Service Elephant go Washy Washy

Your love is like   finger sandwiches, with real fingers

Pharmaceutical drugs are polluting rivers worldwide, study warns

On the positive side, we have some of the most well-adjusted fish in the world 

Today I identify as  a set of 5 year old transgender triplets

Something happened and we were allowed out of the house. No snow, no small explosions, no deaths in the family. We came back to the house and the dog was watching Walker, Texas Ranger. Between you and me, I don't think she was watching it. I think it's Mrs. lefty, "leaving the tv on for the dog." I'm sure the dog would rather she leave the oven on with a pizza cooking. One of those all meat pizzas - no crust.

Walker has a pretty good rug.  So anyway, they're in the back of a small Learjet, when out of nowhere, something that looks like a WWII Messerschmitt(?) pops out of nowhere and starts strafing the Lear. The Lear now has 50+ holes in it and is still flying. The only damage is to the front of the plane, meaning the pilot and copilot, who are occupying their seats, bereft of life. Naturally, Walker can fly a plane, because we can all fly planes when the pilot takes a few bullets in the head. After a number of strafings, the fuq5rrel tank gets hit. There is fire. Walker (and his rug) decide to land in the river. Poof - he puts it down like Sully. Oops. It doesn't work that way, unless you're Sully. It woulda broken apart real nice. I know this from watching 20 seasons of Airport Crash Investigation. I can fly planes AND tell you why they crashed. Spoiler: Chuck, girlfriend(?), and rug all made it out safely. I apologized to the dog and muted the tv, so I could type this missive.

We visited our favorite upscale restaurant (Waffle House) for breakfast. There are NO Waffle Houses anywhere near the Philly area. You have to drive at least an hour to find one, making us very silly people (because you didn't know that already). It turned out to be a bit of a mistake because I had a small headache and the place sounded like they were slamming large stacks of dishes, all through the meal. I can't complain about the chocolate chip waffle, though.

On the way back, we stopped at their local Mart, until recently, the only place in the country you could still smoke in, while shopping. Apparently they replaced cancer sticks with dogs; we saw a lot of them. The world would be better if dogs were allowed everywhere. Anyway, this Mart used to be full of people whose eyes spent their time looking at each other. They graduated(?) and now it's full of people with green, blue, and hot pink hair. I can't tell you what the mean number of colored-hair people per mall is, but they were way over.  It is an unusual time when *I* look like the straight, uptight, suit and tie worker, by comparison.

I got dragged into some sort of natural store, with 7 shelves of 'local' honey. I asked Wife if their local honey was better than our local honey, an hour away. She attempted to explain, then I attempted to explain 'rhetorical' or 'joke'. But if I needed honey and went by myself, I would have been in Deep Doo-Doo. In this store, you do not buy honey, no sir. You buy different varieties of honey. As a man and a man who puts honey in tea twice a year, this was daunting. There was clover, wildflower, and buckwheat honey. There was blueberry, ketchup, and Brussels sprouts honey. I'd have to ask the lady where the honey was, then explain to her that I'd like the honey I'd buy in a supermarket. This would go into the rather large and growing Failure Pile. Fortunately, Wife knew exactly what she needed. 'Needed.'

Another store had military surplus. I had no idea why, but I had to see everything in the store. My favorite was the grenade pouches. I didn't buy any, because it turned out they didn't come with grenades. The same problem arose with the M-16 cleaning kit. They did have some fine Lithuanian army underwear, just not in my size.

It has just hit the shelves: the Mothers Live at the Fillmore '71 three cd box set, with extras, including the night John and Yoko joined them onstage. I had no choice - the money jumped out of my wallet before I could stop it. Review to follow.

We were pleasantly surprised to win a prize for the only people with their natural hair color. Unfortunately the prize was a carton of cigarettes. Generic cigarettes.

It's really nice when the universe lets us out.

lefty Law states one cannot pass a Dairy Queen without visiting. On the way in, Mrs. lefty says the next car over is pretty nice, and discovers it's a Tesla. "STAND BACK!" I said. "You never know when it will spontaneously combust." The only way it would have been better is if the owner was around.

Know what's mind-bending?

My nephew just hit legal age.

We were there the night he was born.

The other night, we saw our latin american friends, with their dog. I asked if the dog was bilingual, and they said she absolutely is - she understands Spanish and English. Especially if food is involved.

 

Woman Sues Over Delivery of Chocolate Penis With 'No Redeeming Qualities'

Sounds a bit subjective to me. Who decides what redeeming qualities of a penis are? I know a ton of women who would think it's quite redeeming, and a ton more who would simply get the joke. 

Let's take a moment to be really sad for her husband.

Flying AIDS News

What do we mean by ‘COVID-19 changes your brain’?

7 in 10 long COVID patients still battle memory and concentration problems

Why some Americans haven't gotten COVID yet and why it's not inevitable they ever will: Experts

Ivermectin Didn’t Reduce Covid-19 Hospitalizations in Largest Trial to Date

Please stop putting COVID-19 test solution in your eyes and nose, FDA says

Murky case for fourth doses now with FDA as protection wanes, BA.2 looms

Omicron vs Zero-Covid: How long can China hold on?

Tesla (Flying) News

We love us some Tesla. They could have their own blog, full of weekly entertainment stories. To be fair, this has nothing to do with Tesla flaws, unless you needed to prove it can't fly.

This week it's the guy in Los Angeles, whose parked car sustained damage, because someone rented a Tesla and sent it airborne. Video has apparently gone viral. I hope the Tesla renter had insurance. It seems Mr. Subaru didn't and has a GoFundMe (post GoFsckMe). There is a hunt to find the airborne driver. The hunt was very difficult, as the driver had already posted it on TikTok. I guess TikTok is the new Faceyspaces. What kind of education was missed, causing people to commit crimes and put video of them online? Brain aberration? Are we going to have to add this to the first grade curriculum? Maybe after do not steal.

The hunt for Nigerians who can change into cats

As if the Nigerians weren't bad enough, with their scamming, apparently many believe they can turn into cats. Bad juju. Maybe we should stop laughing at the Catholics. MeanI addedwhile, people are looking for others who can allegedly do this.

As it turns out, research shows Nigerians aren't the only ones with strange beliefs:

• Botswanans believe they can turn into the Dodo, which is good, as they're extinct
• Kiribatis believe they can turn into Elon Musk
• Slovakians believe they can turn into anything that isn't Slovenians
• Micronesians believe they can turn into Macronesians - the jury is still out
• North Macedonians believe they can turn into South Macedonians (studies show there is no South Macedonia)
• Guineans want you to know they can't turn into the pigs
• Kyrgyzstanians believe they can turn into something spellable
• Nigerans believe they can turn into anything that isn't spelled that way, for obvious reasons

How Oil and Gasoline Prices Actually Work

We're well over $4, California over $5.

Epson payments snafu leaves subscribers unable to print

Internet of Things Strikes Again

The moment you have to connect your device (printer, game box, fridge) to the net, something bad is going to happen.

So you have a nuclear power plant.

So there's a bit of a problem in your country.

So there's a shortage of nuclear power plant workers.

After about 600 Hours, 64 Workers at Ukraine's Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Finally Relieved

Worker1: Hey, is that a fuel rod over there?

Worker2: Nah, that's Bugs Bunny

Worker1: Are we being paid to operate Bugs Bunny? I forget.

Worker2: I think we're supposed to do stuff to make sure there's no Chernobyl

Worker3: How can we do that with the trains running through the control room?

Worker1: Those are not trains - they're bears escaped from zoo

Worker3: What do the dials say?

Worker1: They're singing Hendrix tunes. How do you think I'm staying awake?

Worker4: They say after 48 hours without sleep, you start to hallucinate

Worker1: Never happen. Not here. Were trained nuclear plant operators.

Worker2: Yeah, plus we could use that coffee to power the plant, instead of the fuel rods

Worker3: Hey, there are tanks out there. They look like ours. I don't generally hallucinate military stuff

Worker2: That's not a hallucination - they're bringing in replacements!!!

Worker1: No they're not - that's Mr. Freeze, The Riddler, and the Joker - all sworn enemies of Batman.

Worker3: Isn't he The Batman now? Where's Robin?

Worker2: Home - he's sore from too much sliding down the Batpole.

All: Ewwwwwwww 

Worker1: Wait - I think I see Batwoman

Worker3: Which one?

Worker1: Too far to tell; I hope it's Julie Newmar. Shall we let them in?

Worker3: What if she's only dressed like Batwoman and is evil?

Worker2: We can't afford to let them in. Too much danger. Are you crazy?

Worker1: Do you know we've been here 600 hours?

All:  UNLOCK THE DOORS

Incoming!!

Perhaps I'm wrong about the Internet of Things....
A hacker did his thing on a Nest security camera then warned the household that North Korean ICBM missiles were heading to the Los Angeles. 

You have to admit this was clever: additional points for terrifying the occupants.
Google, Nest's owner, said it was bad passwords.
Everybody else says it's the crappy 'security' built into the cameras, plus bad passwords,

Warning: never use default passwords or passwords you use elsewhere.

Next week on Internet of Things: your dishwasher tells you your daughter's pregnant.

• I pick on Apple but it's not their fault entirely... it's their customers.  A teen who sold a kidney for an iDevice is now bedridden for life. Yeah, but he's bedridden with an iDevice.

Dear lefty:

• Bobby Bollinger, of Brampton, AlaBama, asks if we're kinky here.
• Dear Ballsinger: when you were born, did the doctor spank you a little too much?

Remember the case of the unfortunate brain-dead woman in a facility who gave birth? A suspect has been arrested, strangely, a nurse working there. He was nabbed by DNA. Who expected that to happen?

We got way too many calls about housing for aging relatives. I asked if the relatives were likely to get pregnant. The calls stopped.

• An Oregon man was sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting a horse. 
• The horse visited weekly.

Genetics or Environment?

Every pet in our house has figured out how to open bi-fold doors, because you shouldn't be alone when going to the bathroom. This is four dogs and two cats. How does this happen?

The latest figured it out yesterday. She also magically appears when I'm eating. From a different floor, while napping. With me making no noise at all, including silverware, opening bags, chewing like a cow, or shrieking adult pleasure noises.

• There's an online forum for the discussion of the Internet of Things. It's called Dumpster Fire.

Next on Real Housewives of New Jersey:

• The one with the ridiculously huge lips breaks down and cries when the other one accuses her of not getting her lips done.
• The entire cast says, "We're still on tv?"
• The camera crew pisses the actors off because they don't understand the Joisey dialect.
• Gene Simmons guest stars as the rock star who's banging them all. What do you mean he already did that?
• The women jump into someone's olympic size pool and can't go under water because of their augmented flotation devices.
• Yo Angie has Yo Tina's eyebrow tattoos removed, without her knowledge.
• Crisis is averted when the crew helicopters in hair spray and gel. The helo crash-landed in the olympic size pool, but they rescued the hair products.

It was gettin a little quiet here.....

It was 5am and I was rudely awakened by something like thunder. We looked at each other and said "TREE." Looking outside (I hate outside - it only causes trouble), we verified TREE. The gargantuan shade thing had split quite nicely, landing on the sidewalk. It also got a few overhead wires. This is but one reason why 5am is no good.

It happened by a streetlight, so the damage was well-lit and nobody lost power. Sure enough, within an hour, some idiot drove right through it, breaking the wires and landing them on the street. They courteously drove away. This is but one reason why people are bad.

The power company was very concerned, letting us know they'd send someone around if a truck became available - definitely by next Tuesday.  Ever helpful, a neighbor called police, who courteously blocked the road. In spite of this, people still tried to get around him. It's a good thing we didn't block the street with a line of kids....

Police apparently multiply, as they had become a small battalion, with yellow tape. We're thinking of taking them some coffee. Crime must rampant here. The boys in blue confirmed how utterly idiotic people are. Apparently people are coming up to them, telling them how inconvenient this is and how long will it last. If they're so concerned, they should band together, move the tree, and fix the wires themselves. That should produce complete silence...

The electric d00ds were uncharacteristically nice and pleasant and got it sorted out quickly. Now we call the Tree People. That should deplete the guitar fund completely. Oh yeah, there's the smashed rear window and dented rear of the car.

The problem here is the house knows when I have a surplus and breaks accordingly.





Dear lefty:

• My neighbor really really bothers me. Is it ok to shoot her?
• Keep holy the 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Get Caught

Tonight for dinner: cooked sushi.

This is a Different Post, Just Like All My Other Posts

Over in England, the Ministry for Measuring Things has noted a 90% increase over last year's sales figures for cassettes. Yes, those things you couldn't wait to get rid of after you got a cd player for your car.

Every now and then I come up with an amazing idea and here's one: I am going to put my entire collection of Vintage Original cassettes on the market. They're worth a fortune! I will even include a few Vintage Original blank cassettes. The reason the Vintage Original cassettes are better is twofold: firstly, they have Vintage and Original in their title; secondly, over time, the magnetic particles have aligned with each other for smooth Vintage Original sound that one cannot approximate with New Non-Vintage Non-Original cassettes.

I won't be able to count my money fast enough. Either the tone of this blog is going to change or I'll stop blogging entirely. On the other hand, the guilt of abandoning the six of you would be too great. I will stay.

Just wait til I whip out my 8 tracks and reel to reel tapes!

• I like my neighbor the schizophrenic. He's a genuinely nice guy, who manages to spend most of his time on the planet with the rest of us. After he told me about the lasers shining on our house the other night, that looked like gun sights, he said he's really sorry and he knows we must be missing our little guy. 

It's a bad time to be an administrator or citizen of two municipalities in Alaska. The Alaskan Borough of Matanuska-Susitna (Mat Su) and the City of Valdez have both been hit with some really nasty ransomware. Let's say a few systems are down, like the electronic door key swiping system, nearly all of the workstations, 120/150 servers, email, property querying, library system, landfill weights and fees application, and animal shelter’s computers. The saddest part of this is that they had to dig out their typewriters. I'm sure there were courses available for the kids who had never seen one before. "Most" of the data is safe and credit card data was not stored there. Over 200 organizations have been hit.

The IT Director said:

I will tell you is that this isn’t some kid in his mother’s basement. This is very sophisticated and well-funded.  It would come from somewhere I believe outside the US. When we call it ransomware, that’s not its purpose. I believe its purpose was to disrupt our way of life.

ThermionicEmissions has done some digging in some very dark places and came up with some information: it's the Chinese, messing with the Russians. 

• Seeing a .DOC, .XLS, .PDF, .ZIP, or .7Z "paperclipped" to an email message should always tell you to proceed with extreme caution. These are the most dangerous extensions potentially used by malware authors.
• Remember: Don't

A Security Dood on Twitter has one smart bulb in his house. He found out the company went out of business months ago. The last settings he made are now permanent because the app no longer works. The Internet of Things became The Internet of Things That Don't Work.

• John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, is in Deep Doo Doo because he used the word 'poof' on British radio (poofter: slang for homosexual). Apparently this is a terrible thing to say. In response, Cleese said Graham Chapman was a poof and dead, so he's a double minority. Terry Gilliam, Python and filmmaker, said he identifies as a black lesbian in transition.
• The BBC has dedicated itself to finding comedy of color, so it's not six white guys, like Python. Because non-white comics are genetically funnier than white comics.
• Hopefully we'll all be alive to see this stop.

If you're a Gmail user, you shouldn't be.

Having said that, they offer a new feature called Confidential Mode. It should be called, more accurately, Sometimes Confidential Mode. Let's say that its somewhat confidential from most, except the biggest culprit last time: Google. Google can save and read all your email. Again. Still. Protonmail.com

• Just heard on tv: Don't put your penis in the cooking stove.

Folks... I hope you don't feel like I'm bleeding all over the blog, but I have to try to get this out somehow. Losing a 13 year member of the family you saw every day is traumatic. We're trying everything to get back to (ab)normal, but only time will help. There hasn't been nearly enough of it yet.

Dear Marshall:
I don't know if you read blogs wherever you ended up, but I'm putting this out there to the Universe.  There's a lot of disruption in the wake of your leaving. It's been 4 weeks but feels like forever. We miss stuff... stuff like..

• not being able to go on vacation. We now have the freedom to go anywhere (which we haven't)
• keeping doors open a little
• your food lady misses buying hot dogs for you and jumping when you bark
• tripping over you in the bedroom
• the shrieking to go out, in, or when you didn't get what you wanted
• Quality Time: when I got in bed and you'd come up and lay next to me, demanding attention til one of us got tired. The best time of my day. Mom was jealous. Was the extra cuddling because you knew?
• hell, we miss running to vets and paying the bills - we'd gratefully do it again for you
• the supervision and assistance we got whenever cooking or cleaning the kitchen
• looking at you and scratching your itches

I wanted to tell you how much we miss you but I think you know; you probably miss us too.

Manscaping? I Don't Even Mow the Lawn

Since my furry child started seeing the acupuncturist, he's been eating well. In fact, he's been eating better than his parents. We were told to feed him fresh food. As a result, Wife cooks chicken breasts (it's always about the breast with me) and puts them in the fridge for the week.

To say cockers like chicken is like saying cockers like beef. And cat food.
I sliced it up, went to take the plate to his table, and my wife looked at me in abject horror: "You're not going to heat it up?"

Uh-oh.

Ummmm.. no.

You have to heat it up for him.

Oh. I see (I said, not seeing). Perhaps we can ask him which he prefers.

No, you have to heat it up.

Shall I take a nice cabernet with it? Perhaps a salad?

Don't let him near the liquor again. Remember what happened last time.

Dessert? Do you serve dessert warm or cold?

I'll do it.



Perhaps this is why anybody who knows me and meets my wife tells her how sorry they are for her.

• Wendy: TMZ with implants

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum is leaving because of long-standing differences of opinion with other Faceyspaces executives. WhatsApp is owned by Faceyspaces. Apparently they're collecting customer data and weakening encryption to give advertisers a wider base to target.  Irony: two days ago I told my family not to use this app. Zuckerberg is evil and wanted to link WhatsApp phone numbers with Faceyspaces data. This is a perfect example of how different entities with different bits of data can figure out exactly who you are and what you do. See what Signal can do for you.

• Twitter, sometimes inaffectionally referred to as Twatter by its users, sold data access to a researched linked with Cambridge Analytica. This is the company that Faceyspaces got caught selling data to. Twitter magically banned Cambridge from buying data or running ads on the platform. 
• Another huge corporation with a 'free' service. The free service is your data.

In a delightful bit of research, Princeton University set about seeing where Internet of Things devices went online. Click the link and behold the wonders of where your smart tv, security camera, and light bulbs go when started up.  Let's say the devices go to many third party sites and are not always encrypted. A third party site is a site that has absolutely nothing to do with the operation of the device, like Faceyspaces and ad companies. This is but one reason I won't touch Internet of Things devices. Unfortunately, IoT is the current buzzword, so corporations will be using it, along with the previous buzzword: The Cloud.

Your Samsung Smart TV is a busy little beaver. During the first minute after power-on, the TV talks to Google Play, Double Click, Netflix, FandangoNOW, Spotify, CBS, MSNBC, NFL, Deezer, and Facebook­even though we did not sign in or create accounts with any of them. 

• When I was little, I wondered what it would be like in 2000, when I'd be a certain age. Having aged another year, I never thought about what this age would be like. It's a good thing I remain the same irascible, sarcastic, social bastard. Nothing has changed but the number.

A few years back, the politicians were making a lot of racket about predatory lending, or payday loans. I'm not entirely sure what was done, although it's safe to bet it wasn't all that useful. It could be worse: it could be England, where every third commercial is for payday loans. They're very honest too.. the last one featured interest of 1249.9% (and someone called Uncle Vinny Smashuface)

• President Trump sent a High Mucketymuck to visit Netanyahu in Israel. Netanyahu, on Twitter, said the relationship between the two countries was stronger. Ever the truth-seeker, I mentioned that for $3.15 billion in military aid, it had better be strong. No response yet and no visits from the Mossad, although that UPS truck sure has been parked there a long time...

The country is now seeing some results from the Trump-Stormy Daniels feud. She is now suing him for slander, growing the total number of lawsuits to thirty five. In a totally, completely unrelated story, which has absolutely nothing to do with the multiple lawsuits, patrons of the strip club she's working at arrived ten hours early for her performance.

What are they going to do at a strip club for ten hours..... oh.

In doing detailed research for this story, I looked at a lot of porn stars. Old Stormy is not exactly in the top ten, in terms of looks. In fact, she's not in the top fifty. Perhaps she has other talents.... who knows?

It may surprise you to know that I've been...ummm.... involved with a few strippers and adult video stars in my old musical comedy allegedly professional life. One had just made a movie, so we copied the cover, wrapped it around condoms, and threw them out to the audience during the show. We had never been as popular with the audience and other comics in our history.

Then there were the strippers. This was a long time ago and I'm not entirely sure how we wound up with them (no, really). It's possible our gig was in the strip club and we took it because it sounded like an experience we needed to have. I remember the show wasn't all that well-received, but we started to figure out not to perform near food or strippers. Or football games on bar tv, but that's a different story entirely. We had a video camera with us, because this was before the days of cell phones with cameras. I sat on a particularly attractive stripper's lap and she looked into the camera and told my girlfriend that the strippers were going to steal me away. For reasons I cannot comprehend, my girlfriend was not amused. Go figure.

• Mel Gibson is set to direct a movie described as a kamikaze war thriller. In it, he claims the kamikazes were Jews.
• Speaking of the Jews, a man burst into a Manhattan movie theater and starting to yell about guns, saying, "They are killing us," then "people with guns are killing people in the theater." In a reaction no one could have expected, people got a bit upset. One moviegoer jumped from a low balcony and hurt himself. The yeller grabbed him by the throat and said, "I got the Jew." The Jews really seem to be up to things lately.
• In PA, a boy told the police a clown jumped from the woods and hit him with a metal baseball bat. Apparently this sort of thing happens all the time in Butler County. No word on whether the clown was Jewish.

Let's Bring the Country Together (free speech edition):

a rapper has urged the Crips to assault Kanye West for his support of Donald Trump.

“Yo national alert, all the Crips out there, y’all f— Kanye up,” he said, referring to the infamous Los Angeles-area street gang.

This message was also posted on the rapper's Twitter account.

I have it on good authority there are no Jews in the Crips.

• I have done such an excellent job of staying away from this, but, as a service to my readers, I must let you know that Caitlyn Jenner (68) may marry 21 year old transgender 'blonde bombshell' Sophia Hutchins.
• No personal pronouns will be allowed at the ceremony or in their house because even Caitlyn doesn't know if she's a lesbian (or something) now.

A Conversation with the Dog

I'm on the couch, which is the first place anyone should look for me. I work, I nap, I watch tv, and I surf for porn from the couch. Marshall has been snoozing all day. Wife comes home from doing whatever she does when she leaves, heats up some lunch and sits down. What she forgot was the very sensitive trip switch in the cushion that alerts Marshall that something is happening and he needs to be there immediately to observe it.

This was his absolute second favorite thing in the world: Mommy eating. His first favorite is Marshall eating. He knows better than to sit near me because I won't give him anything while we're eating and from where we're eating. This is proper pet parent behavior, so the dog doesn't think your food is his food. At very least, get up and put it in his bowl. Of course when you do that, he knows that when you're done eating, you're going to put food in his bowl. There is no winning with this dog.  Anyway, he perches near his mommy because mommy is a klutz and will drop something. Cheesy Poofs are the worst. For every handful she gets, two poofs drop to the ground. Marshall is right there to clean for us: our very own Hoover.

Marshall's new trick is when he sees Mom eating, he starts the pitiful whining, which continues and gets louder the longer he's ignored. To be fair, he's a dog, he's old, and he has a fatal disease. The whining can mean pain, hunger, thirst, bathroom, or I Want Your Food. Mom got up and gave him water and asked about the bathroom. Mom went about her business, which meant it was Dad's turn.

Dad. Dad. DAAAAAD.
Yes?
Scratch my ears.
Ok.
Groan... that's good... groan.
Like that?
Yes.
Ok, I have to call someone.
Dad. DAAAAAAAD.
Yes, my child?
Scratch my ears again.
Ok.
And scratch them again. I feel itchy today.

(I forgot that this is code for "I want something.")

Did you want something?
[runs to water bowl] Yeah, water.
Didn't Mommy just give you water?
Yes, but it wasn't the right water.
What was wrong? Was it brown?
No.
Was it full of metal?
No. It was sink water.
Yes.
Sink water is good for swimming only. That's why I always have my paws in the bowl. And it's not cold enough.
Ah. I see. Give me a second. [retrieves sink water he bottled and refrigerated] How's that? [stands 4' over bowl and pours so dog can drink from the stream]
THAT's what I wanted.
Good, no more whining, please. [sits back down]
[60 seconds later] Dad. Dad. DAAAAAAAAAD.
WHAT is it NOW?
I have to go outside.
Couldn't you have asked me that before, when I was up? Do you understand efficiency?
Huh?
Never mind. [lets dog out]
[3 min later] Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. I have to come back in.
I'm cominnnnnng.
Good!
This will be all, right?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Dad. Dad?
YES?
I'm going to take a nap with Mom. Since my paws are wet, I'll be jumping on the bed, probably sleeping on your pillow.

I. Love. My. Dog.
I do.
I treasure every moment we spend together.
Objectively speaking, he's the most brilliant, beautiful cocker spaniel in existence.

Treasure the people and pets in your life. It could all be over in a second.

• If, for any reason, you happen to be flying to New Zealand, leave your duck tongues at home. Don't ask me how I know.

It was December 31, 1969. At the Fillmore, the crowd was counting down. FOUR. THREE. TWO. ONE. Happy New Year!!! Bill Graham gets on the mic to wish everyone a happy new year, while Auld Lang Syne plays. Graham notes that this is the beginning of a new decade. Out of nowhere, the Band of Gypsies plays an impromptu version of Auld Land Syne. It was a new decade. In eight months, Jimi would be dead.

Cell phones have been around for a long time. A girlfriend had a bag phone. Wife and I got Beam Me Up Scotty phones a long time ago. As soon as the Palms came out, I got one - for the time, it was incredible. And here we are, in the era of Really Big Phones and I want a bigger one. Must be my eyes.

It's probably a good thing we're going to check out new phones because there's a slight technical issue with our phones. We're fine so long as we don't try to call or text each other. When I try to call her, 90% of the time I can't reach her. I get voicemail. In any other industry, a 90% failure rate would be reason for a drastic change (except weather forecasters).

When she texts me, I receive it from three hours to three days later, if it arrives. Just in case you think she's ignoring me on purpose. Mind you, when I text her, she gets it immediately, then forgets it'll take three hours to three days to get to me and responds.

Today I had to go to the supermarket to pick up Stuff and I was elected to go in and she parked the car. Never send a man to do a woman's job. I said this because I knew what would happen if I had to go into the damn store. About thirty seconds in, I realized I forgot the name of the cake I was supposed to get. I saw one that looked close, so I made a long distance call to the parking lot to ask the woman (who should've gone in in the first place). Ring. Ring. Ring. Voicemail.

Very funny. Either the radio was up too loud or she was talking to someone. Call again. Ring. Ring. Ring, Voicemail. My blood pressure reached unsafe levels immediately. Levels usually reserved for the cell phone nagging me repeatedly while I'm driving.

Perhaps it would be better to get the other items first. No soda aisle. Stupid me - it was in beverages. There's a reason I don't go shopping. Back to bakery. Ring. Ring. Ring. Voicemail. My face turned red - I could feel it. My blood pulsed, sounding like a huge kick drum. I swore the people around me could hear it too. Speaking of which, it required an incredible amount of effort to tame my vocal output, which was not even suitable for R-rated television. If I didn't get hold of it quickly, the police would arrive, followed by the guys in white suits in the padded ambulance. After reading this blog, you know how difficult it is to keep my mouth shut. Ring. Ring. Ring. Voicemail.

Ok, that does it. She wants a cake, she'll get a cake. A very sweet chocolate sundried tomato rosemary raspberry tart cake. And she will love it.

She probably wasn't expecting the one person Satan's afraid of, but that's who came to the car with the bags. Her hair actually blew backwards as I expressed my displeasure. And when I say expressed my displeasure, every eight foot display window in the store popped and broke into thousands of tiny, sharp pieces in sequence. Those poor employees thought they were going to be on the news for the next week, as the victim of a deranged shooter. Not me - I was fifty feet away, expressing displeasure.

Cake... soda... supermarket.. PHONES. Phone. Cell phone. Ah.
I've mentioned the ring of Wife's phone before. Dead people can hear it in the next county. I have never heard a phone so loud it belonged in an old beat up car whose front jumped up and down on purpose, driven by someone called Chaco. Naturally this phone always happens to be sitting near me when it goes off. And I cling to the ceiling like a cat that almost got eaten by a rabid dog. I ask, ever so politely, if she could turn the ringer down, ever so slightly.  She answers in the negative, because she has to be able to hear it. It's not that she doesn't realize it's loud, because when she knows I need to concentrate, there's a hole in the back yard in which she buries the phone, in concrete, under the garage, in the tunnel to the pizza place, three blocks away.

After I finished expressing my displeasure, she looked up with those gorgeous, innocent eyes and said, "I didn't hear it."

Mollusks in my Molars

Just saw a book called A Practical Guide to Racism.
Couldn't you just take the ball and run across the country with it?


Does it guide you on how to practice racism?

• a black man asks if he can date your daughter. You tell him "not in muh house, colored person."
• LeRoy the drummer wants to join your band. You say no because he's black. The joke's on you because white people have no rhythm.
• see what I did there?

How to spot racism?

• Good morning, class. I'm from the Mayor's Commission on Racism. Since you're white, you're automatically racist.  [true story-Temple University]
• the guy in the white dunce cap and bedsheet, holding the rope? He's the racist.

How to use racism to shut down any argument?

• Trump building The Wall is racist.

It turns out that the name of the show is RuPaul's Drag Race, not RON Paul's. I know this now. In completely unrelated news, I will not be speaking at the libertarian convention after all.

• Before you take a ride on Lyft or Uber, or after, if applicable, you should probably know what they're up to with your data. Not only do they snoop on riders, the executives are spying on journalists who ask too many questions. This is in addition to your data that allows tracking, as well as a decent idea of where you've been going. Read and weep.

Plugging in a new USB device on a Windows 10 machine sends data to Windows, without encryption. Windows is a dumpster fire. A dumpster fire that positively EATS your privacy. This is something just discovered, in addition to the rest of the backdoors to Microsoft and the NSA. I am not making this up.

not that it really matters....

• I often rant about the IoT (Internet of Things): your toaster and Alexa, sending data up the line. Let me illustrate via the news: people are figuring out that there's something going on militarily. How? Some in the military are wearing Fitbits and their data is going upstream. People have looked at the data and figured out there's movement because the individuals are in places we don't know about or they shouldn't be. It's bad enough that data is leaving our house; now it's perfectly illustrated by possibly secret military data. A failure on the military's part, a failure on the public's part, and on the part of the manufacturer (who is profiting from the data).
• When we're done with this issue, don't take any time to think about military being in places they shouldn't be. Oops.
• All of the sudden, Strava, the manufacturer of the devices, is committed to safety.
• What a perfect time to take a public lesson on this activity. Considering it was just Data Privacy Day, I'm willing to bet it will be completely ignored.

So that Spectre/Meltdown issue with the CPUs... the first fix was recalled. When the real fix comes along, it could slow your computer significantly. Superbly bungled. However, the head of Intel says there will be a fix by the end of the year. A silicon fix (hardware/chip). For all future CPUs. Your CPU? Well, you're screwed. I'm full of righteous indignation today, aren't I?

• Let this serve as your periodic reminder that Tony Curtis' real name was Bernie Schwartz. Michael Landon used to be Eugene Orowitz. Furthermore, Steven Tyler is, in reality, Steven Tallarico. He must have changed it because it sounds too Jewish.

SNAPPLE - further

For those of you following along at home, as well as those of you who can bother to be bothered with Trivial Shit<tm>, I'm continuing on the Snapple path. After several months of attempting to purchase lemon Snapple, which is allegedly on sale, and failing miserably, I managed to procure two large bottles, much to my surprise.  Things were good.

But the Snapple Gods were not smiling down upon me. In fact, they were laughing hysterically. Upon opening, the first taste was weird. The second taste continued to be weird. Thinking maybe I ate chocolate or something that would throw the taste off, I tried later. I had my wife try it. I'd have had the dog try it, but he doesn't indicate on quality. He'd probably reject it anyway, on the basis of lemon. He'll eat almost anything but lemon.

It's odd... maybe too much lemon. I'm not exactly sure. Will have to open the second bottle. Who else do you know who has trouble procuring a decent bottle of Snapple? Things are a little... different.. in my house.

I don't mean to come off all negative. I can say conclusively that every bag of Peanut Butter M&Ms that has entered my house has been consistently delicious. There's never even a problem purchasing it. Or eating it.

UPDATE: Snapple and YooHoo, among others, were just purchased by Keurig Green Mountain. While Keurig is one of the greatest products ever invented, Green Mountain has spammed people relentlessly and their coffee is like light brown water, with all the taste of... light brown water.

• Speaking of getting out, I finally managed to get to the guitar store that was (intentionally) closed on New Years Day. With more than enough money for strings and picks, with a great collection of effects pedals, with about four lefty guitars, I could not find a thing I wanted. Nice employees, though.
• Fender has some interesting new guitars coming out; a new series called American something or other Series. Unfortunately it won't be in stock for a while. The positive news is that the existing series guitars will be blown out, hence a potential good deal. I love Fenders, even if they don't make much I like these days. I have older ones.
• Do you ever feel like feeling like you're old? Of course you do. When I was young, I got my first Fender. These Stratocasters were generally regarded as dogs. It was a bad time for Fender and their products suffered. Flash forward to modern day and the 'dogs' I bought are now considered 'vintage'. They command a lot more than they were purchased for. Dogs.
• Meanwhile, I want a real vintage guitar -  1950s.  I played a 1958 Strat once.. it was like butter.. it almost played itself, like something out of Spinal Tap. It would have cost me about $12,000. Today that same guitar would cost triple, quadruple, or more, depending on condition. Since we're rather fond of living in our house, I'll have to find an alternate funding source.

The self-replicating dirty dishes have taken on almost plague-like conditions. I leave a clean sink and the next morning it's full again. Remember, there are only two (alleged) adults plus a precocious spaniel in the house. For this occasion only, I feel safe saying it's not the dog's fault, as he cannot grasp dishes, due to that Lack of Opposable Thumb Thing. I haven't fully ruled out the wife, though, as things tend to happen when she's involved. Logically, all things considered (such as my physical well being), I have only one choice: to believe that the dirty dishes are self-replicating. 

• Interns at the Kansas Capitol must sign a confidentiality agreement. Some outside experts say this is to deter sexual harassment claims.  Imagine an employer so dirty that one has to sign an agreement not to talk about what goes on? Imagine that it's the government.
• Nope, sorry. The government is to remain transparent (Obama, the most transparent administration). They're always up to no good, and that's just the part we can see. Who allowed the Patriot Act to pass? Who just reauthorized unfettered spying? Congress.

Way down there in Mumbai, referred to by Lynyrd Skynyrd as Sweet Home Mumbai, a man died when he was sucked into an MRI machine.  My wife had an MRI and was terrified, so I went with her. Nobody told us what to expect. The machine started and I noticed the necklace I was wearing at the time seemed to be very eager to leap into the machine. We're talking about a piece of metal the size of a guitar pick.

So I'm wondering if maybe the guy was wearing a metal suit. No, as it turns out, the poor fellow was carrying an oxygen cylinder. A doctor and another person were arrested under Indian law for causing death due to negligence. This is one law you won't see in the US. Ever.  It is believed that the gentleman died from inhaling liquid oxygen, which cools the machine.  So remember, kids... breathe oxygen, don't drink it.

If I don't see the sun soon, all of the stories here will be like this.
I mention this because not only is it dreary, we have two days of Nuisance Snow this week. Although all snow is a nuisance, Nuisance Snow is up to one inch, which only serves to cause car accidents and panic buying of bread, milk, and those hats with the whirlygig on top.

• A Russian military jet came within five feet of a US Navy plane, out in international waters. 
• Asked for comment, Vladimir said, "That's a nice plane. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it."
• Navy experts said that it was an attempt by the Russians to show that their... fuselages... were bigger than ours.

Some historically black colleges are struggling with rock bottom graduation rates, some as low as twenty percent. Based strictly upon recent events, there are several ways to deal with this:

1. Lower standards for graduation. A city police force (Philly?), under orders to hire more black people, had to lower the test scores for hiring because not enough black people passed the test.
2. Bring in Other Than Black (OTB) students, on a scholarship, to hopefully raise graduation stats.

That should go over like the proverbial fart in church. Like a Black Sabbath concert for the pope. Like a sermon on bodily fluids.

• Thrillist’s Definitive and Final Ranking of All 50 States ranks Florida as the worst state in the nation.  California's governor Jerry Brown has passed a law, ignoring Florida's rating, and pledges to get his state ranked "right where it belongs."
• Stockton, California, has come out of the gate swinging. Bankrupt since 2012, Stockton's mayor is going to implement Universal Basic Income. For one year, several dozen families will get $500 per month, no strings attached.  In addition to tracking what the residents do with the money, they will be monitoring how a basic income affects things like self-esteem and identity.
• At this point, there is a one million dollar contribution to go towards funding this experiment. If implemented, there will be no donations: it will come right out of your pockets.
• Where did the crisis come from? Stockton racked up millions in debt in development projects in the past, among other things. But it's Magic Money!
• Seriously?

Never accuse ThermionicEmissions of failing to feature feel-good stories, chock full of good old fashioned family values. In fact, the Philadelphia Inquirer just ran a great, sensitive story about generations of families in jail together. It just [sniff..] tugs at your heartstrings. 

• The Indians baseball team is going to change their "Chief Wahoo" logo, deemed offensive to Indians. To avoid causing any further upset, the Indians' new logo will be a swastika.

I've been married a while, so naturally I got to thinking about marriage licenses. Sit a spell and think with me, please.

A couple must go to the city/state/locality and pay for a license to marry. 

Let's not get into the discussion over the state telling you who you can marry.

Why should the state have a say in your marriage? At most, perhaps they can act strictly as a registrar, keeping a record that you are married. Maybe.

This is one of the many reasons I'm a libertarian. We believe in small government. I'd go so far as to say we don't need car registrations. Some go further.

And then when you're done getting the state's permission to marry, you have to find someone to marry you (hopefully you already have a spouse picked out). Apparently this is considerably easier a process, in that just about anyone can marry you. Justice of the Peace, religious leaders, ministers of the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, pretty much anybody with the right piece of paper.

• Campus Reform took a trip to New York University to ask students what they thought about President Trump's State of the Union address. Students hated it. The only problem was that the address was a week away. Did the students get an advance copy? Did they somehow travel to the future and back? Ladies and gentlemen, the future of America.
• Next week, NYU will review the 2020 elections.

Ripped from the headlines: last night I read, wherever it was that I read it, that you might as well eat pizza for breakfast, especially if you normally eat cereal. The logic here is that they have the same amount of calories, but there's a chance that you'll get some protein from the pizza, as opposed to a bowl full of sugar from the cereal. Personally I find nothing wrong with either, although I prefer a bowl full of sugar in the morning and pizza for lunch and/or dinner. Also mentioned is the fact that the cereal sugar is full blast then burnout, while the pizza sugar takes longer, so you don't get the burnout. Not mentioned is whether you like your pizza from last night's box (or last week's), cold from the fridge, or frozen with maple syrup.

• The NSA literally deleted 'trust' and 'honesty' from its core values. At least they're straight about something. By the way, don't say anything when you're near the toaster, ok?

Canada has a C-16 bill, which makes it a criminal offense to 'misgender' people. In England, you cannot use racial slurs, in person or on the internet. The US is working on a law that would make it illegal to make fun of someone's nose hair. Which one of these laws is made up?

I submit that it's difficult to misgender or gender people if they don't tattoo it on their foreheads. Sometimes you see people and ask if they're.... 

And now, ThermionicEmissions is illegal in Canada AND England.

• Boy, am I sick of football. Mind you, I'm sick of football at all times, but it's worse lately. Because the Eagles (Dem Iggles) are going to the Superbowl, television is nonstop Eagles. The morning multi-hour news show is All Eagles, All the Time. The anchors are now in Minnesota (minus the comical accents). Fortunately, there's nothing going on in the country or the world at this moment to break into the 6 hour daily coverage of Dem Iggles, although they did a highly relevant news story about the Mall of America.
• It would be unspeakably rude of me to disallow sports, even though the idea constantly tugs at my being, like certain ideas do when watching Shakira. So watch your sports (after you pay attention to the local and world news, not instead of it). Just get it off the damn 24 hour news cycle.
• It's a good thing I don't watch broadcast television or this blog would be the headquarters of the AntiSports. Moreso.

As I lamented the extreme lack of music on MTV, I discovered an actual CLASSIC channel! Forgetting MTV's mandate, it became clear that Classic means the songs that were HOT fifteen minutes ago. You haven't lived til you hear your tunes on the oldies station.

• While it is possible that the dog sits under other people and gasses them into oblivion, I can only speak for myself. Last time it was so bad that I ran into the kitchen to see if the stove was on. I'm ordering a WWII gas mask  or some SCUBA gear.

Michael Moore, multi-millionaire filmmaker and celebrity*, says that America must be 'Cleansed' of white male privilege.  If he were really serious, he'd cleanse America of Michael Moore's white male privilege.

* I'm against personal attacks. If I weren't against personal attacks, I'd say something like, "...and Famous Fat Person,"

• Quincy Jones took a swing at Taylor Swift recently, saying we need f***ing songs, not hooks. 'A bad song can't be saved by the three best singers in  the world'.
• Go, Quincy! Although this is way late in coming, and probably should have been directed at a previous generation or two, it needed to be said. However, the blame ultimately lies with the record companies. They will only sign and put out garbage for the lowest common denominator. When it starts to sell, all you get is copycats, including the songs, which are written by only a few people. To be fair, Taylor writes her own songs.

Hey, remember that false alarm about the incoming missile in Hawaii?  

It would seem that we have the Original Excuses, and now we have a Report, just made public. For your reading pleasure, the Original Excuses are in blue and the Report Excuses are in red.

The employee hit the wrong button.

The employee misheard something during the drill and believed there was an incoming missile.

The employee made a mistake: we didn't fire him, we reassigned him.

The employee was fired last week.

He was a good employee.

He has been a source of concern to other staffers for over ten years.

We are fed such crap on a daily basis.  Mainstream media lies and/or makes things up routinely. Regardless, all news outlets are owned by six organizations and they print what they're told. When there's an emergency, Damage Control goes into action. Read it again. Boldface lies. Or, if you'd rather, what we heard that day was the truth and this report is full of lies. It's not like you can get the truth anyway.  Remember this next time something big happens. Write it down or record it, then watch the narrative 'evolve'.

• Glee star Mark Salling hanged himself after pleading guilty to child pornography charges. If only more would take the honorable way out.

In case you've booked tickets for that holiday in Poland, be aware that the government has limited Sunday shopping to benefit family life.  Hey, that's just as stupid as some country not allowing car.. or alcohol... ummm... sales.. on Sunday because of.... Blue Laws. Oh.

Special Flying Section

• Astronauts will soon recycle their waste into protein paste. Because you know what they say... Eat shit and fly.

Eighty five plumbers headed from Norway to Germany got unlucky when their plane was forced to return to Norway. Because of a broken toilet. 

I will now ruin the hilarity by telling you that the repair needed to be done outside the plane and no one would volunteer. Or the airline couldn't afford their rates.

• United Airlines, who shares Adolph Hitler's publicist, declined a woman's emotional support animal. She even purchased a second ticket, but United refused to let her emotional support peacock on the plane. In a statement, United said they explained this to the lady three times before they arrived at the airport.
• Something tells me they're really not going to like my emotional support elephant.

Best Headline: Dems panic over avalanche of good economic news...

• I hate it in PA. In the summer, you have to get the ice cream home before it melts. Tonight the ice cream was just fine, but the cereal froze.

We Need Commonsense Truck Laws

It was a fine morning.
The wife had taken off at some unearthly time to take the parents to the airport. They were flying to somewhere (allegedly) warm.* It was so early, she had to scrape ice off the windows.
Back home, I had to get the trash out before the trucks did their parade down the block. Fortunately they didn't have their marching music blasting from the trucks this morning. The Crazy Lady was peering out her spyhole front window, shaking her head disapprovingly, as her trash goes out three seconds after the Minimum Allowable Time strikes the previous day.

Running late, I looked down at Marshall, who looked up, expectantly.
Ah yes, The Dance of the Medicines.
As you know, he isn't very good with taking his pills, depending on your definition of good. He has figured out all manner of not taking his pills, worse than a psych patient in a locked ward. We have tried all sorts of hiding places, like peanut butter, cheesecake, lunchmeat, tuna loaf, Tastykakes, and whatever else is around. This week we're back to turkey. I carefully roll the pill in turkey and present it to His Highness. He quickly sniffs it and gobbles it (sorry). I notice the chewing isn't at his usual rate, which signals Shenanigans. Not hearing the pill drop on the floor (he spits them out while eating the lunchmeat), I turned to give him another pill and there he sat, pill attached to the side of his mouth. Now if you're a black dog, you should probably not hide your white pills on the side of your face. Yes, he's smarter than we are, but according to science, he sees black and white.. perhaps some color.

Running later, it was time for breakfast. No, not mine - his.
Marshall gave up dog food a while ago. As he is doing his best to train his parents, he hasn't had to touch the stuff since. I guess it's not so bad - the stuff costs more than our food, plus we know what he's getting. Unfortunately there was none of it about, so I went with the No Fail Option: tuna. Or as he prefers, "Smells Like Cat Food." Never a problem with tuna. It comes in its own juices too, which drives him nuts (further).

Then it was time for my pills. There's the one to prevent diving under the desk and sitting there for the rest of the day. The other one to counteract the side effects of the one that prevents diving under the desk. The most disgusting pill known to man: vitamin B. I've seen people willingly choose the stuff they give to prisoners with a death sentence over vitamin B.  Then there's the pill that keeps me off the mail lady. The postmaster was very clear about this, so I try not to miss any.

It's not that my wife takes a lot of pills, but the pharmacy truck pulls up after the mail lady leaves.

• All we hear about these days is the opioid crisis. I mention this because the dog takes a non-opioid, very mild pain reliever. Recently we discovered that the Mother In Law also takes this pill. Mother In Law was very unhappy to discover that the dog's dosage is higher than hers and is on the phone to the doctor now.
• As for the Great Opioid Crisis of 2017, a presidential order will result in further chasing of our tails and, importantly, genuinely sick people not being able to get their pain medication. Remember the signs on the pharmacies that said "We do not carry Oxycontin"?

We cannot go a few days without Internet of Things news, and today's is a real winner. LG has a Smart Vacuum. Yes, you read that right. For the bargain price of $549, you get a vacuum that streams video to a smart app on your phone.  The problem is that an attacker can intercept the video, hack the account, and 'gain control of the device'. While it might sound like someone else doing the vacuuming, it could allow access to the home network. So someone can look around your house. 

There are patches to secure the device, but these depend on the vacuum owner having the latest version of the app. What are the odds.....? By the way, over 400,000 of these vacuums have been sold. We're just asking for it. 

Back in my days of customer service, I was taught that when I say NO, I should offer an alternate solution. Well, I left customer service because I hate people, but I want to help. What I'm going to do is keep my house just like its owner: dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. I managed to use vacuums all my life that didn't have a video system that streamed to my phone. You did too. My vacuum is not required to see, as that's a function I can handily perform. My tv does not need to listen to me or send details of what I watch to the manufacturer. My toaster does not need to communicate with anything, other than to tell me when my toast is done (DING). I can survive without my fridge showing me what's in it and telling me what I need to buy at the store.

It's not that I can't see the value of certain smart appliances. A friend has his tv set up through his network and can control it with his voice. Another talks to his Google box, which gives him handy answers to questions and reminds him of things. That's pretty cool... this is the future we read about. What we didn't read about was the technology spying on us and hackers taking over our home network. It's your choice.

• Because of all the ship incidents recently, the Navy has made sweeping changes, including improved training for sailors. 
• Do. Not. Hit. Other. Ship.

China and the US signed an agreement not to hack each others private sector companies for commercial gain in 2015. After the signing, hacking dropped ninety percent. This is really an accomplishment, except that the intrusions haven't entirely stopped; the Crap Cleaner malware left signs that China was involved. 

Taken on its own, an agreement not to hack private sector companies kinda willingly pushes aside the small matter of hacking government systems. 

Mom... Russia is looking at all our files.
Yes, Dear, but they've agreed to ignore files on regular people's computers.

• Tenth graders in California (where else?) are being taught that their sex partner must say 'yes' every ten minutes or it's rape.
• Omitted from this all-encompassing piece of knowledge is what to do when you have multiple partners at the same time.
• Also missing is whether 'oh my God' is an affirmation.
• Who reports the 'rape' if the partner waited til eleven minutes to say 'yes'?
• Do both partners have to do the Rape Dance afterwards, if any laws were broken?
• Can't the president just build The Wall around California?

Parents: you're doing a great job by monitoring your kids' internet use, on their phone, computer, and tv. Unfortunately, the Circle with Disney program you're using has been found to have twenty two vulnerabilities. You're still practicing good parenting, though... instead of monitoring, you're teaching your children to hack. This is a very valuable skill in the 2010s.

• Because you're an aspiring linux guru, here's 3 tools to help you remember linux commands.

Apple will share face-mapping data from the iPhoneX with third-party app developers. Although not as alarming as the headline sounds, this is bad news.

• There's a lawsuit. Yes, there's always a lawsuit, but this one's a winner: a woman is suing Sephora (it's a makeup store, guys) because one of their lipstick samplers gave her herpes. No word on whether the sampler was called Ron and if it was applied in the back room.

Hold onto your hats, kids.... an independent Special Committee has cleared four Equifax executives, including the CFO, of insider trading, after they sold shares just before a major data breach was revealed. Yes, there may be more facts in evidence of which we are not aware, but please... the selloff occurred over a few days, right after they discovered the breach (a month before it was made public). Let me phrase it differently: if you or I had done this, we wouldn't have internet access in jail.

• Offshore law firm Appleby got hacked recently and the hacker dumped an awful lot of information for everyone to see. Yeah, yeah, another breach, it's Monday. Wanna hear a few bits of information?
• secret financial dealings between commerce secretary Ross and a Russian firm part-run by Putin's son-in-law
• millions of dollars of investment in Facebook and Twitter from Russian state companies
• Yes, I like to watch things burn sometimes.. especially when information like this comes to light. They're dirty all the way up to the top.

PC Police Off the Rails. And Cancer.

As we know, England has gone a bit silly with their anti 'hate' laws, making it illegal to say bad things to someone else. One enterprising policeman put two stores on notice that their Feminine Care signs are sexist and must be changed, perhaps to something like 'personal hygiene' or 'personal care'. You know - because men can use tampons. Not to be stopped in his relentless mission of stamping out sexism, he insisted other stores change their restroom signs featuring a woman with a baby, because the men's signs didn't have a baby.

The twitter backlash started immediately, with the officer being slammed for wasting tax money.  Although the story is old, it resurfaced. Usually questionable laws come from Australia, but this one from England is Orwellian. Police are being paid to police speech. It's astounding. One wonders if all other crime has been eradicated so the police can bring the full force to bear on the scourge of people saying bad things.

The policeman in question deleted his Twitter account.

• Condolences to the family and friends of the young lady who lost her life in Charlottesville, when someone drove into a crowd, also injuring many others. The online commentary has very quickly gone nasty and divided itself neatly into predictable camps. Thoughts:
• We (the US) have a First Amendment that allows free speech, no matter how repugnant. The KKK has every right to assemble, regardless of how we feel about them.. to curtail their right is to curtail everyone else's.
• The counter protesters have every right to protest also. It should be noted that when there are counter protests lately, violence tends to follow.
• Free speech does not cover punching or other violent acts, no matter how much any group feels it's ok. Hate speech is a misnomer, used only to shut down opposing views. Speech is speech in the US.
• It is very interesting to note commentary from other countries which do not have our freedoms. They don't understand free speech and think the KKK should not be allowed to march. Period.
• The KKK is a small bunch of agitators, who count on news and counter protests. If people stopped showing up, they would more than likely stop marching.
• At very least, the counter protesters showed up armed for violence.
• The police were given orders to stand down, allowing the violence to occur and escalate. Find out who gave this order and you have a path to find answers.
• It is not difficult to predict that this is only the beginning.
• Ironically, the group calling the KKK nazis wants to shut down speech they don't like.
• Someone spraypainted Fuck Laws, in red paint, on a column at the Lincoln Memorial.
• The above thoughts notwithstanding, arguing over this is a perfect example of Divide and Conquer. If we fight among ourselves, we won't be paying attention to other things.
• Where is this coming from? For one, George Soros, who pours untold millions into creating social unrest.

There is actually a 'sport' called Footgolf. It's advertised as being more exciting than golf. To be absolutely factual, watching grass grow is more exciting than golf, plus you don't have to whisper.

• Speaking of Charlottesville, Anonymous hacked a website called The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi site, which had published an offensive story about Heather Heyer, the lady who was killed by the person who drove his car into the crowd. After the hack, Godaddy, the provider of the page, gave the Nazis twenty four hours to move to a new provider.
• Anonymous says they have the location of the page's owner, Andrew Anglin, and promised to send allies to visit him in Lagos.
• We all love to see the neo-Nazis and Bad Guys get it, right? Does this mean Anonymous is good?
• I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to see the Bad Guys operate in the daylight, so it is easier to see what they are up to.
• GoDaddy states the page violated its terms of service. They were responding to complaints. The complainer, a blogger with an agenda, was outed, resulting in her phone number and address going online and being bombarded by trolls.
• The Daily Stormer registered with Google, which terminated the registration due to violation of terms of service. Someone's not reading terms of service.  I don't remember terms of service, but I do remember Google was pretty solidly behind freedom of speech. You're reading this on a Google site. Perhaps they have a term of service prohibiting neo-Nazis - I don't know.

There is a report of an Internet of Things thermostat playing music. How? It has an Amazon Echo built into it. The situation was remedied by the owner.

In related news, 500 folks who felt it was necessary to get 'smart' door locks found themselves in Deep Doo-Doo when the company shipped a software update that rendered the lock electronically inoperable. Owners had to use their keys, if they had them. The responsible party has offered two fixes, which take between five and eighteen days. Are you ready for the Internet of Things? This is a slow motion train wreck of impossibly large proportions.

• The government has demanded data on visitors to an Anti-Trump site, probably due to an investigation. Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, this sort of thing is bad. 
• On the other hand, perhaps the site should have been located on a server that did not keep this information.
• Some of the Antifa people are radicalizing. There were weapons and shields in Charlottesville. Does this justify an investigation?  Does this behavior violate anyone's terms of service?

So the aliens were giving a tour of Earth...

"This is Roswell, where we played a little trick on the Army Air Force in 1947."

"They call this the Bible Belt. Just ignore it."

"Dogs? They're ours.  Cats? The reptilians rounded them up and dropped them here."

• Ok, I'm dying here... in Atlanta, angry people (antifa) protesting violence defaced a peace monument. Then they all ganged up on a single policeman, shouting PIG! 
• Wait, it gets better... Black Lives Matter put themselves between the policeman and the antifa protesters.
• I'll admit it - I refer to BLM as a terror group. Kudos to them for this selfless act.
• Tomorrow morning, be sure to look for grass, which is now in the up direction, while the sky will be below.

Thus ends the game of Naked Monopoly.

• Given the opportunity, Americans would deep fry furniture

Marshall Update: The biopsy came back positive for malignant melanoma. Sort of. They're 'pretty sure'. There is, of course, another test, but we were told to assume positive. The good news is that they cut out all of it. The bad news is that it still has to be treated, just in case.

So Marshall will now get to see the Doggie Oncologist.

We love him unconditionally, but he's going to need his own GoFundMe page if this continues.

• It's time for my Yearly Tire Rant. Attempting to keep the car legal and maintained, it went to the mechanic. Bulb replaced, oil changed, and by the way, it will need four new tires. The car is obviously conspiring with the dog.
• For reasons I absolutely cannot fathom, my Hyundai requires performance tires. Performance tires. It's not like, at any moment, the engine will leap out of the car because the tires aren't performing. We don't race, we don't bumper car (anymore), and we are never in a situation where the car has to perform anything but starting and running.
• This is the first car I've ever had that has huge wheels and tiny tires. There are no other tires for this car. I'm thinking the car would ride much better with real tires on it but what do I know, aside from the fact that every car I've ever owned had them.
• To make things even more amusing, the tires are in the neighborhood of $250 each. I realize my cars were older, but that's almost what I paid for all four of them.

Internet of Dings

In an extremely rare event, out government seems to have gotten something right. I know, I know, we're all a little dazed. The Senate Cybersecurity Caucus has introduced a bill that would provide patchable products from vendors selling Internet of Things products to the government. In essence the products must be patchable and updateable or replaceable. This is very important with Internet of Things devices.

Now, if they can only do something about their employees... quite a number of breaches are caused by people inside, clicking on stuff they shouldn't.  When in doubt, don't. It will not hurt to ask someone. Your IT department will thank you for asking.

• I gotcher chip card right here: So these new chip cards that are going to secure our purchases, that have already been hacked, have developed a new wrinkle: vendors who won't accept them. In an absolutely unscientific sampling, a significant number of vendors just plain won't accept them and have no plans to. The chip cards were required to be accepted under law, or a penalty would be assessed. The vendors, balking at the price and extra time it takes consumers to use them, have refused. Instead, they will take the penalty. The first one we discovered was Rite Aid. Can you imagine if you decided not to comply with a law? The Mounties would be at your door so fast it would make dragsters look slow by comparison.

The Amazon Echo has been found to have a number of flaws that would allow a hacker to gain root access. The devices (2015 and 2016 models ending in '01') will allow someone to do whatever they want to the device, without a trace. The flaws were fixed in the 2017 models (ending in '02'). The only solace owners have is that the hacker must have physical access to perform the hack (he must be in your house, at the box). Amazon has no plans to exchange the devices. Don't put this stuff in your house.

• RIP Jim Marrs. Jim defined tenacious journalism. He found a topic and dug, then printed the facts.  He taught a college course on the JFK assassination. His books were on JFK, Remote Viewing, secret societies, and 9-11. The Oliver Stone JFK movie was based upon Jim's work. I highly urge you to pick up some of his books. 

If there is so much as a one millimeter gap between food and me, that's where it's going to fall. It's lefty physics. Don't forget to feed your shirt.

• Marshall moves when required. He watched me walk into the kitchen, keeping a loose eye on the proceedings. I took the bag of turkey lunchmeat, shook it within his field of vision, and he came running. There is a company that makes Pill Treats for dogs. They're little squishy treats with a hole in them for medicine, if your dog won't take meds any other way. This is American Genius at work. Unfortunately we're dealing with Dog Genius: he enjoyed this twice, then stopped entirely. We now hide the meds in the treat, then wrap it in turkey. He likes that. For how long is anybody's guess.

I have discovered the best way to rip a paper towel off the roll, while simultaneously shredding it.. pull it at the perforation.

• My Dementia Page has been updated (you see the button up top). In a move that no one could see coming, defying all logic, the facility is discharging the patient because she's too functional. Incredulously pissed does not even begin to describe how I feel.

Much to my dismay there is an Emoji Movie. The nephews went to see it the other day. Asked to rate the movie with emojis, the little one didn't miss a beat and said, "Poop." Runs in the family.

Holes in My Hose

I was sitting there, minding my own business, as most of these stories begin, and there's a voicemail from the Good neighbor. The one who hasn't called the city because my lawn hasn't been edged 'correctly'. This lady is the neighbor you want to have; the sweet old lady. She is the one Marshall has trained to feed him on command. He goes out by her door and barks once. She appears with a hot dog or something and feeds him.  If she fails to feed him, he will sit there and stare at her door, through sun, rain, and snow. He 'buys' her flowers and assorted goodies, like a Pet by Proxy.

The voicemail said that the hose was leaking and there was a lot of water.

Uh-oh.

My wife collects many things, among them hoses and hose accessories. Just last week I attached a new hose and nozzle. Why? Because the other one was old. Ok. We started with a generic hose. It's the same kind of hose everyone had. It was a good hose, a sturdy hose. When you needed to water or fill the dog's pool, it was the hose to use. Because the hose sat, I ran it over on one of my dreaded interactions with the mower. Then the flat hose, featured on countless infomercials, with very loud, fast-talking pitchmen. This either sat in its box or spontaneously disappeared - I can't keep track. The next hose either got old or a house fell on it.

The new hose is green, as they tend to be, but has some odd fabric covering on it and tends to shrivel up or something when there's no water flowing. While I'm fine with computer systems and networks, the Hose Parade escapes me. With the overriding motto in my head (Happy Wife, Happy Life), I tightened all the fittings. There, Dear; new hose.

After the neighbor notice I went immediately to the Hose Site. When I say immediately, I mean after a brief stop at the snack table and Snapple dispensary.  My sharp-eyed neighbor was correct: there was lots of water. The nozzle itself was in perfect condition, not allowing one drop of water to flow. The hose, however, had quite a number of pinpricks in it, with little sprays of water gracing the air, causing a misting effect in spots. While this is good on a 95 degree day at Disney, while waiting in a two hour line, it's not so good toward a summer evening by a house.

A new hose.

The faucet was wide open, which verifies Wife used it. Wife seems to think that if it works, it'll work better turned up full. Unfortunately this is her attitude toward too many things in life. I'm surprised the plumbing in the shower hasn't spit pipes or fixtures at us yet. After I applied the software updates and manual intervention (I turned off the faucet), the deluge stopped.

Upon notifying Wife that new hose needed to be returned, she said it was years old. Well if it was years old, why wasn't it hooked up years ago? And why does an old hose automatically develop quite a number of holes? And why am I even blathering on about this? Maybe there will be some Intensive Hose Expeditions in our future. Just so long as I don't have to mow.  Know what keeps me awake at night? The thought that the kid we have mowing the lawn will grow up and move away.

• There is a very old, very serious vulnerability in Diebold ATMs. Mind you, this is the company that manufactures voting machines. Although serious, the vulnerability requires putting a rod through the speaker, jacking open the top half, then doing some software jiggling, hopefully someone would notice this happening, even if the guy with the crowbar was wearing a coverall that said ATM MAINTENANCE GUY.

The Gun Grabbers are atwitter about 'smart guns', which can't fire without certain factors, like a special bracelet. A hacker recently did a presentation on a number of ways to defeat a specific German system, one involving radio waves and another a few cheap magnets. One also wonders if there will be time and opportunity to put on a bracelet before having to use the gun, but that's a different matter entirely.

• I wanted to bring you this important bit of information before you hear it somewhere else: not being attracted to trans people is deeply transphobic. 
• In response, someone ventured: Hey lesbians, refusing to sleep with straight guys is deeply heterophobic. Bring your girlfriend too. Monogamous relationships are a patriarchal western ideal anyway.

An unnamed casino got hacked. How? The Internet of Things fish tank. After they got in through the tank, they went wild on the casino's network. This is a preview of what's coming to your house.

• After you buy your router, here are some tips to secure the beast. They're all pretty simple and common sense, but help immensely.

If you're a customer of Virgin America, WestJet, or Spirit Air, your data may be in the wild. Check with the airline and change your passwords, at very least.

• Remember lefty's Law: anything worth doing can be done from the couch

I mentioned that we were testing out Zakk Wylde's Valhalla and Death Wish coffees. Death Wish has much more caffeine than regular coffee. I was told they drink like medium roast and they weren't kidding.  They weren't bad but I'm continuing with Peet's French Roast. I missed the body and roast. The caffeine boost didn't do much for me. I am not panning the brand - I urge you to try it, especially if you like medium roast coffee.

• It should come as no surprise by now that there are internet-connect car washes. As we, ThermionicEmissions readers know, if there's a system, there's a hack. And this one's a doozy. This particular hack can literally have the car wash attack your car and you! Not really as bad as a feature-length movie about a rogue car wash attacking a small city, this one can potentially strand your car, hit it with some sprayers, and dump some water. Note to first daters: you can be the hero and rescue your date from the Evil Car Wash. That would have to be worth some points...

Speaking of hacks, check out  https://haveibeenpwned.com/ - put in your email address and see if it exists on any number of hack lists. This may be a depressing click.

In strange related Hose News, we experienced a Plumbing Issue. The issue got what looked like a bandaid. The Issue sprouted up in another place. While attempting the Bandaid Maneuver, it popped up in other places. Suffice it to say that it has become a Rather Large Plumbing Issue, which insurance may or may not cover. It's potentially an Expensive Rather Large Plumbing Issue, unlike the Hose Issue.

You will note the timing on this coincides with the upcoming biopsy on Marshall's oral growth.

Notice we have savings: Marshall's biopsy and Plumbing Issue

Notice we don't have enough savings: Marshall's biopsy and Plumbing Issue.

Notice that, as George Harrison said, It's All Too Much: Mrs. lefty has been non-functional for a while.

Marshall, bless him, has to be bribed to take his ridiculous amount of meds. We've been through peanut butter, cheesecake, lunchmeat, leftovers, French Toast Sticks, and now American cheese. He's walking around like Tommy Chong; saying, "Wow, man" and sleeping a lot.