Nigel's OK in My Book

Watching some classic (old) music videos, I found a song called Making Plans for Nigel (XTC). Never mind the song... I just like the title. The video is bizarre.

While we're at it, Kate Bush sounds like she's huffing helium.

• Of note: when the doctor sedated Marshall, he used Propofol; the drug that killed Michael Jackson. Fortunately Marshall experienced a better outcome.

Congrats on 100 years of freedom for Finland!

Finland is known for heated underwear, anchovy pizza, and Finns. 

The national animal is the elephant (there are no elephants in Finland. They imported one from Africa, but it chose to walk back to Africa, rather than freeze).

Finland's national flower is grass.

• 'Music' star Pink will raise her kids gender-neutral. Please make it stop. The Child Welfare Bureau has been called - these kids don't have a chance.

As I continue to tune in old videos, Instant Karma (John Lennon) comes on.. I've never seen it before.

The first thing I see is Yoko.. this is never a good thing. She's sitting onstage, toward the back of John; blindfolded and knitting. This would be delightfully absurd if anyone else did it. With Yoko it's Art, or as I call it, "a screw loose and a pathological need for attention."

There's a British guy playing tambourine. How can I tell he's British? He's wearing a full tan suit and huge, brown, horn rimmed glasses to play tambourine. There are also two bass players, for a reason John took with him to the grave. Maybe Chapman shot him to keep this from getting out.

It's a wonder I never got hired to review videos in the 80s.

• If anything I write fails to offend you for the entire time you've been reading this, I'd like to share something with you, in the spirit of Christmas: "Simply,  Having, a Wonderful Christmastime."  This song has now invaded your brain and you will sing it incessantly for the next three weeks.
• You're welcome.

Many women suffer silently from vaginal discharge and dryness, according to a commercial. Many people don't know I got out of the army on a vaginal discharge.

I would like to apologize, humbly and unreservedly, for the previous paragraph.

• If you're having a Stupid Day today, remember: it could be worse. You could live in Mecklenberg County, where county records are being held hostage for $23,000 in Bitcoin. You could be the genius who opened the email attachment, unleashing the ransomware upon the county.

The Stupid is also great with the authors of a virtual keyboard app for android and iDevices, called Ai.Type. The app collects keystrokes, contacts, phone numbers, email addresses, social media profiles, and locations, among other things. The data is uploaded to, you guessed it, The Cloud. The 577gb database, on 31 million users, was left open to the public, so anyone who could find it had full access to it.

There is no word on whether the app let on that the user's data would be stolen uploaded to the company's (unsecured) server. Everything the user typed would be available, in addition to the information the app collected. Financial information, love emails, sexts, and all those pictures of women with one more penis than provided for in the original design specification.

If you rushed past the text about your data and clicked I AGREE, this is entirely your fault. If there was no warning, the developers should be sued out of existence and fined by the appropriate authorities for theft and negligence. 

I'll say it again: nothing you use is worth the invasion of your privacy and data.

You could also just use the phone's keyboard. This way, your data will only go to Google or Apple.

• 28 senators wrote the FCC to urge holding off their decision on Net Neutrality because of irregularities in the data of public comments. 50,000 comments may not have been included in the public record. Hundreds of thousands of filings featured stolen addresses and there were half a million entries with Russian email addresses. Not included in the data were the rude comments directed at chairman Ajit Pai's nationality. You don't think there was anything suspicious about this, do you?

A lot of people blame the Russians for interfering in the 2016 election (and when I say a lot of people, I mean the losing side). I view this from the other side (of course I do): the Russians are not interfering - they're propping up American  democracy.

Hear me out: American citizens have become so fat and lazy, they can barely be bothered to go out for milk, no less vote. By hacking into our social media and voting systems, the Russians are making it look like our democracy is functional. People blame Trump for 'colluding' with Russia, when in reality, he was encouraging Putin to have his people vote to make it look like the election mattered. Meanwhile, the people who should have voted all stayed home, where they ran into the streets and online to protest and whine incessantly.

A brief investigation by the Boy Scouts of America, Special CyberSquad, turned up a few other places the Russians made a difference:

• a West Virginia little league game
• the decision not to tax online porn in the US
• a $4 billion appropriation for Congressional bathroom remodeling and donations to Dick Cheney's various humanitarian charities

Have you rented a car lately?

If you did, your locations, smart phone identifier, and entered locations (including schools), are all available, if you attached to the car's infotainment system (the radio).  Privacy International rented cars and analyzed the information available in the systems. Personal information was on every single car.

Just to make things more interesting, the rental companies were not able to provide clear internal policies on handling drivers' personal data. The companies that responded said, as laid out in the Terms and Conditions, the responsibility is on the renter. The future is here and we're shooting it square in the nuts.

• In case you didn't learn the first time, Ashley Madison, the website for cheaters, that leaked its database, has... wait for it... leaked its database of private and explicit photos again. So if you're the kind that insists on getting parts of you wet, you haven't learned your lesson. You know what they say - the third time's the charm.

brought to you by Friends of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Standing When Hendrix Plays

John Lennon's killer, Mark Chapman, was again denied parole. Why do Chapman and Manson have such a difficult time with the parole board?

• Can we admit that we never got, nor will we ever get, Yoko Ono? Let's just be done with it. Fast Fact: her real name is Margaret Onowitz. Another Fast Fact: no it isn't (as far as I know).

While John Kerry has almost fulfilled the broken laugh potential of Joe Biden, today he has finally been involved in a useful headline: John Kerry gets stuck in a traffic jam in New Delhi. It's about time we got some value for our money.. when he's stuck in traffic, he doesn't do as much Stupid Stuff.

• In a brand new and exciting concept for improving the quality of government, North Korea has executed its vice premier for education. We need to examine this new quality initiative.

Are you having trouble getting your life down on paper? You can now hire a personal historian. Because your history is so bleeding important.

• Mexicans are very angry that their president invited Trump to his place. I think the whole Wall thing is a bad idea. Mexico needs to build a wall and pay for it on Mexican soil. Problem solved.

Florida State football star Travis Rudolph ate lunch with a lonely autistic boy.while visiting a Tallahassee, Florida school. I'm no sports fan but we need this kind of grace and humility in the world today.

• In France, Muslims attacked a couple for ordering ham on their pizza. I firmly believe this should not be limited to Muslims. Ham is not an acceptable pizza topping. Try pepperoni. Or bacon.

If you have an account at Brazzers.com, a large adult site, your account was probably hacked (not that any of us view that sort of thing, of course). The intruders got in and discovered the passwords were kept in plain text - in any situation where anyone gives a crap about security, passwords are encrypted or at least messed up enough to be unrecognizable. I'd delete my account, especially if I had any details other than name and password.

• Sophos, a security firm, started hearing that their malware protection system protected against a normal Windows file, referring to it as malware. Sophos issued an emergency patch. Some of us maintain that Windows is malware.

Oral sex is fun, but more importantly, it's healthy!

• a man accused of egging a neighbor's home over 100 times is awaiting his sentence. 100 times. This is a man who could use a hobby (that didn't involve eggs). Perhaps a Brazzers account.

Whale Hunting in Arizona

Playboy magazine will be dropping (fully) nudes. Now when you say you only read it for the articles, you won't be lying. New format to start in March, Hefner to be out of business by April.

• Leonardo DiCaprio will produce a film based upon an as-yet-unwritten book about the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal. BANG! VROOOOOM! POP!  FTWANG! OOF! Nonstop action! Just as soon as the book is written. All the action, suspense and naked ladies you'd expect from a movie about a book about emissions testing.

A Guatemalan mayor was lynched by a crowd. This is the kind of participatory democracy in which we need to be involved. It's a model for the future. It will also have the unintended effect of keeping politicians 'clean'.

• The president made some candid comments, noting that he finds American's common skepticism of government "paralyzing." Coming up, Dick Cheney upset that people think he's mean.

America's mayor, Rahn Emanuel, blames Chicago crime uptick on officers second-guessing themselves. Office of the Mayor: shoot first, ask questions later.

• The rapper T.I. says "World ain't ready for a female president."  Yeah, boy... dem bitches don't belong in da (White) House.

SELFIE NEWS: Selfie-obsessed millenials are increasing opting for plastic surgery to improve photos. I don't even have to do anything - this stuff comes out weekly and writes itself. And teens spend so much time texting that some miss sleep.

• Because there's an open-carry policy at the University of Texas, gun-grabbing students intend to openly carry sex toys. Guns and dildos - an educational dream come true.  At the risk of sympathizing, I say if more sex toys were used, less shootings would occur.

Ladies - if you sniff this particular phallus-shaped mushroom, you will be highly aroused and have a fifty percent chance of a spontaneous orgasm. Plant them everywhere! Peace on earth!

• NOT Ok, Google: if you talk to your phone (not curse) using "Ok, Google," please be aware that Google stores everything you say to it. This is allegedly for accuracy and definitely for advertising.  Don't take my word for it - go ask Google. You'll find a list of every command given to it. You can opt-out but everything still gets recorded - only with an (allegedly) anonymous ID. Oh, your location gets recorded regardless (it's also available for viewing) whenever you speak, search via Google, Google Maps or other apps that have access to your location. [What does lefty do? The same thing he always does - shut that shit off. I can't deny that talking to my phone would be more convenient, as would getting directions, but not at this price.]

John Schindler, a security expert and whistleblower who now writes for The Daily Beast, has claimed that a senior EU official from an undisclosed country also inquired about impeachment proceedings, saying that the nation believes Obama is not fit for office. Why is it only foreign countries that recognize this?

• Apparently there's a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers, which has reached crisis proportions. This does not bode well for air travel. When you consider the news recently, with ground stoppages, 'glitches', hardware issues, and a seriously dilapidated, insecure, single point of failure infrastructure, you do not have a safe, secure, reliable platform. Do you feel safe flying? Are we going to wait until things collapse completely before doing anything? Probably. I just hope no one gets hurt.
• IRONIC UPDATE: A U.S. Department of Homeland Security computer system that checks airline passengers against terrorism watch lists experienced a brief service disruption. 

Writer Salman Rushdie says violence against writers and a misplaced sense of political correctness pose new dangers to freedom of speech in the West. BUT WE HAVE SELFIE STICKS!!!!!!

• Florida man (of course) arrested for DUI in motorized wheelchair. Kentucky, embarrassed,wants its title back.

Tired of debates and political bullshit? The one thing every candidate agrees on: Punish Edward Snowden. You voted them in. Now vote them out.

• NOTE to my loyal readers: Ebola lingers in semen for up to nine months. Let's not let Ebola become the latest STD, ok?

SELFIE TIME - fatality edition!

• two men in the Ural Mountains posed for a photo while pulling the pin from a hand grenade.
• a university graduate died after trying to take a selfie while hanging from a Moscow bridge.
• a 17-year-old boy fell to his death from a rooftop as he tried to take his picture for his Instagram page
• In the US recently a man died after shooting himself in the neck while taking a selfie. 
• officials at the Waterton Canyon in Colorado were forced to close the park after several people were caught getting a little too close to the wildlife.
• at Yellowstone National Park, officials issued a warning after five separate incidents of selfie-takers being gored by bison.
• In Australia, a rock that looks like a wedding cake was fenced off because too many people were climbing it to take pre or post-wedding photos of themselves.

non-fatalities (yet)

• a man taking a selfie while a bull charges at him
• a man posing with a lion 
• someone taking a picture in front of a train
• a woman taking a selfie of herself and her toddler while driving.

TOONZ:

PURE UNOBTANIUM: The question of where John Lennon's iconic Gibson J-160E acoustic/electric guitar went has been answered. The guitar will go up for auction, with John's widow getting half and donating it to her charity. The guitar is set to auction for between $600,000 and $800,000. Paul's stuff is cheaper and left-handed.

Original Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington (63) is under observation after a heart attack. Gary had previous heart trouble. Being a member of Lynyrd Skynyrd is even more dangerous than going hunting with Dick Cheney.

Having taken an obscure turn here and there, it's time to go mainstream.
The Allman Brothers have a very long history in music, as well as a lot of members. Although broken up as of this past January, the band will live forever. Shortly after achieving fame, original member Duane 'Skydog' Allman died, followed by bassist Berry Oakley. More recently, original guitarist Dickey Betts either left or was politely asked to leave, going back to his side project, Dickey Betts and Great Southern. At the time of their dissolution, Derek Trucks (slide guitar wizard and nephew of original drummer Butch Trucks) went back to the Tedeschi Trucks Band and Warren Haynes continues with his myriad projects (solo, solo band, Gov't Mule).

The definitive Allman Brothers live album is Live at the Fillmore. It comes right out of the gate with Statesboro Blues, featuring Duane's lyrical slide guitar and the ever soulful vocals of one of rock's best, Gregg Allman. Enjoy this full album and rejoice in some of the greatest performances in rock.

An Allmans staple is One Way Out. There's a man down there, might be your old man, I don't know.


Jessica, named after Dickey Betts' daughter, is a really hot instrumental which you'll recognize. Also featured on this track is a previous week's focus, Les Dudek. Instrumentals have an impossible time getting on radio but this one made it.

One of my favorite tracks is In Memory of Elizabeth Reed. I love the way it starts out slowly and ramps up to the solos. I love to jam along with this, pretending I'm with the band. I figure if you're going to dream, aim high.

An even better pretend rock star jam is Hot'Lanta. The interplay of the two drummers is apparent, plus the normal guitar heroics.

Guess which one is me....