Frosting a Cake with a Paper Knife

A very common story told by people who have technically died and come back, is the Near Death Experience (NDE).  You know the story... traveling down a long hallway toward the light.. or a garden where your late relatives are waiting for you.

Sit down for a moment.
Stop the external and internal noise.
Go into the dark, maybe to the light, maybe a local light.
Are your friends and relatives there? Which ones?
What is their message, if any?
Think about it.



My wife experienced it.
She was up on the ceiling looking down.
Saw dead relatives.
They told her it's not time - go back.
Fortunately she did.


You're free to poo-poo it. You can tell me it's hypoxia and they're hallucinating (except they all seem to hallucinate the same thing).  It's a thought exercise. You don't even have to believe it's real.

• Things are going relatively well, in that I haven't heard more about the alpacas.

Parents are weird.

Even the most rational of parents have interesting little quirks.

My parents have some rather huge ones.

They're going on vacation, which is wonderful and we're all jealous. A family tradition is to take family to the airport. 

But not my parents. They leave early.

Early?

A day early.

From the airport?

No, but near the airport.

My mother, who can tell you who is about to call before the phone rings, likes to sleep at a hotel by the airport so they can get on the plane in the morning. To this day, no one understands why. I am the reason for many odd things she does, but I'm not owning this one.

• heard on tv: The Lesbian Cheering Squad is his latest picture.

The Pentagon has issued a directive restricting the use of fitness trackers and other devices at sensitive locations or high risk war zones.   The reason for this is that they got caught using the devices that divulged their location. In other words, nobody had an inkling that these devices could cause a problem, until it was pointed out in public. Then a directive was issued.

How long has ThermionicEmissions been warning about these devices? Please don't tell me one low level security d00d outdid the Pentagon by going ahead in his time machine and seeing what was going to happen. What clairvoyance! It's almost like he IS the future.

Seriously, folks.... we know the govt is a humongous monolithic organization that gets nothing done overnight (or century - you've worked at large corporations), but this....  this was not hiding in some black corner of the Dark Web, in back of Hitler's Rolls, under the picture of J. Edgar Hoover in full dress. This was a huge, beaconing, genuine emergency, visible to anyone who took a minute to think about safety and privacy.  I don't expect Joe Consumer would spend much time on this, but it shouldn't require a Serious Security Professional Prognosticator to check the Magic IT Ball to see the future.

These are the folks who protect our nation. Who spin up unbelievably huge new departments to help 'protect' us, at a cost exceeding the GNPs of most countries combined. You know better than to get me started on the result of this (TSA), right? Smile when you read your pay stub and see what you're paying for this.

This could be the harbinger of Bad Things in the armed forces. Wait - let me check my time machine.... fwwwwwip - yup, this is not going to be pretty.  Within the next few years, the Pentagon will restrict 'checking in' to Afghanistan location apps and posting your lattitide/longitude on Faceyspaces. No selfies of you in the sand on Instagram. And NO tweeting your location if you're in a country 'helping its leaders to better position the upcoming vote'. 

If this sort of thing is allowed to continue, it will no longer be fun to be in the military!


The Pentagon is welcome to contact me for consulting, but I'll save them a lot of money by having the NSA pass along what they gather from reading this blog. It's win-win. I get to blog, they get free warnings, and I get to help my country.

HONEY.... it's the phone... the Pentagon's calling again...

• a top supplier of iDevices had to shut down for a bit because of ransomware all over their network.  I told you iDevices are dangerous!

According to F-Secure, spam is through the roof because of the demise of Adobe Flash. Because people aren't using Flash, the criminals' pickings aren't as easy, so they turn to spam.  Here's the best part: long ago I was told that spam was so prevalent because 10% of its recipients clicked on it. Last year it was 13.4% and so far this year, it's at 14.2%. I often lament the fact that we're so incredibly stupid. I truly hoped that with time and knowledge, we'd become less stupid. That was stupid of me. We're spreading our stupid deeper and wider than ever before. We're actually getting more stupid. Not only do we not learn, we flatly refuse to, in favor of growing more stupid. But how stupid can we get, you ask? Don't ask, I say... they will never let you down.

• If you want to go against what security people say and insist on using public wifi, here are some tips to keep yourself relatively safe.

Overheard from an equipment vendor: "Our security team said we are not allowed to use the WiFi in our hotel room during this hacking convention, so I am running to the lobby to answer some emails."

We are doomed.

• They say, whoever they are, that our mind wants to see patterns in something we don't understand, so that's why we see things that aren't there. I wonder if this goes for the ears... The television is usually on at a volume which allows it to be heard in most of Australia, so I'm forever yelling COULD YOU TURN IT DOWN A BIT - AT LEAST TO AFRICA? I was just about to yell again, when I saw the tv was off. This means I'm hearing a tv that isn't on. The technical term for this is auditory hallucination. The technical remedy is antipsychotics. After too long or too many, one starts to sound like Ozzy Osbourne and shake a lot. I'd prefer to think my ears want to hear patterns.
• And that, my friends, is how babies are made.

COWORKER FOLLIES

HIM: This list has the information you want

ME: Do you remember the site for that information?

HIM: Whaddaya mean - the list?

ME: The site where it resides

HIM: On the list. Let me take a picture of the list and text it to you

ME: WHERE THE DEVICE LIVES, where it is plugged into power, where it sits behind a door, its location, where it gets a network plug, where it blinks its lights, where people go to fix it when it breaks, DID YOU LEAVE YOUR MEDICINE HOME AGAIN TODAY?

Frosting a cake with a paper knife... refers to a very old tv commercial for canned icing. It's so moist, you can spread it with a paper knife. Then she does. This was satirized by Frank Zappa in 'Flakes':

I am a moron and this is my wife
She's frosting a cake with a paper knife....

Concert Tickets

This is an incredibly busy concert season. In fact, it's the busiest season I've ever seen. So many great tours that it's a matter of selecting which we can and can't go to.

I have tickets for Generation Axe and am going with a raft of metalhead guitar players and one wife.
Life would not be complete without Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy.
And next on the stage is the last time on the stage for Black Sabbath.

I have no real feelings about Black Sabbath. Tony Iommi, their guitar player, is a lefty, which is always nice. Wife, however, is NUTS about Ozzy and grew up with Sabbath. All I remember about that time is hanging around with my dirtball, pot-smoking friends and listening to music. I don't remember a lot and it had nothing to do with pot. Or anything else.

So we 'needed' Black Sabbath tickets.
I have a sneaky technique when I don't want to do something: tell Wife she's responsible for researching and procuring it. She'll generally forget and I'm off the hook. Wife keeps asking ME to do it. I remind Wife, frequently, that it's HER job. Wife, who generally forgets, manages to forget it's her job. And eventually I get stuck with it. Wife is much smarter than me (although her taste in men is suspicious).

So she seeks to relive teenhood, as if she could remember much of it anyway (dissociative disorders can leave large memory holes). And again, it's my job. It's funny... she never thinks the internet is going to bite her except when it involves purchasing tickets. She nas NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER with Amazon. In fact, Amazon calls her to see if she's alright if she hasn't ordered something in two days. The upshot (where did that word come from?) is that I have to go online and purchase something(s) *by which I mean that I have absolutely NO memory of the last time I tried to go online and purchase something(s)*.

Things are a little different in my house, which is akin to saying that things are a little different in Syria. I always forget that ordering online involves four browsers, much patience (which I lack in the extreme) and much yelling (which I am most proficient at). The first thing these heartless bastards require is the nightmare known as Internet Explorer. The evil beauty of this is that they neglect to TELL you this, so you're forced to find it out the hard way. This task is made more difficult because there's no Internet Explorer on linux (thankfully).

I have no less than four browsers (maybe more) in various stages of lockdown for this very event. And no matter which of the four I use (sometimes all four), something goes wrong. Generally browsing occurs with Firefox, which is locked down so well that even web pages can't get through. When I know there is going to be a purchase, I open Browser #2. When Browser #2 fails, which it always does, I use Browser #3, which has no restrictions whatsoever (PLEASE HACK ME!!). Even this does not satisfy the site fully, although it sometimes allows me to purchase something.

Finding tickets is always an interesting process. Generally the site won't let me see the venue or seating until I tell the bastards to just go ahead and find me some seats. After the seats come up, I always allow for a loud exclamation and several moments' loss of consciousness after I've seen the prices. This is not the Final Tour, this is the Final Cash-In. Why am I complaining - I'm seeing the final Sabbath tour! It's only one hundred fifty dollars per seat - a bargain at half the price.

This was only a prelude: the real fun comes when it's time to pay. Having selected the seats (after a quick remortgage), I am given a 9 minute timer in which to complete my transaction before the tickets are released for sale. No problem - I type quickly and I have a Stubmonger account (but still  pressure). Go ahead - try to sign in. I have a password vault so I never forget passwords. Plug them in and BZZT - wrong password. It's not the wrong password, stupid, it's the one I always use. No matter, his the FORGOT PASSWORD link, which takes me to a page that says SOMETHING HAPPENED and nothing else. Ah, progress (in that there is nowhere to go).

It does tell me that I can use my Ticketmonger account, which somehow lets me in, like a magic mushroom of sorts. I fill out all the necessary information (including mortgage account) and SUBMIT. Oops - it didn't like something. Unfortunately I did not have a Need To Know what it didn't like, so I had to guess. Ah, no place for my MasterVisa - only branded cards. Fantastic! Yelling! The little clock says six minutes. Pressure!

The card type was incorrect because I had no indication it scrolled. Way to make your page readable in any browser, kids. After yelling some more and cursing the thieving bastards for their very existence, I filled out the rest of the information. Three hundred dollars. Wife had better be EXTRA NICE to me for the rest of the year, at very least.

But wait! If you buy now, you have seven delivery options, from printing your own (a $3 surcharge) to two day delivery ($49.95) all the way down to Send Me The F-ing Tickets In The Mail (only $5 each). More screaming. I am not sure how this happened, perhaps New Math, but the total was $350. Somebody is making Big Bucks because they're forcing us to PAY Big Bucks.

Apparently Wife's fear of purchasing tickets is way worse than thirty minutes of listening to me scream, curse, and make several things airborne.

And it ain't over yet, because there's still Joe Walsh/Bad Co and Peter Frampton/Skynyrd.
Oops, yes, it IS over... Walsh is $150 per seat and Frampton is $125 per seat.

One way or the other, you'll probably hear me from your house.

Marvin the Martian is Real

Nancy Drew is coming back to television. This is because there are absolutely no new ideas in Hollywood. CBS pledges she won't be white. Oh wait, there's their original idea! Furthermore, Speed Racer will be Chinese, Dudley Do-Right (famous Canadian mountie) will be South African, and Charlie Brown will come from New Jersey.

• Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith will be boycotting the Oscars due to black actors being shut out of the nominations. No word yet on boycotting the NBA due to lack of diversity.

A university professor will not have kids because they'll be white and have white privilege.  Do colleges and universities get drugs we cannot?

• Here are the 25 worst passwords of 2015 - of course no ThermionicEmissions readers use them, but we do our best to educate others:

1. 123456
2. password
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. 12345
6. 123456789
7. football
8. 1234
9. 1234567
10. baseball
11. welcome
12. 1234567890
13. abc123
14. 111111
15. 1qaz2wsx
16. dragon
17. master
18. monkey
19. letmein
20. login
21. princess
22. qwertyuiop
23. solo
24. passw0rd
25. starwars

Don't forget to head over to change.org and sign the petition to knight Ozzy Osbourne. Sir Ozzy. Has a nice ring to it.

• Friendly warning to early grade school students: Please learn to spell correctly, especially if you're Muslim and spell "terraced house" as "terrorist house". The UK police have absolutely no sense of humor.

Congrats to us.. we just paid off the car! I got the title two weeks ago. Yesterday the driver's side door handle fell off. Fortunately that's just a coincidence.

• A new prison inmate has no idea how drugs got into her vagina. This may well be Patient Zero of the Vagina Drug Stasher epidemic! Call the CDC. Call her primary doctor and see why she has no nerve endings in her vagina and how someone could have got up there without her noticing.

A Norweigan man in his underwear stopped a thief from stealing his car by clinging to the roof in a hair-raising ride at -17C (that's 2.357 degrees Farenheit). Norweigan authorities considering distributing undies to citizens, just in case.

• A tiger at Steve Irwin's Australian zoo has attacked one of its keepers. Tigers, alligators, and many other wild animals, with huge, pointy teeth, biting their keepers. Who could have seen this coming?

Killer Healine: Buddhist monk goes on 162 car tire-slashing rampage after he accidently steps on an insect.

• Let this serve as notice that I will be boycotting the Rock+Roll Hall of Fame ceremony this year, as they have no lefty guitarists up for induction. Will Smith and I will be partying privately that night.

Fun News from the World of Music

From the Unlikely Suspects department, did you know that Hulk Hogan almost played bass for Metallica?

George Harrison's son, Dhani, discovered what sounds like a sketch for a lead on the original Here Comes the Sun tracks.  He is shown with Sir George Martin and his son.

For reasons upon which I would rather not speculate, Ozzy Osbourne is giving away a free colonoscopy.

Since it's borderline illegal for the mainstream media to mention Ron Paul, here's a bit from non-mainstream media about celebrity endorsements. [hint: he's got them]  The question remains what to do with off-center endorsees like Snoop Dog (or worse, Gene Simmons)


I just discovered Brad Pitt is roughly my age.  Yet he continues to be very good-looking.

----------------------------

Bevilacqua and Paterno took the easy way out.
Discuss.

Ozzy Osbourne is a Poofter

And we all know Rule Number One:  NO POOFTERS!

He's the pince of freakin' darkness, fer chrissake.... the man practically helped invent heavy metal.  He launched the careers of many an axeslinger, such as Randy Rhodes and Zakk Wylde.

Why, you ask, is Ozzy a poofter?

Because the esteemed Mr. Osbourne just put down ten thousand dollars for a Yorkshire Terrier.

Yorkshire Terriers, or Yorkies, as they're called, are not dogs suitable for your princes of darkness.  Not even your run of the mill prince of dusk would be seen alive with one of these dogs.  And when I say dogs, I mean cleverly disguised rodents.

Now let's cut to the chase: Yorkies are the exclusive territory of homosexual males, not legendary heterosexual rock stars (regardless of what their wives say).

Does Ozzy wear sweaters?
No.

Does Ozzy sell women's shoes?
No.

Should Ozzy own a Yorkie?
No.

There.  It's really that simple.

Mandatory disclaimer for the humor-impaired:

I don't care what anyone's sexuality is.   Roles is roles and rules is rules. 

---------------------------------------

P.S.  Thank you very much, readers.  Your stopping by and commenting is very uplifting.