Blue Strawberries

Your love is like  hitting your finger with a stapler

• WARNING: It's that time.. pumpkin spice is back. Keep your kids off the streets and ask Dr. Fauci if we need to be vaccinated against it. If you're still using last year's pumpkin spice tires, you must keep your car six feet from all other cars.

I think it's the house. Everything turns blue eventually.

The worst is bread. Given about a day, it turns blue. Everything has to be refrigerated, including the strawberries. The only thing that doesn't grow hair is the top of my head. If it were blue, it would go unnoticed these days. Blue macaroni and cheese is the worst.

Today in Olympic News:  Something not involving a ball came close to a record in something

Today I identify as  Ultraman

• Know what's interesting? Stats show that adding more lanes to highways doesn't help.

It was a gray, rainy Saturday. The forecast was Generally Ugly.

I was (more) unpleasant, having been awakened at noon.

We took Mom out on Saturday, so Wife had the unpleasant duty of waking me. Things were even worse than normal because the ten foot pole was in the shop for a tuneup, so she had to get within arm's reach of me to get me moving. She established, long ago, that it's best not to be near me when waking me. Or when living with me.

Time is weird when being dragged, painfully, from sleep. I feel my eyelids drifting closed and want to fully support them in their efforts, but realize I can't, just before they slam shut. This usually results in one eye open and one eye shut. It takes roughly 20 minutes to fight the Waking War and actually move a centimeter. Then, with my legs hanging off the bed, it's another few minutes for them to apply themselves to the floor. Socks take a while, though. I have to generate the energy to get one on, then rest for a bit, while I consider if I want two socks that morning. It occurs to me that I should have my coffee before I wake up, making dressing so much easier.

I woke up with a headache - it was my Saturday headache. The Saturday headache is drastically different from my other headaches. I think it's my body getting even with me for getting more than six hours of sleep. It's revolting. I've been told my body is revolting for years. Normally I feel the headache and combat it by going back to sleep.

But I had to soldier on. The problem here was that the headache had invited a few of its friends. They were taking up places in my head and causing clanging noises off and on. I've never had more than one headache, so I was a bit flummoxed. After a while, the headaches started arguing. When Mom asked what I wanted for breakfast, she too was flummoxed at the small motions and tics on my face. She was concerned, because she's never seen me short of words. I'm reasonably certain one of the headaches ordered pancakes when we got to the restaurant, cuz that's what was on the plate. I have to hand it to him - he has good taste - the pancakes were great.  [IHOP Tres Leches]

One thing that pissed off millions of people at the start of social media was the people who went out to eat, took pictures of their food, and described it in detail. They became Foodies. Foodies were only slightly more popular than Furries. The reason I mentio
n this is that this blog is kind of an anti-foodie service. One reads along and sees what I like. Then one strenuously avoids it due to sugar, calorie, or fat content. This is like a free public service. Ihop had a promotional hot chocolate last year that had something like maple syrup in it. I think they called it French toast hot chocolate. It was delicious. Unfortunately it's no longer here and the waitress had never heard of it.

It's not that coffee outside my house is bad, but I prepare large travel barrels to take on the way to the restaurant. The Coffee Police should come down on Ihop and Waffle House in a serious manner.

Temporarily almost caffeinated, I ate. This calmed the inter-headache sparring. Some of them even took the rest of the afternoon off, while some came and went. It was near 5:00 when I got home, without my first nap. Sometimes my first nap comes as I transition from the bed to the couch, so this was a glaring problem, as reinforced by the headaches. They stopped arguing and decided to work together for evil, teaming up to sing some current hits. I threatened them with "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" and they quieted down. Stuffed for the next seventeen hours, I did what was right for my body and started my first nap. When I got up, a few hours later, the headaches were gone. Let this be a lesson to me... if I take naps, the singing stops? Was this a cluster headache, because there were so fsking many of them? And to stop getting up before 1:00 on weekends.

• Yes, the food and culture are great, but why live in New Orleans? The entire city is without power due to Hurricane Ida. No matter what happens, New Orleans gets it. It's like the state flag says "Hey hurricane - come get me - nyah nyah!" 
• some areas won't have power for weeks

How are broken clouds different from scattered clouds? Or mostly cloudy? Or mostly sunny? I've obviously been checking the weather today, in a last ditch effort to avoid.....  mowing.  On the other hand, it's more difficult to mow wet grass and it grows faster due to too much rain. When I first visited the southwest, I noticed few lawns. It was a life-changing experience for me.  [notice I didn't say g*me ch*nger]

Every other house on the block has nice grass. I mow weeds, that grow while I'm cutting them. My grass is the kind that doesn't need sun - only rain. It's perfect for the climate. It's called Philly Raingrass.

• is it funny that I can't even get my own relatives and friends to read this blog? I feel really weird about sending out an email, asking them to check it out. Got any suggestions?

I just saw a listing for "Politics Nation with Rev Al Sharpton."

Remember: the two people who watch it vote and their vote counts as much as yours.

• President Taxes called on leaders to mandate vaccines
• #ImpeachBiden

I'm not suggesting you get your shots or not - that's your decision. I will not have mandates, especially the kind that come from government. The shutting down of businesses by state government was a disaster. Nanny State needs to be stopped. You're old enough to make your own decisions.

• Faceyspaces has trackers in 25% of its websites and 61% of the most popular apps
• I don't use Faceyspaces, but I'd advise using 'private browsing' windows for all browsing. When you close them, everything gets deleted.

Moderna Vaccine Shipment Crashes, Prompting Hazmat Cleanup and Shuttering of Airspace

Huh?

And we put this in our bodies?  

• Federal government to expand use of facial recognition despite growing concerns
• They don't care what you think, they don't care if it's illegal or unconstitutional - they're the government

 

With all that's wrong with Google and Gmail, I have to give their spam filter credit. The worst I've had is a few false positives.

• Ok, we all have musical guilty pleasures. Right now I'm listening to Slade. What's yours?

 

[Guitar Only]

I have no idea what possessed me, but I bought a Vox VBM1, the Brian May model. It's small, white, and looks like an AC30 put in a dryer and shrunk down to roughly 12" across.

It has just a few knobs, which is good for guitar players, who can't handle complex equipment. It has a switch too. Save the limited space in your brain and leave the switch depressed (or you'll be depressed).  The knobs are GAIN, TONE, and VOLUME. GAIN controls distortion, you should know the rest. The switch is a gain switch. There is a preamp output, as well as a few others.

How does it sound? Depends on how long you've been playing and what you're looking for out of an amp. The thing is much louder than it looks. The clean tone is... among the most recent clean tones I've ever heard. The fun here is with the GAIN switch depressed (not depressed is lower gain, which didn't sound at all good). You can control the GAIN by degrees with the GAIN knob. This is a real powerhouse of a gain box. It can take you over the top, where there's too much gain (did I say that?). 

Let's be real: this will not make you sound like Brian May. It was put together to emulate his Deacy amp, built by bandmate John Deacon, out of an old transistor radio. The Deacy was used on several older Queen songs (none of which I remember). As it is, it's a really fun toy. The hidden key is the preamp output. Brian uses a treble booster to overload his amps, so this is allegedly the same circuitry. You can plug the guitar into the Vox, run the preamp output to your real tube amp (Brian uses 9 Vox AC30s live) and punch the hell out of the front end of the amp(s). Hang in for a review using the amp this way. May isn't the only famous player to use a booster in front of his amp. Jimmy Page used a number of Tone Benders. If you look closely, Ritchie Blackmore used a reel to reel deck into his Marshalls. Tony Iommi used a sledgehammer.

OVERALL: it's another cute living room toy. The amp itself is cheaper than some of the current treble boosters, so consider that. It's a decent, cheap practice amp. I don't have a lot of use for it. Will probably sell or trade. It's between $250-$300 used. For May enthusiasts, there's also the Digitech pedal that gives you a bunch of his signature tones. That's going to cost you around $300+ used at this time. Unless you sing like Freddy Mercury, it's unlikely to get you laid.

kudos to me for reviewing something put out years and years ago.

I will not be reviewing the mini Marshall stack because someone bought it before I did.

Think of the money I saved.

• Oh poop - right-wing NRA hottie Dana Loesch is married

Taliban militants stormed a Kabul tv station to demand anchor praise the terror group

Over here, that's just network news (without the storming).

 

Tyre Spanner Care and Feeding

Your love is like a string of Mondays



Vladimir Putin, part time signpost and all around good guy, has proposed a no-hack pact with the US. This should work out as well as gun control: ask the criminals not to break the law.



Dear lefty

• Are you going to watch the debates?
• Oh is that on tv? Shoot - I made an appointment to chew razorblades that night 

President Trump paid $750 of federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, according to the NY Times. Who does the man think he is - Amazon?  Whether he did or didn't, doesn't this expose flaws in the tax system? It's long past time to fix this. Rest assured reps and dems won't bother to do anything but raise taxes.

• In case you didn't know, too much glycyrrhizic acid can kill you. Glycyrrhizic acid, unfortunately, is contained in black licorice.
• The second case in 30 years occurred at a restaurant in Massachusetts the other day. The number of fatalities could be worse: fortunately no one likes back licorice.

Data News

LA Police Department has run almost 30k facial algorithms, in spite of promising it wouldn't. Shocking.

Exercise tracking app Strava, which previously revealed the location of military bases, is now giving your data to 'help urban planners'. Do not use tracking apps. Of any variety. Your Fitbit app is sucking up all your data and sending it up the line. Is this ok with you?

Wanna know what kind of privacy invasion is on a website? Visit Blacklight.
Wanna know how secure your browser is? Visit Panopticlick.

You're not going to like the results. My suggestion is to run Firefox with a number of security settings and addins. While many addins are available for Chrome and Chrome-based browsers, they're leaky to begin with.


The CLOUD

Microsoft Office365 went down the other day, taking down email and Teams.
It also took down 911 systems all over the country.
This is a perfect demonstration of my objection to The CLOUD. Email's pretty important to most people and all businesses, but 911 services being down.... unconscionable and possibly deadly.

Everybody went nuts over The CLOUD, mostly upper manglement, who saw only savings. The hardcore security and availability nazis, like yours truly, rolled their eyes and took more aspirin. This is only a tiny demonstration of what could happen.

• We did well this summer, in terms of sunlight. Unfortunately we're in Gray Season. Plus there's winter coming up, so the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) sufferers are on full alert, if not already there. 
• Add in the Flying AIDS and semi-quarantines, and you have a less than ideal picture of health, both physical and mental. Now's the time to get on top of it, before it hits. We're not bears and shouldn't be hibernating (unless the doctor tells you to). Check with your doctor or specialist and find out what you can do. I am not a specialist, and this does not constitute medical advice, but I'd avoid dancing naked in restaurants or malls (unless you have a large mask).

WARNING: Pumpkin Spice is here.
Proceed as necessary.
It starts out with pumpkin spice coffee at Dunkin, then spreads like wildfire to thousands of products in thousands of stores. Before long there's pumpkin spice furniture, pumpkin spice pajamas, and pumpkin spice tires (tyres for our spelling-impaired cousins in the UK).

A friend went for an interview for a very important position (VIP) and was served a pumpkin spice muffin. He naturally declined the position, figuring that if they are careless enough to serve pumpkin spice, what other due diligence have they not done?

• Man killed in a dispute over line at Michigan haunted house
• Oh c'mon... how many of us never wanted to....
• "Clearly that argument escalated" Sheriff Mike Bouchard said. 

Sheriff Mike Bouchard wins this week's Captain Obvious award, for the most idiotic sentence that didn't require saying. The award is a golden trophy, with a man falling off a cliff. It's inscribed "That's not good".



Sex after heart attack may boost survival, study claims.

Let's further the science by seeing if it helps decrease heart attacks.
Ready.... set.... boink!

Another study, closely related to the other study, says it's a myth that women don't want sex as they age.       (unless they're married)


Sociology

Parrots removed from UK wildlife park after they started swearing at customers. The five African grey parrots were adopted in the same week and while in isolation taught each other to swear. I think things are starting to surface that people don't want to face: 'swearing' is a natural form of expression that has been suppressed over the years. Look at the AI bot let loose on Twitter, that became alt-right and started cursing at people. Just the other day, a woman went nuts on a plane, screaming curses and jumping on armrests.

We will not progress as humans (or birds) until we acknowledge our true nature. Uncle Fucker.



Astronomers discover possible 60s era moon rocket booster heading back to Earth.
Small wonder the aliens are pissed: not only do we nuclear weaponize every frontier we discover, we trash up the place. Also returning are the onboard coffee machine, waste processing unit (hopefully will burn up on re-entry), and the comfort zebras of each astronaut. NASA went all out on these missions.



Happys

Jerry Lee Lewis - The Killer!
Jean-Luc Ponty - jazz fusion violinist, played with Zappa, among others

from the man Himself

Is Bathing with Table Saws a Thing?

US, UK sign pact to share electronic evidence in criminal cases

This is called hiding in plain sight. It's also a legal restating of current and past policy.

Cheap android smartphones are expensive in privacy.
Can't upgrade android. Can't uninstall crapware. Location is stuck on.

DoorDash exposed 4.9 million users' personal data.
Go out and buy your own food, people.




Dear lefty

• Why is there air?
• So your penis doesn't fly away when you take a bath

I don't care who you are or where you live, there are 2 words that don't belong together: breakfast and burrito. The words go together like razorblades and hubcaps. It sounds pretty icky upon first hearing it. But, in trying to be open minded, you figure it has the same thing as other breakfasts. Then you realize you're just fooling yourself. Then your wife brings you one from a convenience store. Then you try it. Then you realize this was a patently ridiculous idea, as egg pieces parachute to your pants. Salsa? On eggs? No. I don't like sausage much, and the place is always out of ham or bacon. So I don't like it.

Now that I type this, I realize there's a hidden conspiracy: wife buys 2 sandwiches and gives me 1. It's disgusting. She gets to eat both of them.  I'm ok with a regular burrito for breakfast. Better yet, ice cream or a malt.




Today I identify as Bill Clinton - have a cigar!

• A few weeks back I said one thing we didn't want to hear ever again was 'game changer'. Apparently no one got the memo. Why do they taunt me so?

Yes, it's that time. Time to call the divorce lawyers. Yes, it's Pumpkin Spice Time.
This year's crop is over the top...

• pumpkin spice elephants
• pumpkin spice enemas
• pumpkin spice bagels
• pumpkin spice vacuums
• pumpkin spice pumpkin spice
• pumpkin spice babies (eat the babies!)

No thank you, I'd rather live in a world where no one uses turn signals... Hey!

• You'd never know it from the press, but Sir George Martin produced two Jeff Beck albums: Blow by Blow and Wired.

Hillary Clinton stripped a few gears recently, and referred to Tulsi Gabbard as a Russian asset. She also called Dan Rather, Superman, Led Zeppelin, and the dead Koch brother Russian assets.

Never one to back down, Tulsi referred to Hillary as a baby eater, a Dan Rather groupie, and Huma's sugar mama. Also, Satan's asset. Hillary got offended because she's nobody's asset - she IS Satan.




Vice has an article on Twitter and their moderation.
uh-oh

Twitter has an unflinching commitment to being a public space, where even highly offensive voices are allowed to be heard.

cut it out.

"There are times when we could simply disappear something. We don't do that,"

You are so full of excrement, your entire company is brown.

• Twitter denied the company purposefully made it harder for people to report tweets, and instead said it focused on making it easier to report tweets that legitimately required attention, while cutting down on the number of malicious reports, such as those from trolls abusing the reporting system.

really? I see open posts, calling for people to report someone's tweets because they don't like the message or the person.

• "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." - Winston Churchill

Heroes of the Stupid

There's a new app that tells pilots when their plane has been hacked.
Right before they hit the ground.



SJW Invasions

New paper argues that sex robots should be programmed to make consent decisions (which could result in sex robots rejecting their owner's sexual advances) to prevent the normalization of non-consensual sex

Columbia's library building features the names of only male authors. After 3 decades of trying, these students have fixed that



[Space Station not optimized for women]
Can we take a moment to talk about optimizing and gender?

Do you see the blue bar on the floor? Astronauts can tuck their feet under that or grab hold of it to stabilize themselves.

Luca has his feet tucked under it. Jessica does not. [she can't see out the window]



Supporting Greta Thunberg is evidence of white supremacy, white privilege, and white power, activists claim.  So is reading this blog - you have been warned.



San Diego City College hosted a white supremacist seminar in early October, distributing flyers claiming that cultural appropriation, “racist mascots,” and “Make America Great Again” are instances of white supremacy.