Hey Dad, Check This Out!

My father died a long time ago, when we were both too young.
I though it would be cool to update him on what he's missed all these years.

• Bag phones, beam me up Scotty phones, and tiny flat phones. Walkie-talkie private phones. More horsepower in the phone than the first personal pc's and the computer on the Apollo space missions. Personal computers with hard drives under fridge size. Instant communication, like a 'Dick Tracy wristwatch.'  Roswell's fiber optics, integrated circuits, and night vision. Digital electric alarm clocks. 
• The internet as we know it. The ability to text, talk, send pics, look at dirty pics, and suck up information in no time at all, in your hand and in your house. Sometimes in your car.
• Autonomous cars - that I wish we didn't have to see either. Ridiculously high-powered car stereos, measured in decibels instead of watts. Never replace spark plugs. No rotatable distributors. Unleaded gas. Digital stereos playing AM stereo (for a while), FM stereo, 8 track cassettes, cassettes, ELcassettes, songs from non-connected phones and memory sticks.
• Much better medical knowledge, at ridiculous prices. Much more sophisticated diagnostic machinery. Chiropractors (?), Eastern medicine, and better medicines (horribly expensive and too frequently used recreationally). 
• An incredibly rapid news cycle. Finding out about political scandals via news. Then going back to being covered up by news. The discovery that the Military Industrial Complex is actually running things. 
• Shopping for everything locally, then online.  24/7 stores.
• Complete disregard for manners, customs, feelings, and one's parents. Warehouses for old people.
• Amateur radio, using the same equipment designed and built before your own birth.
• My phenomenal guitar and amp collection. My less than phenomenal playing. Being crowned CEO of Sarcasm.
• Unprecedented governmental and corporate spying. Unprecedented tax and spend.
• Homosexuality and sex-changes out in the open, sometimes celebrated. 'Ass' and 'shit' are ok on tv, but still no 'fuck'. Publicly admitted BJs and cigars not-smoked in the White House. 
• Expansion of The Stupid. Drooling, celebrity-obsessed idiots. Something from another planet called Kardashians.
• The realization that All is Not Well, like it is on tv. The end of innocence.

On the other hand, most of us never got to see

• turntables in cars. Cars the size of two current cars. Suicide doors. 400+ CID 8 cylinder engines, 'straight eight' cylinder engines, leaded gas, people pumping gas for you, waiting for your car stereo and tv to warm up before you can use them,  Fins. Large amounts of chrome. Seats that fit a family comfortably. Legroom. Bench seats. Manual and pushbutton transmissions. Having to slam huge metal doors. No seatbelts at all. Real wood on Woodys. Full service gas stations with window cleaning, fluid check, and replacement.
• Paying cash for a doctor visit. The doctor coming to your house.
• Newspapers. Milk and potato chip home delivery. 
• Salespeople who knew you and 'put it on your tab', then sent it to you.
• Happily living close to your parents.
• Really really bad 'solid state' stereos and guitar amplifiers (ok, that continues).
• Comics being funny without expletives.

We miss you, fella.

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....

Alyson Stupidland

It's been days since we've heard from the TSA, therefore it's time.  The TSA has finally come out on top.  Yes, the TSA always gets their man... errr... woman.... errrr... toddler.  Ever watchful, the TSA detected the 18 month old's name on the no-fly list and promptly removed the baby and her family from the plane.

Yup, you really gotta watch out for those foreign toddlers, especially the quiet ones.

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You know, with all the idiots, perverts and child molesters running for president, it's good to know that Mexico still has a few tricks up its sleeve to show the gringos.  Let's make elections fun, if not downright interesting and thought-provoking.

It is sad, however, that politics still raises its ugly head, as topless does not actually mean topless.

Mitt Romney has been shown to have led the bullying of another student in college.  While bullying is bad, he will no doubt hold this up as an indicator of his ability to lead.

Speaking of leading, a jailed inmate in West Virginia won forty percent of the vote in the primary, over President Obama.

Yes, the ObamaChrist proclaimed his support for gay marriage, but no, the White House will not fight the Defense of Marriage Act.   Would you call me cynical for saying this was a press op?

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Stimpy, the wealth of your ignorance amazes me.

--> They don't call me Stupid for nothing!

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Fort Lee, New Jersey (of course, New Jersey) is starting to crack down on dangerous walking.  In civilized states (and Pennsylvania) we call that handing out tickets for texting and walking.

Fortunately I have a teflon alibi: I don't go to New Jersey and I can't walk and breathe at the same time.

Bah Mallbug - Retail Therapy

I have established that I don't get out much.  Here is yet another amusing casualty of my in-ness.

Back before we owned a house, we used to dash here and there on the weekends, on Manic Mall Trips.  After a while we realized we were spending way too much money and had little to show for it.  This was dubbed Retail Therapy<tm>.

One definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.  We realized that Retail Therapy was a failed therapy.  This didn't get a chance to become a problem of momentous proportions, as we purchased a house, thus taking every single cent of disposable income and sending it into some sort of black hole, never to be seen again.

So yeah, I don't get out much these days.

However, I also noticed that working a pair of jobs and never going anywhere was not exactly a recipe for a an interesting life.  So every now and then we leave the house.  Surprisingly enough, we generally wind up regretting it almost immediately, throwing us right back into Stupid.

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We decided on a mall thirty minutes away, as it had the magnet store which required visiting.  My wife is one of those people stores love; they send her something close to her weight in coupons.

We managed to park in the same county as the store, which I'm told is a good thing.  In we went, to the store I won't name but rhymes with KC Denneys.  BANG, we hit a store full of Christmas Cheer<tm>.  I like to say we celebrate Christmas, but only in the most crassly commercial sense of the holiday.   And there we were, in the most crassly commercial sense of retail.  Holiday jingles, decorations, and outfits.  Santa.  And lines almost as long as unemployment lines.

All this as I'm still finishing up my Halloween candy.  I'm told the decorations were up before Halloween this year.

I loudly observed that I was completely full of holiday cheer (or something), which pleased my wife to no end.  I further suggested that they start putting up Valentine's Day decorations, since they were already doing Christmas.  It pays to be prepared, you know.  The wife shot me one of those concrete cracking looks.

There were lines everywhere, presumably including the rest rooms.  I was informed that this was about normal for a Sunday.  I certainly don't remember the mall like this on any Sunday during which I had left the house.  I suggested turning around immediately but unfortunately there were things we had to purchase.

After six lines and two floors, we somehow managed to procure our things.  In spite of the lines, I have to give credit to the lady behind the counter, who went all out to make our coupons apply all over the place.  It seemed we wound up getting things for free.

We were, however, down one thing.  When I inquired, I was told never mind, we'd shop online.  Why, I asked, couldn't we have just shopped online, as opposed to finding ourselves in this morass of a mall?  Because you wanted to go to the mall.

You certainly can't argue with her logic.

AND THEN THE MALL

Wow.

I've heard all sorts of news about the economy, unemployment, stores closing, and malls becoming ghost towns.   Apparently the economy wasn't all that horrible, at least by the volume of people walking around.  I can't imagine them walking around because they enjoyed the place or for their general health.

So the mall appeared to be on its way to ghost town.  One anchor store had closed.  Most of the stores I remembered had gone away.  I was almost surprised to find a Starbucks.  Merchants must be worried, between the vacancies and the horrid stores that fill some of the spaces.

Even with two floors of stores, I had an incredibly difficult time finding anything of interest.  This did not seem to bother the hundreds of twelve to sixteen year old females flooding the aisles.

Good God, where will they go when the malls close?  There will be an epidemic of displaced young women, presumably with disposable income.  Perhaps we need to forestall this eventuality and open Bieber stores near all malls.

We were stunned.  That's about the only term I can pull up.  We reached immediate consensus that we were never coming back again.


Not even a trip to the adult store would console me - it was that bad.

Heroes of the Stupid

I hope Howard Stern will excuse me for borrowing his line, but if we think about this logically, Howard Stern doesn't really give a burro's rump what I do or say.  Let's talk about the Stupid, using some very recent real-life scenarios.

Before I go there, I want to remind you that it is not (yet) politically incorrect to hate the Stupid, thus branding me a stupidist.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

So Rick Perry, the Texas governor, has received divine advice urging him to run for president.  In other words, this politician has had a break with sanity, wherein he heard voices telling him to run for the highest office in the land.  I'm willing to bet that with his health insurance, he can be treated in any clinic in the country, including the private, exclusive ones.

Every time my wife had to go into the hospital, they asked her if she heard voices.   I understand the medicines have come a long way toward quieting them down.

I have no idea how many of Perry's ilk will cop to hearing voices, but I'd suggest starting as far right as possible and working your way left for maximum efficiency.  Hint: Cain and Bachmann have also admitted divine calling.

Strange Bedfellows?

A coalition including New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms and a rabbi filed a lawsuit Monday in an attempt to overturn New York's gay-marriage law.

How much hate do you need in your heart to be part of this?

Before you answer, I'm not one of those people who refer to disagreement or dislike as hate.  This is simply a case of sheer black-heartedness in the Grinchian sense.  Unlike the Grinch, though, these people will not relent.  They will not discover the remains of a blood pumping organ buried way down inside their sternums.  They will persevere, Cheney-like, in their singular mission of forming a theocracy.

I am against gay marriage.   I am also against heterosexual marriage.  But I figure why shouldn't the homos should suffer just like the rest of us?

I am particularly horrified that there is a rabbi involved in this.  I have met a few rabbis.  I am related to Jews.  Never have I come across this level of malignancy.

Owing Great Debt

The news is full of President Giveaway and Boehner stomping about and chest-thumping over a budget.  This is pure theater.

The fact of the matter is that they're going to raise the debt limit and raise taxes, in direct opposition to their words.  This does not fall exactly along the lines of Stupid so much as greed and rampant ass-covering.

A recent news story alerted a few of us to $34 billion misspent on military contractors.  With that story out, plus the trillions acknowledged missing on 9-10-2001, explain again to me why we need to raise the debt limit and taxes.

I maintain that once the government discovers it can reach into your pocket, it never stops.  Reality has shown this to be correct.  The time limit on the debt limit is no surprise.  Again, it's theater.

How do you suppose the debt got that high?  Congress voted to spend it.
Let Congress fix it. 

Until government cuts itself by about eighty percent, we should not have to pay one penny additional.  In fact, we should be paying over eighty percent less or thereabouts.  Yes, those wacky libertarians do have some good ideas sometimes, don't they?

Right now we are a country ridiculously in debt to a private consortium with a public name (the Federal Reserve is neither federal nor a reserve - discuss).  Nothing the joke called Congress does will do anything to fix the situation.  The criminals need to be put where the rest of the criminals are put.

I am responsible for my debts.  I didn't agree to put my country in debt.

The Greatest Football Season Ever in Jeopardy

The NFL has ended the lockout, which means that there could be a football season this year.  I am horribly disappointed.  This season had such potential.....

Feel More of the Love

Afghan militants have hung an eight year old boy because his father refused to give them a police car.

Personally I would have held out for a fire engine.



Do you still wonder why I'm a stupidist?  Wouldn't you like to be a stupidist too?