Nasal Imperatives

A phone manufacturer named Nothing has ported Apple IMs to android.

Why, you ask?

Nobody knows, but it was shut down in 24 hours (ok, it was a security issue).

Let's be serious - who wants those stupid bleeps and bloops and ridiculous visuals? Android users are still pissed we have to put up with iDevice 'liked that message' notices. Guess what... I don't care if you liked my text or not. I do not derive my ability to get through another day because you liked my post. Or 12 friends liked it. I'd never do that. Except on my blog.

One of those endless Black Friday promos touted mouse pads.

Mouse pads?

Did Consumer Reports buy a bunch of them and test them? What was the testing criteria? Shape? Smoothness? Reaction from people you steered by them? Funky colors? Use as a tissue?

We've gone nuts.

• Some picky Australian mosquitoes may target frog nostrils for blood
• and here we thought they were merely a delicacy..

Deep space astronauts may be prone to erectile dysfunction, study finds

Well, there goes all the ThermionicEmissions reader astronaut job applications 

Study: The serotine bat uses its super-large penis as an arm when mating

So?  Don't we all? Drives the female bats crazy!  

 I got nothing for Thanksgiving. That's ok, I did want anything.

I also got nothing on Cyber Monday. What a stupid concept. Black Friday starts in October, and there are many of them.. they line up, like North Korean government officials, waiting to be shot. Next year, Black Friday will occur in February. Cyber Monday will start on Sundays. Now there's a Giving Tuesday. I like that one - I'm going to give myself a break from all this crap. The xmas trees have been out since July, but didn't fare too well this year due to climate change.

Now that I think about it, I did want something for Thanksgiving: turkey. I don't know what it is but I have trouble getting turkey on Thanksgiving. While some would consider it rude to demand a host serve a certain dish, mine has this fascination for lamb. To the best of my knowledge, the Pilgrims didn't fsck sheep, so I'm going with turkey. Mind you, the dog appreciated the hell out of the lamb, which came home in the appropriately-named doggie bag. Bless them, there was a turkey this year, but we were terrified of what might happen to it - perhaps a turkey stuffed with lamb (or tomatoes), so we had a few large boxes of Stove Top stuffing in the car, just in case. Another guest was from Colombia and brought a traditional dish that involved poorly-cooked yellow rice and stuff. I hear Colombia was pretty mad and sent something else.

When there is no turkey, Mrs. lefty says she'll make a small one at home, then promptly forgets. I decline to remind her because I like my testicles. Mostly, I really want a vat of vanilla buttercream icing, like Mom used to make.

My dish is always dessert. It's usually something chocolate and very heavy to carry (and eat). This year it was a pumpkin pie (with lamb) and a very heavy peanut butter/chocolate pie.

While I got vanilla and chocolate buttercream icing (and a spoon), Mom used to bring the best cake anyone ever had to events. It was a very heavy chocolate cake, with chocolate buttercream icing. Everybody went nuts over it. There was a little coffee in the icing, which only made it better. Mom played a really insidious joke on the family by telling us the cake recipe was on the chocolate tin. No member of the family could make the cake like she did. Mom literally took the recipe to the grave...I have to admit, she got us good.

It's been 3 months since she departed. Her ashes sat next to the table so she got to celebrate with the family. I suggested her ashes could summer at our house next year. 

We all miss her terribly. The grief sneaks out here and there, triggered by a situation or word. Whenever anybody says 'icing,' I'm inconsolable for hours.

Low-Fi Nose Blowing

It has been mentioned here that in the US, car commercials concentrate on the Important Stuff: the stereo.  The iDevice commercials are out and consist of everything being right with the world, according to Prophecy, and concentrate on the great camera and many colors in which the phone is available.  Ah... advertising.

• If you watch LivePD, you'll notice rows of people sitting at computers, looking incredibly serious and busy. LivePD isn't live, and those people are surfing pr0n and watching COPS reruns. shhhhhhh........

Remember when someone made a video a McDonald's burger, proving it never grew mold or broke down? Turns out it's the same for 4 day old cheese fries. Or so they tell me.

• I finally had Turkey Day turkey, only 10 days after Turkey Day. This means my turkey came early. We took everything to my parents' place and they invited Penny too. She was excited to meet everybody. Within 5 minutes, she had pooped on the floor. Not at all embarrassing. If she weren't so friendly, I would have been denied my own turkey. The dog has never done that before. I'm so happy to see you I could defecate.
• As if that weren't enough, she's on meds for this worm and that worm. It's Vet Bills all over again. My PTSD is killing me. I'm doing all I can to stay off the nightly news.

When looking at/for android apps, you can find 12 word-find programs, with tiny differences between them. You can also find a buttload of even more completely useless or questionable apps. I happen to have a few in mind: mushroom identification, flower and plant identification, learn 31 new languages, Burger King Russia, dna testing (dare we ask how the sample is obtained?), gay chat (because gays chat differently?), Lego (because an app is way more fun than actual physical Legos? Or just advertising the next, horribly expensive version), gesture control (I have a gesture for this), coloring book (just shoot us now), 7 minute workout (sure, let your phone kill you), Nintendo emulator (why not a Pong emulator?). My favorite, Lego aside, is the coloring book. Have we really come to the level when coloring books are a thing of the past? Crayons are so 2000 - get the app!

Maybe we can come up with a few suggestions... hmmmm....

• Turn signal emulator (banned in New Jersey, might be too complex and foreign for the rest of the country)
• Sex app: virus-free! Better than getting no sex at all (hopefully)
• Signature app: why should you stoop to actually picking up a pen?
• Virtual Reality Walking App - since you don't leave the couch anyway, why not show the grandkids what it was like.
• Ice Cream App: since you're unbelievably neurotic and think that a bowl of ice cream will put 100lbs on you, or you're lactose intolerant, you can fire up a vision of eating real ice cream! It even lets you pick the flavor... no weight gain, no spending your days off in the bathroom. If you order the right flavor, you get a second scoop. The second scoop will put weight on you.
• Text app: it's been a long day of looking at cat pictures. You're bushed. Fire up the text app... it will stay online all night, texting random people and telling friends your deepest secrets. All this while you recover from your near-fatal repetitive stress injury.

• Watch out - a clever spouse might figure out their Christmas gift. The parent firm of Kay and Jared jewelers exposed the order information of all their online customers. It's ok, they fixed it (groan)
• If you live in Ames, Iowa, for some reason, and don't believe in paying parking tickets, you're in good shape: the online parking ticket payment system got breached.
• If you're a Quora user, a data breach exposed 100 million users. Quora's response was delightfully understated: "We have discovered that some user data was compromised by unauthorized access.... "
• In case anybody's counting, and even if they're not, do you see a pattern here? Breach after breach, from local to national to international. It's because no one gives a rat's ass about security. No one will until the cost of dealing with the incident trumps the cost of implementing security. In other words, the cost of failure is already built into the budget.

The British Film Institute will no longer fund movies where the villain has facial scarring, to "remove the stigma around disfigurement".  No word on eye patches, gold teeth, large noses, sitting in chairs stroking cats, fangs, short people, invisible, more than 2 eyes or breasts, unibrow, people dressed in black, or male pattern baldness.

I'll be petitioning the BFI to no longer fund any pictures with a right-handed cast. There is a pervasive stigma against the left-handed, which cannot be allowed to persevere.  Move to England - we have no stigmas left!

• Why are we not done with the "unsubscribe" spam yet?

Dear lefty

• Janice Mung, of Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania, asks why it's difficult to hold a number of birds in your hand.
• It is helpful to limit the number of birds in your hand to the amount you can comfortably handle. Swallows are non-migratory. 

If you're feeling at all unsafe, now's a great time to move to New York. First they protected you from large sodas. Next up is legislation making it a misdemeanor to send pics of your junk to an unwilling recipient. You could face a year in jail, a fine of $1,000, or both. If you wind up in jail, you'll get close-up views of your cellmate's junk. New York: The New California

In an absolute shock and surprise, the UK is way ahead of New York, with this offense being the same as showing your junk in person (and causing offence, of course).

• Say what you want about George HW Bush, but his passing got some people a day off work. He will be remembered fondly.
• I suspect the former president died several years ago and they forgot to tell him. He looked pretty bad.

Dumb De Dumb Dumb

According to the Federal Communicators Network, even if you're trying, you're probably not writing for the average American. The long and short of it is that Americans have become more stupider over the years, as measured by Science.

Nearly 52% of U.S. adults score below Level 3 proficiency (i.e., they score Level 2 and below), with almost 20% of our population at the very lowest levels of performance.

A score of 3 on this test is considered proficient.
We can't have the Proles questioning policy, can we?







Dear lefty

• Roberta Ohmebum, from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, asks why her dog chews and rearranges her network wiring
• Because he's smarter than you.

All the Windows News That's Unfit for Mainstream Media to Mention

Windows 10 security questions prove easy for attackers to exploit.
You don't even have to read it - you get the idea.

Q. Why do Windows users always get on top?
A. Because Microsoft can only fuck up.



Mein Gott - It's Faceyspaces and It's Not Good

Internal Tensions are strangling The Facebook, for the last 600 days. 
Rather than waste any time caring about these issues, Lord Zuck has inaugurated the new Loyalty Test and its cousin, the new Loyalty Guarantee. It's a little helmet they put on employees. If they're stressed, they might not be loyal, so the Loyalty Guarantee helmet, which wipes out their personality and replaces it with a zombie-like pro-Faceyspaces worker drone. Should they decide to talk to the press, their head will ring so badly they'll wish for the peace and quiet of Afghanistan.

• In some buildings, there are more 'Black Lives Matter' posters than black people
• ex-employees have been talking out of school, further demoralizing current drones employees.
• Lord Zuck states that the entire kerfuffle is a result of biased press.

The files obtained in the UK have been released/leaked/put out to watch the world burn. Read them.  The best revelation was that The FB was fully aware of tracking you closely was creepy, so they went ahead and did it. They updated their cell phone app to require 'read call log permission.' The beauty of it is the engineers figured out how to ask for the additional permission without appearing to ask for it. The program read call logs and mined your call info to better suggest people you know on FB. Are you grokking this? They used your own phone calls to market to you. When you install the app, it requires a ridiculous amount of permissions, because it invades the phone and eats all possible data. You gave it permission. It loves address book info, and what marketer wouldn't?

I don't blame the evil scum FB - they have every right to do this, plus their users rubber stamp everything. At very least, access FB in your browser - not with an app. Even Messenger listens in.

Yul Kwon is Faceyspaces' 'privacy sherpa', but the position caused all sorts of misunderstandings. It was later clarified that privacy sherpa did not relate to user privacy - it related to FB's privacy. He was there to prevent leaks and see that no valuable (damning) information got to the press. They may be evil, but they're not stupid.

So next time FB suggests you might know Margie Wong, who you've been sleeping with when your wife goes out of town and who you exchange sexts with daily, you'll know where they got this information. Since FB knows you're married, your wife will also get Margie as a suggestion. A lot. Eventually she'll ask who this Margie Wong is who keeps showing up in her suggestions.



Ever go to a restaurant with a ridiculous wait time and get on the wait list, with your name and number? You'll be shocked to find this information is also mined. Pretty soon the way you walk when you leave the house will be subject to inspection.. the better to market to you.

If you must leave information, including when purchasing something, make one up. Same for motels with hourly rates, but you didn't hear that here.

I Have Plenty of Hair - Just Look in the Drain

Life is Python.
Python is Life.

I just caught a really good documentary on Monty Python, covering the lead up to their O2 appearance. One of the points they hammered at (and got hammered on) is their age; constantly referred to as septuagenarian, or 70s, in French. Well, they certainly looked older, but consider that the shows started in the late 60s. They're certainly going to have gray hair and other normal issues related to age. Graham Chapman had the ultimate issue related to age: he's dead (although technically it was related to illness).

They covered what the Pythons had been up to, Eric Idle taking the reins of leadership for the appearance, and rehearsals, which some couldn't make due to prior commitments. Putting on a show of this magnitude required an immense effort, from Eric to dancers to props. There was a scene where Eric was driving through his 'hood in L.A., headed off to a storage unit. There he found a picture of the first time he met George Harrison, some gold records, and finally, the albatross he was after.

The following day I watched a relatively recent Deep Purple concert, noting that our classic rock heroes are getting up there. Jeff Beck and the Zeppelins are all septuagenarians. Contrasted with the Pythons, the rockers are still relatively young, hair dye aside.

What have we learned?
That rock and roll keeps you young and that if you put mayonnaise on corn on the cob, I will lose my previous meal upon your person.

• In a survey, half of Americans don't want self-driving cars. Of course they don't want self-driving cars - they crash. They're not ready for prime time.
• Maybe some Americans aren't as stupid as they look.

Turkish protesters took sledgehammers, handguns, and fire to iPhones.
Why? Do the Turks feel like I do about iDevices?
No, they're protesting Donald Trump's administration.

I call on you, readers of this blog, to follow the brave example of the Turks and take sledgehammers, handguns, and fire to iPhones, to protest President Trump's failure to jail Hillary Clinton. If you're unwilling to destroy your own $1,000 property, maim someone else's. If that fails, join my other protest: we're burning old, broken printers to protest Turkey's protest. We'll show them.

• I'm seeing commercials for a tv show called Born This Way, about people born with Down Syndrome. Could someone please explain the attraction of the show and its high ratings? Disclosure: I haven't watched the show, as the commercials provided nothing of interest for me. There are enough disabilities around me - why watch them on tv?

A 41 year old Iraq vet suffered from PTSD, attempting suicide five times after his 2009 discharge. The medicines he was prescribed left him with side effects and he still felt suicidal. He participated in a clinical trial of MDMA (ecstasy/molly), and within a few doses, he wasn't suicidal.

I'm glad the soldier got some help. Our veterans are sometimes treated like collateral damage. This is because Lockheed Martin doesn't build soldiers. Make no mistake - Iraq, Afghanistan and many other wars are unnecessary, but if these men and women served, they deserve the best we can provide. The president has made VA reform a high priority: I hope he succeeds.

Incidentally, ketamine (vitamin K, animal tranquilizer, party drug) is being used to treat depression. War on drugs my ass. Just wait til the drug companies start to sell these.... all of the sudden they will become Miracle Cures.

• The Powers That Be in dog rescue have indicated they're still looking for a dog for us. If you know of an American or English cocker in the Philly area, please get in touch. We're looking for a young adult who's not insane and has no issues.

My favorite religious skewer is the satanists. It would almost seem that they were put together to defend freedom of religion. Little Rock, Arkansas, has unveiled an eight foot state of Baphomet at the Arkansas state capitol.  How did this happen? The legislators approved a Ten Commandments monument. The satanists insisted on inclusion for the sake of plurality and got what they were asking.

Much as I love the point and the apoplexy it caused, I'm coming out against pluralism, satan or not. #1A is about the State not having anything to do with religion. In this case, 'plurality' is a sneaky end-around, in order to get one group's religious symbol put up. 

What would Attorney lefty, Constitutional non-scholar and not-noted libertarian, recommend? The removal of all religious iconography. Require the virtue-signalling legislators to take a Constitution 101 course. Require they view a presentation on satanism. Then send them back to their overstuffed office chairs and have them practice minimal government. 

The nerve of these Bubbas is astounding.

Naturally, Little Rock's Great Unwashed is marching in lock step, mounting a protest against the satanist statue. Because their religion should get preference over freedom of religion. Also because there are no other problems in the state.

• It's 7am. I'm technically awake, and there's an ungodly noise coming through the windows: it's heavy equipment. Equipment so heavy, it sounds like someone doing construction on a highway. This is the loudest noise to grace our street since the 757 landed in our driveway. The neighbor is already busy cutting grass. She doesn't push the mower - it moves away in fear. She's been at it for over an hour... I think she's going blade by blade.
• Ancient astronaut theorists believe the neighbors are building survival complexes, seven stories deep. Or maybe the neighborhood is a CIA front. Except for my house, of course: we're a front for the city garbage inspectors.

Meanwhile back at the airport

"I'm going to need to see your porn, please," said the customs agent at the airport. 

Excuse me?

"I need to look at the porn on your laptop."

Why would you possibly want to look at my porn? How do you know I have any?

"Sir, I'm specially trained to detect porn and see if it's the kind of porn which violates our laws."

How do you know I have any porn that violates your laws?

"I don't. That's why I have to review all of it. No telling where you might hide it.  Please sit over there. A few colleagues will assist me to make this process faster. I'll be back in a few hours."

• Phew.. it's been a long but productive day: I finally got Word 2016 to open in draft view. I'm beat.

There was a party the other day.

No one was entirely sure why.

You're about to ask yourself what a party has to do with a bathroom door. 

Go ahead.

I needed a new bathroom door. I was incapable of putting it up because I had never done it before and it was fairly complex. The solution, as always, was to call Bob. Bob is my buddy of many years. Bob is to construction as lefty is to computers. Bob stopped by, assessed the situation, and had it hung in short order. Wife was impressed. For about 15 minutes. Bob put the door on backwards. Bob are a perfesshunul.

Months later, I had to install an air conditioner shelf brackety thing. I was terrified of it requiring drills and other tools I knew the names of but did not have. Sure enough, Bob was kind enough to stop by on his day off. He looked at the instructions and shook his head... he wasn't understanding. Since we were both standing there in Man Pose (arms crossed, looking pensive), the Man Code stated I had to look at it. I too shook my head and sent Bob home. We just weren't getting it.

Wife, who called Bob, was less than happy that the professional (and I) failed to have the thing installed. When I protested stupidity, she handed me the device exactly as it was supposed to be attached.  Boy, I really WAS stupid. I didn't have the heart to call Bob. But at least I finished with the Man Code: I told her if she's so smart, SHE could install it.

Bob's wife threw a party.

She has different ways of going about things.

When I say threw a party, I mean something closer to arranged a party. She made sure to delegate absolutely everything but being the hostess. When the day came, everybody had brought something, except Mrs. Bob. After all, it was her party. Then everybody arranged the food over tables, tents, and inside. Mrs Bob stayed inside because it was 90 outside. She certainly looked summery, in her very short skirt, which let most of it all hang out. And when I say it, I mean several great handfuls of cottage cheese and some used telephone poles. 

After we left, I hear Mrs. Bob was already planning her next party. Why? Because everyone else cleaned up for her. 

• I hate rain. I hate clouds. I picked the wrong state in which to live. We've had a pretty bad spell lately. Today we're aware of the sun, but the clouds are doing their best to obscure it, like Michael Moore in front of Gwyneth Paltrow. Yet I feel myself longing for rain. WHAT? Because if it doesn't rain in the next hour, I have to mow.
• Well, I had no choice. We went to a battery-powered mower, which is very light and very quiet. This is the problem: everyone else's mower is loud and bothers the hell out of me. I can't even reciprocate. Maybe I'll contact the manufacturer and find out if there's a VOOM retrofit. They have to put them on electric cars, so people will know they're coming.

He Was A Wanted Man

...by everyone but his wife.


I don't want you to stop using Faceyspaces because I say so. Do the research. Watch the video and become truly upset - it's how deep the data collection and profiling goes.

• The House has voted to renew mass surveillance. If you think these people have your back, you're sadly mistaken. Talk to your senators NOW.
• Irony: hacking group Fancy Bear is targeting Senate emails.  The senate would be subject to mass surveillance. Yeah, right.

According to Kaspersky, a whopping 88% of employees know little about their company's IT security policies. Only 88% ?  Good thing they didn't measure how many care.

• OOPSIE: Nuclear weapons systems are vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which could at worst lead to compromise and inadvertent launches. Unfortunately, they were designed pre-digital. Wasn't it recently that we discovered they use floppies?
• President Trump today apologized, in a phone call, to Putin for the inadvertent destruction of the Kremlin.

Microsoft is adding end-to-end encryption to Skype for secure and private conversations. This is what we call irony, as Microsoft has backdoors to itself and the NSA.

• It's not that the weather is weird, but we've had three weeks of sub-freezing temperatures. The other day, it was so warm, we shut down the second heater. Today, there are no heaters, because we have to run the fan. Not to worry, though; it's been raining or sleeting for the majority of the time. I'm renewing the call for a telethon for the purpose of getting us a climate.

I want to advise my people to be very careful in purchasing or using their sex robots, because a hacker with a warped sense of humor can weaponize them to kill you. Do you really want this kind of headline upon your passing?

• In Ireland, there's a town with a little sign that says Welcome to Muff. I think I'd like to eat there.

Despite taking in record individual-income-tax revenues, the federal government ran a deficit of approximately $225 billion during the quarter. Once they get their hands in your pocket, they will never come out. Stop re-electing them - they couldn't organize a sock drawer.

• Next year's self-driving Chevrolet Bolt will have no pedals or steering wheel; leaving the driving entirely to the car. What could possibly go wrong?

Ultrarunner accused of winning races by hiding in Port-a-Potty.

I've finally found my exercise plan. Wife says this is a shitty job.

• President Trump had a physical, which revealed he's in excellent health. House democrats have subpoenaed records, claiming there was no physical. Salon wants to know why Melania didn't have one. Hillary said that physicals are for mortals. Rachel Maddow voted for cancer. CBS wants the exam gown. CNN put together a six-part series on how he could get away with this, called Physical-Gate: Shock and Outrage.
• While all of this was going on, Trump sent another volley of troops and who knows what else to Afghanistan. Endless war, you know.

NOTE TO WIFE: Putting those healthy snacks in a bag that looks just like my bag-o-junk is not going to make me eat them. Dried chips of this and that have all the appeal of liver smoothies.

• My spiritual friends from Free the Nipple are taking their case to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.  After being told to cease their topless bathing, the women refused, got ticketed, and are now suing for the right to go topless. They claim their rights are being violated and that it is discriminatory that men are allowed to walk around with their nipples exposed. Further, there are no laws against being topless.
• This is the kind of legal wrangling I like to get my hands on. So to speak.

If you have any reason to be in Turkey, I'd recommend not being in Turkey. Or at very least, not getting near the airport.  This plane found a very inappropriate parking spot.  Apparently the pilot was going for a water landing when the copilot suggested the airport instead. They compromised.

What I Learned At The Mall

I like to get out of the house once every month or so on a non-work expedition.

This is usually made difficult by weather, scheduling conflicts, aches, fibromyalgia, pains, and/or just plain inability to be up and functional before three.  Today we overcame many obstacles and ventured forth.

Since it has been so warm, it was somehow necessary to go down to the teens today. You have to wear several layers of clothing because if your nipples get hard and freeze, they may break off (it's ok, I am a doctor).

I remember when malls were malls.

(then what are they now?)

We wanted to see the Disney Store because it was closing and might have some must-have Eeyore merchandise. Silly humans... there wasn't so much as a mug and they no longer carry adult t-shirts (or Eeyore merchandise of any type). Small wonder they're going out of business.

For a Saturday at the mall, it was suspiciously free of customers, not that we minded. Wife found a Vietnamese place in the food court. Wife is not from there, nor does she know anyone from there, so naturally she wanted the food. I can't tell you if it's the same with all Vietnamese people, but these particular examples had an interesting method of running a business: either not showing up or hiding in the back to get away from those pesky customers. Like idiots, we stood there. I strongly suggested she pick up a metal chair and BANG IT REPEATEDLY on the metal counter to test their hearing. As you might have guessed, I'm the funny one in the family. Several other ... what do you call them.... yeah - customers.. several other potential customers had less patience and walked away. While it is physically possible that there are people who have less patience than me, I don't really believe there are any. So she wound up at the Generic Chinese Place with the nice Chinese lady out front, giving out samples. Apparently they had many different varieties of grease, most of which she purchased. For a person trying to be nice to her stomach, this was puzzling. 

We located a Fruity Fresh Smoothie-type place and took a look. For a place that had a lot of fruit, it looked good. Fortunately, hidden over to one side, was the ice cream menu. We can't let the hippies win, people. I have to admit, strawberry banana yogurt sounded halfway decent, but I'm a clever type and got them to substitute vanilla ice cream for that tasteless probiotic yogurt crap. So I ate my first fruit of the year; possibly my last.

There are few people on the planet who will deny Carlos Santana is one serious guitar mofo. Turns out he designs guitar straps, paints, and has a shoe line for women. Strangely enough, they're pretty nice. When Wife wanted a pair, I told her only if the purchase included the ability to play like Carlos. Naturally she got them anyway.

Speaking of shoes, I don't get some of the ideas on display. Everybody gets hooker shoes and hooker boots - they're cool and vaguely normal these days. I want to know why some of the women's shoes look like they've been through a shredder. There are many slices actually missing from these shoes. Continuing the theme, other shoes seem to be missing their front or back, sometimes both. So you're either walking around with shredded shoes or shoes that expose your toes or heel. Any way you go, you better wear them at night because sun exposure is gonna look weird on your feet.

What's really weird is that the Disney store is not the only one closing. There appeared to be about four in a row, closing within a few days. Someone suggested high rent. Another said people are only buying online. I thought kids liked malls, online aside. Plus even I have to leave the house once in a while, and it's not going to be playing outside in ten degree weather (with a wind chill of minus 8). We found a nice pet accessory store, where we discussed the relative merits of chicken parmesan versus sweet potato flavored treats. We could tell that this was a good pet store, as they had cocker coasters with an actual black cocker (almost all accessories have a light colored dog). We went with the chicken and he sort of looked at them, sniffed, and walked away. This is a dog that eats raw Brussels sprouts. We also got him one of those military bomb proof snake things with the squeakers in it. He attacks and disembowels them, removing the squeaker for the safety of himself and his family. Tonight he watched Mommy throw it and went elsewhere. Picky bastard, ain't he?

I will never forgive this mall for letting Cinnabon go. I don't want to suggest that this was the genesis of mall failure to thrive, but it sure is coincidental. And like most malls, you could buy as many cell phones as you wanted, along with women's shoes and women's clothing. One shoe store had four aisles of women's shoes and some small shelf in the back with men's. Every now and then I let my wife buy me some white socks, but what is this telling us? The mall is in a decent area with some upscale stores and a few magnets (JC Penney, Sears, etc).

Speaking of location, there's an adult store around the corner. I used to joke about it with my parents. One day Mom called to let me know they had added another floor to the store. She is a model for moms everywhere. Well, most of the time. She sometimes travels to get things, like spices. She found a Spice Shop around the corner and went in to check things out. After a very short look around, she discovered that Spice did not refer to smelly things in little bottles. In fact, it looked spicy, like that adult store she told us about. Yes, Mom walked right into the lingerie portion of the store. I don't want to think about what would have happened had she wandered further back. The Big Gay Bob doll with the twelve inch vibrating penis wouldn't look right in her closet. And if it did, I sure as hell don't want to know about it.

My local mall has four levels of shoe stores. They too allowed Cinnabon to escape. Now there are four levels of shoe stores and one level of cell phones and cell phone accessories. And pocketbooks that routinely cost more than my first few cars. Combined. Last year we got warning notices that they were opening an Apple store in the mall. This is because any store carrying more than ten percent Apple products is required to warn the surrounding area (5 mile radius). It's a good thing they did, so I can stay off that level. If I really need to get to that level, I have to put on a flameproof suit and cling tightly to the store on the other side. Sometimes I still hear the lights and sirens, as well as my skin starting to burn, which is really bad when you're in a closed astronaut suit. When I die and go to hell, it will look like a Chuck E Cheese. Either that or a left-handed guitar store right next to an Apple store.

Crunchy Turfroggy

Are you considering buying a 'smart' device for your kid? Take this quiz first.
Are you ready for Black Friday? Here are some security tips. Good, basic stuff.

• Viagra has been found in the South Korean presidential offices. No idea why this is a problem, but I urge the South Korean president to keep it up.

The creator of the Broadway musical Hamilton has said that Donald Trump is welcome to attend. In completely unrelated news, a new character has been added to the musical, John Wilkes Booth.

• An Australian woman who abandoned fourteen cats which ate each other is being charged with cruelty. I think the lady should be put in prison and forced to eat her cellmate but I don't make the laws. This also proves that all your suspicions about cats are true.

Remember Tomagotchis? The stupid little video 'pets' on a stupid little electronic device? They recently turned twenty. Tomagotchis were one of the early signs that civilization, as it were, was doomed. Kinda like a 1990s version of reality television.

• Obama gave out 'Medals of Freedom' the other day. He choked up when presenting one to Ellen DeGeneres. This is one time I feel solidarity with Obama - I'd choke giving her an award too, except possibly 'Most Annoying Voice'. Or the 'Who Thinks She's Funny' medal, referred to as the Seinfeld Award.

The British government's chief whip keeps a tarantula on his desk. Apparently this is a problem. It turns out the government cannot figure out what a 'whip' is. Meanwhile the whip, in an effort to minimize governmental trauma, has offered to exchange the tarantula for his other pet, a black widow.

• Donald Trump looks like he will appoint Nikki Haley, democratic governor from South Carolina, as ambassador to the UN. The appointment is dependent on her changing her name to something less porn star-ish. Trump's rationale is to put her where she can do the least damage and the UN would be the definition of least damage.

Turkey's president, Tayyip Erdogen, has fired 15,000 state employees since the attempted coup in July. Since the US gives billions of dollars to most countries, I'm all for sending a few his way, in exchange for a consulting job for the US government. The savings will more than make up for the 'aid'.

• Retailers, not satisfied with Black Friday sales, are offering them even earlier, proposing a number of changes for the Thanksgiving season:
• Black Friday will hereafter be known as Black November
• In a bid to appear magnanimous and sensitive to Family, retail employees will no longer have to work all Thanksgiving day; allowing them to eat dinner with their families, between the hours of 2am and 3am.
• For the safety of customers and employees, armed guards will be posted at all entrances, equipped with flash-bang grenades and tear gas, in case the special deal on the one remaining flat-screen tv causes a riot. Snipers will also be positioned on the top shelves of the toy aisles, if any customer draws notice to an item being out of stock. Customer Service personnel will be issued handguns and pepper spray and informed that any refunds will come out of their paychecks.

Ex-CIA General David Petraeus indicated he will serve in Donald Trump's administration if asked. While a position has not been named, two possibilities are Secretary of Secretaries and Secretary of Affairs.

• As if the holidays were not depressing enough for some people, the New Kids on the Block/Paula Abdul tour is now on the road, nicknamed "The Sad, Sick, and Lonely, Suicide Tour" As if that weren't enough to push you over the edge, Wendy 'Frankenstein' Williams and Jerry Seinfeld are also touring, creating a torture chamber near you.

Hey, are you longing for that Tesla but simply can't afford it? Simply hack the mobile app and steal it!

• In another bit of Governmental Fun, this time a Navy laptop was hacked, to the tune of 130,000 current and former sailors (personal information, including Social Security numbers). It's a good time to be in some sort of governmental employment. And when I say good, I mean Get the F- Out.
• Just in case you're still hungry for leaks after Thanksgiving, State Farm, Sheet Metal Workers Union, and Anchor Loans were discovered to have leaky databases. No word on how much data, if any, was stolen.

Faceyspaces has developed a censorship application, so it can get back into China. Keep in mind that if they can censor this particular information, they can censor virtually any information. What a tool this could be, eh?

While we're on the topic, the CEO of Reddit decided to relieve some pressure by messing with some messages, taking out his name and replacing it with moderators of /r/the_donald for about an hour, then admitting to it. This is an international site, with all sorts of user interaction and contributions. Also a site using censorship. The /r/pizzagate subreddit was just shut down because it's 'fake news'. By fake news, they mean user-investigated information into pedophiles and Satanic Ritual Abuse among elites in the government. Coincidence? The group moved to voat.com, where you can find all the information. This is not tinfoil hat. This is tinfoil hat stuff that was known and talked about for years and the facts are just leaking out, via the Wikileaks John Podesta emails. Don't take my word for it - do the research. My own relatives were shocked when they did.

• There is now a 'smart trash can', complete with smart phone app. I do not dare even go to its site but one can only wonder what kind of capabilities it has....
• alerts when can is full
• calls trash removal service to pick up
• lets you know you ordered more proprietary bags
• 'intelligently sorts' trash from recyclables, which means it will separate candy wrappers from wax paper and mistake tin cans for paper because of the labels. It will also spank the cat if it uses too much litter.
• When hacked, approximately fifteen minutes after it is plugged in, it will surrender all of your credit card information and start to hack the Pentagon. When the CIA drops by, it will sit there and pretend to be a dumb trash can.

I just found the new love of my life on reverb.com (a sort of Ebay for musicians). It's a 1958 left-handed Fender Stratocaster, at the bargain price of $35,000. Mrs lefty said to go ahead! The only remaining question is where we're going to live when we sell the house.