Peanut Butter As Lubricant (on Turkey Day)

 

Happy Turkey Day, Merkuns. Happy Whatever Day, non-Merkuns. I'm not thankful for too much, but I'm thankful for you coming by and reading. Then coming back. For telling your friends (that you want to piss off) to come by. For people from other countries who come by and understand the idioms (or whatever they're called - sometimes they get loose and wreak havoc). 

Your love is like  peanut butter shrimp

If you have Outlook at work and need to leave an out of office message, add the words "due to supply chain issues." You will have the best out of office message, even if you get fired.

Today I identify as  Gweneth Paltrow, whose new candle scent is Brad Pitt's penis

Clams are classified as bivalves, because they have two engines. A clam presumed extinct for 40,000 years has been found alive. It's older than the president, but in better shape mentally. The government initially kept this a secret, because his retroactive Medicare payments would bankrupt the country (further).

I finally chose my use-or-lose vacation days, since they won't just pay me anyway. Since I got to this too late, but not later than last year,  I don't have to take the entire month of December off. Just most of it. In an effort to not shaft my coworkers, who would shaft me in half a second, I made sure I was in at least one day per week. And at most, one day per week. With my need for constant stimulation and constant direction, it should be interesting. With unlimited funds, I could just run around and buy stuff. I'm sure there are a lot of my readers with unlimited funds, but I am not one of them (a reader or with unlimited funds). I only blog because I like the money. That turned out to be a regrettable decision after I realized I turned off all the ads and haven't made a penny for over 12 years. So now I only blog.,... ummmm... 

• because it makes the dog proud of me?
• my wife likes the way it keeps me out of her hair
• my wife likes the way it keeps me out of her pants

it keeps me from making household repairs, which wind up costing twice as much when we have to call in the professionals (and the fire department)

just kidding - imagine what would happen if I applied my luck to plumbing.. the Dark Figures would have their way and a swimming pool would appear where the roof once was

So I have a bunch of days to fill with activities so I don't get up to things. I notified the police, fire, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And the guitar stores. It turns out these aren't a problem, as they're just more things I cannot afford. I don't decorate the new black tree, except for a few vacuum tubes and some sex toys. TV is out because I can't stand Medicare commercials. Neighbors don't work from home, so loud guitar playing isn't any fun (nor is organizing Naked Banana Races). Competitive sleeping requires more practice than you think, and cooking is out, due to my oven's perfect 45 degree angle. I can't stand the razzing I get when I show up to a family function with a cake. There are only so many gallons of buttercream icing one can eat before the ambulance parks out front for entire days. 

[ring ring]

Hello?

I have to call you back. click.

I'm happily typing away on my last backup laptop, from I dunno, 12 years ago? It works, absolutely. But it's the one that can't be updated because it's 32 bit and there's little 32 bit software. I'll live. The only significant problem is that it's old and slow and bereft of memory (like me). With 4 programs up, I have to wait til a while after a mouse click before anything happens. Firefox is demanding a week's notice if I want to browse somewhere.

Google is a bitch too. Most of the browsers don't want to log into it. While this is a good policy in general, Blogspot is a Google product. The browser that WILL log in is small, but if you don't pay attention over a day or 3, it gets up to things. The memory use goes up faster than soda prices. It starts inserting things in the blog (so if there's anything you don't like, it was the browser, ok?). If you have lots of tabs open and don't pay attention to it, it makes confidential calls to the FBI about some of the activities you may or may not participate in. Due to a hilarious 'misunderstanding' about 9-11, I was advised not to grow a long beard or take any trips outside the country. 

So I watch the browser carefully.

Dontcha hate it when you get a voicemail from your doctor that goes, "Gee, sorry, we've closed the practice. It's been a real hoot and you should probably find another doctor, ok? If you need any medicine, good fscking luck. If you need any psych meds, walk around the street, naked and barking like a chicken. Eventually you'll get all the meds you ever wanted. And a warm bed. On a locked ward."

 

Social Media 2022

Running to Faceyspaces to complain about Twitter and say we're leaving.

Last year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) released datashowing that it received overwhelmingly more reports of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) from Facebook than any other web service it tracked

Aw, isn't that sweet? 

Now that Musk heard from the people of Twitter, he reinstated Trump. For his part, Trump is not returning, preferring his own social network. Let me guess.... his ego is running the show. Why turn down a huge opportunity to address people? 

Your tax dollars at work 

Biden administration earmarks $13 billion to modernize electric grid.

What form of government is it when the government subsidizes certain industries with taxpayer money? It's called America.

Biden administration grants $1.1 billion to keep Diablo Canyon nuke plant open

President Giveaway rides again!!!!!!!!!!!

Meh - it's only your money.  Won't have any effect on the deficit either. 51% of you put him in office. 51% of you should be taxed accordingly.

---------> don't blame me - I vote libertarian

Tax filing websites have been sending users' financial information to Faceyspaces!

The guilty parties are TaxAct, TaxSlayer, and H&R Block.

You need to read this. You need to contact the companies and stop doing business with them if they continue (which they will). Contact your congresspersons.

The only surefire way to block this is to fill out your return on paper [yikes!]. The way to do it electronically is through a HOSTS file. This goes on your computer (don't do your tax returns on a phone) and blocks any info going to advertising and spy domains (Faceyspaces, Google, ads).  Wikipedia has information on hosts files on all operating systems. This site has a list of HOSTS files which can block ads, gambling, pr0n, social stuff, and combinations. I use the first one. Through the combination of a HOSTS file and ad-blockers on my browsers, I never see ads. Never. This file will stop your computer from being able to send data to ad domains.

The pixels are also embedded in email. You're not going to like this, but turn off 'automatic image loading' in Outlook or whatever you use to read mail on your computer (and the web). The HOSTS file will stop this on your computer, but it's difficult to do on a phone. Try Firefox with an ad-blocker. If you use an iDevice, you're screwed. You can install any browser you like, but it all goes through Safari anyway.

Thanksgiving Sheep 

It's Turkey Time again!

This usually means a trip to family. It's a nice time for the local folks to get together. Everybody brings something and this year we volunteered (get ready) a turkey and a ham.

WHY did we volunteer a turkey on Thanksgiving? Because our host is a little off. Last year it was 2 different lamb roasts. This year there's a choice: lamb roast or lamb chops. Are you starting to see a theme here?

We volunteered a turkey long in advance, because we like to help out, and because I have a lamb allergy (I'm not allergic - I just don't like it). We were kept on hold for weeks til the hostess made her decision. It's not that she's a control freak, but we're given a time to arrive, with only a few minutes plus or minus. It's not that she has OCD, but the dishes are laid out alphabetically. You dare not touch them until you have the go-ahead, least you leave early with some silverware embedded somewhere the emergency room hasn't seen for a while.

So with a 2 day til Thanksgiving advance time, we were told turkey and ham weren't needed - just bring apple pie. The irony here is that I am allergic to apples. No problem - I just won't eat any pie. The extreme lack of notice is screwing with our food-bringing plans.... imagine having to get a turkey on 2 days' notice. But I'd rather do that than eat lamb. 

Let's take a moment to point fingers, shall we? I might have dropped a hint at some point that I don't like lamb. If I were a host, I'd accommodate someone who doesn't like something. On the other foot, I'd have to figure there would be lamb. On the third foot, screw the guests if they don't like what I'm making - they can go to McDonald's. If it's open - ha ha.

I'm just not a nice or polite enough person to suck it up and not eat, so Hijinks are in order. Please help me out if you have any ideas....

• bring a day-old McDonald's order
• have a pizza delivered
• bring a couple of pounds of ground beef and make burgers
• one of those 2' diameter chocolate chip cookie cakes (with extra icing, of course)
• bring my pet lamb, Chops
• screw it: bring a half gallon of ice cream and just eat that 

This might be why I don't get invited a lot....

• 2.6 ozzes of garlic powder, $9.99 - the Supply Chain has taken a serious dump 

It's so cold outside

HOW COLD IS IT?

It's so cold, we have to put our hands in the refrigerator to warm up.

STANDARD HOLIDAY DISCLAIMER

The holidays are generally a joyous time. Unfortunately, for some, it's the absolute worst time of the year. You are not alone; reach out. Friends, family, religious leaders, hotlines, doctors, hospitals, city/county/state resources, more resources through your state congresspersons. It's very important that you reach out. You don't have to feel this way - help is available. If anything happens to you, that's one less ThermionicEmissions reader, and I can't afford that.

[funny image of turkey]

Drunk Blogging

 

Your love is like  buying a social media site called Twatter

On the bright side, we've gone a long way toward solving the Laundry Issue. We just found a bunch of missing wash, in missing baskets. For some reason, perhaps they were scared, they moved into the dining room. It was obvious why we never saw them: they were behind the arc welder.

Today I identify as  Alex Jones - the only person Elon Musk refuses to let back on Twitter. At least Musk is pro free speech. Musk did a poll as to whether Trump should be allowed back, and the answer was yes. I'm shocked.

As if the laptop saga weren't enough, my phone experienced a bit of nostalgia the other day.  I know some people who never escaped Woodstock and some people who never escaped a war. My phone told me I had nothing going on. This is unprecedented, as I always have highly important, sometimes secret things, like my nephew's cello concert. Oops. After some looking around, I discovered my phone had never escaped April 4th, 2003. This is not a significant date, at least for me (and Woodstock non-escapees). In fact,. I can't figure out a way to set the phone to that date and make it stay that way. We just went to Daylight Savings Time and your phone made the adjustment automatically (leaving the rest of your house an hour off). How could this be? Am I in a temporal disturbance? I checked my car and job, which were all current, so I stared a bit and checked the liquor bottles.  Also current, and with some left. 

For lack of any other idea, I turned it off and on again. It worked. I should be surprised, but I'm not. Why wouldn't my phone set itself to a random date? It happens all the time, doesn't it? It doesn't? Oh. 

I'm starting to think there are other entities at play. I don't have any chickens to sacrifice, piles of money to burn, dolls with pins, bibles, holy water, or much else of religious significance, aside from a bunch of commemorative Jimi Hendrix stamps. Do I need to hire people in uniforms to come in and say stuff inside the house?

If you could see me now, I look like a large black cloud, with thunderbolts shooting out, and a really strange, Thor-like creature in the middle. With a very stylish, black, left handed Stratocaster.

HOLD THE PRESSES 

Since we're approaching the holidays, you can now buy white chocolate covered Oreos. Drop what you're doing and get out to the store with the least Supply Chain Issues and pick up whatever you can afford. Trust me.

Week's best pr0n title: She Blew Out Your Can  (?)

Week's worst pr0n concept: My Big Fat 600lb Sex Life

Trump is in for the 2024 election.

Everybody is shocked.

Going strictly on history, here is my prediction: Democrats, trying their damnedest to put up mediocre to bad candidates, will continue to run Biden, because apparently he hasn't done enough damage (yet). His slogan will be "Giving away your money for free stuff!" The Democratic National Convention will serve only toast, because no one can afford much else. Trump supporters will burst into the Republican convention and burn Biden in effigy. The convention will be very cold, as no one can afford heating. The libertarian candidate will remain a secret until one month before the election. It won't matter, because he or she will only get 1% of the vote, even with some of the most idiotic candidates in the history of the country running in opposition.  There will be accurate claims of vote stealing, which will be dismissed as conspiracy theory. Video of trucks hauling votes to burning facilities will be all over YouTube, before they're banned as disinformation.

About Biden running: I wish he'd start running now. Don't fret, he'll only be 80; plenty of time for whatever's left to dissipate (as well as his ratings).

The people, in their gross ignorance, will again prove their gross ignorance by causing another 50/50 split in the results. They enjoy doing the same thing every time, hoping the outcome will be different this time. While this is traditionally the description of insanity, it has also become the definition of American voting. Furthering the proof of the midterm elections, Democrats will largely win, because people are largely stupid. Republicans will win some smaller elections, proving that their people are largely stupid too. The stupidity of republican voters matches the stupidity of republican politicians, especially where the election-losing policy against abortion rules the land. Don't let them fool you - it's 2 sides of 1 warped coin.

While you were touching yourself watching The Masked Furry, the world population hit 8 billion. While I would never suggest Bill Gates was right (about anything), perhaps we're overpopulating the place. If nothing else, we're making a hell of a mess out of it.

Another cryptocurrency exchange went bust (FTX), owing money to over a million people. 

Crypto was a tremendous idea. I watched closely. Then I watched insiders flee with assets and hacks. I watched currencies fail and fall. I just couldn't see getting involved, with that much to lose. Instead my 401k plays the stock market, where there's even more to lose, just as there always has been.  I TOLD YOU SO. Considering (I think) I'm always right, you'd think I could make something from that. Alas, no.

Many interesting things happen at Thermionic Manor. Daily.

Having settled my upcoming days off, I said I have to give the list to Wife.

This morning I'm awakened at the glorious day off time of 7:30.

Did you put air in the tires?

[grumble, think] fzsnitzness

Huh?

No.

I have to go to the doctor and can't bend to do it.

I know. My fault.

Good thing it was my first vacation day off.

I began the process of Not Going Back to Sleep. This can take up to an hour, involving trash cans, an incredibly happy spaniel licking my forehead, thinking about chocolate, and a nagging internal voice, demanding I do something... all combined with the most powerful force on earth: guilt. I was readily aided by someone outside doing... something... that alternated between slamming something into metal and launching tires with a trebuchet. Bless my neighbors - they have a noise for everything.

I can't tell you how I did it, but I found myself out of bed and even dressed.

She looked at me with one of her 157 patented Strange Looks. She went on to tell me she had canceled her appointment, so all was well, just go back to sleep like I didn't wake you on your vacation day and you didn't spend half an hour winching yourself from the bed, semi-awake. And by the way, aren't you supposed to be working at this time?

I'M ON VACATION!

It was at this point I said to myself that if this is what vacation was going to look like, I would forfeit my 20 days. Give em to somebody more deserving. Somebody single.

And hurry up with giving Wife a copy of my days off.

• Because it's a week after Veterans Day and not a holiday, there are fireworks outside.

Up I get, 9:00 on a Saturday, because... you guessed it.... air in the tires.

The only place around is a gas station. The machine takes only quarters, to dispense what you breathe freely, which is just a single one of today's ironies.  The machine instructs you to put the quarters in slowly, probably so it can feel the satisfaction from each quarter.. pure profit. Notably, there are 2 metal poles in front of the machine, as well as its sister, the car vacuum. I'll bet there's a funny story there. 

A car vacuum? What a concept.

I can't see much use in that. It would be admitting that your car gets dirty, and I just don't want to go there. We're driving a really nice car, which simply doesn't get dirty. Dusty, but not dirty. So there's nothing to vacuum.

Ah, but there is. Cars seem to attract trash. Cigarette packs (no idea whose), candy wrappers, condom wrappers (no idea whose), and 5lbs of paper you have to take off the straw before you use it. Do you have any idea how much of that paper it takes to make up 5libs? It actually rides in the back seat, occasionally hinting for a bigger car and a seatbelt extender.

So, at 9am, I pull into the station. And at 9am, there's already some guy using it. I managed to laugh slightly, as only 1 person in line before me is a very small number. 5 is closer to normal. I pull up close, so the fellow knows somebody's next. To be honest, I pull up, hoping against hope it will speed his airing up. Naturally it didn't. I have my rearview mirror set so I can watch to see if he leaves. I spend a lot of time looking at it. This guy apparently needs some serious air. Either that or he's letting the summer air out of his tires and replacing it with winter air. He had a truck, but it only had 4 tires, so that didn't explain his lack of hurry.

Meanwhile, I took the time to push all the buttons in the car that I can't push when I'm driving. Well, that I shouldn't push when I'm driving. Just in case I was worried, it showed me a little car with numbers for each tire, and whether that was low or not. The low ones flashed red. Somebody got paid a lot of money to design this. I liked it, as I'm easily amused, especially by blinky lights. Looking up again, I saw Skippy the Truck Driver hang the hose up on the machine. I sighed with relief. Unfortunately I sighed too soon: Skippy had a lot more to do. I thought since he still had time left on his quarters that he was maybe inhaling the air. Checking that his tires were still round. Walking around the truck, admiring its lines. Looking to see if there were any new scratches (he has every one of the 141 scratches notated in his Scratch Database). It's about 32 degrees out, which is coincidentally the pressure required in my tires. I figure no one wants to assess the exterior of his vehicle in this weather, but I was wrong. The expensive system for telling me which tire is low does everything but indicate what normal is. This quickly becomes a research project. Rather than squat, I figure I'll check the manual. The car is the only thing on Earth that still comes with a manual. And if the manual were in the car, I'd probably have an answer. The 2nd question was WHY was the manual not in the car. The possible answer was there was no room left in the glovebox, after the actual gloves, aspirin, condoms (again?), and that bangy tool that can break your window in an emergency. How you get to it in a frozen car is beyond me. The 3rd question is why is there a need to examine the manual elsewhere? Is it homework from Hyundai? Will there be a quiz?  How many miles should there be between oil changes? Do I have to stay after class again?

Finally Skippy drives off, completely satisfied, re-aired, and smug, with a fine day's work done. He was probably going home to sleep, where I should have been at 9am. Not at his house - at mine. He wasn't my type, being a guy and all. I wish he had stayed to watch a Real Man put air in his tires. There is 1 way you can find out if we've had the car for more than a month: if there are no screw-off caps on the air stems. We had exactly 2, of different types, which tells us the car is 2 years old. Now if Wife cannot bend well and I am meticulous about putting the caps back on, where did they go? I'll bet the *$&#ers who held the car for ransom stole them. They probably had to mail them to the state, to prove something or other, for which we'd be fined a 2nd time.

My entire operation lasted under 5 minutes (6 kilograms Canadian). The only problem was that either the hose or my car's expensive display system was miscalibrated: I filled it to 32, and the display said 31. This is an OUTRAGE. Someone will feel the sting of my keyboard! Where are Standards and Measures? They calibrate the pumps and they get that little sticker. Why not the air? Miscalibration could lead to all sorts of driving issues, even a crash. Your left side could be higher that your right, which is the wrong way to go if you're looking for that jumping up and down thing that the real lunatics want. Lastly, the guages did not change. I was beside myself, until Wife explained that the car needs to be on the road for a few miles before it read correctly and the alarms ceased their flashing and screeching. 

What have we learned?

1. do NOT get up at 9am for anything (except that)
2. acquire one of those portable compressors that run off the cigarette lighter. It won't save you from having to put air in the tires, but you don't have to drive anywhere and wait behind the Skippies to do it.
3. know thine air pressure. commit it to memory. it's much easier than remembering your wedding anniversary.

Oh yeah, 9 in the morning.

I'm in the bathroom, doing bathroom things, when there's a question from Wife. Wife talks regardless of where I am or what I'm doing. 

"Do you have $20 so I don't have to go to the machine?"

Uhhhh...... not on me. I don't have clothes on me.

Oh, because I have to go to my sister's then the convenience store then...

If you could stop talking in paragraphs and please let me get on with the bathroom things.....

In my sock drawer is a bottle of A+W Root Beer, just sticking up from the drawer. I asked Wife, who just stared at me and said, "I don't know."

This is by far not the strangest thing that has happened this morning.

I know you're saying to yourself that you'd understand a Coke or 7up, but A+W is pretty serious. And you'd be correct. But I'm learning to pick my battles, so I'll leave this and wait for whatever greets me later in the day. It will definitely be weirder and more challenging, possibly involving 4 hours of fighting and 2 hours of apologizing. Why just the other day I had the temerity to suggest we use the chair for our butts, as opposed to the brand new Leaf Eviscerator 2000 and Barbies. You'd have thought I said something about her mother and tweeted it to Elon Musk. We observed the required 12 hours of silence.

please excuse the lack of hilarious and thought-provoking memes, but they're all on one of the fallen machines.

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.

Sleeping with the Enema

A large number of android antiviruses are full of holes.


Hey, how bout those cellular carriers who don't throttle video speed except when necessary?  Oops.

I hate like hell to enable this, so consider it a warning in case you want to. 
10 Best Free VPN Chrome extensions.
Why not?
Chrome is Google. Isn't that enough? This browser phones home.
READ the VPN companies' privacy policies and logging disclosures. Some of them are beyond bad. The performance isn't always that good. If it's free, how do they make money?  
Opera has a built-in VPN, but the browser is Chinese. They don't have a great privacy record.




Dear lefty

• What would you do if I sang out of tune?

a. get you a huge record contract
b. You'd be the singer in my band, and we'd go to the next song
c. stand up and walk out on you



As is pointed out to me frequently, freedom of speech is not absolute.
---> Chicago man arrested for threatening to commit massacre at abortion clinic.  I'm pro-life and I'll kill you to prove it.

• Pro Tip: Prostrate is laying on your back. Prostate is up your butt. You should avoid mixing them up. Trust me.

ThermionicEmissions is kicking off a new feature today.
It's called "I'd Rather".

No thanks, I'd rather wear a MAGA hat to the next Democratic debates.

If you have any ideas, comments, complaints, whining, praise, or offers of chocolate, use the Comment button. If you have no comment, use the Comment button.

Don't forget to tell your friends, or people you don't like, to come by and read the blog. Google informed me that we had one visitor yesterday. I want to keep this streak going. If we hit over 20 members, I'll make the blog free.

• Why is Dwayne pronounced du-WAYNE?
• Who taught the South that "Do whut?" is an acceptable substitution for "Could you repeat that, please?"

Twitter is under fire for thousands of ads attempting to influence voting.
In other news, people read ads?

• Giving back: I love stories about animals assisting and saving people. We had a small chance to give back when over 100 humans volunteered to help a few stranded whales get back to sea.

In the background as I type is a drawn out debate on how we watch tv and movies, mostly about using cell phones. One lady said she doesn't like it because it ruins the 'viewing experience.' I try to avoid personal insults as arguments so I won't say 'blithering idiot'. Ok, fine, lady, but who cares what you think? People can watch however they want. They can choose to ignore the entire show and look at pr0n on their phones. So long as they're not bothering anybody, what does it matter? At the movies, however, these people require a serious learning experience.




Dyatlov Pass

A group of hikers went exploring the tundra in the Urals and wasn't heard from.
A few weeks later, a search party found their bodies. They were in really bad shape.. some huddled together, some half naked, some half a mile away, all fleeing something.

The tent was shredded. Examination showed knife cuts. The cuts were made from the inside of the tent. A scrap of paper left there said 'the Snowman exists.'

Autopsies were performed. The medical examiner said no human could have produced the damage that was inflicted upon the bodies. One was missing its tongue.  One student, Yuri Yudin, headed home before the incident. He recently passed away, but identified one of the belongings as being from the military or KGB, indicating someone made it to the scene before the rescue party. Not included were claims of huge footprints.

In short order, the Russian government shut the investigation down. It's been a mystery for 50 years.

Some say an animal. Some say aliens. Cattle mutilations showed tongues removed. Some blame an avalanche. Some indigenous folk who were alive at that time said 'Menk,' meaning Yeti/Sasquatch. Footprint casts from the area are huge. The Russian government put together a group to bring back a Yeti, disbanded in 1959, right before the hikers left. Everything else is classified. Links are to Wikipedia, Dyatlov Pass, and the An American Nationalist blog, with its own theory.

These are the facts as I know them. Draw your own conclusions.




SJW Streaks

Tourette's charity wants apology over award-winning joke.
Make sure to choose at least one topic to be offended by..

I used to perform with a comic who had a stutter and built his act around it. Time went by and he cured himself. Unfortunately, he had no more act.

[Twitter]
"....robots can be trans"

Put Down the Ice Cream and Come Out with your Hands Up

"Hi, lefty!" went the automated assistant.
"WTF," went lefty. That's just creepy.
"Would you like to make a payment? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no."
presses 1
"If you would like your balance first, press 1. If you want to pay now, press 2."
presses 2
"Your balance, that you just told me not to read, is $100. Would you like to pay $100 now with your card on file?"
"Yes."
"......... Sorry, I don't understand. Would you like to make your payment now?"
"YES, PAY, YES, PLEASE"
"......... You selected 'talk to customer service.' There will be a $17 charge."
"WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? ARE YOU A FRIGGIN DEAF MACHINE? I SAID YES, YOU IDIOT. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND YES? I REALIZE THIS IS NEW TECHNOLOGY AND HAS ONLY BEEN AROUND FOR 25 YEARS, SO YOU HAVEN'T GOTTEN IT RIGHT YET...."
hangs up
calls again
"Hi, lefty!" went the automated assistant.
same routine.
"Pay. PAY. YES I WANT TO PAY, YOU DONKEY PLOOKER. PAY. P, A, Y - GOT IT?
"There is a longer than normal wait for Customer Service. Please follow the link we sent you or you'll have to call back 20 more times and you won't get any further."
follows link, pays in 14 seconds
"We detect you have paid online. Thank you for your payment and go fuck yourself."
click





The US Navy will be replacing their touch screen monitors on their ships because they're stupid (the monitors and the designers). The new tech is being blamed for a ship crash: there are separate controls for left and right power, located on different sides of the bridge. Plus the monitors are apparently too complex for the users. Feel safer now?


Hey, do you have one of those new wifi routers with the WPA3 incredibly secure standard? It's already been hacked to allow password discovery.  


Wanna see some stats on the NSA's telephony metadata program?


You know those voting machines that are Very Secure because they're not hooked to the net? Oops.







Dear lefty

• I'm a closet Trump supporter and I'm getting tired of all the divisiveness. What should I do?
• Have the president announce that he is categorically against jumping off buildings. By the next morning, there won't be a single divisive person alive. 

Hey, Kids - it's Sunday morning and I'm in bed.
Well, I was in bed.
Now I'm typing this to you, my good readers.
On a Sunday morning, what's the best thing you can do at 8am?
That's right - the neighbor is having their roof redone!

There are a bunch of dudes with hammers hitting things, conveniently located outside my window. There are also two guys on the roof with those auto-hammer/stapler thingies, playing call and response.

Left: bang bang bang
Right: bang bang bang BANG
It took me a while to figure out they were doing Led Zeppelin's Moby Dick.

Mrs lefty went out to ask them if we should move our car.
They stared at her, silently.
Apparently there's a regulation that companies hire non English speaking workers. This is a problem if you need to communicate with them, but the amount of complaints has plummeted to zero.

I just wanted to let you know that if you hear on the news about some unfortunate roofers in my area falling 2 stories to the dirt, next to the sidewalk, and being impaled on 4.7" wood 2x4's, spitting out their spleens and a pancreas or two, just before lunch, near a red truck.. I had nothing at all to do with it. I was asleep.


Speaking of the news, there's a lot going on in Kashmir lately.
I just can't listen to this human tragedy.
(without hearing Led Zeppelin's Kashmir)
It's been a great time for Led Zeppelin.

• a fake Hillary Clinton Twitter account sent this: Jeffrey Epstein was once a close friend. His impending suicide will take a heavy toll on us all.

A Tesla caught fire after hitting a tow truck in Moscow.
Regular cars also have this annoying habit.
One should always avoid tow trucks.

South Wales police want to remind you that if you make fun of this convicted drug dealer's hair, you will be investigated. Even if they take lack of freedom of speech into account, the right to pick on this person's hair should be universal.

• My dad, retired and in need of hobbies, is still agitated I use 4 spoons of sugar in my coffee. I took offense, as I whittled down to two spoons. The secret here, in case you need to cut down on sugar too, is to use really sweet, high sugar creamer. When I retire, I hope I find better Stuff to bitch about.

Something is wrong in the UK government.

Boris Johnson's hair barely points north, east, and west since the election. The news says this signals his about-face on Brexit and Life in General. The people remain more divided than ever. The Americans ask "What's Brexit?"

If you watch Sky News, I'm dating Kay Burley.

The bad news is that she's not aware of it.

The good news is that neither is my wife.

Hong Kong has gotten a bit riotous lately, with protesters getting more bold, since they found out they can Get Stuff when they protest. The current protest is being held at the Hong Kong Airport. The police are out in force and the government has shut down all flights out of spite. Forgotten during this massive argument as to whose penis is bigger, is the reason for the protest: renaming the airport Donald Trump Honorary Airport.

This would be even funnier if it appeared when the protest started happening, not weeks later. This is the quantity quality of work I put into this blog.

Positive government action
Yes, I know... you don't hear about that a lot.
The FDA warned that drinking bleach will not cure cancer or autism.
On the other hand, the fact they had to put this out is terribly sad.

SJW Stuff

[twitter]
Dear white people: If you haven't apologized for being white today to a person of color, maybe you should.


[also twitter]
Do you have white teenage sons?
Listen up.

I've been watching my boys' online behavior & noticed that social media and vloggers are actively laying groundwork in white teens to turn them into alt-right/white supremacists.   Fake news... everybody to the right of Michael Moore has been purged from the larger social media platforms.



Two commercials have been banned in the UK because they perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes. Yes, this is an actual law.  There is a funny point: news people refer to one of the commercials as Philly Cheese, when the product is Philadelphia (brand) Cream Cheese.

Unicorn Sightings Are Rare These Days

Peter Fonda's in the news, after he posted a tweet suggesting Barron Trump be ripped from his parents and put in a cage with pedophiles.

Melania Trump called the Secret Service.

Fonda deleted the tweet and apologized. We are assured that the Secret Service visit had nothing to do with the cracks in his skull, black eyes, and individually broken fingers.

We checked Twitter for Other Tweets Peter Fonda Deleted:

1. Obama is black, the bastard
2. Watch me put my penis in this pencil sharpener
3. DAMN my daughter is hot
4. I've got snails in my rectum

ABC has apologized for a graphic declaring Manafort pleaded guilty to manslaughter. What they meant to say was "Manafort builds model cars." Anyone could make that mistake.

• Many have predicted that the apocalypse will occur on the summer solstice, for some reason or another, ranging from Billy Graham dying to Kelloggs discontinuing Chocolate Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows. As the solstice has passed, some are starting to doubt the dire predictions. The people who predicted the tragedy said they made a mistake and pushed the date forward, but refuse to tell us when.
• Hollywood blames the NRA for the Apocalypse's failure to occur.

Speaking of proof of God's existence, Star Wars sequels have been put on hold after the most recent cash grab flopped. Also, there is only one treehouse show left on tv.

• Janet Jackson revealed her battle with depression.
• My wife is bipolar and has never bared her nipples onstage.

A woman is suspected of serving her ex-lover's remains at a barbecue.

Guests said, "He tasted like chicken."

• A Kansas man was charged for repeated attempts to have sex with a parked car's tailpipe. 
• The man's blood alcohol was four times the legal limit. His lawyer said, "There is no legal limit for having sex with a tailpipe."  Asked for comment, the man said, "It was a really hot tailpipe."
• Florida's Governor proposed a new state motto: We're messed up but least we didn't try to have sex with a tailpipe.
• Peter Fonda blamed Trump. Democrats called for gun control.

Canada has announced that it will not be attending the Philadelphia Guitar Show this year. The prime minister will be dress shopping with Celene Dion. A spokesman for Dion said she hopes to find him something nice and not too splashy.

• Guilt is twelve times stronger than gravity

Software tip: if you're looking for linux software that does what popular Windows software does, check out AlternativeTo - it also works for other operating systems. OS Alt finds open source alternatives to closed source or commercial software.

My new old office at home is proving quite useful, if for nothing else, escape from humanity. There is a phone on my desk, which makes me feel important. It isn't connected to anything, which also helps in my quest to remain invisible. It still has its original dust, which has kept the insects from taking over. One of the little buggers had developed speech and says stuff to confuse me during evening hours... it can successfully imitate my wife and gives conflicting orders, successfully imitating my wife.

Nothing has fallen and injured me, which is a very pleasant surprise, suggesting that the room exists in a parallel universe. The door, which doesn't shut fully, is actually the portal into the alternate universe. Thus far, everything is the same in the new universe: a profound disorganization, inability to find a single thing that I need, and every flat surface taken up with Stuff. This is precisely the kind of place Hoarders would put on tv, but there is no such show in this universe and the original show won't touch it because their union won't cross universes.

I have a new fan, with six speeds.. I feel so decadent using it. And it has a remote control, so I don't have to reach three feet over to adjust it.  My bigass old tube shortwave boatanchor receiver still works. Pro Tip: do not leave anything with batteries on top of this radio unless you want to see what happens to batteries when heated. In the winter, the radio will heat the entire office, if not the entire alternate universe. Still not answered is the question of why there is an odd number of speakers. Just like in the universe you know, the room eats screwdrivers. Unlike the universe you know, all the pens write. 

I need to speak to someone about getting cold running Snapple and hot running coffee. Somewhere is an old black and white tv. If I try to move it, one of the piles will fall on me and they'll never find my body. There are new popsicle sticks on my desk. There is a great story about these, but I don't know it.

The only serious difficulty occurred when I moved the wireless router into the office, rendering the rest of the house unable to connect. Unfortunately the wireless signal won't cross universes...

• A woman stabbed a stranger in the head with a high heel in a Queens subway brawl.
• Taken to Bellvue Hospital, the man required several staples in his head. A week later he was back at Bellvue because he tried to take them out with a staple remover he had on his desk.
• Democrats, England, and Canada demanded something be done about Shoe Control. Hollywood was strangely silent.

Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving has been lifted.
Saudi comics have requested American comics send them women driving jokes.

• In a nationwide phenomenon, people are dying in Walmart parking lots I told you that shopping there was dangerous.

California Congressman Maxine Waters, founder of Fairness in Politics, has ordered people to harass Trump officials in public places. "The thing I want you to know is that we're not desperate.  If anybody asks, blame it on the Russians."

Maxine also ordered the military to make fun of Trump's hair at White House appearances. "Nyah nyah should be enough to get our point across."

Asked for a quote, the republican party could not comment because it was rolling around on the White House lawn, tears of laughter running down its face.

Maxine also proclaimed God is on our side.
Reached for comment, God was really mad. He said a little birdie told him Maxine should make sure her affairs are in order.

Suck it Up

You'll notice all the commercials for vacuums. There's all sorts of new technology to suck stuff up. One of them is battery power, because plugging your vacuum into an outlet is so inconvenient.  You have to admit these ads are quite compelling, showing young, attractive people using the device, in an apparent attempt to clean.  Let's face it - their 'dirty' furniture is cleaner than our clean furniture. There's even a dog. Yeah, right. They don't show the dog defecating on the floor (or the couch).  This is supposed to make you feel all kinds of positive about vacuuming. They have smiles on their faces, while explaining all the new Sucking Features and Methods of the device.

So you buy one of these, at approximately three times what you paid for your current vacuum, that you don't use. Because nobody likes to vacuum, except those OCD people, who will do it at 3am if necessary, and it's always necessary. The manufacturer has sold another unit and you've done your part to help capitalism. You're still not going to vacuum.


Which brings me to Dyson. Dyson is a name that was made up after months of focus groups; the kind that bother you in malls. It sounds all scientific and miraculous. Dyson makes devices that bend the laws of physics as we know them (and we generally don't know them). Everything they make is in the form of a stand or handle, with a loop at the end. The loop is where it all happens. Their handheld Loop Device will cool an entire house (and dog-sit). As if the miracle of air conditioning weren't enough, it purifies the air. It's an ingenious little device, which came from back-engineering a thingie on the ship that crashed at Roswell. Yes, this is alien technology. When turned on, the device causes the house to time travel to a colder season, thereby making it feel cooler. Consult your doctor to see if Dyson is right for you. May cause kidney failure, death, or embarrassment. Whatever you do, do NOT send out your bills or make vacation plans while the device is working. Do not, under any circumstances, operate the device when you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. Or just want to have sex.


in a variety of sizes

• I need to hurry up before all the Engelbert Humperdinck tickets sell out

• Because you're DYING to know, his real name is Arnold George Dorsey. He changed his name to Englebert for the German composer of 19th century operas (because the reference is so much more hip to American audiences)

The absolute best question in 5 years of being on Reddit is "Why is it easier to insert a cucumber into my vagina than a carrot?"  This is not a typical question, but an award-winning one.

• Gaming Disorder is officially recognized by the World Health Organization. Repetitive Stress? In that case, I already have it, but not from games.
• And in a manic spurt of activity, the World Health Organization no longer classifies being transgender as a mental disorder. Twitter's right wing will be very upset.

One looks back every now and then.... and realizes one never really ran afoul of upskirting laws. It's too late now.

• No matter who you are, there will be someone who sees angels and fairy dust when they say The Cloud. When they speak of this with great reverence, make sure to mention that a scan by research firm Lacework turned up 22,000 systems unprotected or publicly available.

Recently there was an anti-knife protest in England.

Anti. Knife.

Because knives are a gateway to spoons.

• Thank goodness this is a light week, because researchers only found seven vulnerabilities in 400 models of IP Cameras (security cameras). 

In feminism news, the self-victimization continues: Mindy Kaling claims that white male critics are being 'unfair' to 'Oceans 8'.  Or maybe it just sucks, I don't know. The single commercial I saw reeks of 'we needed to make this movie with women in all the important roles.'

A feminist bookstore closes from lack of sales, white men blamed.

If there was a meeting of white men, strictly for the purposes of closing feminist bookstores and being unfair to female-led movies, I never got the invitation and I'm feeling some kind of way about this. In fact, I never got the invitation for any meeting of white males, for any reason (including nerding, the presidency, or heavy metal bands).

• A California judge has ruled that Twitter’s policy of banning users “at any time, for any reason or for no reason” may constitute an “unconscionable contract”, and that a lawsuit against the company brought by self-described “white advocate” Jared Taylor may proceed on that basis.
• Wow. 
• We know I'm not a legal scholar, but unconscionable contract seems to be a way to get out of one way contracts. If true, there are so many contracts as to be unconscionable. They might include any social media, credit cards, mortgages, etc etc etc. This is an observation, not a complaint.
• Many people are upset at Twitter for throwing people off randomly, generally the right-leaning. The victim this time is a white supremacist, claiming Twitter's policy of free speech is a lie. He's correct, no matter how disgusting the speech. This mirrors the First Amendment, however, the Social Justice Warriors believe they can censor anyone that doesn't agree with them (because words hurt). 
• IF Twitter can be held to their Free Speech claim, this would be good news for many. Something about this smells odd, though. Should a private corporate entity have to be burdened with government regulation (no matter how much I'd like to see Twitter suffer)?

Speaking of women, I just saw a commercial where the big question was "How do I want to be seen as a woman?"  Strong, assured, etc. Works for me. While these qualities are being listed, a flawless model is lithely walking around in a small bathing suit, then standing in a pool. Is this what they call mixed messages?

• Speaking of commercials, I saw one for Period Poverty. It's from a pad company that is donating one pad to schools per box sold. 
• Did you know about Period Poverty? I didn't.
• If anyone reading experiences this, please contact me.

Get ready: the very smart, enterprising people at Google have announced a spying device for hotels. It's called Sleep Spy (no it isn't, but it should be). Google promises not keep any data (and Google wouldn't lie, would they?).

Alexa, have the front desk bring me 97 lubed condoms, black
Alexa, where do I get a leather mask at this hour?
Alexa, I need a companion: flat rate, not hourly. any mix of genitalia, likes pudding.
Alexa, send a death threat to Google headquarters. Sign it from you.

• A journalist decided to spend ten days off Faceyspaces. He was harassed to death by the very same Faceyspaces. Good reading.

State police are looking for a Pennsylvania man, Shawn Christy, of McAdoo, after he posted a message on social media, threatening to put a bullet in Trump's head. The message has since been erased. Christy is to be presumed armed and dangerous, so if you see him, yell, "Hey pussy - Trump made your mother his love slave."

The Secret Service's response was, "You want to shoot the president? Stand in line, idiot."

Many people accuse the president of many negative things. If you think critically, you'll notice he's been great for the economy: the Secret Service is nine times as busy handling threats, gun sales are good (but not as good as under Obama), lawyers are having a boom year, and social media has gone through the roof with people bitching about every thing he does/wears/says. Even porn stars are in the news. Mental health counselors and heart doctors can't keep up with the demand, as well as forensic cleaning crews, for when his detractors' heads explode.

Wheelchairs in Space

I recently made a horrific discovery: something's wrong with me (duh). I'm getting Old Disease. Hear me out.... I first noticed the concept when my brother bought a house. We used to joke about heads exploding when the adult store moved into the neighborhood.  One day I mentioned it and he got all upset about property values and what about the children? This is what a house does to you? Nah, I have a house and was perfectly ok with the adult store. I might have been the only one in the region who was. In fact, it never caused a crime, never had shady hangers-on, and just sat there. Let's face it: if you're looking to buy adult toys, you're not going to stick around outside the building and use them.

My shock discovery happened this morning, when I clicked a link and

• found myself reading an article on old, creepy motels being converted into hip and expensive new motels. Even worse, I was looking at the pictures. WTF happened to me?  
• I am apparently the victim of familial high blood pressure and have to take medicine. My grandfather had to take medicine. As a little boy, I noticed that he took a small pharmacy with his breakfast in the morning.
• One of my meds is having a dispute with the other one, throwing my brain into an alternate universe for half a second now and then.
• Remember: nothing with medicine has to change if you don't go to the doctor.
• I go to my nephew's school violin concerts.
• My wife bought me a chair. MY chair. So I can say, "You can't sit in that - it's MY chair." When visitors arrive, she tells them it's MY chair. They speak of it in hushed tones.
• People talk about 401k's and I actually listen (unlike sports).

This must stop. Now.

• A 26' statue of Marilyn Monroe's iconic "dress blowing up" pose is drawing ire from a church and residents in Stamford, CT. Children are climbing up under her dress and looking at her underwear. The denizen are outraged.
• WTF has happened to us? The movie is ancient and famous. Marilyn Monroe is a legend, an icon, another tragedy of the Kennedy Legacy. Considering PA has to deal with a statue of a fictional boxer (Rocky), I'd rather have Marilyn. This statue is practically G-rated. What's with all the outrage?
• "It's disrespectful to the church." Shut up. Don't be a negative stereotype.
• "If God had anything to say, he'd send a lightning bolt through it."  Hire that man.

Ummmm.. why is the Vatican's secretary of state attending Bilderberg?

This is a huge meeting of incredibly influential people to discuss things they are going to make happen on a worldwide basis, held this year in Turin. It was given a ton of press recently due to journalist Jim Marrs' (RIP) discovery of it, and Alex Jones promotion of the news. Alex is famous for bullhorning the people driving up to the hotel. They drive up in blacked out limos. The guest list is not available and the entire hotel is shut down to everyone but attendees. Guests of the hotel have been ejected in the middle of vacations.  But the Vatican? This isn't normal.

• Why are so many mall stores closing? One could guess it's the internet. I have a long history with malls. Since we didn't have the internet when I was little, we went to malls. Now one can walk into a mall with a significant percentage of stores closed.
• This used to be interesting. Now it's kinda sad. Cities are losing jobs and not replacing them. People are being robbed of places to go on the weekend. I'm a child of Retail Culture and believe heavily in Retail Therapy (buying lots of stuff to satisfy the hole in my soul). This might just be another sign to keep on my path to agoraphobia.

My parents surprised me with my birth certificate.

I thought I already had one, but apparently there are two. I failed to ask if I was born twice.

It was a professional level forgery because, as you know, I come from Mars. Of course the Mars Rover found methane: we're screwing with it. We leave a bit of it here and there for it to find, strictly for our amusement.

No one will ever discover the certificate is a clever forgery, because it says I was born in New Jersey, and what fool would fake being born in New Jersey? It's brilliant on the part of my parents.

• ATTENTION: If you're like me, you're watching your weight (increase). If you're actually doing something, especially if that something is Weight Watchers, you're actually in good shape. Wait, let me clarify.. the company left a critical server unprotected, allowing hackers a view into the company's infrastructure. No customer data was compromised (they wouldn't lie, would they?).

If you need a little pick me up, a little light news to brighten your day, this isn't it. The state of Florida (it's always Florida) failed to carry out background checks on firearm licenses for a year.  Was the system down? Nope. Were they being held at gunpoint? Nope. The employee responsible forgot the login to the system that checks backgrounds.

In case you're curious:

The database was created in 1993 by the FBI and the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. States and firearm retailers can use it to check on the criminal and mental health history of those who want to buy a firearm, including their histories in other states. The database flags applicants who’ve served more than one year in prison, have been convicted of drug use in the past year, are undocumented immigrants, were involuntarily committed or deemed to have a “mental defect” by a court, or who were dishonorably discharged from the military.

A model of governmental efficiency.. look at how fast the licenses were processed!


Speaking of Florida, and everyone is, if you live in Wellington, Florida, and used Click2Gov to pay a utility bill, you may find unauthorized charges appearing on your bill. Naturally no one knows how it happened, but there is a company called Superion, which produces software used by government offices, and the connection to it has been severed.

• Mom's had a cell phone for a while now, and is damn near confident in its use as a phone. And when I say confident, I mean she has to ask someone how to dial it. That struggle having passed, she has just discovered texting.  Mom doesn't exactly grok texting: the first text was 3 paragraphs long and written in the form of a letter. I wonder how long it's going to take for her to pick up that everyone texts so they don't have to talk to each other. Nah, she's never been antisocial - only her children have.

Uh oh. Egypt has decided that if you have 5k Twitter followers, you are considered a member of the press and subject to laws governing "fake news". At least we Merkuns have alleged freedom of speech.

• Shocked to find out California has created a DNA database on all babies born for years? No, not really. Remember: if it can be done, it will be done. And the outcome will not be favorable to you.

HISTORIC FIRST

ThermionicEmissions wants to give readers a chance to participate in a possible change. Do you like the blog as-is? Would you rather the installments come with fewer paragraphs but maybe more frequent? Would you rather not see new installments at all? Are you even reading this? Drop me a line to say you have seen this paragraph. Or drop me a line to tell me you haven't seen this paragraph.

As always, tell your friends, parents, pets, and random strangers about this blog. Tell them something. Tell them to avoid it, if necessary.

Welcome to the Snot Factory

Sometimes a man can get in trouble, through no fault of his own.
Like when your girlfriend answers with a simple hello, and you're in the shower and it's your wife on the phone...  Joe Walsh - Certain Situations

• In these times of ubiquitous surveillance, it's important to have and use all the tools to keep you relatively safe. Toward that end, PornHub has come out with their own VPN (virtual private network). This is the thing to use at free wifi spots and anywhere else, to keep your data safe. Available for android, iOS, and Windows, the app comes in free and paid versions. It is not restricted to PornHub use.
• I have not checked out the policies of the VPN, so if you want to install it, I highly recommend that you look at them first. One of the most important features is no logs.

Your friends at Faceyspaces just want you to know that they're not paying for the theft and misuse of your data by Cambridge Analytica. Oh, and by the way... they knew about this last year, but didn't say anything til they got caught in March. Lastly, Zuckerberg has a special message for all of Faceyspace's users: 

Nyah nyah, I'm not paying you for SHIT - all your data is MINE and I'll sell it to whomever I want and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

• I wanted to be the first to bring you the news: a new study by the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research says the reason any Americans are poor is they're not working.
• I have advanced copies of next week's studies, where we discover: the reason she suffocated is that she wasn't breathing; the reason Americans are tired is they're not sleeping; and the reason men are so horny is they're flipping men.

So you bought one of those Amazon Alexas because they're so gee-whiz futuristic and it will listen and answer you, unlike your family.  As it turns out, it certainly does listen. It emailed and entire conversation a couple had to one of the people on their contact list. Amazon confirmed that's what happened and they're "taking steps to avoid this from happening in the future." It is extremely rare.

Before we proceed with my analysis, let's get one little thing out of the way: I TOLD YOU SO. Anything you can talk to that has a microphone in it can listen. These days it will listen. Anyone who has watched tv or read online news knows about devices eavesdropping. Anyone who reads this blog knows about it, in even greater foreboding detail.

The device is supposed to hang out, doing nothing, until it hears "Alexa", at which point you ask a question or tell it to do something. Then it goes back to sleep. Now Amazon tells us it definitely listened and definitely recorded a conversation that was not preceded with "Alexa" and definitely sent it to a contact on their list (because you gave it permission to access your contacts). Furthermore, it's rare, meaning it has happened before. 

Then there's the box from Google, which is trying to surpass Microsoft for Most Evil Corporation. Make no mistake - these boxes aren't there for your convenience. You are paying Amazon or Google to collect your conversations, emails, purchases, and whatever else it can mine.

• there was a police call today described as vehicle vs building. I wonder which one won.

Are you ready for more happy privacy news?
On the heels of the discovery that Securus was providing/selling cell phone tracking information to police, another company, LocationSmart, had an online feature that would, with the user's permission, give you their location information. However, and there is always a however, a Carnegie Mellon University PhD (Piled High and Deep) candidate discovered that you didn't have to use credentials at all to get the information. The feature was very accurate, from 100 yards to a mile. It was removed from the website.

They also store other technical data such as speed, heading, and IP address information among others, to provide accurate geo-targeted promotions for marketers, IoT assets, and tracking of business personnel in the field.

Now read that again.

We have at least two companies that track your cellphone. One did it quietly, without a warrant. One asked for your permission. Wanna bet there aren't more? It stores all sorts of information for marketing and tracking. No one is trying to hide it.... this is already built-in, unlike security. 

And this, me hearties, is how the system is going to fail everybody except its owners. In a mad rush to track and store all information possible on you, all sorts of sneaky projects will get launched, with all sorts of bugs. The ability to validate input (limiting input and making sure it can't fake the system) is junior level programming. 

Then there's Internet of Things (IoT). Because security is an afterthought here too, your light bulbs can be the way hackers get into your network. There is no serious use for internet-connected light bulbs. Or your toaster won't toast because your internet is down and it can't contact its server for updates. Or because some junior level programmer forgot the safety controls.

The Remaining Rant is that nothing that's happening is a real secret and hasn't happened before, in some variation. We've known about hacking forever, long before the personal computer was around. With each new technology, it seems we failed to learn the basic issues from the previous cycle. Plus the data hoarding is out of control. And you're paying for the privilege of being tracked.

• Isn't it cool that you can come for the sarcasm and stay for the security news? Please don't answer that.

Our president has taken the unprecedented step of making Twitter his official announcement platform. As is his wont, he blocked a number of people. As is their wont, seven of them sued under the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Two courts upheld the sevens' opinion, on First Amendment grounds. The courts held that, since Twitter is the official announcement platform, blocking them results in a violation of their First Amendment rights

"is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another”

I didn't expect this to go to First Amendment, especially the right to shoot replies to an elected official. Perhaps being excluded from the announcements, though. This can be remedied by not logging in to Twitter.   In addition, it would be smarter to mute these people, rather than block them. Muting shuts down any tweets from the muted individual and they are not aware of it.

Opinion:
I concur with the decision, but it's so ridiculously small a point...

The idea of "exchanging views with one another" is complete nonsense. These people are just butthurt that they can't be total assholes in their replies to the president. They happened to find a legal loophole that will allow them to sue and direct more negative attention to Trump. It's a pretty smart ploy.

Have you seen some of the crap directed at Trump on Twitter?
By way of observation, no other president had to deal with this level of nasty, down to death threats. Whether or not you agree with him.
As with most matters, I'm inclined to go with the law.

• Hillary Clinton says she wants to be the CEO of Faceyspaces because it's the largest source of news in the world. I think it's a match made in heaven. Zuckerberg is quietly evil; Hillary is overtly evil. Faceyspaces is in the middle evil. In addition to the largest source of news, it's the largest database of what people had to eat (with pictures), cat gifs, and when they're going on vacation (while listing their home address). It's the front page of the NSA - who better than Hillary to be in charge?

The good news: scientists have discovered the next superfood

More good news: it's non-dairy

Potentially bad news: it's cockroach milk crystals.

Question: Do you want to milk them?

• Seattle mussels have tested positive for opioids.
• Seattle Mussels is a football team, right?

Molestation, Thy Name is Weinstein

Good old Harvey is back in the news, as if he ever left.

He was arraigned on rape and criminal sex charges. 

What that means is that someone put reigns on him for some sex that was so good, it was criminal.

As a result, he must wear an electric monitor.

On his dick?

He posted a $1 million bail, because the judge did not want to see him in a place like jail. It's horrible there.. 

he'd be likely to become a participant in some rape and criminal sex.

Harvey's lawyer, in a well thought out strategy, said that Harvey didn't invent the casting couch. 

THAT was his defense? He didn't invent it. He sure as hell took good advantage of it.

• Another day, another school shooting. Does it occur to anyone that these things are coming fast and furious? That they're too close together to be statistically probable?

An Indian man needed a six inch shower head removed from his rectum. because he slipped and fell on it.  Ummmm..... let us ponder the mechanics of this, shall we? Your typical shower head exists at a level of roughly six feet. If this fellow slipped, he should be in the Olympics, as some sort of gymnast/contortionist. So he slipped and either turned around 270 degrees or slipped and levitated about four feet. His target accuracy was exemplary. The doctors removed the foreign object with gentle anal stretching. Perhaps the gentleman went to the emergency room for this procedure. Fortunately the piece of plumbing lodged up there came out easily, as the fellow fell on a bottle of lube before falling on the errant shower head. The article features x-rays, so you should get on over there.

• Chelsea Manning says mass surveillance is 'getting worse'
• With insight like that, the NSA should snap her up immediately. We can't afford to have her fall into the arms of the Russians.

Manscaping? I Don't Even Mow the Lawn

Since my furry child started seeing the acupuncturist, he's been eating well. In fact, he's been eating better than his parents. We were told to feed him fresh food. As a result, Wife cooks chicken breasts (it's always about the breast with me) and puts them in the fridge for the week.

To say cockers like chicken is like saying cockers like beef. And cat food.
I sliced it up, went to take the plate to his table, and my wife looked at me in abject horror: "You're not going to heat it up?"

Uh-oh.

Ummmm.. no.

You have to heat it up for him.

Oh. I see (I said, not seeing). Perhaps we can ask him which he prefers.

No, you have to heat it up.

Shall I take a nice cabernet with it? Perhaps a salad?

Don't let him near the liquor again. Remember what happened last time.

Dessert? Do you serve dessert warm or cold?

I'll do it.



Perhaps this is why anybody who knows me and meets my wife tells her how sorry they are for her.

• Wendy: TMZ with implants

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum is leaving because of long-standing differences of opinion with other Faceyspaces executives. WhatsApp is owned by Faceyspaces. Apparently they're collecting customer data and weakening encryption to give advertisers a wider base to target.  Irony: two days ago I told my family not to use this app. Zuckerberg is evil and wanted to link WhatsApp phone numbers with Faceyspaces data. This is a perfect example of how different entities with different bits of data can figure out exactly who you are and what you do. See what Signal can do for you.

• Twitter, sometimes inaffectionally referred to as Twatter by its users, sold data access to a researched linked with Cambridge Analytica. This is the company that Faceyspaces got caught selling data to. Twitter magically banned Cambridge from buying data or running ads on the platform. 
• Another huge corporation with a 'free' service. The free service is your data.

In a delightful bit of research, Princeton University set about seeing where Internet of Things devices went online. Click the link and behold the wonders of where your smart tv, security camera, and light bulbs go when started up.  Let's say the devices go to many third party sites and are not always encrypted. A third party site is a site that has absolutely nothing to do with the operation of the device, like Faceyspaces and ad companies. This is but one reason I won't touch Internet of Things devices. Unfortunately, IoT is the current buzzword, so corporations will be using it, along with the previous buzzword: The Cloud.

Your Samsung Smart TV is a busy little beaver. During the first minute after power-on, the TV talks to Google Play, Double Click, Netflix, FandangoNOW, Spotify, CBS, MSNBC, NFL, Deezer, and Facebook­even though we did not sign in or create accounts with any of them. 

• When I was little, I wondered what it would be like in 2000, when I'd be a certain age. Having aged another year, I never thought about what this age would be like. It's a good thing I remain the same irascible, sarcastic, social bastard. Nothing has changed but the number.

A few years back, the politicians were making a lot of racket about predatory lending, or payday loans. I'm not entirely sure what was done, although it's safe to bet it wasn't all that useful. It could be worse: it could be England, where every third commercial is for payday loans. They're very honest too.. the last one featured interest of 1249.9% (and someone called Uncle Vinny Smashuface)

• President Trump sent a High Mucketymuck to visit Netanyahu in Israel. Netanyahu, on Twitter, said the relationship between the two countries was stronger. Ever the truth-seeker, I mentioned that for $3.15 billion in military aid, it had better be strong. No response yet and no visits from the Mossad, although that UPS truck sure has been parked there a long time...

The country is now seeing some results from the Trump-Stormy Daniels feud. She is now suing him for slander, growing the total number of lawsuits to thirty five. In a totally, completely unrelated story, which has absolutely nothing to do with the multiple lawsuits, patrons of the strip club she's working at arrived ten hours early for her performance.

What are they going to do at a strip club for ten hours..... oh.

In doing detailed research for this story, I looked at a lot of porn stars. Old Stormy is not exactly in the top ten, in terms of looks. In fact, she's not in the top fifty. Perhaps she has other talents.... who knows?

It may surprise you to know that I've been...ummm.... involved with a few strippers and adult video stars in my old musical comedy allegedly professional life. One had just made a movie, so we copied the cover, wrapped it around condoms, and threw them out to the audience during the show. We had never been as popular with the audience and other comics in our history.

Then there were the strippers. This was a long time ago and I'm not entirely sure how we wound up with them (no, really). It's possible our gig was in the strip club and we took it because it sounded like an experience we needed to have. I remember the show wasn't all that well-received, but we started to figure out not to perform near food or strippers. Or football games on bar tv, but that's a different story entirely. We had a video camera with us, because this was before the days of cell phones with cameras. I sat on a particularly attractive stripper's lap and she looked into the camera and told my girlfriend that the strippers were going to steal me away. For reasons I cannot comprehend, my girlfriend was not amused. Go figure.

• Mel Gibson is set to direct a movie described as a kamikaze war thriller. In it, he claims the kamikazes were Jews.
• Speaking of the Jews, a man burst into a Manhattan movie theater and starting to yell about guns, saying, "They are killing us," then "people with guns are killing people in the theater." In a reaction no one could have expected, people got a bit upset. One moviegoer jumped from a low balcony and hurt himself. The yeller grabbed him by the throat and said, "I got the Jew." The Jews really seem to be up to things lately.
• In PA, a boy told the police a clown jumped from the woods and hit him with a metal baseball bat. Apparently this sort of thing happens all the time in Butler County. No word on whether the clown was Jewish.

Let's Bring the Country Together (free speech edition):

a rapper has urged the Crips to assault Kanye West for his support of Donald Trump.

“Yo national alert, all the Crips out there, y’all f— Kanye up,” he said, referring to the infamous Los Angeles-area street gang.

This message was also posted on the rapper's Twitter account.

I have it on good authority there are no Jews in the Crips.

• I have done such an excellent job of staying away from this, but, as a service to my readers, I must let you know that Caitlyn Jenner (68) may marry 21 year old transgender 'blonde bombshell' Sophia Hutchins.
• No personal pronouns will be allowed at the ceremony or in their house because even Caitlyn doesn't know if she's a lesbian (or something) now.

A Conversation with the Dog

I'm on the couch, which is the first place anyone should look for me. I work, I nap, I watch tv, and I surf for porn from the couch. Marshall has been snoozing all day. Wife comes home from doing whatever she does when she leaves, heats up some lunch and sits down. What she forgot was the very sensitive trip switch in the cushion that alerts Marshall that something is happening and he needs to be there immediately to observe it.

This was his absolute second favorite thing in the world: Mommy eating. His first favorite is Marshall eating. He knows better than to sit near me because I won't give him anything while we're eating and from where we're eating. This is proper pet parent behavior, so the dog doesn't think your food is his food. At very least, get up and put it in his bowl. Of course when you do that, he knows that when you're done eating, you're going to put food in his bowl. There is no winning with this dog.  Anyway, he perches near his mommy because mommy is a klutz and will drop something. Cheesy Poofs are the worst. For every handful she gets, two poofs drop to the ground. Marshall is right there to clean for us: our very own Hoover.

Marshall's new trick is when he sees Mom eating, he starts the pitiful whining, which continues and gets louder the longer he's ignored. To be fair, he's a dog, he's old, and he has a fatal disease. The whining can mean pain, hunger, thirst, bathroom, or I Want Your Food. Mom got up and gave him water and asked about the bathroom. Mom went about her business, which meant it was Dad's turn.

Dad. Dad. DAAAAAD.
Yes?
Scratch my ears.
Ok.
Groan... that's good... groan.
Like that?
Yes.
Ok, I have to call someone.
Dad. DAAAAAAAD.
Yes, my child?
Scratch my ears again.
Ok.
And scratch them again. I feel itchy today.

(I forgot that this is code for "I want something.")

Did you want something?
[runs to water bowl] Yeah, water.
Didn't Mommy just give you water?
Yes, but it wasn't the right water.
What was wrong? Was it brown?
No.
Was it full of metal?
No. It was sink water.
Yes.
Sink water is good for swimming only. That's why I always have my paws in the bowl. And it's not cold enough.
Ah. I see. Give me a second. [retrieves sink water he bottled and refrigerated] How's that? [stands 4' over bowl and pours so dog can drink from the stream]
THAT's what I wanted.
Good, no more whining, please. [sits back down]
[60 seconds later] Dad. Dad. DAAAAAAAAAD.
WHAT is it NOW?
I have to go outside.
Couldn't you have asked me that before, when I was up? Do you understand efficiency?
Huh?
Never mind. [lets dog out]
[3 min later] Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. I have to come back in.
I'm cominnnnnng.
Good!
This will be all, right?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Dad. Dad?
YES?
I'm going to take a nap with Mom. Since my paws are wet, I'll be jumping on the bed, probably sleeping on your pillow.

I. Love. My. Dog.
I do.
I treasure every moment we spend together.
Objectively speaking, he's the most brilliant, beautiful cocker spaniel in existence.

Treasure the people and pets in your life. It could all be over in a second.

• If, for any reason, you happen to be flying to New Zealand, leave your duck tongues at home. Don't ask me how I know.

It was December 31, 1969. At the Fillmore, the crowd was counting down. FOUR. THREE. TWO. ONE. Happy New Year!!! Bill Graham gets on the mic to wish everyone a happy new year, while Auld Lang Syne plays. Graham notes that this is the beginning of a new decade. Out of nowhere, the Band of Gypsies plays an impromptu version of Auld Land Syne. It was a new decade. In eight months, Jimi would be dead.

Cell phones have been around for a long time. A girlfriend had a bag phone. Wife and I got Beam Me Up Scotty phones a long time ago. As soon as the Palms came out, I got one - for the time, it was incredible. And here we are, in the era of Really Big Phones and I want a bigger one. Must be my eyes.

It's probably a good thing we're going to check out new phones because there's a slight technical issue with our phones. We're fine so long as we don't try to call or text each other. When I try to call her, 90% of the time I can't reach her. I get voicemail. In any other industry, a 90% failure rate would be reason for a drastic change (except weather forecasters).

When she texts me, I receive it from three hours to three days later, if it arrives. Just in case you think she's ignoring me on purpose. Mind you, when I text her, she gets it immediately, then forgets it'll take three hours to three days to get to me and responds.

Today I had to go to the supermarket to pick up Stuff and I was elected to go in and she parked the car. Never send a man to do a woman's job. I said this because I knew what would happen if I had to go into the damn store. About thirty seconds in, I realized I forgot the name of the cake I was supposed to get. I saw one that looked close, so I made a long distance call to the parking lot to ask the woman (who should've gone in in the first place). Ring. Ring. Ring. Voicemail.

Very funny. Either the radio was up too loud or she was talking to someone. Call again. Ring. Ring. Ring, Voicemail. My blood pressure reached unsafe levels immediately. Levels usually reserved for the cell phone nagging me repeatedly while I'm driving.

Perhaps it would be better to get the other items first. No soda aisle. Stupid me - it was in beverages. There's a reason I don't go shopping. Back to bakery. Ring. Ring. Ring. Voicemail. My face turned red - I could feel it. My blood pulsed, sounding like a huge kick drum. I swore the people around me could hear it too. Speaking of which, it required an incredible amount of effort to tame my vocal output, which was not even suitable for R-rated television. If I didn't get hold of it quickly, the police would arrive, followed by the guys in white suits in the padded ambulance. After reading this blog, you know how difficult it is to keep my mouth shut. Ring. Ring. Ring. Voicemail.

Ok, that does it. She wants a cake, she'll get a cake. A very sweet chocolate sundried tomato rosemary raspberry tart cake. And she will love it.

She probably wasn't expecting the one person Satan's afraid of, but that's who came to the car with the bags. Her hair actually blew backwards as I expressed my displeasure. And when I say expressed my displeasure, every eight foot display window in the store popped and broke into thousands of tiny, sharp pieces in sequence. Those poor employees thought they were going to be on the news for the next week, as the victim of a deranged shooter. Not me - I was fifty feet away, expressing displeasure.

Cake... soda... supermarket.. PHONES. Phone. Cell phone. Ah.
I've mentioned the ring of Wife's phone before. Dead people can hear it in the next county. I have never heard a phone so loud it belonged in an old beat up car whose front jumped up and down on purpose, driven by someone called Chaco. Naturally this phone always happens to be sitting near me when it goes off. And I cling to the ceiling like a cat that almost got eaten by a rabid dog. I ask, ever so politely, if she could turn the ringer down, ever so slightly.  She answers in the negative, because she has to be able to hear it. It's not that she doesn't realize it's loud, because when she knows I need to concentrate, there's a hole in the back yard in which she buries the phone, in concrete, under the garage, in the tunnel to the pizza place, three blocks away.

After I finished expressing my displeasure, she looked up with those gorgeous, innocent eyes and said, "I didn't hear it."