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.

I Don't Want You Dead - Just Stop Breathing

Dove apologized for a body wash commercial where a black woman turned white after using the product. Hellfire and Fury ensued. Be fair - who could have seen that going wrong?

• Do satanists threaten their children that if they're bad, they'll go to heaven?

Harvey Weinstein has been caught with his pants down. Literally.

Another sexual harassment suit has hit, this time going public. The previous ones haven't, because Harvey is the price of being a star. You apparently had to have sex with Harvey. Everyone was afraid to say anything, lest they be thrown out of Hollywood. Incidentally, Harvey was just thrown out of The Weinstein Company, which he formed with his brother and two others. Incidentally, there has been a number of suits settled already, which means this was even less a secret.

There's absolutely no excuse for the behavior of this animal. Who knows how many were hurt.

Corey Feldman has stated that there are pedophiles in Hollywood, that have messed with young stars. He is terrified to name names, for obvious reasons. I wonder if Harvey is the name he wanted to say. The name Charlie Sheen may pop up also, in reference to Corey Haim.

While we're on the topic, designer Donna Karan defended Weinstein, saying that the way the actresses dressed, what were they asking for? Yes, she just blamed the victim.

• Our friends over at United Airlines are in the news again, but this time it's not their fault. A passenger tried to escape the plane by opening the emergency exit door, but failed. Then tried again. And again. The third time was the charm, in terms of a Federal Air Marshal restraining him and having him arrested upon landing. The moral of the story is that if you feel warm, talk to a flight attendant. They will open the emergency exit for you.

Angry that her husband played too much golf, a woman cut off his penis and flushed it down the toilet.  Judging from her actions, he'll continue to get as much sex as he did before she pruned his hedge.

• Look out for more information on the Las Vegas shooting. The lone wolf shooter narrative looks to be falling apart, as there are reports of other shooters, some on the ground. There is also video, as the casino is surveilled, plus a camera that looks downward from the roof.

This is Wales' most haunted public toilet. As determined by the Twenty Seven Point Wales Restroom Haunting Scale. And because there are lesser haunted public toilets in Wales.

• Why does privacy matter? In simple terms, if you haven't been paying attention to my constant ranting.

As mentioned earlier, Whole Foods has experienced a payment card breach. Oddly enough, it's at the in-store table service and taprooms, not at the checkouts, which use a different Point of Sale (POS) system. The breach was announced two weeks ago and hasn't been updated. Why upset your customers more?

• Over 5,000 Morrisons (British supermarket) staff have sued the company, after their personal and financial data was leaked by a disgruntled insider. Things get more interesting when Morrisons claimed it was not liable. Morrisons was, however, awarded 170,000 pounds for the leak, but the employees got nothing. This company's behavior is so abhorrent, American companies want to bring them in as consultants.

In this month's (year's?) best headline, "Florida man drops pants and sodomizes pink flamingo to death." Harvey Weinstein refuses to divulge his whereabouts on the day in question.

• North Korea hacked South Korea's military network, gaining access to 235 gigabytes of sensitive data. And by sensitive data, we mean pictures of big-breasted Korean women in skimpy bathing suits.

Top defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, do not have HTTPS web encryption enabled by default. This is why we can't have nice things. It's also why the biggest-spending war machine in the world doesn't stand a chance against electronic espionage. PORN websites have HTTPS encryption enabled. Or so I hear.

• Millions of Pornhub users have been hit with a malvertizing attack. An ad on the page, disguised as a 'legitimate' ad, redirected users to a fake webpage, where Chrome and Firefox users were presented with an update screen, which installed the malware. Not that any of us go to Pornhub, the largest group of porn sites on the internet.

October 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day.

ThermionicEmissions interrupts its normal merriment to get serious:

• You feel like shit - we understand. The pain is crippling. 
• Reach out and talk to someone.. a friend, relative, counselor, online friends, suicide hotline 1-800-273-TALK (8255). 
• From someone who has been there.
• You may think you mean nothing to anybody. You're wrong. You will leave a trail of destruction in your wake that you can't imagine. Family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, even online buddies' lives will be affected and this will carry through to the end of their days. People close to me, after having seen what death does to families and friends, swear they'll never commit suicide, no matter how bad the pain gets.
• It is important to all these people, and me, that you reach out when you're feeling like hurting yourself (or others).
• You don't have to feel like this. This is not normal. There are professionals to talk to and medicines that help.
• Let's not lose one more.