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important people, get important awards, say important things

My Guests and I didn’t watch the Oscars and simply don’t care.  We love old movies and old Hollywood.  Now everything sucks.  So we don’t watch, and would rather examine different kinds of beach sand in a laboratory than learn who won.

The Oscars used to be alongside the Super Bowl as a much watch event for the whole country each year.  But that was decades ago.  I can’t fathom a human being who still watches this running joke.  Though I’m sure plenty of decent, good people do so for their own reasons.  Hey we all have our own guilty pleasures, folks!  Mine’s beer, and more beer.

Anyways, we’ve come up with some belligerent guesses on how all this played out:

1) Most of the awards went to obscure arthouse projects and actors for films that almost nobody saw or will ever see

2) The ceremony dragged on for a bloated five plus hours as these self-identified very, very important people stroke their own egos with delicious hot fry oil

3) A celebrity made it a point to show and/or state how rich they are compared to YOU, the poor shit eating masses

4) Various, multiple, one-sided, unneeded, petulant, militant comments were made about the current state of American politics

5) Conversely, no mention was made about China’s current, daily crimes, because Hollywood wants China’s money and supporting evil helps with that

6) One or both Clooney’s offered a remark that made the audience desire to shoot one or both of them into the Sun via giant clown cannon

7) Bogart’s ghost appeared on stage and stated deadpan, “I hate the lot of ya.  You’re not real people.  I wouldn’t ever have a drink with any of ya.”

8) A woman clutched the Oscar statue, and quoted 37 Me Too platitudes, all without understanding the same statue is still held without shame by an acknowledged child girl rapist

9) George Lucas showed up, and tried to get everybody to shake his hand so it could be remembered that he is, in fact, still alive

10) Militant anti-film luddites stormed the stage wielding plastic bats and proclaimed a return to a “Heroic Book Future” before being subjected to tasers

Fin

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live by the sword, and die by it

All the best battlefield commanders of our generation are in Africa. All the West’s haughty generals and admirals are only good for losing wars for the last 20 years while simultaneously running their hallowed institutions into the ground.

Perhaps the absolute best battlefield commander alive on the planet is Paul Kagame, Dictator & Overlord of Rwanda, Teddy Bear Darling of the International Development Community, If You Like Your Teddy Bear to be Really Stabby, Stranglee, and Shootee.

Another is Idriss Deby of Chad. Deby lasted over three decades and probably woke up every single one of those days wondering who was trying to kill him or who he was trying to kill. Photographs can tell quite the story. Just get a load of this photo, this was not a man you messed with:

Chad’s army on both paper and in photographs looks like a bunch of kook losers.

Don’t be fooled. Chad’s army is one of the most base lethal on the planet and it’s because of Deby and the fact he’s kept them at war for 30 years straight.

Well, now his luck has finally run out. Apparently Deby was killed on the very day of his sixth presidential “election” up in Chad’s north by the 427th round of rebellion against him. The details are very vague and strange and I’m super skeptical here. It just doesn’t make sense. Personally, I think somebody inside his own circle did him in, but I’m just straight guessing. If his battle death was legit, it would be super appropriate and a proper end to Deby’s life if he died on his 1,317th completely meaningless skirmish.

Now all the generals have rallied around Deby’s son, who is in his late 30’s and happens to be a four star general (I wonder why). I don’t know anything about this guy, he could be awesome on the battlefield too. But just look at this photo, I can’t make up my mind:

I can’t decide whether this photo is of a subdued, calm killing machine, or of a little man who will struggle all his life to replace his Father. It’s probably both.

Meanwhile, after three decades of Deby’s rule, Chad remains mostly destitute, with grinding, unspeakable poverty for at least 1/5 to 1/2 of the population. Granted, Chad is on the Sahel, and so not all of this was Deby’s fault. But after three decades in power anything that happens to your country is your fault.

Deby was a brilliant general, but a terrible president. Now, onto the son. It’s positively medieval.

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soon, Mars will be your holiday destination

So the new Mars rover (there are so many now it’s hard to keep track of which is which) brought a helicopter with it. Or more accurately, a little drone that weighs four pounds and is probably so brittle your three year old could break it whilst holding a candy cane.

Mars’ atmosphere is so thin the two twin blade props on the thing had to spin at an insane rotation rate to attain the necessary lift. You can see the NASA video here:

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Succeeds in Historic First Flight | NASA

Pretty cool. That’s no kidding a human creation in flight on another planet.

Essentially this is a test bed for future airborne drones which could be used to explore Mars far more effectively than a ground based rover crawling around at 1.73 kph.

But I’m insane, so all of this is minor scraps for me. What I REALLY want to know is:

1) When will the NASA airborne drones be armed with guided missiles and chain guns?

2) In keeping with Humanity’s desire to destroy everything including ourselves, when will these armed drones be used to exterminate all remaining life on Mars?

3) After extinction, when will Mars be available as your pristine holiday destination?

These are important things to consider. Too harsh? Wrong. After all, Mars started it. We’ll make sure Earth finishes it.

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quick boss changes are fun

I’m constantly amazed at how human organizations so easily decide to spike their own success. We do it to ourselves. It’s not like one of those science fiction episodes where the slug in the brain makes people do dumb things. In real life, the alien slugs would take a hard look at us, then set up shop in Bermuda and get wasted while we do their work for them.

My good boss has been in the job for three years. Now he’s leaving, and they’re replacing him within one week. Do you think one week is enough time for a solid turnover between bosses? Well, our executive leadership sure thinks so. Which is another mark against them for why I wouldn’t let them walk my dog for three seconds unsupervised.

The other thing is the new boss has zero experience doing this job. So we got that going for us too. It’ll be a long six months as we drag this poor bastard across the bureaucracy of our asinine cubicle hell work environment. We’re gonna have to hold this guy’s hand every step of the way.

Here are some examples:

1) Boss makes a statement, as fact, when in reality it is fiction because he hasn’t the background

2) Boss makes his escape and attends a meeting without the subject matter expert to keep him honest and unknowingly destroys project

3) Alien slug monster calls boss on phone to verify ineptness continues, when confirmed, slug hangs up phone and orders another martini

4) Boss gets angry and yells at and demeans fellow human being in frustration at inability to comprehend knowledge he does not possess

5) Boss attempts to make up for lack of experience by ingratiating himself with executive leadership, thus removing the blocking powers of prior good boss, and causing all the executive’s bad ideas to become our problem

6) Slug monster sends a false pretentious, patronizing thank you not to new boss with the name of an old friend, slug writes that new boss is the best, smartest person in the world, and needs essentially no advice to excel

7) New boss awkwardly attempts social contact at mandatory (and covid illegal) work greeting event by telling humorous (to him) stories from things he did 17 years ago

8) Boss asks question, we give answer, boss asks same question 11 days later

9) Old good boss asks us how we’re all doing when we run into him in the hallway, extremely awkward and inaccurate comments are uttered and old good boss feels bad

10) Alien slug monster wants to speed up the pace of disaster, tells us that we must give bad advice to the new boss and that if we don’t, slug monster will set off a fusion bomb underneath a city, when we discover that the bomb is in Brussels, we shrug and laugh at them

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Nagasaki – reborn

In going through the few photos I have of Nagasaki, the other major bunch are of the hypocenter or peace park. That post will be a long one on history, with a lot of the photos from the park and my thoughts on the museum. However, today is just one shot. I came across this photo and I was shocked I had it. This is at the hypocenter. I had to go back and look it up, I was in Nagasaki in April of 2004. So this is Nagasaki in the Spring, 59 years after a nuclear weapon exploded right above this location. I’ll leave any conclusions and thoughts to you.

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Nagasaki – Confucius Shrine

Not sure why I ended up at this Shrine, it’s not entirely popular but I’ve got pictures of it so I guess I went there for a reason. I guess?

Constructed in 1893 by Nagasaki’s Chinese residents the place has 72 statues of Confucius. It’s a reminder that Nagasaki was always the ancient gateway into Japan.

Note the differences in architecture from Japanese shrines from some of my previous posts.

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disconnect everything you can

Recently, a town of 15K people near Tampa, Florida nearly had their entire water supply poisoned by a hacker. Somebody hacked the system and increased the lye content of the water to poison levels. Only the actions of a very alert employee (who should be the guest of honor at the next Super Bowl) saved 15K people from drinking poison.

Guess what, nobody cares. To me, this should be front page news for a week. To others, the Brittney Spears documentary and the Aunt Jemima rebrand are more important. These news articles go above the near poisoning of 15K Americans, which is off the front page after less than a day. So this is another reminder of how debased and useless the modern media is.

I can’t stress this enough, disconnect everything you can. I’m a former loser computer science major. I’ve never used computer science, but am still a loser. If you have four hours, give me a shout and I’ll explain to you in intricate detail just how unsecure the Internets is.

You cannot secure the Internets. At its most basic 0 and 1 level, it can’t ever be totally secure. This goes back to how the founders of the Internets designed the backstage to be totally open and freewheeling. When these dudes made the Internet’s core coding and theory, security wasn’t even on their top 100 concerns.

I was helping my Ma troubleshoot her fridge this weekend, spoiler alert, never buy an LG fridge. In the manual they have Wi-Fi instructions. Why does your fridge need to connect to the Internets? Soon your freaking pacemaker will be. What the fuck are people thinking? I think they don’t understand just how unsecure this all is. The “Internet-of-Things” is a fucking dystopian nightmare in waiting.

You need a phone and a computer to connect to the Internets. Oh, and a gaming console, if that’s your thing. Disconnect everything else. As the bumbled coronavirus response has shown, if you’re counting on the government to protect you, you have the wrong idea. You have to protect yourself.

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it’s the Super Bowl, sort of

Coming up! On tomorrow’s special feature, an elderly narcissist duels a mostly humble upstart who might one day supplant his records. Will the upstart change football generations in one three hour block of domination? Will the narcissist use all his dark major powers and quack snake oil health products to summon the ghost of a dead unicorn to play slot receiver for him? Tune in tomorrow to find out!

I have met zero, and I mean zero people in the last few weeks who are cheering for the Bucs. Why? Simply put, everybody, and I mean everybody wants Tommy to lose. Even people I know who are apathetic to football know who’s playing and want Tommy to lose.

What did the greatest football player of all time do to deserve this? Well, part of it is undoubtedly jealousy. The guy has more money than Satan, has won the Super Bowl six times, is married to a supermodel, and probably has a whole gaggle of Oompa-Loompas at his mansion to be his manservants.

But, it’s mostly because Brady is an insufferable shit. His canned fake public statements are worthy of the most jaded public relations hack. Brady so polished and calm and fraudulent in public that his second career should be to establish his own public relations / reputation firm. He’d make billions.

His wife is a known bitch who openly insults just about any form of humanity that displeases her highness. And then greatest of all is the TB12 health line which if you, an average ordinary man tried to sell this, would do a decade in prison for medical malpractice and fraud. But Tommy is famous and rich, so he gets away with harming real, live human beings with his fake health/medical regimen and products.

Oh, and yeah, he did cheat for many years. And like Bill, he got away with it. Would he have still won six titles without cheating? Probably. But still, he cheated.

Maybe in two decades after Mahomes has one his sixth title he too will have succumbed to the human frailties of riches and power at the pinnacle level. Maybe when he’s 40, Mahomes will be despised too. At one point, Brady was just a humble sixth round draft pick who at 24 won his first Super Bowl and was adored as the underdog who made a miracle happen.

What I do know is you couldn’t ask for a better historical matchup. This will probably go down as one of the most famous Super Bowls of all time. Enjoy it!