Tag Archives: internet

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Human One-Liners

Instant Human….
….just add coffee.

You can’t stop progress….
….but you can unplug a lot of it.

I don’t have a welcome mat….
….because I’m not a liar.

I have an inner child….
….but I don’t think it’s mine.

I’m a quiet drunk….
….Some people say passed out.

I finally got a car with a TV in the dash….
….All it ever shows is someone backing over my garbage cans.

The Amish Powerball Lottery….
….is up to four dozen eggs.

Library….
….because not everything on the internet is true.

I have a meat-cutter joke….
….but I’d probably butcher it.

Evangelical Christianity is just….
….radical Islam with pork and beer.

My kite puns….
….just go over most people’s heads

Do you know why birds sing in the morning?….
….They don’t have to go to work.

A buffet is like a time machine….
….You can go back for seconds.

I put the ‘Pro’….
….in procrastinate.

I’ve reached the age where I don’t know if I sustained an injury….
….or if that’s just how I am now.

I’m at the age where, if I drop something….
….I don’t need it anymore.

What do you call a pig with laryngitis?….
….Disgruntled

I lost the wife’s audio book….
….Now I’ll never hear the end of it.

I just got up from the couch and….
….my Fitbit notified me that it detected unusual activity.

You can be a good person with a kind heart….
….and still tell people to fuck off when required.

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Book Review #32

Some science fiction authors write about the future – but they do so in more than one way.  In the late 1960s, the prop-master for a Sci-Fi TV series, cobbled together a hand-held, fold-away, ship-to-shore communicator between an orbiting spaceship, and the ground party.  20 years later, millions of people owned flip-phones.  Sci-Fi authors in particular, can be very prescient, revealing as-yet unseen developments.

Title: Mona Lisa Overdrive

Author: William Gibson

The review:

This is the third book in a trilogy, beginning with ‘Neuromancer,’ and ‘Count Zero.’  They make more sense, read as a trio, but he put in pretty good STOP/START points, so that each one is fairly well self-contained.

Actually, the story itself is rather unimportant – a small-time quest for more money and power in a post-apocalyptic world.  It’s the ‘matrix’ upon which he builds the action that is significant.   I obtained an undistributed 1989 copy of the story first published in 1988 – when the Internet was still a baby – when few of us even knew computers existed, or owned one – when some of us weren’t even born.

This is the author who conceived The Matrix, who wrote the book about neural data storage and transmission, which became the Keanu Reeves movie, Johnny Mnemonic.  The book is rife with drug use – organic, custom-designed laboratory, and neurological.  He foresaw ‘Influencers.’  You can upload and experience segments of important people’s lives, by inserting mini-flash drives into USB-type ports in your neck, and get electronically buzzed the same way.

He was the Canadian equivalent of Philip K. Dick – both of them needing a good screenplay writer to tone down their stories.  He lived in southern British Columbia, where special mushrooms were common in the wild, and fairies and unicorns – and less pleasant apparitions – gamboled in the woods.  He may have invented Sasquatch.

It was an interesting time passer, but I wouldn’t really recommend it.  If you do drugs – it won’t make any sense – and if you don’t do drugs – it won’t make any sense.

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Fibbing Friday #263

Last week’s questions from Pensitivity101 were provided by our friend Jim Adams. Thanks Jim!

  1. Who was buried in King Tut’s tomb?

General Ulysses S. Grant.  Only Grant’s horse, Bucephalus, is buried in his tomb.

  1. Why did the Sphinx have a lion’s body and a human head?

Because the Egyptians didn’t believe in Darwinian evolution

  1. What month of the year did the Nile River overflow its banks?

Thirty days hath Septober, April, June, and no wonder
all the rest eat peanut butter – except Grandma, and she drives a new Buick.
It was the month when the new shipments of beer began arriving, and the river became a little more yellow.

  1. How many gods did the ancient Egyptians worship?

Every one they could find – and a few they made up.  No internet back then!  No porn?  No Home Shopping Channel?  No online gaming?  They had to have something to do!

  1. How much makeup did Cleopatra wear?

Girl… She was the first influencer for the makeup brands of the day!
Using all the pretty layers to look and feel her best, not to mention protecting her skin from the ravages of the sun.

  1. How long was Nefertiti’s neck?

As long as she was alive.  She wanted to be head and shoulders above the commoners, but she only accomplished the head part.

  1. Why did the Egyptians walk so strangely?

Sand in their burnoose

  1. How many pyramids did they build?

Oh wouldn’t you like to know!  The sands of time have hidden more than we have found and we’ll just have to wait until they decide if we are worthy of getting them back!

  1. What was Ramses II known for?

Condoms

  1. What did the Egyptians do in Karnak?

They watched Johnny Carson’s Tonight show, on Funk and Wagnall’s front porch.

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Anarchy Inc. – Battling Bureaucracy: Episode VII

I’m licensed to drive for another two years.  You’ve been warned!  Lay in your supply of Xanax.

I passed my 80-year-old retesting examination.  My fears have been allayed.  It was even easier than I hoped, but there were the inevitable Government administration SNAFUs.  I received a form from the DMV, with a covering letter.  It said that I was required to watch a short, online movie.  I thought that it might be instructional, but it was just a little rah-rah piece about keeping our highways safe.  No-one ever asked me to prove that I’d viewed it.  I guess it’s assumed that local Mennonites who drive cars, must also have internet access.

The cover letter said that I could book my appointment online, or with a toll-free number, which I chose, and talked to a real, live, refugee who could barely speak English.  The Government form had all my information – name, address, phone number and license number – and a blank line at the bottom where I was instructed to write in day, date, and time.  I was given a 1:00 PM slot, which I dutifully wrote in, and the wife entered it in her cell-phone calendar.

On the day, we arrived at 12:50.  There was a sign saying that there was no receptionist, have a seat and wait, and I would be called.  There were seven people in the waiting area, adult children waiting for mothers and fathers.  There was a group in the examination room.  Conversation revealed that they had a 12:30 appointment time.

One o’clock came – 1:05 – finally, the examiner lady began releasing them one at a time, every few minutes.  After the third or fourth, the wife asked when I would be taken in for my 1:00 o’clock time slot.  “Oh, all the one o’clock people are already in there.”  Obviously not!!  “Well, I’ll finish with this group, and take you in alone.”  Apparently, the session was scheduled for 12:30, but a few of us, both online, and with a live clerk, were told 1 PM.  Those Oners who arrived early enough, were taken shortly after 12:30

The letter said to present my plastic, credit card license, and the mailed form.  I handed them both to her.  She was surprised with the license.  Apparently, I was the only one who had it handy.  She had to ask each of the others, and wait till they dug it out.  She swiped it through a reader on her computer, and handed me the paper form back.  “All your data is on here.  I don’t use that.”

She had me look into a VR headset kind of thing.  At the bottom there were seven numbers.  I quickly read off the first five.  With the divot in my right eye, I wasn’t sure of the last two.  I pulled my head back slightly, and turned it, so that the left eye could confirm – the same ‘averaging’ system I use in real life.  Then she activated some peripheral-vision lights on each side – nowhere near as complex as the ‘range of vision’ tests I have to do at my eye doctor’s.

Then it was on to art class.  I was given a sheet of paper, a pencil, and told to draw a clock – round(ish) circle, dot in the center, 12 numbers in their proper places, and hands set at 11:10.  She gave me five minutes to complete it.  A bit shaky, but I was done in less than one.  The entire test only took five minutes.  Now I just have to look forward to repeating it every two years.  Look out, Captain America!  Here we come.

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Cycling Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 gave us more recycled questions from Teresa Grabs who was the Fibbing Friday originator:

1. What is the most intelligent life form on Earth?

Sasquatch, and their Asian cousins, Yeti, for staying so far away from humans that they are just rumors and myths.

2. Why did we really go to school?

So that Mum could congregate with the rest of the neighbourhood Wine For Lunch Bunch.  Sometimes mine would call Nan, and apologize.

3. What did teachers do during recess?

Lines!  Back in my day, it was Canadian Club.

4. How did you get to school?

With special dispensation from the local School Board, and only after Mom and Dad signed the Special Waiver, guaranteeing to hold them blameless.

5. What was life like before the Internet?

It was a lot like Real Life.  Since the advent of the Internet, it’s been a Cosmic Joke that no-one gets.

6. What is the best thing about social media?

Being able to opt out, and ignore its seductive siren call.  Using this life plan, I have personally rescued 47 IQ points from being destroyed.

7. What is your favorite thing to put chocolate sauce on?

That was a stripper Exotic Dancer, who called herself Cherry.  But that was long ago, and far away.  Now for an exciting evening, I put Ben-Gay on my right hip.

8. Doctors were all wrong…humans don’t need water. What do they need?

REVENGE!  👿  Tell the boss you don’t think that my work is up to company standard??  You’ll rue the day.

9. Dolphins are not mammals. What are they?

They are the Orca’s equivalent to the Internet.  If you are lucky enough to see one, it’s not just frolicking for humans.  It’s rushing an order to get Free Willy, tickets to the Taylor Shamu concert.

10. There is a Lost Dutchman’s Mine, but where is it?

The treasure-map said to go to the North Pole, turn west, and take 143 paces, but I think it’s up in Nelly’s room, behind the wallpaper.

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Roses Are Read – So Are These Books

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants….

Some books that are good for the mind, some books that are good for the soul, and some books that are good for just passing time.  I read ‘em all last year.

1491
A description of indigenous societies and empires in North and South America before the white man arrived.  Aside from the lack of iron and steel, many of them were as complex and technological as anything in the Old World.

A Harvest of Short Stories
A 1960 Ontario English textbook, complete with notes and questions, and the names of three girls who had owned it.  16 short stories, mostly Canadian and British, including a couple of O. Henry ironies, and Poe’s A Cask of Amontillado.  I didn’t have to download a free PDF.  Two Sherlock Holmes, including The Speckled Band, where I found three errors.  You can’t train a snake.  They do not drink milk, and they are deaf, and will not respond to a whistle.  The notes found one more, where Holmes refers to Watson’s pistol by a company which only ever produced ammunition.

A History of the World In 10 ½ Chapters
Not what it claims to be.  A collection of short stories intended to make fun of blind religion, especially Christianity.

Count Zero
Book number two of a trilogy about surfing the internet, but written 40 years ago, when most of us didn’t know the internet existed.

Dead Moon
A premise that large areas of the moon are used as cemeteries.  Seemed energy-inefficient to me.  Along comes a space rock which re-animates the dead, with no explanation of how, or why.  Still, escapist fun.

Even
Lee Grant’s (Jack Reacher) younger brother writing in the same genre.  Heavy on the thinking and planning, but not averse to a little required violence.
Genellan – First Victory
Again, the second of three sci-fi books about three, then four, then five alien races, including us, who band together to defeat another powerful one, intent on controlling the galaxy.  Think Star Trek Federation versus The Borg.


Gilgamesh
A book written before you were born:  This one was written before almost anyone was born – 5000 years ago.  Book review to follow.

Kingdom of Bones
An excuse to while away some time in retirement.  This one shows a place in darkest Africa where Gaia-energy caused animal life and intelligence to develop.

No Plan B
While ‘Lee Child’ is busy developing the Jack Reacher TV series, (They’re filming the third season in Toronto, where the lead actor, from Minnesota, complains about the cold weather) it falls to his younger brother (see Even above) to keep pumping them out.

One Minute Out
Another Gray Man time-passer.  In the first novel. he got so beat-up and shot-up that I didn’t see how he, or the series, could survive.  This is the ninth, and they both seem to be feeling their age.

Rasputin’s Shadow
Many people are still fascinated by Rasputin.  Even a hundred years later, he’s a good MacGuffin to hang a modern action/suspense novel on.

Relentless
This is number 8 in The Gray Man series.  Same as above – only slightly different.

Run
Same basic plot as Even, above.  An innocent bystander gets screwed over, and works like Hell to get his life back.  Good for a week of casual reading.

Sapiens
A description and illustration of how humans climbed down from the hominid evolution tree.  We – the race  – may have made a great mistake in inventing farming and technology to feed an ever-increasing population.  Hunter/gatherers spend only 18/20 hours a week feeding themselves, with much less stress.

Shatter War
Number two of a trilogy about how areas of Earth are jumbled from different time periods, ranging from ice age, to 200 years in our future.  With a canvas that broad and blank, anything is possible.  From a husband/wife team like the Childs.  He determines the plotline and story arc, and she provides the development prose.

Sierra Six
This is number seven in The Gray Man series.  I’m presenting my titles in alphabetical order, but that inverts the published order.  This book is out of plotline order.  It’s a flashback story to explain how it all started.

Target Acquired
Ghost writers help the ghost of Tom Clancy-past to keep pumping out these Jack Ryan Junior, second-generation novels.

The Kaiser’s Web
If Raymond Khoury can hang a tale on Rasputin, then Steve Berry can hang one on the German Kaiser.  Everything old is new again.

The Kill Clause
A police detective, whose young daughter is raped and murdered, is offered a spot on a vigilante squad to bring justice to those who escape on technicalities.

The Last Orphan
A Jason Bourne-type agent is finally showing some signs of being human.  I am hoping for more books in the new direction.

The Program
The above vigilante policeman, (temporarily) off the force, rescues a rich man’s daughter from a Scientology-type cult.

The Runaway
A missing,16-year-old, female agent trainee, and the possibility of a relationship with a lady DA and her young son, help scrub a few letters off behind his assumed name –  ADD, ADHD, OCD, PTSD.  He may become part of civilized society, even while he’s still knocking off bad guys.

The Span of Empire
Similar to the Genellan book, again, there are more and more interstellar races, joining together to resist the galactic bully, who would ‘cleanse’ them all out of existence.

There Is A God
Lies!  Damned lies, and more desperate Christian Apologetics lies.

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The Laws Of The Internet

Constants and laws that you can always rely on

POE’S LAW

There is a point where it is almost impossible to distinguish extremism from satire of extremism.

STREISAND’S LAW

Any attempt to censor information on the web will lead to that information being widely spread.

ARMSTRONG’S LAW

The longer a conversation goes on without a mention of America, the more likely it is for some random American to bring up the moon landings.

MUPHRY’S LAW

If you leave a comment, correcting someone, there will always be a mistake in it.

CUNNINGHAM’S LAW

The best way to get an answer to a question is to answer it wrong yourself, and just wait for someone to correct you.

CAD’s THEOREM OF TOPIC CLOSURE

A smart post is less likely to receive a reply than a stupid post, because there is less to be said, but a really full and comprehensive post will bring conversation to a halt.

THE LAW OF ‘GO FAQ YOURSELF’

Any given question in a website’s FAQ will be repeated, at least once a week.

WADSWORTH’S CONSTANT

The first 30 minutes of any video contains no useful information.

COLE’S LAW

It’s just thin-sliced cabbage

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MAID Service

DON’T CUT ME OFF!

1Jaded1 recently asked about local views, and my opinion and views, on medically assisted suicide.  There’s very little mention, or pushback, here.  After all, we’re safe, sane Canada, not the Bible-thumping Southern Excited States.  Do whatever you please, just don’t scare the horses.

The issue does exist here.  Locally, it’s been given the cutesy acronym MAID – Medical Assistance In Dying.  I don’t know how far that label extends.  The very day she asked this question, an Op-Ed letter demanded that “death with dignity” access should be legally guaranteed, as a right.

I stand foursquare behind that.  I believe in the maximum of personal freedom.  I don’t feel that my bodily autonomy, or anyone else’s, should be violated by some do-gooder’s trumped-up morals.

HOWEVER!!!….

Be (VERY) careful what you wish for.  I can appreciate some people’s worry about the thin edge of the wedge, or the slippery slope.  Two days later, another Op-Ed letter arrived.  17 years ago, a man’s family and doctor fought him tooth and nail, to prevent him from accessing MAID.  With medication and psychotherapy, he is now a reasonably-functional citizen.  He was never promised that he would recover, but he now has hope.  He admits that he really didn’t want to die, he just didn’t want to live his nightmare any longer.

I am all for informed personal consent, but to ensure that cases like this do not occur, is going to require some administrative oversight. – a three-doctor panel?  This is where the bigots and the bureaucrats get their hooks in, and have a field day ruining running other people’s lives – as they see fit.

The same applies for gender-reassignment therapy.  INFORMED personal consent is paramount.  If little 8-year-old Billy wants to grow his hair down to his shoulders, and wear hair-bows, nylon panties and dresses, and call himherself Suzie – let IT!  Even non-bigot observers are rightly concerned when WOKE parents are authorizing treatments for pre-pubescent children.  You’re not even supposed to get a tattoo until you reach the age of majority – the age of informed personal consent!

Let Billy/Suzie live with the public fallout of the temporary decision for a while.  If he/she/it/they are still determined to go ahead, we can be reasonably assured that the choice is valid and duly considered.  Both these decisions have offices on a one-way street.  Once you start down it, there’s no turning back.  Considerable contemplation should be displayed, before a doctor is authorized to prescribe an overdose amount of Nembutal or Propofol, or before they lop Billy’s wiener off, and start pumping hormones in.

Pragmatically, especially on the suicide issue, I say go ahead – unless they’re directly related to me.  Earth’s population is now over 8 BILLION!  The overcrowded rats are beginning to nip at each other.  I can see you, Vladimir Putin.  I fear that a drastic reduction in population is going to occur anyway.  I can see you, COVID19, and all your mutant cousins.  A bunch of suicides might help reduce the social pressure by eliminating the emotionally inadaptable from the gene pool.

A lad from Montreal committed suicide on his 16th birthday.  On the next anniversary, his distraught mother also committed suicide.  On the third anniversary, his bereaved father also committed suicide.  I don’t wish to appear hard or uncaring (Oh, go ahead) but, apart from cleaning up the mess, and the confusion and sadness of friends and relatives – perhaps we are all better off without their contagious weakness.

A representative of the Council of Canadian Academies wants all levels of government to do something about the profusion of scientific misinformation which has caused many preventable COVID deaths.  In addition to regulating social media platforms and private messaging apps, Ottawa needs to support the production and distribution of science-based, factual information.  Science communication is facing an uphill battle.

This is one of the things that most irks me most about some Christian Apologetics debaters.  They ask, “Even if Atheists could prove that there’s no God, (That’s not our job – or our aim!) what’s wrong with believing something that’s false?”  Because it can get you killed!!  Worse yet, you can take your family, your neighbors, your friends, and even ME along with you.  I see you, Jim Jones, and David Koresh.

That’s when and why I begin to care – deeply, strongly!  In the movie, Spy Game, Robert Redford played an old agent, training a new agent.  At one point he advises, “If it comes down to between you and him – Send flowers.”  I’m sorry that you are so dumb and gullible that you will believe internet/religious conspiracy theories.  Please accept this lovely bouquet of Chrysanthemums.  We’re all probably better off without you.”

Despite those who see only in black and white, there is no perfect world, and there is no one-size-fits-all, perfect answer to either of these problems.  We’ll just have to live (or die) with imperfect humans – and keep your nose out of other people’s business, lest someone use it as an exclamation point.  😳

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Book Review #28

Days of Future Passed

The shape of things to come!  This author was prescient.  This is where it all began, or at least, a big part of it.

The book: Neuromancer

The Author: William Gibson

The Review:
This book was written in 1984.  I had a chance to read it over 30 years ago.  The son read it, but I passed on the opportunity.  It would not have had the effect on me back then, as it did to read it recently.  I read a post by a blogger who was doing what I am doing, taking old Science Fiction books out of storage, and re-reading them.  His description intrigued me, so I got a 2010 re-published copy from the library.

The story itself is not all that exciting –by today’s standards.  His protagonist is a computer hacker who can mentally access, not merely individual computers, but can surf the entire Internet.  Of course, the author doesn’t call it that.  The term, and the function, did not exist back then.  He did not coin the term Cyberspace, but this book popularized it.  Soon, readers and other authors were regularly using it.

In 1984, computers, and their interconnectivity, were far less common than in his then-future fiction.  Since he couldn’t call it the Internet, he coined the term The Matrix.  While this author, and this book, are not completely responsible, they both heavily influenced Tron, and the three Matrix movies.

The précis reminded me of Johnny Mnemonic.  A bit of research revealed that, 17 years later, he shuffled some concepts around and wrote the novel that another Keanu Reeve movie was based on.  Microsoft had incorporated in 1981, but the microsofts (small m) that the hacker uses to jack in, are nail-sized inserts that plug into a socket at the base of his skull, like Sim-cards, or SD cards.  They contain relevant data, and operating code – the Apps of their time.

The plot involves the hacker either slicing or surreptitiously oozing past security protocols, to free a manacled A.I. – Artificial Intelligence.  The story also contains a couple of computer ‘Constructs’, which are essentially the uploaded knowledge, experience and personality of hackers who were killed while online.

This author impresses me like the deaf composer, Ludwig von Beethoven.  He conceptualized huge amounts of technology that he couldn’t see, but which later came to exist.  Finally, there is another peculiarity, not of the story, but of the particular copy of the book that I received.

It is in the page numbering.  Each page is numbered in the lower corner.  Each number is underlined.  The underlining on the right-hand, or Recto page, extends to the edge of the page, across the thickness of the sheet, and continues till it underlines the number on the left-hand, or Verso page.

Infinitesimally and imperceptibly, the numbers and the underlining rise and fall several times through the book.  If you firmly close the book and look at the lower edge, the ink forms an EEG brain-scan readout.

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Flash Fiction #277

PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox

FORTRESS MENTALITY

With the advent of COVID, Bruce’s neuroses finally became useful.  Social distancing?  Check!  He was a loner, something of a sociopath.  No physical contact?  Check!  He didn’t like to be touched.  Disinfecting?  Mr. Germaphobe carried his own hand sanitizer and wipes.

Work from home?  He was a ‘Prepper’ who’d bought this bunker of an old stone barn and was fixing it up.  He’d laid in a ton of government-surplus dried foods.  The windmill pumped water through filters, and supported a satellite dish for phone and internet.  The roof was solid solar cells.

“Call me when it’s safe to come out.”

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If you’d like to join the Friday Fictioneers fun, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.