News You Can't Use: The Business of Sleep

The effort to monetize the sleep cycle has, until now, been somewhat of a disappointment. No commercials being beamed into dreams, no monthly bed taxes, it's a sad state of affairs. Fortunately, the progress toward a world where literally everything costs money, where the "skip ad" button does nothing and is just retained to mock you and by-the-minute rates are imposed for naps is being made. As usual, New York City is right there at the vanguard of this exciting new realm of profit. See, there's some serious entrepreneurs there. It's not all junkies dressed as Disney characters, underground dwelling cannibal humanoids and giant bed bugs, really.

The Yelo Spa in Midtown Manhattan goes a step beyond traditional spa services. You can actually come here simply to catch some Zs.

It's hard to believe that we live in such an age of miracles. A place you can go to and fall asleep.

Yelo spa founder Nico Ronco came up with this room called the Yelo Cabin -- or "Yelo Cab" for short -- so that the city that never sleeps can take a nap.

Please do not get into an unlicensed Yelo Cab.

Nappers can relax in a zero-gravity reclining chair and choose from a variety of colored lights or complete darkness to find the perfect sleep mood.

Wow, zero gravity! It's like sawing wood in space. Then add the exciting choice of lights or even everyone's favorite, total darkness. Whatever this costs, I'm in!

The cost:  $1 a minute.

You know what, I think I changed my mind. It's like a motel that costs $480 a night, has red and blue lights instead of basic cable and probably wouldn't let you do the Adult Act with a lot lizard.

The Yelo Cab punctuates a growing demand. Millions are not getting proper amounts of sleep and turning to places outside of their home to fix it.

Yes, millions are turning from the bed that failed and seeking out total and complete rip offs.

The emphasis on sleep is so great at the Benjamin Hotel that it partnered with Cornell University to create an entire sleep program complete with a sleep team.

The best sleep scientists from Sleep University will be creating a sleep program so you can sleep!

In addition to black-out drapes and the obligatory eye mask, the Benjamin's sleep therapy includes 10 different pillows from which to choose including one called the lullaby pillow.

Whoa, wouldn't recommend that one. The lullaby pillow would be too much for a first-timer like you.

Wait, you can get it free?

The CDC calls insufficient sleep a public health epidemic. It remains a factor in many illnesses, some chronic.

No word yet on our gullibility epidemic.

So suffice it to say, getting a good night's sleep is invaluable. The consequences of not doing so can lead to a variety of health issues. Talk to your doctor if need be.

Who needs insurance when you can get all this great free medical advice from FOX New York?

Full Story.

Komment Korner  

Yeah, that's a competitive rate for sure.

Let's call it nap time, no one will suspect anything.

Really. Really? For real? Are we being serious? For really?

lol only a fool pays for a service like this

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: San Francisco Using Drinking Water To Heat City Hall, Other Buildings

It's been a good week for terrible days. There's lotus-eating human derelict day, Earth Day and the upcoming one week anniversary of the Edmonton Oilers getting the first overall pick. We could celebrate by "responsibly" inhaling plant fumes, remembering the worst environmental alarmism, or in our case tucking into some exciting drought hypocrisy. To give you the full disclosure and transparency, when I read the headline I really wondered how "drinking water" can heat buildings. Do you hold it in your mouth until it gets to 98.6 and then spit it out or something? It turns out that's not right. Don't worry, it's explained in excruciating detail.

The people who want us to use less water are part of a system that could be among the biggest water wasters in San Francisco. That system is in hot water, because of hot water.

The most corrupt and wasteful people might be corrupt and wasteful. The irony. Then the pain of sentence number two. The reflexive property doesn't always create top quality journalistic prose, as hard as that is to believe.

“After the water is heated up, the condensated water is then discharged into the sewer system,” said Tyrone Jue of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. “This is drinking water that is being used for the steam loop.”

It's like the hydrological cycle, but with more outrage and sewers standing in for clouds.

Water is heated to make steam to heat City Hall and 170 other nearby buildings. Although City Hall reuses most of its portion, a quarter million gallons a day goes wasted. Good drinking water ends up in the sewer. It’s a system that is more than 80 years old.

A rambling stream of thought narrative explains what's going down. It heats structures. Some is reused, some not. I could drink that sewer water, if it wasn't in the sewer. It's eight decades in the making.

“This system has been set up in the city for many decades, as far as this steam loop. It doesn’t rely on fossil fuels or natural gas to heat these buildings. So in that sense it’s good,” Jue said.

Or you could just wear a jacket or sweater, so in a sense it's bad.

But times have changed. Water is a much more precious commodity now than in the 1930s when steam heat seemed to be a good idea.

I know, it's hard to believe in today's enlightened age that we were such fools. Those naive maniacs that played with the properties of water with all the care and concern of a five-year-old who finds a loaded gun in a drawer.

“This station has had a problem with water intrusion since it opened in the mid-1970s. And so we’ve been pumping it out and trying to get rid of it since then,” said Taylor Huckaby of BART.

I think I'll put Water Intrusion on the "maybe" list for that metal band name.

Now 65 million gallons of ground water under BART goes into the sewer each year. The idea is to get that water, not good for drinking, into the heating system to replace the good drinking stuff.

When I'm talking about that good drinking stuff it isn't H2O, if you know what I'm saying.

Booze.

The company says there are no firm plans and it will be expensive.

"We've got some vague plans we came up with while lying on the hood of a car and looking at the night sky."

"First I better warm up somehow."

But in this era of drought, priorities are changing and saving good drinking water is now at the top of the list.

We'll do it this weekend. Maybe. If there's time.

Do not visit the ad-riddled source: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/04/23/california-drought-san-francisco-drinking-water-steam-loop-heat-city-hall-buildings/

Komment Korner  

i think i'll take a hour long hot shower.

These pigs use millions of gallons an hour.

The energy code in the municipality where I run my steam plant requires us to have a robust condensate return system

Heat it up with a mid sized nuke or two.

Gov. Moon Beam just up to his old tricks.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Governments are Hiding Aliens, Claims Former Defence Minister

There's some weird stuff going on up there in America Junior. And I'm not even talking about the legal drugs everywhere, the speech and thought laws, the French, or the Edmonton Oilers getting yet another chance to ruin a first overall draft pick. No, there's stranger things going down than a mismanaged joke of a Hockey franchise that gets all the breaks. I'm talking about space aliens who are being concealed by the powers that be in Ottawa, something I think we all suspected deep down but has now been completely confirmed by a former leader of the Canadian military maple syrup bacon complex. 

A former defence minister has accused world leaders of concealing the presence of aliens.

My claim that the cover of the Megadeth album "Rust in Peace" was based on actual events has now been fully vindicated. I'm just waiting for confirmation that Jimmy Carter is full of Soviet cyborg parts and all my heavy metal conspiracy theories will be proven.

Paul Hellyer, who was a Canadian minister from 1963 to 1967, is now urging world powers to release what he believes to be hidden data on UFOs.

We don't even have college transcripts for our President, so good luck.

'Much of the media won't touch [the documents]', he said during a keynote speech at the Disclosure Canada Tour at the University of Calgary.

"Good news, class! Instead of learning dreary employment skills, today we're going to hear a speech from some crank who believes in fly saucers!"

'[The public] will say, in one way or another, "Mr President or Mr Prime Minister we want the truth and we want it now because it affects our lives."'

For this to happen the [internet pornography] and [television] will have to go down and stay down for several weeks and society must somehow not fully collapse during that time.

Hellyer, 91, first went public with his belief in aliens on Earth in 2005, becoming the first high ranking politician to do so.

Of course he's been out of office for nearly forty years. I'm just sayin'.

He claims that the aliens have 'been visiting our planet for thousands of years' and are unimpressed with how we live.

Snobs from another galaxy. Sure you united your planet, eliminated all war and crime and then mastered faster-than-light travel, but we keep churning out slight improvements in selfie and texting technology. That's got to count for something.

'We spend too much time fighting each other, we spend too much money on military expenditures and not enough on feeding the poor and looking after the homeless and sick,' he said.

It can now be confirmed that inscrutable intelligences from the other side of the universe are cut from the same cloth as that guy at the bar who rambles about "We got bombs, but no food, man" before staggering home to brutally pummel his wife and children.

Last year, the former Canadian defence minister declared on Russian TV that aliens are walking among us.

Something tells me there was a lot of patronizing "Da, tell more." in that interview.

But he said they are refusing to share their advanced technologies until we change our polluting and warring ways.

"We're not giving you this technology that would create pollution-free energy until you stop polluting." Whatever spaceman, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

In the bizarre interview, Hellyer made a series of pronouncements about aliens which grew increasingly outlandish and sounded closer to the plot of Star Trek.

I like how it got worse as the interview progressed. You haven't even seen the real crazy yet! I've got some Star Trek stuff here. Doomed redshirts, rubber-suit aliens, talking computers to death, ridiculous brawling, that sort of thing.

'They are very much afraid that we might be stupid enough to start using atomic weapons again.'

Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!

Hellyer believes aliens are responsible for some of our modern technology including the microchip, LED light and Kevlar vest, he said.

But I thought they weren't sharing with us, what with the pollution and bombs and war and that guy over there called me a jerk, I think.

Hellyer described several types of aliens including 'Tall Whites' who are working with the U.S. air force in Nevada.

The BYU basketball team is not from outer space, sorry.

'They're able to get away with that; they had a couple of their ladies dressed as nuns go into Las Vegas to shop and they weren't detected,' he claimed.

Well, there's your great idea for a "Sister Act" reboot, Hollywood.

Well, how else would it get in there, smart guy?

 
A third group are called 'Nordic Blondes' and Hellyer said that if you meet one you'd probably say, 'I wonder if she's from Denmark or somewhere.'

Please ignore the fact that my alien delusions are also full of my bizarre racial purity theories.

Full Article.

Komment Korner

There is a rumor that the Aliens have demanded that 2015 is the year that the Governments either confirm their existence or they will will do a big "coming out" themselves.

Nurse, where's my tin foil hat!

The US spends $800 billion protecting the World from itself

Finally more proof there are crack pots at high levels of the Canadian government.

Sounds like this poor guy has flipped his lid.

Seriously, what the hell.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Choose Your Own Adventure #29: Trouble on Planet Earth

After becoming an undead horror but failing to parley that into factory ownership or whip kink I'm back for another R.A. Montgomery masterwork. This one promises some undefined trouble on our little blue dot. I guess it could have been more vague, like "Some Difficulty or Unpleasantness Somewhere in the Universe" but close enough. We're going to get conflict and we've got this amazing Third Planet backdrop for it. What more could you want? Stir in some gray ponytail "We got bombs but can't FEED people, man!" philosophizing, wussy vehicles and dwarf bashing and the result has a chance to be pleasingly tepid.

UPS shorts and high socks...in danger!!!

I'm maxing and relaxing in front of the moron box, enjoying all the societal collapse dispatches. It turns out all the world's oil has abruptly vanished. Time for the doomsday clock to strike midnight, in other words, but I'm cynically detached from this bizarre disaster. I tell my brother "Ned" that this means the "Earth has given up!" All because we had to have non-sissy means of travel, presumably. Also, our planet is still rotating and going around the sun, dude. It's not over.  

I'm told Ned is well known for his wild ideas. Considering I just assigned human characteristics to a giant ball of dirt and magma I'm hardly one to talk. He's also a problem solver with some of that "ESP" that we used to all believe in until it was ruined by 900 number hucksters. Right now he's going into his psychic aura or whatever and the upshot is he wants us to go to Saudi Arabia, which I guess is on the table is a viable option for some reason. I want to go to the CIA. The Middle East or trying to get help from the government. These are not good choices.

Perhaps realizing this R.A.M. tells me to flip a coin instead. Lucky Maryland quarter comes up Maryland.

Another reason to mourn the death of "ESP" as a meaningful shared myth.

Well, it's off to Saudi Arabia. I'm told I have "plenty of cash" from earlier, unspecified adventures and plane travel into a world terrorism hot spot was still easy when this was written so before the next page can even finish Ned and I are in Riyadh, a city described as "crowded" and "hot." I'll cut Montgomery a break, it wasn't easy to research things before the internet and those extremely general facts are probably true. 

The goodwill is immediately ruined by typically R.A. manlet bashing, this time a "small man" inviting us into one of those unlicensed cabs that you've probably heard a lot of good things about. Even if you weren't aware of the author's short = evil prejudice this whole situation screams trap. We'll just shoe ride it, thanks. 

Maybe one day a real rain will come and wash away all the pirate taxis.

I guess I'm feeling homesick because I decide to go get an English language newspaper. Naturally, while I'm doing this Ned gets taken and my particular set of skills acquired over an extremely short life will have to be deployed. Skills like distrusting the short, wandering off for no adequately explored reason in a foreign land and making darkly humorous remarks when the television news announces the coming global crash into Mad Max chaos. Yeah, those.

I wander around yelling Ned's name and blaming him for his abduction and likely torture porn victimization. I can be a jerk. Out of nowhere an old man taps my shoulder, name-drops Allah and assures me that my brother is actually safe. Nice to see all that paragraph-long drama resolved so neatly.

I ask him how he knows my brother and get a weird, evasive answer that's apparently good enough. It's off to his cool shop, chuck full of mandalas, geometric paintings used by Sufi mystics to induce their trances. I know I rag on Montgomery a lot, but he does seem to have a very sincere appreciation for other cultures. Of  course being a dirty drug-addled hippie "Global Citizen" I suppose that would be expected. Ned's peeping the art and I decide to join him. 

Perfect for the side of your love van or motor glider.

Time for some mind expansion, as all this starts to get very significant. Ned produces a bronze box that he claims was under some prayer rugs and offers some of the salve inside. Come on, you're not afraid to get high, are you? My brother rubs some on his hand and walks right into one of the pictures. Far out. 

I'm not some wimp who follows rules or worries about permanent hallucinogenic compounds in my spine, so I follow after, entering a world of shapes and colors. Yes, this children's book contains LSD imagery. Ned tells me he's solved the problem of the world's oil. Man, tripping fixes everything. He promptly vanishes. Whoa. A moment later we're back in the store.

Ned declares victory, while I innocently compare my acid test to a "trip to Disneyland" and wonder what he could possibly have done to set things right. Then everything completely falls apart, I mean even more so, as we take a taxi (licensed and driven by someone of average height or taller, I would assume) into the desert, set down one of the pictures from the store, perform a chant, and out comes the oil. "It's a time pipeline!" is the non-explanation. What. The. Fudge. 

Solving problems like "sanity" and "not eating your own fingers."

I really don't know what else to say. I get that the author is probably no stranger to "mystical trances" but I don't think that really makes it all right to put this nonsense in a book intended for a pre-teen audience. Even setting that aside, this one was a bizarre mess. Say no to drugs, friends. And unlicensed cabs, of course.

  Oh no, drugs destroyed my artistic ability. Look at this garbage, seriously.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Public Trust in the Web 'Eroded' Says Global Cyber Commission

Do you trust the invisible tubes that beam data sets for the hard sciences and celebrities at their absolute worst images across the world? It's about as legitimate as asking "Do you trust these shelves full of books?" or "Do you trust the road in front of your house?" but it's something we're forced to address. Does the average person still share their credit card information with the Nigerian royal family or get excited about new job opportunities giving your bank information to former Iron Curtain country thugs? Against all odds, it seems that we're slowly gaining a grasp on basic common sense. Don't too excited, it's just a pronouncement from a worthless globalist body.

The public's trust in the Internet has been severely eroded by a cloak-and-dagger approach to collecting private data online leaving it open to abuse, the Global Commission on Internet Governance said on Wednesday.

I posted a picture of myself getting shitfaced and a potential employer looked at it and decided to go with the candidate who wasn't into morning cork-sucking. Real cloak and dagger, here. Look out, James Bond, the HR department just learned that the right button on the mouse does things.

"Confidence must be restored in the Internet because trust is eroding," commission head Carl Bildt told a press conference in The Hague, ahead of a two-day conference on cyber freedom, safety and security.

Please, place your faith in something that, by its very nature, is inherently untrustworthy. We must restore your trust in strangers that want to take your money and/or organs, it's very important. Bring back the ignorance, it's bliss.

Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister, said distrust was brought about by "the non-transparent market in collecting, centralising, integrating and analysing enormous quantities of private information about individuals and enterprises."

If someone had just explained that my jingoistic rants on a public forum would actually be read by others, I might not have called for another war with Spain, etc.

Maybe don't put that private information into the old sex box, there's an idea.

Once collected, the information is targeted by governments for surveillance "in ways that have a chilling effect on fundamental human rights, in particular freedom of expression and legitimate dissent and protest," the Global Commission said in an 18-page report released on Wednesday.

We'll fix your tyrannical government run amok by getting your to trust the spider web again.

Criminals too abused personal data including on the "Dark Web" -- the hidden part of the Internet protected by powerful encryption software.

If you need me I'll be busy posting wacky cat pictures to the Dark Web.

Law enforcement should be allowed to gather data for their investigations but should be "specified in advance, authorised by law and consistent with the principles of necessity and proportionality," the commission added.

Never has so little been said with so many five dollar words.

Your snail recipes are no longer safe.

"Individuals and businesses must be protected from both the misuse of the Internet by terrorists, cyber groups and the overreach of governments and businesses that collect and use private data," it said.

Yeah, let's all get on that.

Full Article.

Komment Korner  

another stellar example of why all career bureaucrats, politicians, and global collectivists should be euthanized for the good of humanity.

ISIS training camp confirmed 8 miles south of El Paso

I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.

What kind of #$%$ would trust the "Web" to begin with?

It's not the holly grail of privacy

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: New .sucks Domain Stirs Up Storm Over Free Speech

Looking for exciting material on the cobweb related to straws, candy canes and industrial vacuums? Well, you're in luck, because the exciting new "Dot Sucks" revolution is upon us. Think of the amazing lamprey sites! Wait, I've just been told it will be little more than garbled anger directed at broad-side-of-a-barn targets like Google, Facebook and Taylor Swift. Finally a chance to make that "Why thar no not like button on da web book" page that the world is practically begging for. Or maybe not, because it turns out the monied elites that rule over us aren't thrilled with the idea of periods and suck being placed after their names by the new breed of Solzhenitsyns eager to battle the Beast System and also bad pop music.

The new Internet domain .sucks has stirred up a firestorm over free online speech and the potential for extortion against companies and individuals.

Yes, you read correctly, extortion. We have created an AaronZehner.sucks site full of lies and character assassinations. Leave ten million in unmarked bills in a P.O. Box or suffer the full wrath of a new top level domain no one has actually heard of.

The company operating this new domain claims it is "designed to help consumers find their voices and allow companies to find the value in criticism."

We are high-minded and noble heroes who use blowjob language to appeal to humanity's worst impulses. Finally that negative review of Microsoft products will have a home, unlike now where they have successfully scoured any and all criticism from the inner-tubes.

But critics see it as a shakedown scheme designed to force companies and individuals to fork over cash to keep an unfavorable or offensive website offline.

It's so hard to pick a side in this fight, what with everyone being so completely awful.

According to media reports, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and other large companies have bought up the domains by exercising their trademark priority rights, presumably with no intent to use them. Music star Taylor Swift reportedly did the same thing.

Wow, she really can turn those tables. Trouble, trouble. Shook this one right off. Thank you lame commercial gym for forcibly exposing me to this garbage to the point where I can reference it effortlessly.

Also, our ruling reptiles seem to be really afraid of a few semi-literate dirt bags creating special "you suck" sites for them. It's almost like this all just a giant house of cards. 18 trillion in debt you say? Huh, how about that.

What has fueled concerns is that the domain registrar, a Canadian-based company called Vox Populi, is charging $2,500 for the website names -- far more than a typical website registration of $10 to $25 -- before the names are opened to the public on June 1.

Oh, Canada. It's the neighbor that seems normal enough, but has a basement full of dope and holds regular wife-swap parties. Anything goes up there, man.

This really is some sleazy stuff, in all seriousness.

The Intellectual Property Constituency, an advisory group to the global Internet domain regulator, complained last month that the "exorbitant sums" are effectively a "shakedown scheme" to get money from companies and others.

They already got their T. Swizzle money, bro. It's a little late for this.

After the June 1 deadline, online trolls or "cybersquatters" could buy up the names and then extort even higher prices, according to the group which includes film, software and music industry associations and other trademark organizations.

Another victory for the free market! Look at all the value that's being created by the invisible hand of human garbage!

The group last month urged the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages the domain system, to stop the .sucks domain before it goes live.

Please vaguely defined shadow entity, stop this Canadian evil!

"Break down the cockpit doors, American internet! Assume the controls!"

Atallah told AFP however that as a result of the complaint, ICANN decided to forward the matter to regulators in the United States and Canada.

Regulators. We regulate any stealing of billionaire intellectual property. We're damn good, too. But you can't be any geek from a vaguely defined governing body. Gotta be handy with the domains, earn your keep.

John Berard, chief executive at Vox Populi, told AFP the new domain is something that companies can use to engage with consumers, and that he sees the word "sucks" as "edgy" but not pejorative.

It might have been edgy in 1981. Now with children's programs routinely spewing the foulest of foul words, to say nothing of R-13 movies for preteens, I don't think so.

"We think we're creating an opportunity for interaction that is meaningful," he said.

I'd respect you more if you were honest about your moral leprosy, I really would.

"If a company were to establish its own .sucks site and drive that discussion to a centralized location it might be quite a valuable asset."

Think of the synergy, raised awareness, cross-branding and strategic communication these fellatio-themed sites will allow. 

Berard added that the pricing "reflects what we believe to be the value of the names."

This dot suck site is a valuable commodity! Really!

Asked about ICANN's letter to regulators, Berard said, "I don't think that anyone who takes a look will find a problem."

Please do not "mount up."

The debate comes with ICANN acting to vastly expand the number of so-called generic top-level domains (gTLDs) from the traditional ones like .com and .gov, including some such as .porn and .wine.

Well, at least we have our priorities straight. Please visit my new site at EndtheUnitedNations.wine.

Full Article

Komment Korner  

Voltaire highly influenced our Founders and Framers

Obama.sucks is already taken

www.hillary.sucks

Free speech free speech for the dumb. Free speech free speech for the dumb.

Why not ".sux?"

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Too Much Time On Facebook Can Lead To Feeling Depressed

When I'm feeling down nothing improves the old vital humor balance faster than providing potentially damaging information about myself to the entire internet, looking with jealousy at the material possessions of my "friends" and thinking lots of impure thoughts while sorting through perfectly innocent beach/bending over/somehow lost my pants pictures. Oddly enough, it seems my experience is not what you'd call typical. According to the same experts that routinely fail to diagnose obvious pathologies in ticking human time bombs the Facebook experience might actually lead to The Sad.

From photos of that incredibly fit friend to new baby announcements and vacation gloaties, Facebook can sometimes be a source of anxiety and envy.

I'm so nervous and jealous. Come on, are there any two emotions more in step with the modern American experience? Throw in a little healthy dislike of "the other" and you're all set. Still, it would appear that the "gloaties," a word that definitely needs to be destroyed by one of those Ministry of Truth re-writers, are wrecking our fragile psychological well-being. Stop showing me your Easter Island photos Mr. Work Acquaintance, it's tearing me up inside!

University of Houston researchers found that Facebook users felt depressed when comparing themselves to others on the site.

If we'd just start comparing ourselves to imprisoned criminals and those without pre-fab McMansions we'd immediately feel better. Please launch HumanDerelictBook.Com so this is possible.

The lead researcher notes that too much time using Facebook and comparing oneself to others can be linked to depressive symptoms.

And not the good kind of depression you get from taking goof balls or Coors Lite, but the bad kind where you get weepy and write horrible poetry.

“One danger is that Facebook often gives us information about our friends that we are not normally privy to, which gives us even more opportunities to socially compare,” lead researcher Mai-Ly Steers said on the school’s website. “You can’t really control the impulse to compare because you never know what your friends are going to post.”

Yeah, I just never know what those crazy guys and gals are going to slap up there on the old information gathering site next. It certainly won't be endless cat pictures, "amazing" videos from lame mainstream websites or "funny" images of old timey people with modern snark added. No, it's totally impossible to predict. "Here's me dissolving my date in the bathtub!" Man, you wild dudes. Now I'm depressed.

Look at this wacky stuff! My life is like an awesome sitcom! Hope it doesn't make you all sad!

Researchers also note, though, that the findings do not indicate that Facebook causes depression.

Think of it as a mirror held up to your pathetic loser life, not the cause of said life.

The article is published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

I'd say that journal used to be full of serious, high quality studies, but let's get real here.

Avoid depressing ads for things you don't need by skipping the source. http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/04/08/no-surprise-here-too-much-time-on-facebook-can-lead-to-feeling-depressed/

Komment Korner

all my "friends" were deluging me with useless communication on subjects like fake farming games and mafia wars.

It would be depressing to know you're just like all the people who use Facebook.

Facebook is computer trash.

Too much Hussein Obama causes depression too, in a myriad of ways. Cruz 2016.

Good point. "I saw a girl on the internet who loved it when the guy did x, y and z to her, so why won't you let me do those things to you?


Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Which Way Books #2: Vampires, Spies and Alien Beings

After a potential hollow earth adventure ended by playing it safe and avoiding danger it's back to Which Way Books. They're what I'd imagine the Choose Your Own Adventure series would have resembled if it had been produced by East Germans. You've got stark, utilitarian prose, tons of White space where words or illustrations probably should be but are absent in a masterstroke of bleak, modernist art and a quality that veers from pretty good to "There are two doors, which one?" making up an entire page. For all its obvious shortcomings, there's a certain charm to this series. Like that Soviet bloc product, you get the feeling that with everything that was stacked against the makers, including their own considerable limitations, the moderately serviceable final result still represents the best that could be hoped for. On days when the kommissar is there it can aspire to even greater heights than, "well, that's something."

Compare that to Twist-a-Plot, where clearly talented people were involved but they just didn't care and had a massive amount of contempt for their potential readers. I'll take my entire page with two sentences on it, thanks, as long as those two sentences aren't full of terrible, suspension of disbelief shattering attempts at comedy.

You know what, maybe we should just start reading this book.

Today it would be vampires, factory owners and kinky billionaires.

With all the artistry of a Minsk apartment building I'm informed I won the "Grin Toothpaste Sweepstakes." That's pretty much it as far as that goes: no attempts to expand on the concept, no jokes about consuming thousands of tubes of the stuff en route to this amazing triumph, nothing. The only reason it's even mentioned is to provide a fig of explanation for what follows and having served that purpose we just move on. Nice.

The big prize is a trip to a movie lot, but before I can start watching amusing celebrity meltdowns there's crazy noises and the sort of glow that suggests imminent alien abduction. The guide is all "Oh no, it happened!" which might be more understandable in the face of a tantrum from a bankable star than this madness.

The explanation, as you probably already guessed, is the studio created a machine that turns fantasy into reality. Yeah, just let this idea wash over you. One thing you have to say about Which Way, they never met a high concept too ridiculous. "Turn on the reality machine, we need to create glistening blood-suckers of high school age!" Sounds a lot more sensible than endless remakes. 

I feel the Killer Goalie story should be told to every new generation.

The bottom line is we're caught in the "Reality Warp," which sounds more like what happens after a six pack of beer than a science fiction concept. An attempt to run, clearly the best weapon against the very fabric of our world being torn open in pursuit of an off-brand E.T. knockoff, fails when I crash into an invisible barrier and am confronted by three "grays." For some reason the book let's you simply walk away from this inescapable mess to see the vampire movie area, so I do that. 

I end up in a dark classroom where stern Mr. Draco (Man, Harry Potter stole from everything, no matter how humble and forgettable) and am instructed to take a seat. I'm informed by a classmate that the one I selected used to belong to "Charlie" but he was murdered the night before. Well, it's not like he's going to need it, then. 

  If Dracula had studied liberal arts instead of business.

The school day goes by without result and it's pretty clear this part was written to stand alone and then shoe-horned into the "Movie comes alive!" conceit to fill pages. The "reality warp" and movie lot tour have been forgotten and this is all described as banal and ordinary. The teacher wants me to stay after, since I'm new and all. The meeting is going down when halfway through there's a horrible odor. Yeah, creatures of the night were a little different before they discovered their love for erotic tie-up games. I'm given a chance to bolt, but honestly this book is robbing me of my will to resist and I'd kind of like to wrap things up.

Draco denies that there is any smell, which of course confirms that he's the origin. Then I get dizzy and pass up. Yup, they really missed the boat on the concept of vampires using their horrible personal hygiene to get their victims as the centerpiece of the new, totally lame mythology recent years produced.

I treat my hundreds of employees very well.

I wake up in a graveyard and, hey, it's Lisa! Remember her? Well no, in a nice continuity error the route I took to get here contained no references to this character, who apparently was another student that disappeared. I forgive the mistake. When you have to churn out dozens of words a day to write one of these it's easy to see how this might happen. Anyway, she's basically offering to turn me into a vampire, but I'm apparently so slow on the uptake that I just "feel strange" about this whole arrangement.

I tell her to put in the fangs and that's what happens. I'm given the dark gift and become an undying monster. Still, I'm an optimist to the last, realizing this means no more "decimal points" or being told not to stay up late. Sorry kid, if you're going to become an industrialist like most of the undead you're gonna need that long division. 

All amazing.

I didn't like this one. It seems likely that the author couldn't manage the 3,000 words required to produce a full Which Way Book and just combined some failed, poorly edited fragments with the "reality warp" nonsense providing the link. It doesn't really auger well for this series that this sort of almost unbelievable laziness is already happening two books in. I also didn't like how clueless to obvious genre elements my character was. This isn't a zombie movie ("Some kind of ghoul...or walker? I don't know!") so there's really no excuse.

Maybe the "aliens" and "spies" portions were better, but I'd bet a shiny nickel against it.

  Mars needs suburbanites. 

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Michelle O’s ‘Healthy’ Lunches Going to the Pigs - Literally

I knew this was gonna be a winner just from the headline. Scare quotes? The word literally, which according to the dictionary can mean almost anything? Yes, this is going to be an incredible story of what happens when a program to save our bloated nation fails miserably and must be reverted to swill. In a way it's brilliant: take the food no one wants and feed it to the most magically delicious animal in the entire world. Yucky vegetables and disgusting fruits transformed through digestive and butchering alchemy into delicious bacon, pork, sausage and who knows what other money meats. In another, more realistic way it's sad and pathetic, but let's take a glass half full attitude toward the current race to the bottom.

There’s one group of young eaters who like Michelle Obama’s school lunch program: pigs.

No, not you chubby. I mean literal (the first definition, not the one where it means it isn't literal) mud rolling sources of delicious stored calories. My mouth is already watering contemplating the inefficient transfer of potential energy when I bite into a First Lady fed swine product.

New Mexico’s Galloping Grace Youth Ranch is accepting fruits and vegetables thrown away by students at several elementary schools in the Rio Rancho area and collects some five tons per week.

Maybe the legendary efficiency and concern for detail of our federal government has been slightly exaggerated.

“It’s really whatever they don’t eat coming off of their trays, so when they get up to the trash cans they will scrape it into one of our buckets that we pick up on a daily basis,” ranch CEO Max Wade tells KRQE.

Thank you for explaining this complicated process, I was really struggling to form a mental image. Generation Nothing fills the can with wasted food, off to the pig farm. Got it.

Speaking of the pigs, goats and chickens gobbling up the students’ castaways, Wade says, “If you think about it, it’s a fresh salad bar every day. Fruits and vegetables and they love it.”

With enough rationalization the coming meltdown seems like a blessing. If you think about it, stealing the copper wires from derelict industry is a form of recycling! If you think about it, lying to receive benefits is a sort of karmic adjustment!

To underscore the point, he’s talking about the farm animals, not the school children.

Yeah, we got it. I guess it's my fault for still wearing that "Traditional Conservative, Please Use Small Words and Repeat Yourself Often" sign around my neck.

The goats prefer romaine lettuce, some pigs like grapes while others will eat “anything.” The chickens like the dinner rolls.

When not eating rusted tin cans goats are the food snobs of the animal kingdom.

It left me too weak to resist common core math.

Earlier this year, a New York district estimated its students throw away 85 percent of their fruits and vegetables.

How well the imitation wadded beef is doing remains unknown.

“If we cut up 20 pounds of cucumbers, we guess that 17 pounds get thrown away. I’ve watched kids take their cup of vegetables or fruit they’re required to take and just throw it away.”

"Man, that global starvation is like so not cool, dude. Let me go throw away some food now."

The Nebraska Farmers Union was working to partner with Lincoln-area schools to collect discarded food to fuel a worm farm, known as vermiculture.

Yet another worm farm success story.

Some 3,000 pigs at a Rhode Island hog farm scarf up uneaten fruits and vegetables, too.

I think I've given you enough isolated anecdotes to make the point.

Two Rhode Island districts – North Smithfield and Burrillville – that are sending their scraps to My Blue Heaven Farm. Both districts are participants in the National School Lunch Program, which is implementing the hated federal lunch rules.

Not to be confused with My Blue Heaven fantasy camp, where I went last year and had a great time pretending to be a mob informant relocated to a small California town. 

Full Story.

Komment Korner  

anything government puts their hands on gets destroyed... ruined...

Naaahhhh, those are just your peon kids, they will eat whatever their Dear Leader tells them to eat.

Perhaps they should move to Russia or China to see how well things work there.

To see what BHO has in mind for America google the 'Holodomor"

Just to clarify, we at Galloping Grace Youth Ranch do not feed the cafeteria scraps to the pigs, only to the chickens. The Federal Swine Act states that any meat products must be recooked prior to feeding pigs. We do collect fruit and vegetable discards from local grocery stores and food banks and feed this to them. In the end, we donate the pork back to local food banks and food pantries.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.