February 2024 – If there is something

Taylors cursed with an inflated sense of Taylorness

Following the ascension of a certain Taylor to the status of Galactic Superstardom, a whole slew of other Taylors are beginning to act as if their Taylorness confers superstar status on them. This disturbing new trend has some rather ordinary Taylors behaving as if they’re entitled to all the flattery and fawning of that Taylor whose popularity eclipses the Super Bowl.

Take, for instance, the case of LIV golfer Talor Gooch. After being snubbed by the Masters golf tournament and despite lacking a ‘y’ in his Talor, this counterfeit Taylor had the unmitigated gall to take a shot at four time major champion golfer Rory McIlroy.

“If Rory McIlroy goes and completes his grand slam without some of the best players in the world, there’s just going to be an asterisk. It’s just the reality. I think everybody wins whenever the majors figure out a way to get the best players in the world there,” Gooch said.

Did everyone catch that? If Rory McIlroy wins the Masters and completes the career grand slam, there will be an asterisk because three time LIV Golf winner Talor Gooch wasn’t in the field. Nevermind that all the top talent and major winners currently playing on the LIV tour will be there, the absence of Talor Gooch will necessitate an asterisk be affixed to Rory McIlroy’s legacy should he win the Masters tournament.

There is one Taylor whose name is spoken in just about every household in every corner of the universe, and still she isn’t capable of summoning the ego required to make a statement as dim-witted and tone-deaf as Talor Gooch’s comments. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to his Taylorness over powering his good sense.

Another Taylor who can always be counted on to demand the citizens of the world think of her before acting on their own interests is Taylor Lorenz. A “journalist” for the Washington Post, this Taylor has, in the past, scolded the rest of humanity for not maintaining the strictest Covid restrictions because she’s immunocompromised. Also, she saw fit to lecture everyone on the importance of journalism in the wake of some recent mass layoffs in the media. An actual journalist might have had a point, but she’s emblematic of the need to purge the profession of reporters doing advocacy and not reporting. Despite her mediocrity, her Taylorness won’t allow her a moment of self-awareness.

While the massively popular Taylor seems to be doing a pretty decent job keeping her ego in check, the same cannot be said of some of these other Taylors. They appear to feed off the worship and adulation aimed at her and redirect it at themselves. The Taylors are not alright. Someone in their circle needs to have a difficult conversation with them. Otherwise it’s going to get pretty ugly when their Taylorness crumbles and comes crashing down all around them.

Welcome to the New York State Supreme Court

In a bright New York courtroom, on a mahogany stand, there sat a rock and roll legend raising his right hand.

Do you promise to tell the whole truth, or something resembling the facts? Sorry, could you repeat that for the hard of hearing in the back.

Through a fog of tequila, peyote and THC roamed the dust covered memories of Don Henley.

“I remember scraps of paper, words written on a page, and a groupie in the corner who didn’t seem of age.

“I preferred yellow notepads and Glenn Frey preferred white, prompting hours of quarreling on which one we would write.

“I think we settled on yellow and the songs began to take shape, then we ran out of doobies and had to stop for a break.

“Someone nicked our notepads and sold them for a price, while the band was left with nothing but pink champagne on ice.”

Ed Sanders shuffled forward with his nurse in tow, “I’m here to cover Manson,” and sat down in the front row.

The room erupted in laughter, a guitar played some chords, up rose Don Felder whose solo blew off the doors.

Like a drum boomed the gavel and order was restored, while over in the corner an old Rolling Stone reporter snored.

From the bench the judge called out, “bailiff please tell me the time, we haven’t had this spirit here since 1969.”

For real, Rolling Stone today put these words in print, “the band didn’t want dirt on their 1890 breakup to be made public.”

They’re living it up at the New York State Supreme Court, what a nice surprise, bring your alibis.

President reduces global warming in White House ceremony

Out of concern for the safety of climate change activists who use their bodies to block the freeways of the nation’s capital, President Biden held a ceremony at the White House yesterday where he dialed back global temperatures by two degrees Fahrenheit. The president hosted members of Extinction Rebellion and several other climate groups to demonstrate the concrete steps his administration is taking to reduce global warming.

“Okay, everybody, most people don’t get to see this,” the president said, standing before an elaborate control panel. “Those buttons over there launch the nuclear missiles. We use these doodads to communicate with the aliens. We got one for the Greys and one for the Reptilians. And over here we have the global thermostat. My administration has heard you loud and clear. So, now I’m going to dial down global temperature by two degrees. Press hold. Bingo! Climate crisis averted.

“On behalf of the United States of America, I’d like to thank you all for being a monumental pain in the ass and drawing attention to this global crisis. But now you don’t need to lay down on the freeway anymore and prevent hard-working Americans from getting to their jobs or picking up their kids from school. You’re now free to stop gluing yourself to things and throwing soup on the Mona Lisa. Go out and have some fun! Have an ice cream cone! That’s what I’m going to do. And now your ice cream won’t melt so darn fast.”

It appears the Terminator Toothbrush story is just a false alarm

Not since Orson Welles incited mass hysteria with his 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast has a media event caused so much global panic.

First reported in a Swiss newspaper, the story of three million hacked toothbrushes repurposed as conscripts in a botnet army with the mission of taking down a Swiss company turns out to be more fiction than fact.

According to Fortinet, a security company that helped promote the story, a massive force of Terminator Toothbrushes did not cause millions of euros of financial damage:

“To clarify, the topic of toothbrushes being used for DDoS attacks was presented during an interview as an illustration of a given type of attack, and it is not based on research from Fortinet or FortiGuard Labs. It appears … the narrative on this topic has been stretched to the point where hypothetical and actual scenarios are blurred.”

Not so fast, though. Just because millions of sleeper agent toothbrushes weren’t activated to carry out cyber attacks doesn’t mean it couldn’t theoretically happen. It seems smart toothbrushes, smart refrigerators, smart electric blankets and smart bean bag chairs have very poor security and could be mobilized to carry out computer hacks at a massive scale.

The false alarm has incited deep paranoia among users of these ordinary household gadgets, with many living in fear of something as seemingly innocuous as a smart toaster or an internet lampshade. This has caused many to reimagine our dystopian future as one where humans become slaves to our home appliances.

Perhaps we’re already there.