‘Splainin’
The other day Momma called and wanted to know what The Cloud everybody was talking about was. Momma is 86 years old. I was tempted to tell her it was a rock band and leave it at that, but Momma is real good at catchin’ me at stuff when I try to make my life easier.
I didn’t know where to start. “It’s a date storage system,” was not the answer she was looking for. She wanted to know why they call it a cloud and is it a satellite and can the cloud eat her bank records and why would anyone possibly need something like that and are you sure it’s safe and have you told your brother about this and can you see it in the sky?
God is going to hold me accountable for this but I finally said, “Look, Momma, it has something to do with s-e-x and you don’t want to know about it.” She agreed and went on to tell me about her yellowbells growing on the back fence.
Texas Congressvarmint Louie Gohmert is not as smart as Momma. If he doesn’t understand something, it has to be a government conspiracy. But instead of asking questions, Louie thinks he already has the answer and wants to stump the computer wiz.
You really need to go read read the whole thing because Louie could be all Three Stooges at once.
The wheel and fire are also government conspiracies and Louie is just waiting for the right time to make hay with that information.
Now you know what turning Texas blue is called Battleground Texas. We have to fight stoopid.
Thanks to everybody for the heads up.
Louie may not be “asking for a fruit comparison.,” but I sure want to give him one. He is crazy as a kumquat.
What a pity Ted Stevens is dead. Perhaps only he could adequately explain to Louie how the series of tubes that is the Internet actually works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
1It was described…”like trying to explain how the internet works to your grandfather.” Unfortunately, explaining to this man how governing, rational discourse and compromise are supposed to work ends similarly.
2It’s in the cloud, all right, obscured by the murky fog of dementia.
With all those ranches, Texas must have a fair number of fences, which implies a whole lot of fence posts. You need them all, because evidently a huge number of your politicians are dumb as a post and you don’t want one idiot to have to share his dumbpost with another idiot.
3it is evident that Microsoft’s “Scroogle” ads have not escaped Louie’s notice. I was pretty sure that it was targeting the dumb & fearful segment of the market & Louie provides confirmation.
4The Cloud is a rip off of a communications term by Micro Squash. In telecom the cloud is the path taken by a signal through what ever path is available. This is done by computer switching. A call from Houston to Lufkin could go through Alexandria La. which is not a direct path. Since electricity travels really fast it don’t matter. They started calling it the Cloud because no could be sure where the signal was. So called Cloud computing is just storing your data on some monster server farm. Something I will never do. I used to do telecom and computers for a living I know info is not private or safer there. As if it is really private anymore anywhere. This is just a way to charge you a recurring fee for something you can already do.
5Granted that Gohmert has fewer functioning neurons than a snail, I find the whole concept of “targeting” ads to customers based on email content (or even which site they visited) ludicrous.
Google’s, and the ad community’s success rate in targeting ads to me is zero. Ditto spammer attempts (I noticed an uptick in shoe-brand spam in my LiveJournal after I posted about knitting socks. You’d think they’d realize that a woman my age knitting socks is probably not the target audience for illegal knock-off high-performance athletic shoes.) The ads that pop up on my screen at various sites (You Tube, for instance) seem to have interpreted my interest in science, environmental issues, politics, to mean that I’m a young male who also has concerns about “pleasing your woman.” (And then there was the site that was supposed to tell you from a sample of your writing if you were a male or female writer. Er…no. A bunch of us writers had fun with that one…random success rate.)
6Consider the source.
7For Momma the simplest explanation of the cloud is that it is another word for the internet and they call it the cloud because they use a cloud shaped symbol for it. Another way is to say it is like the electric grid. You don’t need to know how to build it to use it, just plug in and stuff works.
Amazing thing about Louis is that he has no idea how stupid he looks and sounds. On the other hand it must appeal to his constituents. Is there nobody smarter to run against him? I gather the last contender was pretty much cut from the same cloth but wearing a Democratic label.
8I was just glad I have a keyboard protector when I got to the “fruit comparison,” because otherwise I would be cleaning the diet soda out of the keys.
9An interesting comment on the article:
“Oh- for those wondering why the people of Tyler and its rural environs don’t vote for someone else… in 2010 Gohmert was the MOST LIBERAL of the four candidates for TX-CD1. In 2012 he did have a Democratic challenger… a mostly paper candidate who, going by her website, was almost as conservative and incoherent as Gohmert. Being a Democrat, a woman, and African-American, she managed to get 27% of the vote in a deeply racist, sexist, and rural portion of the state. Long story short: Gohmert wins because no better candidate ever comes forward, not necessarily because he’s beloved.”
10Looks like Battleground Texas might have a little bitty crack to shine a light through?
What I can’t understand is how a person who reportedly has some education in his background could be so clueless. The mind boggles.
I had gotten a Kindle for a birthday/Christmas present and I was trying to explain the cloud to my husband.
Joe doesn’t even use ATM cards so it was quite a discussion.
he’s smart so it didn’t take too long.
My daughter called while I was reading my Kindle and I could hear Joe say to Kris, “your mother’s not here she’s in her cloud, reading.”
Now I’m going to read Gohmert’s article. Need another cup of coffee.
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