My PRE-PAID Ticket to the Next 4 Years

 

Since this blog is about hacking and the perfect computer virus, I've got to hand it to the election people in five states. Well played, folks! I couldn't have done it better, myself.

Yes, I've been pouting about my election prediction. But on the bright side, I bought my pre-paid ticket to the next 4 years of Trump's 2024 campaign. He may be an obnoxious SOB, but he's my obnoxious SOB, and I have a front-row seat that beats watching any late-night television show monologues. I went and got a big box of CostCo Movie Popcorn. Let the show begin.

#maga #donaldtrump #hacking2020

Destroying Angel's Election Prediction

 Axiom 1:    Most people realize that pollsters put respondents' preferences into a database.

Axiom 2:    As a result, because they don't want retaliation from biased media, high-tech, bad guys in general, etc., a large number of Trump supporters actually lie to pollsters.

Axiom 3:    Conservatively, Destroying Angel predicts that at least 10% of Trump supporters will tell pollsters they support Joe Biden.

Net-net:    Take whatever poll you want and subtract 5% from Biden and add 5% to Trump.

Hence, even the most pessimistic Trump polls are, in reality, predictions for a resounding Trump victory on November 3, 2020.

I figured I'd post this in advance of the elections, just to have it in writing and out there. If pollsters want to pull their industry out of the crapper, they should take those names and phone numbers from their database of Biden supporters, select a truly random sample, and send people out to the respondents' homes for a personal interview. This should be the NEW BEST PRACTICES for future political polling.

Taman Shud.

Enough of this Republican National Committee Email already!

 

Yesterday alone, I received 61 fund-raising emails from people representing the Republican National Committee. Luckily, over this election season I have 33 filters on my email that dump these into my junk folder. Yes, I could have "unsubscribed" to these, but I thought I'd get an idea of effective political solicitation subject lines. I'll leave that exercise up to the reader. In the meantime, damn but I'll be glad when this election is over. My wife asked me when I was going to turn on the Christmas lights around our house. She said, "On your birthday?" I said no, I'll be turning them on the day after the freaking election.

Selah.

Winner of the 1st-place Golden Quill award

 

I have four stories in this award-winning anthology, one of which predicts Salesforce's Marc Benioff will become President of the United States. Another stars Woody Harrelson in a redux of The Devil and Daniel Webster titled (duh) The Devil and Woody Harrelson. Add to that a first-contact story and wrap it up with an immortal being who plays a really mean guitar, and you have four cool stories. Check out Cresting The Sun on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cresting-Sun-Brian-C-Hailes-ebook/dp/B082QMFJ2C

Come on, man! 30-40- Trump fundraising emails a day is over the top.

Dear Mr. President: Your army of fund-raising minions are totally out of conrol. I sent you a couple of donations, and now my email inbox is buried every day in notes from everybody under the sun, asking for more. So far, I have sixteen rules that automatically dump these emails into the junk bin on my desktop computer. Unfortunately, my Android smart phone doesn't have this capability, and that's where I do most of my email checking. My humble request: IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT'S HOLY, PLEASE FIRE A FEW OF THE BASTARDS!Sincerely,Destroying Angel

Hacking buying a tux: Have a Zoom wedding!

Yesterday, our granddaughter got married. Only parents and siblings attended in person. The rest of us got to Zoom in. Hey, I didn't have to get out my tux and iron that frilled shirt!

Damn! Terrorists now have a road map with COVID-19

Awh crap! Now that The Bad Guys have seen the effect COVID-19 has had on the world economy, it's time for all the terrible stuff from The Book of Revelation to come forth. An airborne mutating virus with much more lethal capability than coronavirus could cause some biblical stuff to happen, dammit!

#zombiland #covid-19 #coronavirus #biowarfare

Hacking COVID-19: Finally working on my rock opera.

I'm thinking that COVID-19 is finally my chance to put some serious time into turning my novel Destroying Angel into a Broadway musical, a rock opera. Of course, my music sophistication is dated, probably to the first half of the 1960s with a bit of Tommy thrown in. But if Mel Brooks can get away with several iterations of The Producers, then I just might pull this off.

Stay tuned.

How I turned $2 million into almost $418 million

How does a guerrilla warfare ad man keep his eyes on what is current in the culture? My own trick is to play the Hollywood Stock Exchange. The account is free, and when you sign up they give you $2 million in fake "Hollywood Dollars" to bet on how movies will do. As of today, my $2 million original seed money has turned into $417,998.09.

I tend to bet on how things will do on their opening weekends, with an occasional "long shot" on a movie that I think is a sleeper. Like the John Wick franchise. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown me off a little, since it has absolutely killed theatre attendance.

Nevertheless, to those of you guerrilla warriors who want to keep your fingers on the social pulse of America, I highly recommend the Hollywood Stock Exchange.

#hsx #guerrillawarfare

Advice to CMOs: Creativity only happens in a "state of play"

The hardest bit of advice for any CMO to take these days is the most critical to your success: "Creativity only happens in a state of play." Whether I'm working on my current novel or creating another scurrilous piece of guerrilla warfare for a client, I always start my mornings with some playful mental calisthenics. Today, I was remembering my stand-up comic act for the 2016 America's Got Talent auditions. Maybe the world wasn't ready for Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff jokes. But someday, somewhere, boy do I have a rip-roaring funny after-dinner routine.

In the meantime, find a way to enter into a STATE OF PLAY before you attempt to solve today's problems.

#cmoadvice #stateofplay #larryellison #marcbenioff

Guerrilla Warfare: Turning a client's $25K into over $625K with Peter Max

Here's a little-known fact about the IRS and art. If you hold a piece of artwork for one year and then give it away to a non-profit (like a library or a museum), you can deduct the appraised value of that art as a donation on your 1040 income tax form. Back about 1979, my literary agent also worked with famous artist Peter Max, and I came up with an idea.

My client needed a gift for 250 salespeople at their million-dollar club event. We paid Peter Max $25,000 to create an original piece of art for my client, along with 250 signed and numbered prints of that art. The client got the origiinal to hang in their lobby, and the salespeople each got a print. Later that year, I had an art appraiser issue certificates that each print was worth $2500, and encouraged the sales people donate their print to a non-profit one year and one day after they got their prints, and to take the $2500 tax deduction. That amounted to $625,000 in deductions. In addition, the original art appraised at quite a bit more, and the client home office took a gigantic donation deduction.

Now a caveat for you artists. The artist himself cannot donate his or her work and have the same kind of tax treatment. But if you know an up-and-coming artist and need a gift for your salesforce, you can win on multiple fronts:

1. You can put some serious food on the artist's table.
2. You can give your salesforce a gift for which you pay $100, but which your giftee can use to obtain a much larger tax deduction the following year.

Win-win, eh?

Oh, yeah. This went over so well that the client did another Peter Max deal for the following year.

BTW, notice my watch. It was an HP-1 calculator watch. Quite an advanced piece of technology in 1979.

#guerrillawarfare #petermax #artforfunandprofit

When I refused to sell my invention to Stirling Moss, the most famous race car driver in the world

Back in the late 1970s when I was a mathematician-turned-inventor, I got a call from my idol, possibly the greatest race car driver to have ever lived: Stirling Moss. He wanted to buy my HAGOTH VOICE STRESS ANALYZER. I refused to sell him one, and he got a little upset with me. That is, until I told him that I'd almost destroyed my dad's car on the S-curve on the way to our country club as I tried to imitate him. I'd be pleased to give him one of my units if he was ever in the USA.

Surprise surprise! He was racing a classic birdcage Maserati in Sebring, Florida and offered to let me advertise on him and the car. So I met him in Sebring and, as you can see, he has my HAGOTH logo on his fire suit. My magnetic HAGOTH signs were THE ONLY ADVERTISING on the car (much to the chagrin of the car owner). No STP stickers. No Penzoil sign. Just my HAGOTH on each door of the car.

He won that race. Here he is crossing the finish line.

Somewhere in my piles of negatives I have a side view of the car, but for the life of me I can't find it.

I'm still waiting for Woody Harrelson to call me and ask about my screenplay The Devil and Woody Harrelson. Ya gotta dream big, and I always go for that brass ring.

My voice stress analyzer made the front page of every major newspaper in the country, and I appeared on ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's Today and Tomorrow with Tom Snyder shows, the Mike Douglas Show, and on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour. I'm still waiting to become the Tom Clancy of my little mountain community in Draper, Utah.

#stirlingmoss #invention #voicestressanalyzer #sebring #birdcagemasarati #ABCGMA #NBCToday #mikedouglas #mcneillehrer #woodyharrelson

My First Home Computer: circa 1976

Okay, I'm bragging now. On the left is my first home computer. I got it in 1976. It was a PDP-11/34 with 32 KB of RAM memory, and the two washing-machine-size disk drives (the Darth Vader helmet that Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz gave me sits on them) were 5MB each. It was a 16-user RSTS time sharing system, and required me to install 220V power and a special air conditioner in my den. This is the system I used to run my electronics company and, later, my run for the U.S. Congress in 1978.

Interestingly, the two leather chairs in the foreground are the same chairs that sit in the Pirate Cottage today (see the photo above). Gosh, leather lasts a long time.

You know, back in the day, I wrote a realtime operating syystem in just 700-bytes of assembly language code. Those were the days my friends, those were the days.

#piratecottage #myfirstcomputer #starwars #garykurtz

The day I refused to sell actor Robert Conrad my invention

Back in the late 1970s, I proved that a mathematician could become an electronic engineer by learning Ohm's Law: V=IR. I invented the Hagoth voice stress analizer. One day I got a call from Robert Conrad, star of the TV show Black Sheep Squadron. He wanted to buy one, but I refused to sell it to him. He was a feisty guy, former Golden Gloves boxing champion, and got a little hot under the collar. Then I explained that his first TV show, Wild Wild West, inspired my invention. All those cool things he pulled out the heel of his cowboy boot intrigued me. So I told him that since he was the inspiration for my invention, I'd be delighted to give him one. I'd even fly down to the Black Sheep Squadron set and show him how to use it.

What a guy! He said, "Thank you. What can I do for you?" To which I replied that I'd love him to narrate the introduction cassette tape I sent out with each unit. He quickly agreed and I flew to California.

He'd shoot a scene and then come into his on-set motor home and narrate a few paragraphs. Then he'd go shoot another scene. After about half a day of this, he stopped in the middle of our recording session and said, "Do you know how much Eveready batery paid me to shoot their commercial, daring someone to knock that battery off my shoulder?" I said I didn't know, and he exclaimed, $560,000! They payid me $560,000 for that commercial, and I've spent half a day working for you and all I'm getting is this $1600 gadget!"

I laughed and said, "Cool, huh?"

He laughed, too. And finished the recording.

#robertconrad #blacksheepsquadron #wildwildwest

NIH hiding effects of malaria drug in treating COVID-19

The National Institute of Health website itself (click here if you don't believe me), has a chilling statement about the so-called "miracle drug" used for years to treat malaria. Just click on their website and search for the word "paranoia" before running out and buying more ammunition for your assault weapon. Oh wait, you can't find ammo in stores any more. Turns out this sentence is buried:

"However, there are a growing number of clinical reports that show these drugs may also have neurological side effects, including paranoia, anxiety and depression."

Okay DestroyingAngel, you say, big deal! Right? Ou contraire mon petit chu chu (my nod to France, where they breathlessly report a 100% cure rate for COVID-19 with the drug chloroquine). Say "No big deal" to the U.S. military when soldiers at Ft. Bragg came back, killed their wives, and committed suicide. And then there was the boat in the Persian Gulf.

The above data was sent to me by a brilliant lady whose former husband went on the malaria meds and became psychotic, to the point he tried to kill her. Yep, he's her former husband.

So with our president and Fox News excitedly reporting a possible "cure" for COVID-19, get set for a real kind of Zombieland. While the NIH doesn't quantify the "neurological effects" of chloroquine, my mathematician's brain suggests that if tens of millions of Americans get the drug, there will be some serious weirdness that requires us to protect ourselves from…real zombies.

Uh, remember to DOUBLE TAP.

Taman Shud

#covid-19 #coronavirus #zombieland #zombies #malaria #chloroquine