Last Link Log? (With Wail)

Categories: Animals, Books, Fashion, Food, Malheur, Me...but first, click here:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-frugal-gracious-living-challenge--2/x/997637#/

Animals 

Heartwarming feral cat story:

http://blogjob.com/pets/2016/01/man-feeds-stray-cat-at-hawker-stall/

Books 

This weekend I re-read, and decided to part with, Joshua Harris's I Kissed Dating Goodbye. It was a slightly more dramatic (youthful enthusiasm?) restatement of the attitude toward "dating" that was prevalent at my church college, where you might be especially attracted to A but were still expected to be almost equally friendly with B, C, D, and on through Z. You could enjoy A's company on an almost daily basis without making any commitments...because you really were "just good friends" who, in moments of passion, might express intense feelings for each other by gripping both hands when you shook hands after a pleasant evening. It was a delightful social ambiance...for HSPs anyway. Here's another writer, who sounds about the age Harris was when he wrote that book, expressing the same feelings.

http://blogjob.com/teendiaries/2016/01/11/an-emotional-trauma-of-love/

Fashion 

Cheap clothes, not all but many of which are made (specifically for the export market) in various Asian countries, tend to be overpriced if you buy them at stores like K-Mart. If you like to shop in aid of good causes, those cheap clothes aren't much of a problem...they almost never make it into secondhand stores.

http://blogjob.com/pennypinchers/2016/01/11/cheap-clothes-arent-cheap/

Food (Yum)

A fresh, savory way to get the Vitamin E middle-aged people need, just in case someone out there is tired of sweet potato desserts...

http://blogjob.com/breakfast/2016/01/09/savoury-sweet-potato/

If your New Year's resolution was to eat healthier...

http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5e58f59d97611f910916b6276&id=8be8ee33db&e=4d57a9fdfb

I wouldn't put cheese in the "yum" category, but you might. Here's an article about things to do with cheese that sound yummy to me, since they don't involve eating it:

http://nowiknow.com/behold-the-power-of-cheese/

Malheur 

Prosecution of a crime, or could it be a land grab?

http://reason.com/archives/2016/01/12/the-oregon-standoff-is-only-a-glimpse-at

Me 

I don't post about times of desperation as a prank, or even as a reaction to a "desperate" emotional mood. I didn't plan to post about one today, or want to. However, the fact is that for the past few days I've been walking to and from the computer center, in increasingly wintry weather, and having correspondingly, increasingly unpleasant bronchitis. Third flare-up of the typical complication of this year's "it's more like a cold than a flu, so flu shots don't work." Grandma Bonnie Peters had pneumonia and other serious complications from the same infection; I originally caught it while trying to help her. I've been having odd feverish-type sensations all day.

It is possible, indeed it feels probable, that I'm having a touch of depression-as-a-symptom. As David Myers explained in the textbook we used at Berea College, sometimes people need a bit of depression (temporary or chronic) to see the facts.

This site has been up for a week:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-frugal-gracious-living-challenge--2/x/997637#/

I know it takes more than a week for the kind of funders I'd like this project to attract to decide whether they want to fund things or not. However, the way the professional fundraisers at Indiegogo are handling their own campaign is discouraging me; and in any case I don't know that I have more than a week. If I keep on trudging in to publicize this project every day, I won't be able to do it. If I don't do it, I don't expect that anyone else will.

There really is a question of physical survival. I'm not far over age fifty, but I am over fifty--this is the third flare-up from one of those stupid little flu-bugs I didn't even notice a few years ago. I'm not earning enough money to pay for food or heat. The wood stove's not been repaired; the electricity may be cut off tomorrow. I did eat a little solid food yesterday, and what it did was make me sick right before dawn this morning. When I go home we'll find out whether I'll be starving out my infection(s), starving to death, or freezing.

Here's what I'll not be doing: making any effort whatsoever to survive without POSITIVELY THRIVING on $1,000 per month, guaranteed, for the rest of the year. If you're not as psyched about that project as I've been, I honestly don't care to spend any more time writing anything for you to read. I'm not thrilled about the idea of growing older or sicker than I am today, either.

I didn't expect this to happen...well, before age thirty, I didn't expect my fiftieth birthday to happen either. For many years, lots of people liked what I did, and so signified by paying for it. That was not entirely due to youthful sex appeal; not all of those people had physically seen me. I can still do the same work. People still seem as willing as ever to use what I do, what I've done, in all kinds of ways and on all kinds of levels.

But a lot of good people have died in the last twenty years...and, in the last ten years, what I've seen more of is this attitude that people don't need to pay for what other people do. People are all about "needs." "Just go on welfare and beg for what you 'need'!" "But I 'need' this, I shouldn't have to pay for it!" Yesterday someone actually said to me "I don't have $10" [this person was clutching a $20 lottery ticket at the time] "but I might have $10 worth of canned goods I could give you" in trade for something I'd made that would sell for $20 on Etsy.

I don't know a lot of honest people any more. Most of the people I see every day are, frankly, thieves, frauds, cheats, and various other forms of trash; they operate according to what people my age used to call a criminal mind. I used to like the majority of people I knew and believe that they liked me. A generation is passing, and that's no longer the case.

I've promised myself for a long time that, when I become unable to earn my living, I'll stop eating.

I put my back, as well as my money, where my mouth is...even if most people in cyberspace don't seem to.

Few things in life are guaranteed and it's possible that a real-world funder might pop into the computer center during the next few minutes, but, as of the present moment, I can't plan to come in tomorrow. Or ever. I may post and socialize again; I may not. What you need to keep in mind, if you prefer that I do post and socialize again, is that you need to do something different in order for it to happen.

I'm not a violent person, and have no plans to commit suicide, as such, unless anybody harasses me with any conversation that does not follow the model of "See, I'm funding your project with $100 or more! Please, please, carry on with your project, exactly as planned! See how supportive I am!"

I'm old enough, and have lost enough friends and relatives, to say this: if anybody drags their sorry carcass up to my home and I appear to be neither fully recovered nor completely dead, please know that I'll be enjoying the best finale our lives in this world can possibly have. I'll be, on whatever level it really is, in a place where there's no more coughing, no more sprue, no more lost loved ones, and no more need to deal with the trash with criminal minds. I'll finally have departed in peace, to be warmed and filled (James 2:16). I've enjoyed most of the past ten years, but even so I'll be happier and better off than I've been during those ten years. So, for Heaven's sake, don't wake me up.

If you want any of my web sites to continue to exist, there's supposed to be a Paypal button you can use here on Blogspot, although it's never worked for me. There's one on Blogjob; it has worked for me. There's a professionally managed fundraising campaign, for what that's (apparently not) worth, on Indiegogo.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-frugal-gracious-living-challenge--2/x/997637#/

There's even real life...if you get your first substantial contribution, and I mean no discouragement with anything other than Benjamins, in ahead of pneumonia, starvation, or freezing.

If you don't have a Benjamin to your name, please just shut up, sit still, and try to be as brave about these facts as I feel, myself.