I had given serious thought this week to Jim Babka's claim that "Read the Bills" had been a bipartisan Tea Party motif as long as "Outlaw 'eminent domain'" (Virginia has done what it can in that direction, so it's no longer a main focus of this web site, although it was) and "End Obamacare" (to which Congress is finally getting close, thank God). I think the main reason why other people haven't thought of it as a Tea Party motif is that it's sooo obvious, it appeals to a lot of people who wanted nothing else to do with the Tea Party. I think readable bills, as an idea with mass appeal, ranks higher than tax cuts, not much lower than GMO labelling, puppies, and grandchildren. This web site has posted jingles about Obamacare and the War on Small Towns; do we need one about Congress' moral obligation actually to read and debate bills, and share them with the electorate as well, to keep things like Obamacare being "passed in order to find out what's in" them? At this time of year a tune for "Read those bills, read those bills, read them all the way" comes to mind. I had thought it might be fun to see whether standing in the market would give my brain time to think of a year-round tune for less obvious lyrics on this theme. (It's hard to write songs in the cafe because of the piped-in music.)
On the other hand, few people actually trade in the Friday Market when air temperatures are below freezing. Cold weather boosts sales of warm durable knitted things, but only when pampered townsfolk dare to step out of their cars and feel the warmth thereof. One thing I like even less than not paying my fair share to support our upgraded Fire Department by setting up in the Friday Market: not earning enough money to pay my fair share to the Fire Department, while standing in the Friday Market and watching the cars pass by.
The ground hadn't frozen overnight. The wind chilled my hands and ankles, but it didn't really bite. The ground wasn't too wet to display things. Those low-hanging snow-type clouds weren't supposed to deliver actual snow, according to the Weather Service.
I walked past the market. I looked at the five vendors who'd dared to come out, all but one huddled inside their vehicles, and the one who was actually waiting on one shopper. The Sock Seller! I've tried to like the Sock Seller, and failed. She has been coming to Friday Market for a long time but started as a young widow, not a retiree; she's close enough to my age to feel competitive and make hostile dominance displays every time we've spoken. I didn't recognize the display of anyone I find more congenial than the Sock Seller. I saw one truck I didn't recognize, at all, and if I'd had any money to spend I might have gone to see what was being sold out of it, but...meh. I didn't see anybody who was likely to buy a book.
The most reliable way to predict the weather in Virginia is to think of it as something like your official enemy in grade school. It won't do anything really bad, but in exchange it'll always do whatever you find least convenient. Once in a while it may be possible for the weather to make itself less convenient for someone else than it is for you, personally, but generally--if you go out without an umbrella, however bright the sunshine was when you left the house, by the time you get back it'll rain. If people who have not sold a book manuscript this month are sufficiently inconvenienced by cold wind and are out shivering in it, selling cheap socks, and you go in flaunting your active metabolism and warm clothes, and set up a display of vintage books, you are demanding snow. If you have sold a book manuscript this month and you call that unexpected snow to ruin the Sock Seller's Christmas, that is just plain mean. No person I know seriously believes that this is the true explanation of local weather patterns--it's mostly a running joke, like Santa Claus--but nobody completely discounts it either.
I have a writing job to finish; it could be done in the afternoon hours only, but extra time for revisions (and e-mail and Twitter) is always nice. I decided to leave the one-dollar bills to the Sock Seller and work on the fifty-dollar job. Yesss...if the payment goes through promptly, this might bring my income for the week up over the $300 mark! (The cookbook manuscript sold for $300; Guru.com took out their collection fee.)
Thank you, Gentle Readers, and please keep those paid writing jobs coming, on and off all those writing sites...I'm beginning to hate Freelancer.com, but if somebody Out There were to commission a US$50 writing job through Freelancer, that'd destroy their feeble excuse for failing to deliver the NZ$40 payment for that book chapter someone bought through that site in 2015. Then I could either wipe out my balance with them and go after them properly, or have proof that they'd violated their own weaselly contract. Either would be an improvement over this ought-to-have-always-been-illegal garbage about their not being obliged to deliver payments below a certain level--Paypal exists to make it possible to send payments below US$1, and the Internet badly needs a regulation, enforced by the laws of all countries where a web site is allowed to do business, that would allow online contract workers to enable weekly payments only when daily earnings (e.g. page-view royalties on writing already purchased) are routinely below US$1, but would, in the absence of such a contract, automatically make contract payments to workers. Freelancer collected NZ$40 on a day when the international exchange rate translated that to U$30; the Internet should be set up to require that that US$30 went directly into my Paypal account, without my having to touch a key, before Freelancer's account could take in one single penny of any nationality. Freelancer has been collecting interest on that one measly payment for more than a year--and any attempt to clutch at that payment for even one day should have automatically put Freelancer into Whitescreen Mode.
Somebody in China tried to set up a "page view payments only" deal through Guru, and whether it's due to the new FCC's vigilance or to Guru's, that deal was removed from the system before anybody wasted a minute on it. I like that. It's how the Internet should have been set up from the day one.
Enough about me; on to this morning's cute Christmas e-mail, and why fans of Grandma Bonnie Peters should use this link.
Amazon thought you needed to know about this, and after checking it out I agree. Although you can't actually buy Santa's sleigh in real life or online, it's a cute, funny introduction to Amazon's relatively new and under-trafficked "Vehicles" category. (Amazon Associates like this web site have, in the past, had to use non-Amazon links when we wanted to illustrate a blog post with a car photo link. No more. You can order a car online from Amazon too--some cars, anyway.)
What do you think of Amazon's additions to existing Santa Claus lore? Would the reindeer ever retire? What about a car for Rudolph? Doesn't matter. The point of the Sleigh web page is that its search engine "carries" links you really could use to buy toys for 1.9 billion children, if you had that much e-money to spend. The Sleigh is strictly virtual, but it delivers just about any material present you can think of. (Hugs and hot cocoa are still up to you.)
Use the Sleigh to shop for other goodies at Amazon here.
But seriously...even if you're not in the market for a motor vehicle, and think Santa and his faithful reindeer will jollywell stick together...you should consider using the Sleigh, for as long as Amazon leaves the page up, to browse for purchases on Amazon. Why? Because each Amazon Associate's e-mail this morning contains an individual Sleigh link to use in aid of our own favorite charity. When you click on the Sleigh links above or below, you're directing a portion of Amazon's multiple charity support system's money to Grandma Bonnie Peters' favorite, the Adventist Disaster Relief Agency.
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| Click here to direct some of the money you spend on Amazon to ADRA. |
ADRA is about as legitimate as charities get. Because they use money for disaster relief only, very little money donated to ADRA goes to feed the Gimmee Monster. Christian workers use funds to deliver emergency supplies and support relocation and reconstruction efforts, such as everybody, "the just and the unjust" alike, needs after a fire, earthquake, tornado, etc. When people need more than that, ADRA is in a position to route people toward other kinds of help, public or private, church or secular, as may be indicated. "America First" type readers may enjoy reading that they are currently active in Puerto Rico...
ADRA has responded to disasters in the contiguous States too, but they are, like their parent church, global...and they have a "Gift Catalog" of ongoing ministry projects you might like to fund, including rescuing teenagers and pre-teens from sex trafficking, helping poor people invest in plants and animals to raise for food, fun, and profit, supplying schools, and generally helping communities recover from disasters.
Amazon didn't spell out in the e-mail, but does mention, that so far this for-profit web site has raised zero dollars for ADRA. This cause is dear to Grandma Bonnie Peters, who has been pinching out ten percent of her Social Security pension to send to it for many years...and who knows whether this will be the last Christmas when she can see any gift shopping done in aid of ADRA in this web site's name.
Aaand...for those of you who just don't like Seventh-Day Adventists, Amazon has provided a super-cute image for use in any follow-up e-mails you might get! I don't know whether S.D.A. spammers even exist, but I'm personally acquainted with a scummy scammer lawyer who's active in aid of the S.D.A.-funded school where he was in one of my classes, so who knows. In any case I don't think Amazon will share your address with anybody. But feel free to share with all the spammers you're about to block from your e-mailbox, if you bother to send them an e-mail explaining why you're blocking them, this image:
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| It delivers virtual lumps of coal...I think ADRA usually does better by disaster survivors than that, but hey, whatever it takes to keep'em from freezing! ADRA works in some very cold places...despite all those images from tropical countries they have offices in 135 countries with recent activity in Canada, the Ukraine, Slovenia, and Austria. |
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