It's been a busy weekend...A magazine editor very kindly sent me a copy of someone else's book for review. I did not like the book. The editor obviously did. So will many of the magazine's readers. The book works as escape fiction; I just don't happen to like escape fiction. I'm not sure whether it's meant to have a Serious Message; it can be read as having one and I didn't like the message, either. So I was writing about why people who like that kind of thing would like something I personally haaated, which is always an interesting chore, anyway...and because of the week of sunshine I was also dealing with a nasty glyphosate reaction involving lots of unscheduled napping and loss of blood and so on. Then I finally had the chance to take my broken-down work bench apart and put it back together. It did not leave a lot of time for link-hunting, or even watching John Maclane's new movie, which is actually getting decent reviews from people who are wired to get into movies.
And then I had a lot of wordy reactions to things I found online that aren't news, and/or don't deserve links, but...
Business
We hear that Kingsport's original Wal-Mart, out on Stone Drive, wants to join the list of local stores that encouraged their cashiers to "be assertive" and indulge in little social dominance displays toward customers.
The photos aren''t links, but you can Google each photo and get links to TV and newspaper reports about the stores,. I opened only one search page; the phrase "Rude employees" leaped off the screen, just below the photo.
Seems as if the prudent store owner would be training all employees...NEVER give anyone a reason to post the phrase "rude employees" on a Google Review. Don't speak before you're spoken to. Don't stare. Don't "call" if you can help it, and if a "call" just bursts out of you, be SURE it's "Sir" or "Ma'am." Don't chatter. Don't gossip. Don't let your shadow fall within six feet of a customer. Always ask yourselves "How respectful is it possible to be?" Never let yourself imagine that you are in control of anything beyond the ends of your noses. Just control what you can control--yourself: make sure every part of your body language exudes your real physical need to please the customer who is the source of the shirts on your backs.
Kingsport does not currently look like a city that can afford to have one store where one employee speaks out of turn to any customer--even if the employee is sure it's one of the city's new homeless population. If one of them comes into the store to piddle on an employee's leg, the employee might be pardoned for saying "Please Sir, may this servant humbly beg your gracious pardon, Sir, the restrooms are over here"--but the tone should be subservient at all times! When I see an employee yapping insolently at a homeless derelict, I think how much that employee needs to be flopping down right beside him in the alley, unemployed, unemployable, just another useless extrovert that will never be missed.
Kingsport looks like a city that needs to keep its extroverts in fear. "If offensive noises, e.g. words that are not 'Thank you Sir' or 'Thank you Ma'am' or a very very polite and humble answer to a direct question, could possibly come out of your mouth, apply Duct Tape Therapy before reporting to work!" The future of the city may depend on this.
Car Show
Alana Mautone deliberately chose to take the kind of pictures I would have tried not to take. Anyway, some wonderfully wacky vintage cars.
Charitable Opportunity
A company advertised a product reviewing job last week. They'll probably give the job to someone who already has a decent camera, but...sponsors, here are some facts:
1. About twelve miles from the Cat Sanctuary, the Kingsport city animal shelter has been having a hard time with funding and has been unable to find good homes for some adorable, adoptable animals who have been pets, who have already learned some basic rules and commands...
2. My cats, who lead a simple natural life and whose needs are few, get bottled water as endorsed by Serena. And she didn't even pose with a bottle in a video.
3. Shelter animals are a more diverse group with more diverse needs. They could endorse just about anything and look all kinds of adorable while doing it.
4. If you're not local, you'll have to take this on faith, but...You've seen that I can take adequate photos with a ten-dollar phone camera. Before digital photography, I used to have a 35mm camera. I have won prizes for landscape and action photos. Good digital cameras are sold at Wal-Mart now. Given a good digital camera, I could take prize-worthy photos of shelter pets endorsing or refusing to endorse pet care products...food, toys, brushes and combs, beds, mats, carrying cages, collars...
Want to see local shelter pets earning their keep as they find fur-ever homes? Just add money...or, if you happen to have received one as a gift and never used it, a digital camera.
Cybersecurity
You knew that even in Singapore, the fabled island/city/state/nation of niceness where they impose fines on impoliteness and real punishment on crimes like littering, there had to be some people who just...weren't...all that...nice. What outlets do they find for their not-nice impulses? In recent years, it seems, they've taken up computer hacking. Often very stupid and amateurish hacking, like pasting my e-mail address in as the source of the sort of blatant scam I don't even need to bother telling you to report and block.
Most Singaporeans are decent ordinary people, probably too busy with their own jobs and lives to read a lot of US blogs, but if you blog about Asian books in English you might have the good luck to find e-friends in Singapore. If, however, you notice your corner of cyberspace suddenly getting thousands of visits from Singapore...you shouldn't put any personal or financial information online in any case. Be very careful about where you click.
(ETA: If your e-mail or blog headlines feed show you S.A/R/K.'s new post, in a mx of Malay and English with a lot about betting and depositing money...you know Sark didn't post that. Do not click. Empathize.)
Politics
No direct link for this one, because you've already seen links galore: Republicans reportedly think the way to use their majority status in Congress is to try to impeach President Biden. Harrumph. It'd be better strategy to impeach the Vice-President first, and I do believe she deserves it more, but with so many things to fix, is mudslinging really the best way for Rs to use what's been given them? Try mandating a real education, with particular emphasis on the disciplines of detached and critical thinking, the ability to state a position which which you don't agree, and the often unpalatable fats of history, for the young victims of education by people who (eyeroll) still believe in Socialism. Or taking a stand on the abuse of the Internet to steal people's online time--say, limiting "updates" to the hour between 3 and 4 a.m. on the 29th of February. Or declaring unrestricted free enterprise, with tests of professioanl competence but no fees, for all senior citizens who choose to forego Social Security and keep working. And I'm sure any real Republican voter they asked could think of another twenty or thirty things our Republican Congress might do that would be more useful than another impeachment effort. We've sat through that kind of show before and it's not even entertaining.
I do think some time in Lorton would be good for Hunter Biden; he's the sort of rich brat people our age grew up singing songs about, "going Too Far'cos y'know it won't matter anyway. You can rely on the old man's money...but it won't get you Too Far with me!" He failed to learn anything from the song and ought to be given a chance to learn something from going to jail just like a less connected man. All our Presidents have had embarrassing relatives and some day Hunter, too, might hope to be remembered for efforts to help other rich brats achieve sobriety, like Betty Ford, whose efforts not to disgracet the name of Frist Lady succeeded; she'd been an embarrassment but she really showed the world how pretty and nice she was when sober. Hunter Biden will never be handsome but he might become nice..
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