Hands up all who are tired of this "Black" commercial spew. "Black Friday" was all very well but it's getting out of hand. It's Thanksgiving weekend. Thanksgiving Wednesday. Thanksgiving Friday. It is primarily a religious holiday and its traditions, beyond actual, y'know, thanksgiving prayers, are about family gatherings. A round of shopping in the dear old home town is among some families' traditions, but there's no need to overdo it. I'm disgusted by the e-messages that seem to apologize for Thanksgiving rather than revelling in it. "We know this is a depressing time...people drink till they pass out at the thought of having to see their relatives..." Well if you hate your relatives all that much, stay home and talk to an emergency counsellor. That is not what Thanksgiving is about.
I personally did not have a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend. I spent the day feeling unwell. That is not normal, for me or for anybody. Trying to "normalize" it does not help. We need a solid consensus that Thanksgiving is a time of joy, and people who besmirch that joy with their personal nastiness are very sick people and need to be locked up in a small dark cell, to which all the keys have been recycled, where something that started out as food might drop down a chute now and then if anybody remembers., but mostly they don't. Normal human beings who belong out in the air and sun may not want to see all of their relatives more than once in ten years, but we enjoy checking in and, seeing our cousins from Hawaii or Norway or wherever as the strangers they really are, getting a quick news story about their lives to last for the next ten years.
And let's leave the booze for wretched Europe, please. Americans have drinkable water. And ice. And, if we want to add calories, we can always add sugar and fruit juice, or chocolate, tea, or coffee. (We brew stimulant drinks, not depressant ones.) We drink soda pop. We drink bizarre holiday confections made out of different fruits with frankly incompatible flavors mashed up in ginger ale, which create the party game of trying to figure out what's in the punch, which gives people who don't really know each other something to talk about. Boozers are losers! Maybe if Europeans learned to drink soda pop or coffee like human beings, they could get through a decade without a tribal war. I say the sooner the better.
Art
This link takes you around the four walls of paintings in a California art gallery's main showroom. Click on "Artists" for more displays. Author/filmmaker/artist John W. MacLean was in the number one position, top left on the "Artists" page, when I clicked. For those who can afford to make Statements with gorgeous professionally polished chunks of rocks, he's been carving up some pretty ones and the prices are low for that kind of art.
Bickering & Infighting
Why ever would Drudge drop PJMedia and Townhall from their reading list? I don't know, but I can guess. Because those sites were eager for advertising. That's cool! Advertising is good! But they fell for evil advertising schemes that diminish the quality of the site. Lots of blogs, like this one, don't want to steer readers to (let's make a list we can chant at desperate or greedy bloggers)
* ads that pop up
* ads that jump around the screen
* ads that block content
* ads that flash, blink, or distract readers
* ads that slow down the loading or reading of the main content
* ads that crash browsers
* ads that interfere with printing
Try this, PJ Media. Line all the ads up in a linear sequence and put them down at the bottom of the page where readers can scroll down to see them if interested. Always remember...flashy graphics make an ad look like one of the corporate ads everyone ignores; small plain lettering looks like the classified ads people actually sit down and read.
If that doesn't get you back into everybody's good graces, take the paywall off the comments section.
You lost views, links, and readers because, like so many other sites, you sold out to arrogant, rude advertisers. To get us back, make your site a service to readers again.
Book Reviews
Some new authors have been waiting impatiently for others to get their books onto Goodreads, Library Thing, and other book marketing venues. Today the doors are closing. On this final Sunday in November the Goodreads, etc., reviews of October's new books go live. The following books continue to languish outside, waiting for author/publishers to set up pages for them. (I've tried doing this myself, and it works better when author/publishers do it.)
Sophie Michaels, Murder 101
Sheryl M. Frazer, Genevieve's Sixth Choice
Sheryl M. Frazer, The Treble with Mr. Swinger
Willow Finn, Grumpy Billionaire Cowboy
Steve Moretti, A Kingdom Is Lost
Writers who are sending out e-mails to ask whether people have read your books, please make sure you've set up the pages where reviews of those books will be found! I will try to focus on Christmas-theme books in December, winter-theme books in January, and so on. I have e-books to review for every day in the next year.
Picture
Colors that are too found in nature. Only not often.
We should all live in places where our "ordinary" days are beautiful enough to inspire poems. Even if we write free verse.
Technology
Should more towns reject "5G" wireless technology, which promises to put enough radiation everywhere to make the whole town a wireless "hot spot," for health reasons? Yes, and also for privacy reasons, economic reasons, and need-to-check-Verizon's-hubris reasons. I'd vote in favor of rejecting any new offerings from Verizon JUST because Verizon has failed to reconnect the cell phones people in my neighborhood actually liked, on the original price terms only with a year of unlimited free service for every day they were unethically disconnected. They can't stick to their existing contracts, they can't have any new ones. We'd hate to let towns sink public funds into contracts with companies that might just unilaterally decide to back out of those contracts in the hope of forcing us to buy something that didn't work as well and pay five times as much for it!
Word, Wonderful New Useful
Thanks to Lone Star Neanderthal at https://howtomeowinyiddish.blogspot.com/2023/11/a-bit-of-conjecture.html.
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