Animals
Butterflies in England.
Mostly large animals in the Western States.
And around here it feels like time for a rerun of this Annual Nag. Imagine trying to cool 65 pounds of body in a breeze you're only built to catch with six inches of tongue! From Barkley's Human you'd expect more than just another "don't leave your dog in the car in the sun with the windows rolled up." As some readers may remember, this one is unique, and fun to read.
Art
Quilts.
Fashion
Why the current fashions actually look a lot like things many of us have kept since the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s, so it looks as if people like me would be leaping at the chance to update our wardrobe--but we're not. Things we've kept since high school are still worth mending. Most things sold today are not worth running through the washing machine (where they're likely to fall apart) the first time. Not only are young shoppers being cheated; they're colluding with corporations that cheat workers and harm the environment. Do you want to join the calls for more international regulations, or do you want to buy casual clothes secondhand and make--or pay a local person to make--your "best" clothes?
(I apologize for linking to a video so stuffed with commercials. Please do your bit to inform Youtube that, thanks to Wix's ad saturation campaign, you now not only wouldn't click over to find out whether the free version of Wix has been improved, you wouldn't even chat with anyone who did use Wix. We are not TV-consuming sheeple. We respect people who make something worthwhile in support of their product, and we usually need to see or hear that only once. We swat annoying buzzy flies.)
Food
This web site does not endorse the idea of eating crabs. Still, this Malay comedian, "Uncle Roger," has something to teach Americans about advertising. He's not butting into other people's videos. He's making his own. If you're tired of hearing about his products, you simply stop watching his videos--but if you're interested in Asian cuisine, you probably won't. (I don't intentionally seek out cooking videos, or videos of any kind, but I'll watch one now and then if it's recommended by an e-friend.) His video is so funny, and instructive, that I don't care that he's advertising his frozen crab curry. You could use the method shown in the video, plus whatever you want to pick out of the vegetable garden, to turn rice or even ramen noodles into an interesting and nutritious salad that would help your guests understand why he calls mall food courts prison camps for food.
We need to help big corporations move away from the idea that Internet-as-a-clone-of-television is viable--why would they ever even have thought that? Why develop something that's much more expensive and only use it the same old way? No. They need to be supporting the Internet as a free public forum where they don't try to control what other people see, hear, read, and say, but interact with other people on an equal basis. That gives advertisers a level of credibility they would never get through television. TV shoves commercials in your face every five minutes and demands that everything be product-supportive, if not positively stuffed with product placement. Results? Well, if you're most of the people I know, you watch less television. Advertisers do not need to replicate that effect on the Internet; they'd be wasting money on a market that's already dead set against them. They need to develop intelligent strategies for the original Twitter, where they pay to support the open forum and they control their own pages. They're not screaming at everybody but they have the chance to talk to friends and thereby make friends they would not otherwise have. Different strategy for a different market. Are we computer-over-television types that much more profitable a market? Global elite, yes, but are we big spenders? Are we big influencers, in the sense that TV viewers who see us buying stuff in the stores think "Wow, if they buy it it must be a good deal"? Remains to be seen. I do have that reputation and have helped people discover some bargains, but there's no way to compare the influence of each of the different individuals who discover a deal. In any case, making the Internet more like television is a total lose-lose-lose. "Uncle Roger" knows how to use the Internet.
Hero Worship
Something I've been aware of since the 1990s, when it was Rodney King and David Koresh...The fact that people have been victims does not make them heroes. Nobody (with a few possible exceptions for Hitler or my Professional Bad Neighbor or the person who molested a child you know) should be beaten up by as many other people at one time as Rodney King was. Nobody should be tortured, under the pretense that he couldn't simply have been arrested, the way Koresh was. That doesn't change the fact that they, and Trayvon Williams, George Floyd, etc., were not heroes. Were, in fact, mixed-up messes who might have benefitted from some supervision by Real Men.
This week's Sunday book raises this as the topic for the obligatory lovers' quarrel, and it's worth thinking about: What should tough love for mixed-up messes look and sound like? Not a gang beating, not burning their houses over their heads, not blowing their faces off with a bullet, obviously... Should people call them idiots when they're acting like idiots? Slap their faces? Call them out when they're lying to others and possibly managing to deceive themselves? Sometimes kindness, trust, and encouragement work with, e.g., addicts; sometimes they only enable the addiction,
Music
Somebody out there is in search of what a friend once called "a real pretty lovesong," a musical species that was already rare in 1979 and seems endangered now. Here is one. It lacks the wordplay for which we remember Cole Porter, but it has the wholesome attitude and the nostalgic sound.
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