First I should probably explain why there was no web surfing at all on 8.17.26. No posting, either.
In a very organized, tidy, efficient way I pulled down all the first year's posts from Bad Poetry (TM), compiled them into a chapbook, got them nicely formatted into Kindle, and only then found out that Kindle no longer recognizes people's passwords. At least not for anything that might involve money. For that they demand that you be tied down to some sort of cloud-based gadget. The "apps" they want people to use to format Kindles don't even work on real computers any more, though my formatting choices were simple enough that the Kindle looked decent anyway.
Two things were learned from this very valuable experience:
1. We all need to stop using Amazon. Not because Pris is feeling peevish--I'm not, actually. Because Amazon is too useful to lose without a fight, and the only way to save it is to withhold money and attention from it until it starts to feel the loss.
Every time you use anything cloud-based, you're feeding the demand for those horrible "data centers" that are destroying neighborhoods. Amazon, I learned later in the day by talking to someone who's been exchanging e-mail with Bezos, is in the process of building one in western Texas (where they might be able to find a suitable patch of desert a hundred miles from anywhere, but people will still be sorry, when "Fredi's Cantina, !!Last Water for 150km!!" dries out and shuts down) and one in Ohio (where there is no suitable place for one of these neighborhood-killers, I don't care how rusty the Rust Belt is, they still have land that could grow food). We need to starve these very bad ideas. We need to knock the sick idea of putting a monster "data center" in any part of Ohio right out of Bezos' head.
The only thing that is likely to get into Bezos' head is a loss of money. So we all need to dry up the Amazon.com. Finish the Kindle book you're reading, close it, and don't open Kindle again. And stop using those cloud-based devices. Connect to the Internet only from real computers with disk drives. If Microsoft and Amazon want to stop working for real computers, let'm stop working. Both companies can only benefit from a good whack in the pockets.
You like the Internet, and the convenience of unlimited text messages and so on and so forth. So do I. But the only way to save the Internet from itself is to pull back. Force the companies to consider the suicide race with China that Trump keeps blathering about. If China wants to jump off a bridge, we need to be standing on the bank with ropes, NOT racing China to the bridge.
2. I wanted to test the hypothesis that I could hand-sell more locally printed chapbooks than Amazon could e-sell more Kindle chapbooks. Too bad for me, I may never know. But the books are all ready to print on demand, and trust me, they look a lot better on 8.5x11" of paper than they do on some lame-brained "tablet." These are all new, formal poems (more unrhymed forms than I've used here, percentage-wise) that have never appeared on this site and never will. To read them, you have to buy them. Default typefont is 12-point Times New Roman; bigger or bolder type--even sans-serif type, if anyone actually finds it easier to read--is available on request.
The Outlook e-mail address at the bottom of this page is still functional--to the extent that anything Microsoft ever is, any more. So is the postal address. Use either one. Your printed book will be sent to your mailing address, either way. It can be inscribed as you think fit.
Anyway, crossing that chore off my list, I next did some errands in town. Then I came home, put my feet up, and watched a thunderstorm blow in. It was a looong cyclone, a "storm system," and the Internet faded out, in, out, in, then out for the night. I am now sitting in McDonald's. I needed to come into town and use one of those almost vanishing, obsolete objects called a phone--a real telephone, not an espionage device--anyway. But not for Amazon's benefit.
As I'm sure we've all learned by now, indulging corporate employees in an oldfashioned phone call is a good way to get the phone we've used disconnected due to a barrage of junk calls from phishing robots.
I spent most of the day reading e-mail and rewriting a form letter into intense, personal, guilt-tripping letters to elected officials. Two links:
Glyphosate Awareness
Wouldn't that look good on a bumper sticker or T-shirt? Driscoll's Berry Farm continues to spray glyphosate and other poisons on fields near public schools, even after a man--grieving father, celiac, or both?--did a month-long hunger strike. Let's kick them in the pockets, too.
In fact, you can get it on a T-shirt from
Music
Can't actually listen to music in McDonald's, but I was able to cache this and hear it when I got home.
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