If you piss off a niece with an entitlement complex but refuse her friend request, does anybody hear?
Yes, my darlings, that happened. Aforementioned niece is her mama’s daughter and was slamming her sister using the same self-righteous rhetoric in which my family excels. It was victim blaming on steroids. And I called her on it, on Facebook, so everyone could step back and say, “Oooooh snap!” And did. My snitty little niece was not amused, and fired back. I brushed it off, a la Luke Skywalker in the latest Star Wars episode, and basically said, “If the shit fits…” We weren’t “friends” precisely because of her BS attitude, and she immediately tried to friend me. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know her intent was to give me a piece of her itty bitty mind before flouncing off dramatically and blocking me. So I ignored her. A few seconds later the friend request was gone, and I got an alert she was blocking me.
Mission accomplished. Adios, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. I’m too busy with reality to bother with your drama. This kid has always had a personality complex along these lines. She’s got money and la-dee-dah. And in my world, bit whoopity-doo.
Other than that, Facebook was on a piss-me-off run today, all the way around. Our local “News” TV station has a feed that draws out every redneck gun-totin’ idjeet you ever saw, at every opportunity. An unarmed black man murdered by police, and the police used his corpse finger to unlock his phone? He had it comin’, because drugs (there weren’t any.) And so on. I’d like local news, but don’t need the racist, misogynist ramblings that come with the package. I ended up sending this message to the station after the “Un-Like” button was pushed:
I’m no longer “liking” your site. The people following you represent the most hateful, racist bunch of jerks I’ve seen. They make me ashamed to be in Arizona. And yes, I know I can leave if I want to. I haven’t ruled out the possibility.
So many of your posts are clearly intended to incite hatred and division. Congratulations. Any real news value just spiraled down the toilet with civility.
My version of flouncing, I suppose. I felt like if I left without saying why, it served no one. As only one person I’m not important; however, if enough “only one person” elements kick in, it might get the message across.
Going forward, I’m sticking with my cord-cutting. I can’t afford to ignore the news altogether, but I don’t have to expose myself daily to people whose heads explode from stupidity, unless they live and work in the nation’s capital. Much as I’d like to excuse myself from the Washington cesspool as well, to ignore Congress, the Commander in Thief, and their respective minions is to ignore a political cyclone. We can watch local news with antenna TV (quaint concept, huh?) and get my cable stuff via Internet TV, mostly on demand.
If you’re still paying for satellite or cable television, you’re getting ripped off. You can spend one-time to get a Roku, Apple TV, or Firestick, and subscribe only to what you want. We pay for Netflix, Sling TV (the $25 a month package), and BritBox (because my spousal unit is an Anglophile.) All told, we’re paying slightly over half what we were paying for cable TV, and still watch literally everything we want to watch. There’s so much more – and so much BETTER – from my experience, I’d never consider going back to cable. We were paying $190 a month for cable & Internet. We now pay $112 for everything combined – uncapped Internet included.
Ahem.
Sorry, got sidetracked there for a minute.
On the subject of the political mess, I for one couldn’t care less about the Stormy Daniels affair. So the misogynist Cheetolini was boinking a porn star while his third faux wife was nursing his child? Yawn. Clinton beat you to the punch line, only he waited until he was in office. And Kennedy before, and so on and so on. So it was buried and might have used election funds to pay the porn star off? Should be alarmed. Can’t suss up the interest. I’m a hell of a lot more concerned about things like the Great Pumpkin’s nuclear pissing contest with North Korea, his propensity for giving political head to the former-KGB-agent-in-charge in Russia, his practices of replacing qualified personnel with reality TV stars and oligarchs, and his systematic erasure of civil rights and social safety nets. Ditto for Congress, which is at least equally guilty. Priorities, people. Don’t let yourself get dazzled by the porn star. Focus on what matters.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch… Today was a lazy day. I took a muscle relaxer last night. I rarely take them because they knock me out for the better part of 24 hours, which is what happened. I had soooo much to do, and ended up sleeping it off instead. To my credit, I’m in substantially less pain today. Unfortunately now I need to hit things doubletime to catch up. The good/bad news is I’ll probably be wide awake around 11-ish tonight, which will give me some room to get a few things cleared up, but for now I’m still drowsy, and it’s more than 24 hours after I took the damned pill. Go figure.
I did a lazy dinner – threw a pork roast in the crock pot early this morning, fixed some mashed potatoes and buttered corn to go with, and called it a meal. It was unimaginative but filled our tummies just fine. Dessert was Popsicles. Done and done. Sorry Dangerspouse. My heart was in it but my body abdicated.
In publishing terms, given some recent Amazon changes, the tentative plan for an indie publishing company is moving up in priority. A virtual private server is an easy setup. Building the shopping cart for paperbacks is easy, but the tough part will be building and maintaining our own reader app and making it interact with the sales process. The son is working on it now. He said it would look good on his resume. I kind of chortled, because it’s more apt to become a full time job.
For those who don’t follow me on Facebook and have no clue what I’m talking about, Amazon is by far the biggest single outlet for eBooks, and books in general. This is good. A shift in Washington, however, spooked them. They de-listed all their erotica books. Umm.. okay. Except they ALSO started re-categorizing ALL ROMANCE as erotica, even squeaky-clean Christian romance. Other genres as well, but the fact they slammed the single biggest selling category means there’s a gaping chasm out there for people who both write and read the genres. So I bought the domain sweetmountainpress.com for non-erotica stuff and eroticbookseller.com for the more interesting category. I’m not dropping any more $$ into the process, though, until I see how it all falls out. It looks like some of the books may be re-listed, but given Amazon’s responses to date, I gather long-term the company’s disenfranchising all those authors.
We’ll see how it goes.
Oh, and an unusual side note. Seems we have a critter roaming the area at night. Somebody spotted a mountain lion. So my nightly dash to the car could get interesting.
I DON’T CRITICIZE HOME COOKING. I DON’T CRITICIZE HOME COOKS.
Let me reiterate:
I DON’T CRITICIZE HOME COOKING. I DON’T CRITICIZE HOME COOKS.
Considering how easy it is to NOT cook at home given all our modern conveniences, anyone who makes any effort at all in the kitchen is to be applauded. On top of that, holding home cooks to the same standard as professional cooks (or ex-pro’s like me) is a fool’s folly. Plus, it can serve as a deterrent to regular people, who will feel too intimidated to perform if they think there’s some standard they have to meet. *I* may hold myself to a certain level of quality, but that’s only because cooking is practically a fetish with me. For regular folks who work, maybe don’t have pro-level equipment, certainly don’t have pro-level skills, maybe do have kids, etc., I don’t care WHAT the food on the plate ends up looking or tasting like. As long as they tried, and as long as it didn’t ultimately poison the eater(s), they have my enthusiastic and very sincere applause.
That includes your stupid crockpot abomination 😉
Hey, you still get over-the-air television transmission there? Here in the Big Bad East they forced all of us to convert to digital probably a decade ago. I was pissed, because we’d only recently invested in a big honkin’ aerial antenna that NewWifey(tm) bolted to our roof chimney so we wouldn’t have to bend over and take it from the cable companies. Overnight one night…no signal. From anyone. But you still get it, huh? Cool.
Sorry about the petulant niece drama. I don’t know anything about the Facebook particulars you mentioned, but I get the idea that whatever you did stymied her evil plans for retaliation. Bravo! Hopefully she matures as she matures – or has a great ass so she at least can marry well. Both work.
Which reminds me: good luck with erotic book selling. THAT is something I do understand 🙂
Your antenna will actually get you over-the-air digital. Do NOT – I repeat, do NOT buy a “digital antenna”. You do, however, either need a digital TV or a converter box. I suspect at some point in the past decade you purchased a digital TV. Ergo, connect that baby up to your antenna and run a channel search. Then look into a Roku. It’s the easiest of the Internet TV streaming deals and one of the cheapest, too. You can try it out before you even cut the cable and go just ‘net.
And I know you don’t criticize home cooks, not even my crock pot abominations. I have a few dump recipes if push comes to shove, but most of the time I slow cook the meat or poultry and use as ingredients for more adventurous stuff. However, my body’s been giving me Hell lately, soo….
And I figured you’d appreciate the erotic book sales angle. We’re holding off a little to see how things shake out at Amazon, but as I said, we were already looking into the indie publishing aspect of things. If we pick up even some of the ‘Zon slack, I can retire.
Glad you cut your ties with that niece…who needs that? Good luck with all your other endeavors. As I told you on Facebook, my latest book will be going up for sale by next week. I didn’t advertise it as having sex in it…but this one does. We’ll see what happens, I guess.
Yeah this niece just got on my last nerve. She’s always been a snotty little thing, and I refused to stand by and let her stomp all over her little sister again. Little sister felt bad, thought she caused it. I told her otherwise, told her NOT to let her big sister’s nastiness rule her life.
I hope your book flies under the radar. If for any reason it doesn’t, I might be able to help you out. Here’s hoping.