Do independent books have as much support as independent bookstores?

 I used to work at a Barnes and Noble and I was paid about 7 dollars an hour, eventually creeping up to 11 dollars after twelve years.  I stayed for the insurance, which was okay, but not something I could use much anyway with my schedule.  And as I worked there, I noticed a lot of support for independent bookstores, almost as if working in one was equivalent to overseas mission work in a war zone.  There was respect for that industry, and disgust for chain corporations.  I felt it as a worker, but stayed anyway and read a lot. Many times, that was the theme of the criticism, that booksellers at chains weren't real readers. But we were, depsite no pay whatsoever for any of our education.

Anyway, that reality of underpaid work actually supports the low view of chain corporations but I just want to throw one more thing in the mix which is this: now that I am an author, I am again on the disrespected side because I self published.  Things have gotten better with that, so they say, but I just am wondering about this admiration for independent bookstores as it compares to readership for independent publishers.  I am not sure people are so supportive of writers who don't get rolled through by the "big Five" publishers, speaking of aggressive corporations. Mostly I conclude that I should do as I have always done, which is just make friends and know that things will be better in heaven.

 hello everyone, not much thought going into this but a topic for mad blog is how new york city doesn't have clean running water.  Neither apartment I lived in had drinkable water, and at fast food places they sell bottled water without even asking you if you want a cup of ice water instead.  There isn't even a water spout on the drink machine at the chicken strip restaurant I went to.  Why? Because they know the water isn't safe and never will be, kind of like the people.

 Well hello everyone, it's me again, slowly adding a mad blog post here and there.  Today's post is from something exactly today, which is blogspot's, I mean google's request to allow cookies when I upload something from my computer.  Probably the idea is so they can scan for some kind of security reason, but in this case, cookies is a vague term.  And what I think I am noticing is a creep towards requiring people to allow total computer access for these tech monsters.  First they will ask to do a security scan on what we upload, then whoops, it has to be all our files, just for safety of course, then it is permission to access those files for any reason, and then whoops, the tech giants have all of our financial information.  And then there's the fact that it probably isn't just about money, it is about more power than that, they want our lives, identities, and souls.  No need to be conspiracy theory about it, because everyone knows that regular life now is more outrageous than anyone's warped theories.  Who speaks out about this? No one that I ever hear of.  All I see is the same self righteous racism obsession that I grew up with for forty years.  There is nothing left to do on that but flog anyone who has a different life; meanwhile, some truly problem people are taking everything anyone has ever worked for.  I have said it before, don't think it wont be you, and don't think it won't be the people you pretend to help.

Procrasti-nation

Well hello everyone, this post is about quotas and racial representation. It is about how America a long time ago could have found means to require that multiple demographics have adequate government representation but instead relied on slow political progress that became more skewed in certain political direction.  Like to gain the seats, an ideological trade-off had to happen.  It could be that some of it worked out in a fitting way. However, I am not sure that indirect progress has been the most honest process, and it certainly was inefficient to the tune of hundreds of years. Cops have quotas that they fill with black bodies, now dead half of the time, but America couldn’t allocate a percentage of government roles for the diverse population it brags about?

I’ve always been from the more conservative part of the country, and I drift along hoping for the best, changing my mind sometimes about a lot of things. But one thing I have to say now is that if people can’t tolerate accepting the candidates who win fair and square, then they are monstrously blind to the supernatural patience of people who have tolerated an obvious, indisputable and deliberate government exclusion for their whole lives. It doesn’t get more hypocritical from a country that emerged from fighting taxation without representation, and it isn’t a coincidence that the leaders are more racist mascots than some sports teams still out there.

Present Tense

Well hello everyone, time for a mad blog post. This one is more political than usual. Usually I go for the every day policies. But this is a reaction to an interview where I saw the new republican VP candidate insult a whole demographic. It was JD Vance telling Tucker Carlson that the childless liberals weren’t truly invested in the future of the country because they had no literal offspring. He went on to call them (us) miserable cat ladies living in one-bedroom apartments in New York City.

This is really sad for me to hear, hurtful in some ways, but mostly disturbing and alarming. One problem with his critique is that it is definitively ignorant to blindly degrade a segment of the population that is different from your own.  It suggests that liberty and justice for all is not the true goal, but instead wealth and power for some, with fame for himself no doubt. 

But I also offer a response that is a more powerful argument against his judgemental assumption. Not only might these childless people have invested in their communities and the future instead of family, but it could be that having children might also create a bias of caring about your kids instead of other people’s kids. So how will that play out for the future of a country?  That could be why some of the bad conservatives are so opposed to providing things like school lunches and emergency hygiene products for middle schoolers.  It is hard to believe, and yet I do recall being treated like garbage as a retail worker when parents were looking for something for their kids.  All they cared about was getting their kid what they wanted, and they would torture and kill over it. Okay, that’s a bit much, maybe, but I am just saying that people can spin stuff in the other direction too, if we all didn’t already know better anyway.

Borrowing Righteousness

Well everyone, this is a deeper topic than the way I will probably get into it, but the issue is basically political people’s intent to dip into resources from people who do what they are supposed to, and their plans to spend that value on bums who do exactly the opposite.

The example I am using is a “harm reduction” device that was just installed in my apartment, which is essentially a timer that you can set if you are doing drugs, so if you overdose and they don’t receive a signal from the cancel button, someone will come find you and take you to the hospital where insurance money or tax dollars are then spent on your illegal habit.

That is one side of it, but there is also a censor on the device that alerts their system if you are standing in front of the device, doing anything, such as making coffee. Now people can say what they want about assuming innocence, but I know from my apartment’s other behavior to make some of us look bad in other clients’ eyes, that the purpose is to blur any behavior with drug use so “we don’t really know who is doing drugs and who isn’t.”  

There are other peer networks that label some workers as “justice involved peers,” so as to equate those on one side of the law with those who break the law and use up social resources in jail.

Philosophically, this is the core and crime of communism, with the satanic deception behind it to let the guilty go free and the innocent be accused.

I can’t convey my disgust enough, though the workers who installed that system yesterday accepted a joke book from me and were dear and precious people.

So I will continue to have faith amid evil systems, which have overwhelmed me since college.  I think for some reason it is a calling for me and a task given from God, possibly so I could, over time, see the truth about Jesus’s atonement and how that is where righteousness is found, outside of our own efforts even in “cleaner,” more faithful societies.

However, it does not change right and wrong, and I know that huge portions of our people and world will not tolerate these lies and injustice, and many good people would die and kill over violations that were accepted by me and more thoroughly, for me. Why, because I am a good person and people couldn’t tolerate it. It burned them because of their own flammable choices.

How many degrees is the hell you're going to

 Well hello everyone, this is Refried, making weak attempts to restart these better blogs and recover from the abuse that wrenched the writing across most of my genres.

Today's topic is the sudden closing of colleges.  The defense argument is that they simply couldn't sustain the school and had to act suddenly.  But unfortunately, what that is, is simply a broken contract.  They have offered a four year degree program and then "can't" deliver on it.  

One solution that could help everyone and would have already happened if old people cared about young people, is that degrees should be broken up into two year segments anyway.  There were enough millions of people who did not graduate for people to see years ago that granting an associate's degree early on would help everyone's lives at least some.

As for colleges not keeping their end of a bargain, it is a sign of moral weakness in no longer high places but the crooked crags of idolatrous success worship. And the people who acquired more of it, which are... grownups, hoarded what they got and had to fail and bail for the young people.

It's tough times, must be easy for me to say, maybe it is and maybe it's not.  But the feeling of injustice from those who suddenly lost their community and goal track and investment, could not be more accurate.  Now there will be legal cases and we will see how people dodge responsibility.

The lesson is to not promise what you can't and won't deliver on.  That's a lesson people supposedly already knew.  Going to college isn't supposed to be as irresponsible as a horse race or a boxing match.

maybe restarting mad blog soon

 Well hello everyone, today I got an email from Old Navy saying that by continuing to use their website and products, I am agreeing to their updated terms and conditions for their membership program.  That is weird, I think that using a website is using a website.  I unsubscribed.  This also reminds me that I think I might try to recover this blog and write happy posts like my old posts.  And then maybe republish my mad blog book with three years missing.  And start doing the mad blog posts again where they are just light policy analysis instead of expressions of deep devastation and outrage at a ruined life. 

I have a video playing on facebook again.  My numbers dipped a little bit because of the captions that I used this time.  I guess that is why facebook made that the default setting.  People have been very patient with facebook’s powerplays for many years but I think soon they will be regulated and will have to tell the truth and not show the same political favoritism.

 

Well that is all, maybe I will put this post on my old mad blog.