WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
WokeProg Report:The Syphilis Spirochetes have reached their brain.
byVanderleunonApril 27, 2022
Macbeth:Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart. Doctor:Therein the patient must minister to himself.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Secret Amazon Meeting to Ban Conservative Children’s Book – Walsh wrote a book satirizing the transgender cult, and it became a best-seller on Amazon. The woke crew who runs Amazon isn’t about to let that continue. A leaked Zoom call has surfaced in which Amazon employees discuss plans to take the book off the recommended list and stunt its sales potential … essentially banning Johnny the Walrus.
Libs of TikTok has the video. In it, an employee of Amazon calls the satire “problematic” and says it’s been “a very traumatic experience for transgender Amazonians and our transgender customers.” The employee vows that “there are things in the space that are happening” to deal with this trauma. “It’s one hell of a problem,” the employee says about the book, before bringing a “customer” onto the stream who lies about what is in it.
Amazon leadership held a session for employees dealing with the “trauma” of Matt Walsh’s book becoming a best seller and dealing with his trolling. They strategize on how to demote it on their site and claim he will get people killed. @MattWalshBlog broke them. pic.twitter.com/AKH8ihO0iV
Listen to these depraved and mentally ill high-level employees of Amazon plotting to “burn” a book. The ideological rot in our enemies’ minds is deep and is metastisizing.
During my “career” in publishing, I edited and published more than 200 books for Houghton Mifflin in all areas from fiction to science fiction to Tolkein to history to science to politics to social concerns… all subjects. Never once in all those years did I think or hear anything remotely like the sheer malicious mendacity and calm fascist drivel oozing out of the mouths of these moral cretins. It simply didn’t occur in the editorial meetings, the corridor chats, or private encounters with one’s superiors behind closed doors. It didn’t occur because of some secret agreement on publishing from a stiff set of ideological principles. It didn’t occur because we simply didn’t have that kind of structure in our brains.
It wasn’t that I bought and edited books to be published that were darlings of the left/liberalism mindset dominant in publishing in those years. I brought in a number of titles that were not. In fact, one of the reasons I was hired as Senior Editor and Director of Trade Paperback Publishing was that I came from magazines — Penthouse Magazine — and would bring in books others would not. (And no that does not mean “Porn,” laddies.)
Before and after Houghton Mifflin I worked in magazines. They were, in order, Organ Magazine (founding editor), Earth Magazine, City Magazine (Founding editor), Penthouse Magazine USA (Senior Editor), Omni Magazine, Penthouse UK and Penthouse Europe (Publisher and Managing Director), Penthouse.com (Vice-President). In magazine publishing, I edited thousands of articles on every imaginable subject and — as a quick study and star-class bullshitter — wrote thousands under my name and others.
From 1972 until 2002 I worked all over American publishing, attend conventions and tradeshows and supervised at printing plants for 6 million copy runs. In all this time and space, I never once — no not never — had or heard of any conversation remotely like those above.
In the early 1990s, I became Employee #3 of The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) as their Director of Communications. Founded by Mitch Kapor (Lotus 1-2-3) and John Perry Barlow (Grateful Dead) I worked closely with Mike Godwin (Godwin’s Law). The original purpose of the EFF was to make sure the protections of the Bill of Rights were extended to cyberspace. At this remove, I have no idea what the EFF is up to but I’m fairly sure it’s Woke-Infested. Godwin’s gone Woke Squared and Kapor is Woke Cubed. Barlow would still probably be for the initial idealistic purposes of the EFF, but he’s dead. Nevertheless, this was another organization I joined in which I never heard the whisper of fascist speech suppression. It had nice ideals. Today it is mainly a sponge for tech millionaire donations.
What those self-inflated Amazon bags of flatulence are bluttering about should be deeply shameful to any person who believes in the principles of free speech. Yet these diseased minds seem to be both shameless and clueless. This tells me that the rot is deep and broad. This tells me the tumors cannot be cured with anything less than a hot wire cauterization deep inside the skull.
Once again I am reminded how the woke virus has infested untold millions of hosts so deeply that although they might once have been our political opponents, they are now our enemies and need to be treated as such wherever we meet them. The only intervention that can possibly save them at this point is a spiritual awakening they are unlikely to receive outside of the sheer Grace of God.
Oh, did I mention that at age 18 I was on the steering committee of the UC Davis branch of The Free Speech Moment and was at Sproul Hall on December 3, 1964; the day that we invented the people that became, two generations later, the insects above? Well, I just did. And those bugs above were not what we meant; they were not what we meant at all.
I was in publishing, too, HAH. I was what amounted to the city editor on a town daily paper. At 16, mind you, but I did have a foot in the door seeing as how my family owned a little over half of it. I started in the darkroom, started writing sports (very badly, but I learned) and one day the city editor was on vacation and there I was, striving to get the layout done before I had to run off to high school. Uphill. Both ways.
And what I did was nothing compared to Gerard’s work. For starters, our largest print run would have been 4500.
I did sit in on conversations with adults like publishers. The gist was always “how can we do more?” not “How can we hide this bestseller from our customers?” Geez, any staffer who did something to suppress a profitable book or magazine or newspaper would not only be fired immediately, they would be unemployable in the industry, at least regionally.
gwbnycApril 27, 2022, 12:32 PM
a pressman, and a dockloader of one of the two locals lived in our neighborhood (The Painesville Telegraph”).
work us up a foto/anecdotal recollection, chief- Good Lord, you must exist in providence.
Mitchell O StrandApril 27, 2022, 11:15 AM
Nice reference to Prufrock in the last line.
Based on your writing, I think the mermaids will sing to you…
VanderleunApril 27, 2022, 11:16 AM
Readers like you are why I even touch the keyboard.
Lance de BoyleApril 27, 2022, 11:42 AM
Penthouse! Pah! Fie!
We were too poor to afford Penthouse.
We read Outhouse.
It was packed….
“Packed, you say?”
Yes, packed. What don’t you get about packed?
…with informative articles.
“Lemuel Muggins found dead in bib overalls. ‘And they weren’t his’n,’ says Esther Suggs, snidely.”
“Little Debbie Clooper gets new shoe laces. ‘The old ones they wuz all wore out’ she said, in defense of her extravagance.”
“Cousin Merle’s got maggots. ‘Well, take a nap on a manure pile and that’s what you get,’ says Esther Suggs, in that know-it-all way of hers.”
Yeah, that’s all I got. In contrast to some of youse, I have to work.
Gordon ScottApril 27, 2022, 2:32 PM
Lance, we, well, I have missed you around here.
Lance de BoyleApril 28, 2022, 10:40 AM
Gee, thanks, Gordon.
David SmithApril 27, 2022, 11:50 AM
Not what we intended at all. Some of our generation have a lot to answer for. And the rest of us have a lot to answer for for letting them get away with it.
‘Off the pigs’ indeed, but we misidentified who the pigs were.
I almost lost it at the phrase “transgender Amazonians”. What the Hell might those be? Surely Theseus and Heracles only fought and killed normal, regular Amazonians—you know, those one-breasted, womanhood possessing beauties conjured up in Greek mythology. Or was it really Greek history? I bet none of those armed and dangerous ladies had a secret Michelle Obama-type penis tucked and hidden under her armor. Imagine the fright Heracles would have had had he discovered such a thing?
ThisIsNotNutellaApril 27, 2022, 2:44 PM
The Panoplied Obonga Shlonga is an image I can do without.
CCApril 27, 2022, 1:52 PM
When the SHTF, these specimens will either grow up quickly or perish.
Whichever I care not.
I raised my kids not to be weenies.
You raised your kids right. The others will perish. What future society could use such weaklings anyway? The strong will survive to pass on their genes.
Occasional CommenterApril 27, 2022, 2:04 PM
“They are all 27-year-olds who literally know nothing.” That’s the root our our challenge.
This is why winning an occasional national election isn’t enough. These morlocks will go underground and nurse their hatreds. Eventually, aided by a similarly pozzed press, they will convince enough well-meaning, superficially-aware folks to return them to power. And the civilizational downward spiral continues.
What the country needs is a nationwide, Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus level of epiphany. I cannot imagine any way to create such that doesn’t involve fire and blood.
Neither can I. “Fire and Blood” would be a cleansing.
DennyApril 28, 2022, 6:26 AM
“They are all 27-year-olds who literally know nothing.”
That’s nothing. In my own extended family there are kids approaching 40 that still have their own bedrooms and routinely go grocery shopping with “mom”.
Noticed that as well. I am 68. Among my equals it was common knowledge that boys would have gotten the Hell out of the house by 18. I as gone at, well, 18. I fled into the tender arms of the USAF. Once out, it was work and college. Lots of both. Kept at it more or less until retirement at 66—barring two years spent with neither work nor responsibility living in a tent and hammock in Central and South America.
Before the military I worked in the fields, delivered papers, washed dishes, parked cars, washed cars, and worked in an autopsy room at 17 years old. After the USAF I tended bar, worked as a security guard, managed apartments, worked as a janitor—and all that was a preface for a 27 year vocation in teaching.
At 27 I had an Honors degree in History, was dating an Italian ballerina, and was headed for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
No room for weaklings, sloth or indifference for those of my generation. We worked hard, we played harder, and we paid for both. Some of us are still paying.
Estoy ListoApril 28, 2022, 2:18 PM
In our working class home of six kids, my mother made it clear: At 18 you’re out the door–plan on it. And so we did, glad to get a real job after years of delivering papers and picking summer fruit.
“Summer fruit”: Man, does that bring back memories. I worked For Club’s Berry Farms from 9 years old until 12, after which I delivered papers for $30 a month and washed cars for $1 an hour. After all that Basic Training was Heaven.
Wow, Gerard, I knew you had accomplished some neet stuff. But that list of accomplishments is amazing.
I’ve one question for you.
What’s the Solution?
ThisIsNotNutellaApril 27, 2022, 2:39 PM
Solution? Well, now…
Officially, the Paraclete knocks out the Spirochete in the 9th Round. And we all live happily ever after.
Unofficially, the First Rule of Fight Club pertains.
It’s a bit more Zen Koan than nutting out the GMAT… this whole Solutions to Big Questions Thing… Part of the problem is too many twisted but pernickety GMAT Acers running the show. If you Wite-Out the Question, do you still have a Problem?
The Paraclete wins in the 1st Round. By knockout. Easy-peasy.
VanderleunApril 27, 2022, 11:08 PM
My solution is the same as Sherlock Holmes’ solution:
“Which is it to-day,” I asked, “morphine or cocaine?”
He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened.
“It is cocaine,” he said, “a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?”
I used to tend bar at Chinese restaurants in Portland, Oregon (1987 – 1993). A regular customer would come in a few times a week after the lunch rush. He was not really dressed appropriately for a 4 star restaurant: jeans, t-shirt and tennis shoes were his outfit. I talked to him as he sat at the bar. He did not speak English at all. He said his name was Julio, that he was from Colombia and that he worked for a friend “buying and selling stuff”.
One afternoon I asked him what sort of “stuff” was he buying and selling. He just gave me a Cheshire Cat smile and left. An hour later he returned, slapped something down on the bar, and said, “Miguel, eso es mi negocio!” Then he left. On the bar was a 2 inch square of aluminum foil. I had no idea what it was, and put it into my pocket. When I got home at 6 pm I remembered that square of aluminum foil, and opened it up. Inside was a white powder. It as then I knew what Julio was “buying and selling”.
I put Cream on the turntable, and used the powder in the recognized and recommended method. Clapton had never sounded so good.
VanderleunApril 29, 2022, 8:28 AM
CascadianApril 27, 2022, 6:32 PM
“What’s the Solution?”-the solution is obvious, starve the beast, quit buying books (and much else) at Amazon.
Back when I was still in undergrad, around the turn of the century, I made it a point to get my Bachelor’s degree without taking any English classes. Partly because, as far as I was concerned, I had fulfilled my writing requirement at my first school. Mostly, though, I had seen the school newspaper. The quality of journalism there was such that I feared taking English classes would actually make me stupider. Granted, this is a sampling of just one unremarkable state college, but given the general decline in the quality of journalism since then, I don’t think my concerns have proven wrong.
Notably, the absolute stupidest students at that school were Education Majors (AKA the tenured teachers of today). Every one of them expected to be handed “A”s, and whenever a paper received a poor grade (which is to say, every time since they never seemed to learn) they would come storming in to the professor’s office and declare, “but I’m an Education Major!” This, regardless of the reasons for failing, regardless of the opportunities the professor would give for making corrections; really, despite anything anyone else said or did. They were Education Majors, and simply for existing deserved straight “A”s.
This was when I first realized that someday when I had kids, it might be better to just go ahead and homeschool.
It’s all a vicious cycle: stupid entitled teachers raising up stupid entitled students who become stupid entitled… in this case, Amazon censors.
I was in the teaching racket for 27 years. I entered through a back door, having taken absolutely no “education” classes at the college. I had Honors degrees in History and PolySci. The education majors I met were borderline illiterate—and most were physically unattractive to boot.
Half-way through my 10 years teaching in Argentina, my superintendent told me to go ahead and get a normal teaching license. He sent me to the French Riviera for 30 days to a summer school that specialized in allowing international teachers to get a teaching certificate so that they could teach anywhere in the world. Zut alors! The wine, the women, the song! I got my certificate.
When I moved to Oklahoma some years later I had to attend a few classes to qualify for an Oklahoma Teaching Certificate. What a waste! What stupidity!
Since retirement I have recovered somewhat. Education majors are barrel scrapers. Journalism majors too.
Princess CutekittenApril 27, 2022, 10:18 PM
Julie, I’ve seen numerous claims that the dumbest students get routed into Education and Angry Studies.
Everyone: what should be done about the situation above? Should the First Amendment be amended to include Big Tech, or would that do nothing except enrich lawyers? Should author Walsh file suit for defamation against Amazon? Can Mr. Walsh afford as much justice as Jeff Bezos can afford?
The mole here is a hero, risking his job to give customers the opportunity to make an informed decision as to whether they wish to continue to patronize Amazon. When Amazon starts frisking meeting attendees and confiscating their phones to prevent further disclosure, what should customers do? I don’t believe it’s too early to think about that.
Richard KreulApril 28, 2022, 3:24 AM
Welcome to that realization re: the woke. Better late than later.
A Kindler Gentler Boot to the FaceApril 28, 2022, 8:13 AM
No need to hide the iron fist now that the Long March is complete.
You’ve had too much to think and we will decide the programming that goes out to the glorious New Man hive unity borg.
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
Transgender Amazonians? First the estrogen shots to grow them, then cut one off. OK the thought that crossed my mind upon, shudder, seeing the term.
I reluctantly, when all, or at least most, else fails, deal with Amazon being up here atop the world at the end of the supply chain.
Actually Amazon is becoming far less useful to me, more and more often when I try to buy I find a note in red “Sorry we cannot ship that item to your Alaska address”
However I stopped kindleing quite a while ago. A lot of authors I like have, in their opinion gone indy, left publishing houses for Amazon (Not really indy, but hey, gotta go where the buyers are, not for me to judge.). If I’m interested in a read by one I’ll see if a usually used hardcopy is available from Thrift Books pick it up there and go to the author’s web page dropping a nickle or so in their tip jar so they get as bit more remuneration for their work outside the halls of Amazon.
I’ve suggested to some that they sell an epub edition from their web page as well as the mobi version on kindle but most are comfortable just with the Amazon arrangement.
Gordon ScottApril 28, 2022, 2:00 PM
I am told, Mike, that indie authors must do so much marketing that it is a second career.
Now that is funny! The Presbyterians claim to be “Christian”, yet their web page reads like an activist front for the Democrat Party. Here are their pressing issues:
Abortion/Reproductive Choice Issues
Alcohol
Capital Punishment
Church and State
Education
Gambling
Gun Violence
How Presbyterians Make Decisions
Mission
Peace/Peacemaking
Politics: Talking politics is not taboo
Sexuality and Same-Gender Relationships
Funny, nothing there about Jesus. Well yes, because He is not welcome there.
Jesus wondered that, when He returned, would he find faith on earth? From the looks of things, quite doubtful. But then, He promised that the gates of Hell shall not prevail. Ok then.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
i foresee a lot of lawsuits in amazon’s future.
I hope everybody at Amazon has been “vaccinated.”
This is one of the reasons I come here, Gerard.
I was in publishing, too, HAH. I was what amounted to the city editor on a town daily paper. At 16, mind you, but I did have a foot in the door seeing as how my family owned a little over half of it. I started in the darkroom, started writing sports (very badly, but I learned) and one day the city editor was on vacation and there I was, striving to get the layout done before I had to run off to high school. Uphill. Both ways.
And what I did was nothing compared to Gerard’s work. For starters, our largest print run would have been 4500.
I did sit in on conversations with adults like publishers. The gist was always “how can we do more?” not “How can we hide this bestseller from our customers?” Geez, any staffer who did something to suppress a profitable book or magazine or newspaper would not only be fired immediately, they would be unemployable in the industry, at least regionally.
a pressman, and a dockloader of one of the two locals lived in our neighborhood (The Painesville Telegraph”).
work us up a foto/anecdotal recollection, chief- Good Lord, you must exist in providence.
Nice reference to Prufrock in the last line.
Based on your writing, I think the mermaids will sing to you…
Readers like you are why I even touch the keyboard.
Penthouse! Pah! Fie!
We were too poor to afford Penthouse.
We read Outhouse.
It was packed….
“Packed, you say?”
Yes, packed. What don’t you get about packed?
…with informative articles.
“Lemuel Muggins found dead in bib overalls. ‘And they weren’t his’n,’ says Esther Suggs, snidely.”
“Little Debbie Clooper gets new shoe laces. ‘The old ones they wuz all wore out’ she said, in defense of her extravagance.”
“Cousin Merle’s got maggots. ‘Well, take a nap on a manure pile and that’s what you get,’ says Esther Suggs, in that know-it-all way of hers.”
Yeah, that’s all I got. In contrast to some of youse, I have to work.
Lance, we, well, I have missed you around here.
Gee, thanks, Gordon.
Not what we intended at all. Some of our generation have a lot to answer for. And the rest of us have a lot to answer for for letting them get away with it.
‘Off the pigs’ indeed, but we misidentified who the pigs were.
I almost lost it at the phrase “transgender Amazonians”. What the Hell might those be? Surely Theseus and Heracles only fought and killed normal, regular Amazonians—you know, those one-breasted, womanhood possessing beauties conjured up in Greek mythology. Or was it really Greek history? I bet none of those armed and dangerous ladies had a secret Michelle Obama-type penis tucked and hidden under her armor. Imagine the fright Heracles would have had had he discovered such a thing?
The Panoplied Obonga Shlonga is an image I can do without.
When the SHTF, these specimens will either grow up quickly or perish.
Whichever I care not.
I raised my kids not to be weenies.
You raised your kids right. The others will perish. What future society could use such weaklings anyway? The strong will survive to pass on their genes.
“They are all 27-year-olds who literally know nothing.” That’s the root our our challenge.
This is why winning an occasional national election isn’t enough. These morlocks will go underground and nurse their hatreds. Eventually, aided by a similarly pozzed press, they will convince enough well-meaning, superficially-aware folks to return them to power. And the civilizational downward spiral continues.
What the country needs is a nationwide, Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus level of epiphany. I cannot imagine any way to create such that doesn’t involve fire and blood.
Neither can I. “Fire and Blood” would be a cleansing.
“They are all 27-year-olds who literally know nothing.”
That’s nothing. In my own extended family there are kids approaching 40 that still have their own bedrooms and routinely go grocery shopping with “mom”.
Noticed that as well. I am 68. Among my equals it was common knowledge that boys would have gotten the Hell out of the house by 18. I as gone at, well, 18. I fled into the tender arms of the USAF. Once out, it was work and college. Lots of both. Kept at it more or less until retirement at 66—barring two years spent with neither work nor responsibility living in a tent and hammock in Central and South America.
Before the military I worked in the fields, delivered papers, washed dishes, parked cars, washed cars, and worked in an autopsy room at 17 years old. After the USAF I tended bar, worked as a security guard, managed apartments, worked as a janitor—and all that was a preface for a 27 year vocation in teaching.
At 27 I had an Honors degree in History, was dating an Italian ballerina, and was headed for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
No room for weaklings, sloth or indifference for those of my generation. We worked hard, we played harder, and we paid for both. Some of us are still paying.
In our working class home of six kids, my mother made it clear: At 18 you’re out the door–plan on it. And so we did, glad to get a real job after years of delivering papers and picking summer fruit.
“Summer fruit”: Man, does that bring back memories. I worked For Club’s Berry Farms from 9 years old until 12, after which I delivered papers for $30 a month and washed cars for $1 an hour. After all that Basic Training was Heaven.
Wow, Gerard, I knew you had accomplished some neet stuff. But that list of accomplishments is amazing.
I’ve one question for you.
What’s the Solution?
Solution? Well, now…
Officially, the Paraclete knocks out the Spirochete in the 9th Round. And we all live happily ever after.
Unofficially, the First Rule of Fight Club pertains.
It’s a bit more Zen Koan than nutting out the GMAT… this whole Solutions to Big Questions Thing… Part of the problem is too many twisted but pernickety GMAT Acers running the show. If you Wite-Out the Question, do you still have a Problem?
Press 2 if you find that Problematic 🙂
The Paraclete wins in the 1st Round. By knockout. Easy-peasy.
My solution is the same as Sherlock Holmes’ solution:
The Sign of Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (1890)
Well, Musk (tongue in cheek I know) does have his eye on Coke.
I used to tend bar at Chinese restaurants in Portland, Oregon (1987 – 1993). A regular customer would come in a few times a week after the lunch rush. He was not really dressed appropriately for a 4 star restaurant: jeans, t-shirt and tennis shoes were his outfit. I talked to him as he sat at the bar. He did not speak English at all. He said his name was Julio, that he was from Colombia and that he worked for a friend “buying and selling stuff”.
One afternoon I asked him what sort of “stuff” was he buying and selling. He just gave me a Cheshire Cat smile and left. An hour later he returned, slapped something down on the bar, and said, “Miguel, eso es mi negocio!” Then he left. On the bar was a 2 inch square of aluminum foil. I had no idea what it was, and put it into my pocket. When I got home at 6 pm I remembered that square of aluminum foil, and opened it up. Inside was a white powder. It as then I knew what Julio was “buying and selling”.
I put Cream on the turntable, and used the powder in the recognized and recommended method. Clapton had never sounded so good.
“What’s the Solution?”-the solution is obvious, starve the beast, quit buying books (and much else) at Amazon.
Back when I was still in undergrad, around the turn of the century, I made it a point to get my Bachelor’s degree without taking any English classes. Partly because, as far as I was concerned, I had fulfilled my writing requirement at my first school. Mostly, though, I had seen the school newspaper. The quality of journalism there was such that I feared taking English classes would actually make me stupider. Granted, this is a sampling of just one unremarkable state college, but given the general decline in the quality of journalism since then, I don’t think my concerns have proven wrong.
Notably, the absolute stupidest students at that school were Education Majors (AKA the tenured teachers of today). Every one of them expected to be handed “A”s, and whenever a paper received a poor grade (which is to say, every time since they never seemed to learn) they would come storming in to the professor’s office and declare, “but I’m an Education Major!” This, regardless of the reasons for failing, regardless of the opportunities the professor would give for making corrections; really, despite anything anyone else said or did. They were Education Majors, and simply for existing deserved straight “A”s.
This was when I first realized that someday when I had kids, it might be better to just go ahead and homeschool.
It’s all a vicious cycle: stupid entitled teachers raising up stupid entitled students who become stupid entitled… in this case, Amazon censors.
And here we are.
I was in the teaching racket for 27 years. I entered through a back door, having taken absolutely no “education” classes at the college. I had Honors degrees in History and PolySci. The education majors I met were borderline illiterate—and most were physically unattractive to boot.
Half-way through my 10 years teaching in Argentina, my superintendent told me to go ahead and get a normal teaching license. He sent me to the French Riviera for 30 days to a summer school that specialized in allowing international teachers to get a teaching certificate so that they could teach anywhere in the world. Zut alors! The wine, the women, the song! I got my certificate.
When I moved to Oklahoma some years later I had to attend a few classes to qualify for an Oklahoma Teaching Certificate. What a waste! What stupidity!
Since retirement I have recovered somewhat. Education majors are barrel scrapers. Journalism majors too.
Julie, I’ve seen numerous claims that the dumbest students get routed into Education and Angry Studies.
Everyone: what should be done about the situation above? Should the First Amendment be amended to include Big Tech, or would that do nothing except enrich lawyers? Should author Walsh file suit for defamation against Amazon? Can Mr. Walsh afford as much justice as Jeff Bezos can afford?
The mole here is a hero, risking his job to give customers the opportunity to make an informed decision as to whether they wish to continue to patronize Amazon. When Amazon starts frisking meeting attendees and confiscating their phones to prevent further disclosure, what should customers do? I don’t believe it’s too early to think about that.
Welcome to that realization re: the woke. Better late than later.
No need to hide the iron fist now that the Long March is complete.
You’ve had too much to think and we will decide the programming that goes out to the glorious New Man hive unity borg.
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
― T.S. Eliot
I revere you, G.
Transgender Amazonians? First the estrogen shots to grow them, then cut one off. OK the thought that crossed my mind upon, shudder, seeing the term.
I reluctantly, when all, or at least most, else fails, deal with Amazon being up here atop the world at the end of the supply chain.
Actually Amazon is becoming far less useful to me, more and more often when I try to buy I find a note in red “Sorry we cannot ship that item to your Alaska address”
However I stopped kindleing quite a while ago. A lot of authors I like have, in their opinion gone indy, left publishing houses for Amazon (Not really indy, but hey, gotta go where the buyers are, not for me to judge.). If I’m interested in a read by one I’ll see if a usually used hardcopy is available from Thrift Books pick it up there and go to the author’s web page dropping a nickle or so in their tip jar so they get as bit more remuneration for their work outside the halls of Amazon.
I’ve suggested to some that they sell an epub edition from their web page as well as the mobi version on kindle but most are comfortable just with the Amazon arrangement.
I am told, Mike, that indie authors must do so much marketing that it is a second career.
After receiving these fine answers to life’s question I feel frustratingly Satisfied. Fifth floor please.
And as The Tower Of Power told me just this morning,
Funk The Dumb Stuff!
That woman with the whiny voice sounds funny. I think she’s Presbyterian.
Now that is funny! The Presbyterians claim to be “Christian”, yet their web page reads like an activist front for the Democrat Party. Here are their pressing issues:
Abortion/Reproductive Choice Issues
Alcohol
Capital Punishment
Church and State
Education
Gambling
Gun Violence
How Presbyterians Make Decisions
Mission
Peace/Peacemaking
Politics: Talking politics is not taboo
Sexuality and Same-Gender Relationships
Funny, nothing there about Jesus. Well yes, because He is not welcome there.
I was being ironical.
I wasn’t.
Weinstein and Epstein are/were Presbyterian too.
Methodists are similar, especially women-led congregations. That’s why they are currently undoing the “United” part.
Jesus wondered that, when He returned, would he find faith on earth? From the looks of things, quite doubtful. But then, He promised that the gates of Hell shall not prevail. Ok then.