A few days ago I had the pleasure of attending a Christmas party hosted by my financial advisor. Much to everyone’s surprise Santa came to visit. As an adult, I don’t expect visits from Santa but when it does happen it is an enjoyable experience. Seeing Santa serves to enflame the Christmas sprit in all of us.
The very next day, I attended a Christmas party for OASIS for the Visually impaired. Santa did not participate in it, but one of his elves came to sing for us. His playlist was all Christmas songs. Again, it served to heat the fire of Christmas within us. I was so enthused that I finally decorated the house exterior with colorful mini lights. That extra spirit and fifty-degree weather with sunshine got me out of my chair to string lights. Usually, the Scrooge within prevents me from doing the job until Lovely gives me her evil eye and demands it.
I’ve decided to put up our Christmas tree tomorrow, which will complete my decoration tasks, but I still have Christmas cards to send and presents to buy before I am 100% stress-free.
I send a letter with my Christmas card every year, but this year (2023), I’ve decided to skip that tradition. I barely make it through a short post for GrumpaJoesPlace, much less a creative letter different from last year’s. All this writing is beginning to sound like work. We all know that work is a four-letter word, and I should avoid using it. I could write about how I spent nine months creating the wood sculpture I christened Libre, but nobody cares about Libre but me. I’ll have to use the trick my college professor taught me to make a list of possible topics, pick one, and begin writing about it.
When it comes to kids wanting to change their gender while still in grammar school, I cannot, nor will I, ever believe it is possible. It’s been a long time since I was that young, but it never occurred to me that I might want to be a girl. The subject never came up in our house. My brother is a boy, I am a boy, and my sister is a girl. We were satisfied with life as it happened. What I could believe is that kids who want to change their gender at age five or six have been brainwashed. Perhaps by parents who wanted a girl instead of a boy or vice versa. Kids just don’t think that way. They are too young to really understand the difference. Another thing I don’t understand nor believe is the medical industry that is growing up around gender change. There must be a lot of sick doctors who believe they can become famousl by supporting the physical surgery they implement to change a boy into a girl.
There has to be something in the food or water these people drink to make them believe in what they do. There is no other explanation. What is scarier to me are the laws that politicians are implementing to allow six year olds to undergo major body transformations without parental approval. Instead of giving parents the responsibility they have for bringing up their progeny the law pushes the right on to elementary school teachers. That is totally insane. In fact nothing about gender change is sane.
One of my theories is that the brains of these children have been infiltrated with garbled messages and the young brain just soaks it all in, and messes up the intricate linkages between mind and body. One way that occurs is by the constant repetition of thought processes that may occur during electronic games. All kids love playing computer games and parents use the games as a way to keep their child occupied and out of their hair. The games allow characters to morph from one person to another, they can change personalities with button pushes in instants. I know from my own addictions to electronic games that the desire to win and play is strong. One game I play is two deck solitaire. The stats kept by my computer show my win rate to be 16.2%. That is a losing statistic, but the desire to beat this game of chance continues. The same meter tells me that I have spent a total of 122 days, 23 hrs, and 25 minutes playing a game that I cannot beat. Yet, whenever I get near my laptop, I play another round. If that isn’t conditioning I don’t know what is. It is hard for me to realize that I have spent four months of my life playing solitaire, but it is a fact.
Statistics of populations world wide show that the number of people who are transgender varies between 1-5 percent. My math calculates that to be as many as 80 million people who have been born with their wires crossed. Is it our responsibility to convert these souls into their proper gender? I say no. We are still far away from having the smarts and the techniques required to make gender reassignment safely feasible. At this point we are merely performing experiments on kids to uncross their wiring. That puts us in the NAZI class of experimenting on humans because it is fun to do.
One day, soon I hope, these people who believe they can alter nature and revise gender will wake up and reverse the process. By that time we will be flooded with generations of kids who have been bodily re designed to think they are something other than what they are. The problem is they will have no way to reset to what is normal.
The most famous artist for this type of saucy postcards was Donald McGill.
He was nearly 80 years old when he was put on trial (1954) under the Obscene Publications Act, found guilty and fined. Today the postcards are worth a fortune.
I recall scanning postcard racks while on vacation and buying several of these to send to friends.
Too many times I wonder how it is that people can make money using social media. Maybe because it is my age that puts me at a disadvantage, but I really am interested in how it works. Whenever I find something like a book, or a video that will explain the simple dynamics of using Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc I devour it.
I just finished reading a book titled “City of Like” by author Jenny Mollen. Jenny has crafted a fictional story which involves the life of of a simple New York mom who wants to raise her kids and have a job too. I won’t get into the plot any further because I would be a spoiler. In this story the characters are very different people who live for building their audience on social media. All that matters to them is getting “liked, friended, subscribed to, or followed.” The numbers become the game. The more followers one has the better the chances are the content producer will be monetized. Monetized, now thats an interesting word which has risen from obscurity in the business world to one of everyday usage by the masses of social media users. It means that that the content being presented by someone of Facebook derives revenue from the content. Companies like Youtube (Google) have learned that profit can be had by using the content of the masses. It doesn’t matter what the content is but rather depends on how many viewers see the work. It is not much different than selling newspapers.
The social media companies get all of the content free from their users. It costs very little to store the content digitally, and their computers can track viewership easily. Then it becomes a matter of deciding how to make money, and how to reward content producers for their creative efforts.
I had not heard the term “influencer” used before reading this book. An influencer is one who builds an audience of tens of thousands of viewers and pitches products and services to this audience. The influencer is rewarded with free samples of the products they pitch. Some of them are in such demand that they hire agents to agents to negotiate for them. That is when the big money begins to flow.
Recently, I watched a Youtube video of a young man in his twenties explain the mathematics of building audience for the purpose of achieving monetization. He went through the process from the ground up and explained how a blogger, vlogger, etc. will have to produce several posts daily in order to succeed. I get people clicking to follow my blog and when someone does I get an email notification. I then visit the persons blog to see what he/she is about. Most times the follower is someone who sells a product on his blog. One reason I check them out is to decide if they are genuine or in business. If they are real bloggers and are just interested in writing stories I will befriend them and continue a dialog. Some of my best friends are people I have never met in person, but with whom I communicate almost daily.
Nevertheless, with inflation eating away at my fixed income I am becoming more interested in a developing a new income stream to help me along. I have resolved that I can do it, but will wind up giving up the freedom of retirement by making my blog into a job. The formula for success requires producing several content posts daily, reading, commenting, and following hundreds of other bloggers daily. It makes sense to me now as to why so many bloggers have people on their payroll who submit content daily.
At this point in life, I feel that my sciatic nerve will allow me only a couple of hours a day to sit at a computer before my toes begin to tingle, my right hip is on fire, and the nerve between the head and shoulder is screaming for help.
