Stupid Advertising

French's: we may be jingoistic and/or xenophobic, but we're not coneheads!

(Responding to an advertisement I was just served (hehe; see what I did there?) saying that French's is "not from France" and has "all-American taste."

C'mon; I thought we were done with that during the "Freedom Fries" era.

(no subject)

In the wake of Harlan Ellison's death, a FB friend told a story about him. Ellison was at a convention and said friend (SF) had been listening to him talk at various events. At one talk later in the run of the convention, SF was listening and nodding as Ellison talked about a particular thing from a book. Ellison saw him and said, to paraphrase, 'You've been doing that all weekend, but I don't think you've really read all these books. You're just trying to look like you know what you're talking about.' SF summarized the next part of the book that Ellison was talking about, and Ellison acknowledged that SF had, in fact, read those book. SF said that this was a real ego boost for him, to be affirmed in that way.

I commented that, while I might be missing something, this seemed to me like the kind of gatekeeping that a lot of fen are, justifiably, decrying these days. A community member expresses understanding and familiarity with a piece of media, and another community member responds by accusing the first person of having a reaction based on something superficial; of being a fake fan.

SF responded and said that I was entirely missing the point. I said that that was fair, and I would like to understand what the point actually was. And then, as best as I can tell, he deleted the comment chain.

I interpret actions like that an an expression that someone is not interested in my opinions or in having meaningful conversations with me, so I saved everyone aggravation and unfriended him.

I unfriended his partner soon after Charles Manson died. Someone responded to a news article about it by expressing some kind of hope that he would be redeemed in heaven or something (I forget exactly), and SF's partner responded very critically to that comment, attacking the person for it.

Maybe shrinking of my friends list will also encourage me to spend less time on Facebook! Of course, this also probably explains part of why I don't seem to have a lot of online social-media friends....

(no subject)

Me to a coworker, in response to a discussion about vacations: "Well I took 48 vacations this weekend! ... I count them by the hour."

In the spirit such mini-vacations, I will be taking about 216 of them centered on the week of July 23rd. I will be driving to Colorado, probably via Kansas, and returning to Illinois, probably via Nebraska. I feel an urgent need to get *away from everything* for a while. I'll be seeing a mish-mash of things culled from Roadside America and Cinema Treasures that most people probably won't care about but I'll tell you about them anyway as I work on my itinerary.

The only things that would make the trip better would be the presence of my partner (who would be miserable) and a companion good dog (which I do not have in my life at present). The dog-shaped hole in my heart that Piper left has been slow to heal, and I would have loved to have her with me on this trip, the way I had Kuma on another, years ago.