Episode #76: Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

As we come out of yet another non-agnsty week, we would like to remind everyone that originality has taken a much needed siesta of an unknown length. Because of this much needed break, we are forced to mine once again, all that is provocative, namely my first blog Cedar's Mountain.

Yeah, lots of posts to choose from, and our topic of choice is pop culture.

Being one of the older members of my former hive {by at least two decades} allowed me at times to have very interesting conversations about pop culture. I emphasize "very interesting" because more often than not, I would have to explain, in great detail, some of my pop culture references. 

Yes, I had co-workers whose pop culture awareness stopped in the 1990's and completely bypassed public television.

So when I would say something like "happy white clouds" I would get very odd looks {e.g. "wait...wut?"}, which would then force me to explain in detail, completely with info dump, on what I was saying in reference.

Yes, it did ruin the flow of conversation quite a few times, much to my annoyance. Anywho, the aforementioned quote was intentionally used by me, because the post that I'm linking to features an interesting explanation to that phrase, complete with active video.

So, from the June 13, 2013 edition of Cedar's Mountain, I bring to you the post Making Pop Culture Work.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #75: We're Still Blipped

It's still been a somewhat semi-angsty non-work week {emphasis on non, since I is retired}, as the tired old cliche of "Often the best laid plans...." is being offered up to you the reader today.

Things have reached an impasse in regards to the writing front, as I have not been able to move on like I wanted to with my upcoming e-book {which will be titled A Trilogy of Love}, as we were forced to take a minor detour along the way. But I'm pretty certain you don't want to hear me whining about my lack of effort on the writing front yet again. So, instead we're gonna reach into the distant past and talk about an old post from my first blog, Cedar's Mountain. enjoy.

E-mail humor.

Back in the day when I used to have a core group of work friends, we would forward humorous e-mails to each other. Because a lot of us had wicked senses of humor, our e-mails were a bit on the offensive side. One such email contained a brutally funny poem called "Frenemy". The original title of the e-mail escaped me when I had posted this back in mid 2013, so the post was called Fluffernutter {not sure why, but I think the pic had a lot to do with it}.

One thing that will jump out at you is the fact on how incredibly verbose and witty I still was back in the early 2010's. The downhill slide to being really cynical and burnt started in the next year, but for a good 6+ years, I was really funny and witty. This particular post is a good case in post.

From the June 21, 2013 edition of Cedar's Mountain, I bring you the poem called Frenemy.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #74: We Blipped

Sometimes we experience the occasional blip in our month, where we get to thinking about where we were, where we're going and where we're presently.

This has been the case this particular month.

My particular blip happened this past week, when the aforementioned issues intersected at the exact same time.

It's now mid-February, and everything intersected at the same time. To whit:

1} This week, I went to a few doctor appointments. This brought home the fact that in about three weeks the state medical board will be meeting to determine whether or not I qualify for a disability retirement (thus a higher monthly pension) or not. Either way, the immediate headache will be that I'll be forcibly changed to another health insurance place. The state of CT has a completely differently health insurance plan when you become a retiree, so this will cause all kinds of chaos not only for myself but for my wife and daughter as well.

2} In conjunction with the first point, my income will drop by roughly 75% or so. So once the dust settles, I'm going to be looking for something part time about 15-20 hours a week or so. I was actually planning to do this originally back in 2020, but had a change of plans where I could file for disability and still get paid until it gets approved (going on 4+ months now). I do have things in place for when April rolls around, so I'm not too terribly worried about things as they presently stand.

3} Daughter is slowly getting back to her old self, after taking a minor detour for all of 2020. She has a brand new road map for herself and I couldn't be more happier for her or prouder of her.

4} The recent passing of a few extended family members and former middle school/high school classmate has now introduced a sobering new reality/mortality. It's a bit troubling when people who are either roughly your age (55) or ten years plus or minus to your age have passed away. Certainly hammers home the fact that tolerating human toxicity sucks major moose testicles, and should be excised with extreme prejudice.

And finally,

5} Sometimes the best laid plans, no matter how bulletproof they may be, can be thrown into a state of flux, just by the simple act of the real world poking its craggy little head into your business when you least want it to.

So remember, act accordingly during your day-to-day existence, because having people talking about you in the present tense is surely much better than being talked about in the past tense.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #73: And You Censored Me Because...Why?

As most of my long time readers know, I'm incredibly squirrely when it comes to be moderated/censored. As in, I get seriously bent out of shape to the point where I often cut ties with the person/entity who did the censoring.

The censoring itself has been pretty much dormant for the past few years, beyond the occasional unfriending of those on FB who took exception to a comment(s) that I made on a post that they were unwilling to defend (easier to unfriend someone that it is to defend your point of view).

I say "dormant" since I've become much better at reading what a person's personal views are on a given topic, so I make it a point to be respective and simply "scroll on by", which is a concept utterly lost on 98% of Americans who lean left/progressive with their personal views. Instead, I keep my more "offensive" comments limited to the pages that I follow/suggested pages that I troll.

For the most part, this has worked fairly well for me. I play nice with people I like, and they play nice with me. Easy peasy. However, this year, there have been two occasions in which I've been taken to task and had verbiage removed, and I've had two noticeably different reactions to being called out.

1} I had a blog post removed from a writing group I belong to. This happened during the first week of January when protesters stormed Capitol Hill (IMO it was not "an insurrection"). I had posted it in the group for a prompt that day. One of the lovely admins (I genuinely mean that as a compliment) removed it and gave me a few thoughtful reasons as to why. I told her that I appreciated the sentiment, that there was no hard feelings on my end and that everything was good. Ultimately though, I probably prompted a tweaking to the group rules on what can and can't be posted in the group. 

2} This one is a bit more difficult to simply accept. I've become a bit more active on YouTube as of late and have posted dozens of comments over the past couple of years, some thought provoking and some funny/whimsical and all about the topic of the video being shown at the time. And none that violated the fluidity of the community guidelines. None. Earlier in the week, an acquaintance of a writing group I belonged to posted a video link to someone who talks about all things writing, which the topic of the video was about vanity publishing (of which the acquaintance was interviewed for the video). I made what I assumed to be an inoffensive comment about it, along with a suggestion about a website to check out, and also subscribed to the channel.

Maybe about an hour or so later, I went back to the video and saw that my comment was gone. Now there was nothing on the channel itself saying that comments were being moderated (like you can on blogs), so you can imagine that I was extremely upset about my comment being nuked. I left one about my comment being nuked and sure enough, that one never posted as well. Suffice to say, I was really upset about this and immediately unsubscribed to the channel. The owner eventually commented and offered to restore the comment. Long story short, I'm not quite sure what happened to my original comment. He said that it wasn't him that took it down, that it must've been YouTube. Personally, I find this hard to believe as all my previous comments have met/passed the various algorithms with flying colors, and only YouTube and the owner of a channel can remove comments they deem offensive/poor taste. In any event, I politely gave my two cents and wished him well with his channel.

So these were my most two recent bouts of censorship: one where my response was casual and understanding, and one where my response was not casual and understanding, but more to the point of being seriously ticked off and pledging to avoid the content creator for the future.

Censorship is fugly, but depending on where and what the circumstances are, can be, to a small degree, acceptable.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved