Turn off the Television - Too Much TV

In this hectic world of over stimulation, when our senses are bombarded with traffic, job demands, family duties, media,health and financial concerns all banging on the brain's door for attention - don't we need a little break once in a while? Do we have to find a fallen log in a neglected woods for one moment of peace?

Not long ago, a doctor's waiting room was a peaceful place. Maybe you were feeling poorly or had some health concerns, sure. But you could sit in the quiet waiting room,  a plain uncluttered place, paging through old National Geographic magazines, or chatting with fellow patients. 

Now, they have the TV on. running constantly. Waiting your turn in the ER? Fox News is yammering about Democrats. Waiting for the doctor to check your BP? The idiots on Jerry Springer are fighting and screaming right over your head because the only place left to sit is under the screen. "Everybody Loves Raymond" seems popular with health care professionals too; maybe because it's more fighting and screaming. 

Going out to dinner at the local eatery? The TV is on. At one popular local restaurant, I was about to bite into my tuna sandwich, when I glanced up to see a lung being dissected on the over hanging TV.

What is wrong with people? In a time when medical evidence shows that too much TV has a detrimental effect on both children and adults, why are we constantly subjugated to the infernal racket and quickly changing images on TV? And why does it walys have to be loud, irate, and obnoxious.

Maybe it's a ploy by pharmaceutical companies. Maybe they give health care providers, restaurants, and car care businesses free televisions - all a covert plant to drive us all crazy so we have to be medicat4ed with those expensive prescription drugs they advertise on TV. 

Unless, maybe we are all way past crazy. Maybe that; why my BP is often so low. I've learned how to turn off my senses and retreat from all the noise by going into a self induced, partial catatonic state.You gotta find some peace somewhere. 

Peace out - 

Dolores

(Public Domain Photo thanks to wikimedia commons)

HubPages Subdomain Switch and Me

Like a lot of people, Google's Panda update hit me hard. Not the most prolific of writers, I was content with my earnings, realizing all the while that if I actually got up off (or is it on) my ass and produced more content, I would attract more traffic and earn more money. But it was good. 

The Panda slap left me disillusioned and disappointed. Resentment took turns focusing my anger, in turn, at HubPages, Google, and myself. I read up on what other, more knowledgeable writers had to say and paid close attention to the changes HubPages made to the site in their attempt to improve the quality of production down on the old content farm. 

Spring of 2011 brought a new look to HubPages. Writers were given a subdomain. Hopefully, instead of being dragged down (or hauled up) by the other writers, search engines would look more at the quality of each writer's work. And, of course, quality is very subjective. The subdomain switch garnered both approval and disapproval from some of HubPages best and worst writers. 

I wrote less, fiddled around with my blogs, and attempted to clean up my articles. My HubPages spring cleaning just meant that I refreshed my hubs, checking spelling and adding a bit of information that should have been included the first time. I deleted a few stinkers. I cut down on some of my Amazon capsules after seeing that too many made the article look messy. 

When HubPages made suggestions, I attempted to comply. They had a new vision of the site focusing more on magazine type articles and discouraging personal, blog type hubs. 

 HubPages new subdomain switch worked well for me. My traffic improved, more than twice what it was prePanda. What will happen tomorrow, or next week is impossible to say.

I read lots of complaints in HubPages forums. But the happier folks did not say much. Maybe they got sick of their articles being ripped off, their content stolen by copy-cats and thieves. I don't blame them. 

But for now, I am happy at HubPages. Things are looking up down on the old content farm.

How to Change the Font in Your Blog Title (for Idiots)

As you may easily surmise, all this internet stuff is a mystery to me. Despite nearing 1/2 million views on HP alone, one would think that I'd have picked up or at least attempted to learn something a bit more complicated than popping buttons.

But no. In anticipation of creating another blog that offers some actually helpful information, I decided to mess around with this one just to see what I can do. I'd like to build a blog around making stuff and move away from the blatherings presented here where I so depend on the kindness of strangers.

So, I added the sunset so befitting the blog title. Now, that was not hard. Then, I decided to change the font of the title. I goggled 'how to change the font in a title of a blog' and read several lists of instructions that went like this:

)-+rk@%^&*Fu{boo(+#>insert font of your choice here
pX>&)_@..Wdbbbk#$^<;;''|\\\|**-s&!!?ZZzzgah)(+or-)
up['efgahble3*)!,f3&9pVi#$(ll(-'$^,,!!??Zhi
bbn..!%h-+=!!?:$t^&*)_+!&**hbb&-+#$%?!;hj<.:+!?i#

I finally found one that was slightly less intimidating, that did not remind me of how they used to depict curse words in old comics. Then, below,I saw and read one more:

On the Dashboard page, Click Design. Click Template designer button. Under Advanced options browse the fonts, select one you like (you can even change the color) and save. Do not be scared away by the word "advanced."

How simple is that?

Why are we presented with a plethora of complicated code, of large clumps of nearly indecipherable code that may as well be in Chinese (they be hieroglyphics above) when, if you are asking such a simple question, there is a huge change that you don't understand all that technical language?

Of course, I should learn some HTML, or whatever. Of course, I am an idiot. That's why I am asking questions.

Lark Rise to Candleford Saved My Life

Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but, at the end of the day, watching Lark Rise to Candleford is like taking a tranquilizer before bed without the next morning zombie-like effect.

For years, my husband and I have been watching lawyer/cop dramas at night. Just looking for a story to wrap up the day and forget our troubles, we've subjected ourselves to child abuse, unfairly accused people driven to suicide, torture, kidnapping and more torture, and the sheer torture of watching the authorities accuse everyone they meet in the course of an investigation of the most hideous crimes imaginable. It don't make for sound sleep and a relaxed mind.

I can' t help but wonder if the popularity of the profoundly awful reality shows indicate that people are sick to death of murder and mayhem, brutal criminals, and obnoxious authority figures.

And when we do fixate on a show, it's the kiss of death. Producers should run pilots by us. If we like it, they could save a lot of money and ditch the whole thing.

Somehow, by accident, we stumbled on Lark rise to Candleford. Drawn by the picturesque setting - every scene looks like a 19th century painting and many scenes resemble my favorite art, 19th century landscapes and impressionist landscapes.

Set in late 19th century England, a cast of characters live life full of the simple day to day problems sans electricity. In our first episode, Laura lost a package she was supposed to deliver, damaging the self respect she had earned by assisting the controversial post mistress of Candleford. Following episodes introduced plots filled with tenderness, unfulfilled desire, fear, shame, and my all time favorite poignancy.

None of the characters are fabulously beautiful, although the late Victorian/ early Edwardian outfits certainly are. The serial follows the inhabitants of a market town, and a nearby hamlet called Lark Rise. Even the names of the places are poetic. Drawn from a memoir written in the 1930's and 40's by Flora Thompson around her youth in Oxfordshire, England, the quaint setting and people belie the complexity of the simple dramas enacted in the show.

Characters are complex and varied with personality traits that are both annoying and endearing. Dorcas Lane,the post mistress, has inherited her post office from her father. She is a strong minded feminist, a kind hearted employer, busy-body, a love sick spinster, both generous and petty, straight-laced and silly.

The Pratt sisters are self righteous, pretentious pains-in-the-ass as well as loving, ambitious, and foolish.

Lark Rise to Candleford is a BBC production (of course) that our local PBS station airs in the afternoon. We tape it to watch at night. When I first fell in love with LR2C, I googled it only to learn that the BBC has already canceled it! Four years of kindness and poignancy is all we get.

Verification, Bin Laden, Obama, and God

Certain people are out there demanding verification these day - verification on the death of Osama bin Laden; verification on the verification of Obama's birth certificate.

Now, verification ain't a bad thing. There's been a paucity of that what with the ability of any idiot (like me) to post information on the World Wide Web. Google is supposedly attempting to address this issue with its new Panda Update (along with trashing some democratic sites like Hubpages, but that's another story).

News organizations have, in the past few years, closed news desks and cut down on the number of bona fide journalists - people whose investigative work was verified by fact checkers, leaving us with a hodge-podge of questionable information. So, this sudden demand for verification may be a good thing.

But, how far can we take it? Would it really verify the death of Osama bin Laden if the US government posted photographs of his mutilated corpse? The man was shot in the face. The resulting image would be gruesome, inflamatory, and unseemly. Photographs of a mutilated corpse prove nothing.

Al Qaeda has verified the death of Osama bin Laden. But should we believe them? Should we believe the President of the United States? Frankly, most of us have trouble believing anything today. (Where is Walter Cronkite when we need him?)

The whole mess reminds me that I'm glad I believe in God. Like Job, just take everything away, and I'll still have faith in the unprovable.

So, in the immortal words of Tiny Tim (no, not the singer) "God Bless us - every one."

Deathers are the New Birthers

Sure, you've heard of the Birthers, whose big noise recently declined into a low buzz. Now, we've got the Deathers, a rag-tag bunch of wacky Repubnuts who refuse to believe that Osama bin Laden is dead.

Just when you thought - okay, shut that bunch down, now we can talk about real issues, the fundamental concerns of the actual Republican Party - real serious people with important issues like cutting taxes for beleaguered zillionaires and making sure abortions for 14 year old rape victims are not funded by the government.

The Deathers, however, are not quite the untied front as the Birthers. Some only want to see a photograph of the deceased Osama bin Laden. Others will not believe a photograph. People just don't look like themselves when they're dead, especially after being shot in the face.

Maybe they should have captured O. b. L. alive, which certain people wouldn't believe either. They could have forced him to appear on a nationally televised interview with Barbara Walters. She could have asked him the tough questions like, "Tell us, what makes Osama bin Laden tick?"

(The answer, of course, is a time bomb. But I digress.)

Deathers have lots of interesting takes on the death of the Al Qaeda leader and ex CIA operative once known as Tim Osman. Like the one where bin Laden has been on ice; that is actually kept in a large block of ice somewhere and a transformer blew the electricity producing a nasty thaw. Then there is the one that has the United States Government as a front for the Vatican, and a bunch of Jesuits in body armor captured bin Laden years ago. Or the right wing talk show host who claims that President Obama unlawfully assassinated bin Laden on a giddy whim after incurring lots of laughs in a recent roast.

Let us recall back in the early days after Obama won the election, when the Right Wing talk show hosts encouraged their fellow Americans to stand against anything and everything the new president said or did. The Deathers dogedly follow that sage advice. Let's band together for our country, sabotage the presidency, oppose good ideas, disbelieve anything we hear that we don't like, even if we would like it if our guy was behind it.

Now that makes sense! (Not)

Hey, Facebook now has a message board entitled Osama bin Laden Not Dead. Deathers are the new Birthers!

The Google Panda Update, Content Farm Slap and me

Google's Panda Update and content farm slap has a lot of us home writers in a whirl. Our little cottage industry now threatened by the Big Boys has left us quaking in our boots, or should I say beddie slippers.

The folks up at Big G seem to be moving forward with what they like to call noble intent - an attempt to weed out the chaff, the spam, the rubbish, and the tons of copied material that clog up Google searches. They claim that Google cred will be given to authoritative sites instead of a bunch of back water yah-hoos spewing content for the various farms that have been created to earn a bit of pin money from Google ads.

Call me naive, but my little plot on the HubPages content farm offers some high quality produce. Sure, there are weeds growing around the edges of the field. I am hoping that the HP staff drags out the heavy machinery to winnow out the chaff.

But authoritative? Back in my early days on the farm, I wrote a self-help piece that was plagiarized by a bonafide psychologist on her very 'authoritative' site. The work of the peasant was passed off as her own. The work of a backwater hayseed (me) spooned out and served up by a professional, the kind of site Google hopes to grant authority.

So go ahead, Google something - how to do something, help for a home project, hobby, or a new passing fancy. You will find authoritative sites by commercial interests, companies, and corporations who exist to sell you a product. That is not information, that is advertising.

Remember Alta Vista? Once a font of information, they went commercial - do they even exist anymore?

Sometimes those little people on the content farms know something. They research and write some pretty good articles with unique content and info, giving you a helpful introduction to a topic. Sure, they rub elbows with jerks and copy-cats. I guess we are known by the company we keep.

But authoritative? When I go into Home DePot, I get my best advise from other costumers.