YOUR MONETIZED LIFE : THE 'MADE IN CHINA' SHIT I BOUGHT WITH MY STIMULUS CHECK : GOOGLE ADS on YOUTUBE VIDEOS DEFY POSTER'S REASON FOR BEING : YOUR REAL REASONS FOR HORROR THIS HALLOWEEN

YOUR MONETIZED LIFE : THE 'MADE IN CHINA' SHIT I BOUGHT WITH MY STIMULUS CHECK : GOOGLE ADS on YOUTUBE VIDEOS DEFY POSTER'S REASON FOR BEING : YOUR REAL REASONS FOR HORROR THIS HALLOWEEN

By Christine Trzyna

ADVERTISING and MARKETING attempt to sway us, and be it the recent mud-slinging political campaign junk mail arriving in the box or the chronic ads that appear on YouTube videos and all around the Internet. The idea is to expose a person over and over again to the idea that they need to vote a certain way or buy a particular product or educational event. Why, 'they' have been following your interests based on your searches and how much time you spend on a site, and (even in Incognito) have you down to a demographic to be pitched to. 

I consider myself to be almost immune to the sway. 

For the record, the only thing I purchased on-line prior to the Covid closure were a couple books to replace ones I lost and owed the library. I did so after trying to find copies locally. I even called a store that sells used books owned by someone on my shit list because that was preferable to buying on-line.

I'm big on buying local. To this moment I've never purchased anything through Amazon. 

Then came Covid closures and stimulus checks. I determined that I would buy the things I wanted and needed locally to try and stimulate the economy of the United States of America that gave that money away, was that not the idea?  However, after putting more than 12 hours into going into the local stores and not finding a single thing on my list, I went on line. I'm not a big fan of Walmart because it's a company that so underpays it's employees that they have classes on how to get EBT food and apply for Section 8 housing, but because I didn't want to buy from various sources and pay out all that money in shipping and wait for a half dozen boxes, I did a first order that did not include any clothing. 

Those few things I purchased with my share of stimulus money were pretty much all Made in China crap, I realized once I got them and looked at the packaging notice and lived with them. The big bag of cotton balls was the exception, Made in the U.S.A. I bought the cotton balls because I needed to up the total in order to get the free shipping.  I bought things that have already broken, including electronics, and ready for the eternal stay of the landfills which also costs our economy. Those things were shipped here across the oceans, and so there was the fuel used to get them here.

So this is what I really did with the stimulus checks. I stimulated the Chinese economy. I supported Communism (even though thousands of Americans have died to combat it and we have countless homeless Viet Nam vets on the streets.)  I supported the economy of a country where a person lives in the invasive and controlling nightmare we all patriotic Americans dread; walking down the street and having an automated voice pick up on our presence electronically; electronic voices calling out such phrases as "Hey Jong, you owe thousands of dollars to your credit card company." How do these devices know who is who? You guessed it. You should think more about buying with CASH rather than being CHIPPED in the near future. And turn off your cell phone and leave at home once in a while.  Chances are good you can live without it.

China: Personal information spewed to embarrass people publicly in a country where suicide was once the main way to save face. Yes, this is happening in China, along with all sorts of violations we do not allow in America. China - A country in which human rights are questionable and, for some ethnic and religious groups, not existent. China - A country that not so long ago forced abortions and had supervisors at work places monitoring women to take the contraceptive pill. A country in which all religion was considered beyond outdated and illegal. 

How the hell can we expect God Bless America when we support China like this?

The Made in China shit I bought using my stimulus check also includes all the clothing items I purchased at Ross Dress For Less, where it's damn difficult to find anything made in the U.S.A, though those NAME BRANDS they carry, went to China to have their suitcases, bras, jeans, and so much else manufactured and that isn't Ross' fault. The company's stock has done well. Ross carries seconds, close outs, and buy outs, and things that went out of fashion season, which most people do not care about, so they profit. There is usually a few racks up front of more fashionable and expensive items, as if to set the tone. (The same company that owns Ross also owns T.J. Maxx.) The Gloria Vanderbilt brand pants I bought, unlike in the old days when that brand wore like iron, are already misshapen and shrunk up my ankle. The shoes I bought at Ross Dress for Less broke after a couple months of not daily wear. The light weight hoodie over-top I bought has fabric that is piling after a few washes. This is how I get away with the headline MADE IN CHINA SHIT. 

By buying Made in China, I supported the end of American manufacturing and jobs, though both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for allowing those jobs to go elsewhere with mythologies such as that these are jobs Americans will not do.

My recent foray into finding cotton or cotton poly sheet sheets and discovering that even housewares fashion arbitrator Martha Stewart had gone the way of Made in China microfiber - more hours shopping locally and in person gone to waste - caused me to then spend more hours on the Internet. Consider the TIME one spends shopping on the Internet or shopping in general, and consider what a waste of time and energy that is.

I checked for what I needed, which was a queen sized cotton or mostly cotton-poly flat sheet to back a quilt, with a hopefully matchy green, at about a dozen stores, including ones I used to walk into (Macy's, Nordstroms) only to discover that cotton sheets were now rare and astronomically priced.  

It seems there are only two choices in sheets that are diabolically opposed. Organic cotton or sheets sprayed with a CHEMICAL to be 'anti-microbial.' One can imagine bugs going croak while your skin rests on this chemical.  (Are they out of their minds? We are told skin care products that appear to sit on the surface go deep into our skin and warned against shampoos with certain ingredients that will harm our scalps and concerned about cancer-causing sun screen but we're going to spend a third of our life laying on sheets with chemicals over microbes that we have an immune system to battle?)  I ended up ordering 100% cotton flannel (I did not want flannel) that was grey (so my quilt will not be reversible) and made in India (better than China but not much) from an obscure company out of state.

By the way, Microfiber sheets take forever, just like stretch leggings and other clothing with stretch, to turn into chemical dust in landfills. Special technology is needed to degrade or reuse these fibers. Ever hear about how when they dig a landfill they can find a readable fifty year old newspaper and a hot dog practically off the grill not degraded? Well, your stretch leggings take even longer.

So there on the shelves of Ross Dress for Less where all these Name Brands, some of which brand-wise communicate that they are only for the posh, made in China and made of polyester, some with beautiful colors and patterns, but you just know that you would stick to them in a hot climate and that they usually also don't want to stay on the bed because they are just too slippy slidy. I went to two locations. I encountered three other women also looking for cotton sheets in total frustration and we all talked about these issues. One said she was purchasing for her 12 year old grandson who was specific about cotton.

Human beings have bought into the idea that they personally need to be BRANDED (Think about that, branded as with a hot iron into the skin, to express being OWNED) and they do that buy buying items they can wear or walk around with that show labels. To do so is to show off wealth, class, or style - or so some people think. However when it comes to sheets, the lure of the name brands and the designs was not winning out. We did not want to sleep on microfiber.

Advertising and marketing - fascinating and horrific.

One of the ads that comes up when you blog on Google is to MONETIZE your work, to allow Google to place ads.  I've never given in to this sway either, in part because this is where your stats count and I've never blogged for stats. Not that I couldn't use some extra money and once in a while considered it.

It's the interuptive quality of advertising on the Internet that I abhor first.  There's the battle so many do to grab your attention, your mind, to stimulate you. Then there is the interruptions that attempt to grab your attention away from the article or video you selected. That even one's personal reveals might be interrupted in that way, tells us just how superficial and shallow we as a society may have become that we would allow all that, just for some pocket change.  

But worse than that (I promised you HORROR!) are the ads coming up on YouTube stations that are simply inappropriate.

I recently blogged about once-upon-a-time New Ager, Doreen Virtue, and her 180 to Fundamentalist, Bible-Based Christianity. She is begging Jesus for forgiveness for leading so many to the path of eternal hell and talking about demons and going against dozens of activities and beliefs aligned with the New Age Movement. What was coming up? Well, believe it or not ads for POSITIVE THINKING type educational experiences, something she firmly opposes. One of them was about a woman who, using her mind power that is taught by a certain educational event, was able to win countless prizes including vacations.

Another video I watched happens to be that of a Christian church far away because I happen to know from long ago one of the men who became a minister there. They went into YouTube video preaching during Covid and I check to see how he's doing, if he's still preaching the Bible, since he's been health challenged in recent years. Well, up came ads for personal hygiene products for men, which were practically scatological. I sent him a message about that.

An ad for, to put this delicately, a device that men can safely use to groom their very private parts also came up in - of all places - a YouTube video for a man who vlogs about UFO's and Big Foot. I get it, someone must have put the tag, "hairy"  There he was, this man's man earnestly going on about mysterious missing person disappearances, and up came the ad for this shaver. He had to be unaware.

Then, just the other day I decided to watch the station for a person who is also onto UFO's and Demons, also Born Again Christian (I know!  Such an agenda!  However, since the United States has admitted to not knowing what some UAP's are and there is now an official investigation committee that includes a NASA astronaut, I can't help myself.) So there I was listening to his videos on YouTube when up comes a commercial, not for the gold company that is one of his sponsors, but a scary ad for Halloween monster film. Clearly there must be a meta tag with the word "Demon."

On Google my objection to allowing ads is the apparent lack of choice of what advertisements are acceptable. Personally, I think it's horrible that I be exposed just searching for YouTube videos I want to watch, to clips of violence and sexuality, in particular because I know that ANYONE, of ANY AGE, can be exposed to these. It is inappropriate for me to be seeking a video that guarantees "relaxing" music, or music to study by, and here comes the roaring of a monster, super heros, blood and guts, loud explosions, and - upsetting to me - the females in these film ads are usually porny stereotypes which I do not want propagated.

These films, aimed at the fear mongering, the murderousness, the blood and gore that Halloween celebration has become are especially promoted at this time of the year, and they, along with video games of the same nature, market violence and destruction, anger and opposition. Then we wonder why there are kids shooting up their classmates, humans intentionally driving their cars into strangers to kill them, and there are the evil, demonically influenced war crimes via Russia in the Ukraine.

There is evil.  There are demons that want your soul.  Marketers and advertisers want your soul too.

C 2022  Christine Trzyna

Note: For whatever reason the font sizes on my posts are going all over the place, even though they look good in preview.  So this morning 10/30, I went back into this post and moved the fonts to medium and saved... again...

HE USES OLD FACE MASKS AND GARBAGE TO MAKE ART

https://youtu.be/r0GnwY-v-qw  Have not embedded this video because of the commercial... one of the most annoying commercials too. Have a look at the link,

IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND : GORDON LIGHTFOOT

You won't read that book again because the ending's just too hard to take. 

IMAGINE : EXPERIENCE THIRTY-FOUR : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

 

IMAGINE that you are a bird.  Choose the kind of bird you are.  What is it like to find food?  To build a nest? Tell about your adventures as a bird.  Maybe this is a bird memoir. 

Christine Trzyna

This exercise is part of a series of writing exercises and to bring up the whole series use the tag Christine Trzyna Writing Workshop. 

C 2018-2025  Christine Trzyna 
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use this post in not for profit situations. Please credit me. Send me love.  It's karma.

GREENLIGHTS by MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

McConaughey first states that this is not a memoir, but that is the best genre the book fits. A memoir, unlike an autobiography or biography, does not seek to cover an entire life and more detail, though the author does give us the basics, choosing scenes or descriptions that pretty much say it all about his parents and their parenting.  That's important because it moves the story along.

Frankly, I personally find it difficult to think of people who are abusive as also loving. Does he ever say the word abusive?  No. Perhaps there's an argument for people not knowing better.  Or that his dad was a Texas 'Good Ol Boy' : I had hoped such characters who use violence and extreme control to teach or discipline or get even with their friends and family had been left behind in the Wild Wild West and were capable of the (admittedly slow) progress of intellect and understanding.  However, who deserves their parents?

Personally I think McConaughey's family of upbringing was dysfunctional and that causes me to have anxiety: I hope he is not duplicating this in raising his own children. You see, McConaughey says that from a young age the only role he ever wanted in life was to be a father. He repeats that.  Also, but, however... he tells his story without apology or over-explanation.

As for women, apparently this celebrity used his fame as an advantage and had many every which way but when he met his wife, who he calls a mermaid, it was love at first sight. He says there never was and never will be any other woman for him.  (Never was? He was in his thirties when he met her. Did he not break hearts as he had many women every which way?  No insight into that expressed.)

Matthew McConaughey is a highly successful actor, and it seems acting is rather natural or effortless to him, though he does explain the risk he took in staying firm: No more rom-coms.

I was impressed with the writing in this book flows, it delivers, and McConaughey seems also to be a natural writer.  It was, as they say, a good read. I recommend it - highly.

My biggest criticism of the book is that it also intends to be a red light, yellow light, green light (go) book, enlightening, sharing wisdom, and, in order to do that, excerpts from a long ongoing diary that the man kept are included and are near UNREADABLE. These excerpts are sometimes in small lettering printed on intense black and frankly my vision was not up to the task. It was annoying.  Also sometimes I did not get the point or the connection. There's probably important connections to the text, but I missed out. I'm sure this blackness was an attempt by the publisher for the book to look a bit scrapbook-like and arty. It was a waste of ink.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

MOON

 

EVE BABITZ : SLOW DAYS, FAST COMPANY - THE WORLD, THE FLESH, and L.A. : FAME AND FRIENDSHIP

 re Janis Joplin in previous paragraphs...

Women are prepared to suffer for love; it's written into their birth certificates.  Women are not prepared to have "everything," not success-type "everything." I mean, not when the "everything" isn't about living happily ever after with the prince (where even if it falls through and the prince runs away with the baby-sitter, there's at least a precedent.) There's no precedent for women getting their own "everything" and learning that it's not the answer.  Especially when you got fame, money, and love by belting out how sad and lonely and beaten you were.  Which is only a darker version of the Hollywood "everything" in which the more vulnerability and ineptness you project onto the screen, the more fame, money, and love they load you with.  They'll only give you "everything:" if you appear to be totally confused. Which leaves you with very few friends.

The kinds of friends you get when you have "everything" (after your old friends have decided to send you all their screenplays, so that you're afraid to run into them lest they wonder why you haven't read them) are either your immediate family or other famous people.  A lot of times your immediate family is what drove you into such excess in the first place.  So that leaves other people with "everything." In Hollywood, there's usually a special grace period when you're allowed to grab a few friends before you're pitched into only meeting other famous people ...

Excerpts pages 60-61 Published 1977

MAMA CASS GOT A STAR ON THE PAVEMENT OF HOLLYWOOD YESTERDAY: DAUGHTER OWEN WAS BEHIND IT

With an assembly of those who loved her and cared: once-upon-a-time bandmate Michelle Phillips looking real skinny, Michelle's daughter Chynna, who runs a YouTube station on her Christian life - wearing a giant cross, John Sebastian of Lovin' Spoonful fame, who knew Mama before the Mama's and the Papa's,  music producer Lou Adler wearing rubber shoes and shorts as if he had just come on down from pool-side, Stephen Stills of CSN, and other bands, and other people who you may have heard of, MAMA CASS ELIOTT has gotten a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The person behind it is her daughter OWEN, who was raised after Cass' death by Cass's sister Leah and her husband Russ Kunkel, a drummer who played with - you know his work from albums - Carly Simon, James Taylor, and some others.

The Mama's and the Papa's had a brief reign on the charts, the radio, but their music went on and on, the Oldie stations continued the play and every once in a while you might catch California Dreamin on the air, as fresh as ever.

The thing I've been most impressed with reading around these people and the Los Angeles - Laurel Canyon music scene in particular - is that Mama Cass was not just a talented and ambitious singer, she was also the kind of person who introduced people to people, who was among those who ran a kind of salon.  And, although one might think of it all springing up "organically," through casual encounters, actually, they were all ambitious, they all wanted to earn money, make it big, be rich, and don't let that hippie thing fool you.  It's impossible to sort it all out, especially from such distance, but Cass was integral in making the scene happen because of she was thinking about how to help others achieve theirs. And that willingness to share and include and help people along - that generosity - that knowing it was not all about her - gets her five stars from me.

That's my commentary.

Here's a link to an article from Variety: 

VARIETY : DEDICATED TO THE ONE I LOVE by Roy Trakin

An excerpt: Owen is using the star ceremony as a springboard to finish her own biography of Mama Cass expressing displeasure at the previous one, British writer Eddi Fiegel's 2005 book, "Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of Cass Elliot.: With the help of rock estate specialist Jeff Jampol, she is exploring other options for her mom's story, including a biopic.

And another from Daily Mail in which Owen is called a son, and when someone does not know who John Sebastian is, they skip identifying him in a picture.  Probably in hast to beat a deadline...  Also, treats it like a fashion commentary as if one cannot see what people are wearing from the photos.

However some interesting quotes if can bear all the pop up ads and clickbait...

DAILY MAIL : MICHELLE PHILLIPS, CARNIE WILSON HONOR MAMA CASS by Brian Gallagher

C Christine Trzyna

#9 DREAM : JOHN LENNON