Dead Week 2023
The first in a series of ten articles . . .
For me, those words cause an immediate (if that’s fast enough) clicking away from the website, no matter the topic. Be it the lunatic response to the lunatics running the asylum, or How to Make XYZ, or The Listicle of Listicles on finding a decent yard of white cotton to purchase from a non-Zombie, non-Commie Site in this mixed-up world of retail rot:
The Internet has become a junkyard, filled with space junk from yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
How is one to navigate the digital bilge?
I have no answers.
As Anton Chekhov sagely advised, the important thing is for the writer to posit the question.
When I had to re-do my website this past summer, this personal domain that’s been in existence since September 2012 (or thereabouts), I hesitated to make it look too “professional” and slick. The appearance of Going Corporate is a real turn-off, at least it is for me.
Going Corporate has become the equivalent of going to the devil. Fabric e-tailers I used to peruse became, post 2019, and definitely post-2020, shades of Ali-baba.
Most people might not know what’s going on Behind the Screen, but I’ve a fairly good feel for the oppressive, and pervasive, globalist strings pulling the puppet strings here, in the USA; there, in the EU; and, most pathetically, in the UK.
Small online businesses in Ireland, Scotland, and France are having a field day in the wake of the marvelous consumer backlash against Multi-National Crap.
I shall confess that the gifts for Jolene, the Beagle Jumping Queen, came from Costco. I humbly admit my financial sins in that matter.
This past Christmas, my gift-buying, giving and receiving were wondrous acts of good will to artisans, and to everyone with a throbbing heart of sincerity — because of my truly ethical choices in consumer spending. And we all know — OR WE ALL OUGHT TO KNOW —buying anything online is all about the Ethical Sourcing of Everything We Must Feel Ethical About.
I typically get my Christmas shopping done by December One, but, this year, I had to buy EARLY, VERY EARLY whatever I needed to procure for The Holidays. I consequently bought wisely and prudently, from industrious capitalist enterprises that survived the globalist attempts in 2020, and beyond, to squish the Little Guy like a gnat on the worldwide retailing rug.
By far, the most disappointing of all of my ethical purchases were the patriotic ones — the woolen items grown (SOURCED), and made, in the USA.
It’s become a gimmick of global proportions for the unethical e-tailers sucking up to the Save-the-Planet micro-blob to try to reel in the true outdoorsy types, such as I, who go for walks in the woods without ferreting away 4 devices in the secret pockets of the overpriced anorak.
And while they’re all Saving the Planet, they can wrap themselves in that post-recycled polyester that has overtaken Textile World as the Garment Fabric of the Future!
As a woman, as a seamstress, and as a lover of natural fibers, I am comforted — warmed to the cockles of my heart — by the fact that wholesalers of Harris Tweed in the quiet and peaceful village of Garenin, Caroloway, on the west side of the Isle of Lewis, have erected a website that’s rudimentary and real, and willing to offer to little ole me, fabric of single-width or double-width.
The prudent, practical, and ethnical choice is the double-width.
With the excitement and enchantment only I can muster for woven woolen textiles, I found 10 tweeds to purchase in the New Year, at fantastic prices. There’s no millennial madness going on in that village, where the pitch of Skinny Suits to adults of 2% body fat eliminates me completely from that client list.
I’ve always been on the outside, looking further out, so this undeniable sense of appalling isolation is normal, as well as desirable, for me. I only hope that the Outsider doesn’t get packaged and peddled for wide-scale sale. Then I’d really be in a pickle.
Please do not attempt to find the definition of that phrase online, or the warming of the cockles of your heart. The phony-baloney re-defining of aeons-old words and idioms is a most despicable sight on the faux-ethical woke-sites.
Latchkey Kid has morphed into a state of childhood independence, according to a master degree’s thesis-expert!
Those new “interpretations” are the First in a Series of Ten Phases of re-writing history into malarkey or, ahem, myth. I suggest you purchase a technical book or two, or a series of books, to further refine, or even introduce yourself to — accurate knowledge of donkey’s years terms.
If I can do it, you can do it too!