In the Home of the Enemy

Yesterday, when I got to work, I was told I needed to do some deliveries.  Fun, eh?  Deliveries happen every now and then.  Something gets delivered wrong and we have to replace it, or, as in yesterday's case, the delivery truck could not deliver the flooring this customer had ordered.  Why not?  Because the customer lived out in the friggin' boonies.  Translation?  A mile and a half from the customer's home we turned left onto a one lane, strip of black top which was supposed to pass for a road.  At the end of that mile and a half there was a driveway, gravel with bits and pieces of what may have one time been black top, which wound up a steep hill for another 800 feet.
I parked our small truck in front of the open garage door and walked to the front door (no sidewalk) while the associate with me started tearing the shrink wrap off the pallet of flooring.  I knocked and some kid answered and he told me to bring it in through the garage.  As I carried the first box in through I could feel my skin begin to crawl.  There, to my left, on the floor, were 2 Trump / Pence signs.  I was in the home of the enemy... a Trumplodite!
He was big and fat, at least 6'3" and 300 pounds, probably more, and very, very white.  And while for the most part the house was clean, it was also very cluttered.  The coffee table was stacked with NFL magazines, and Country magazines, and newsletters, and there coats and jackets tossed over the backs of furniture.  Two computer keyboards and a tablet lay against the side of the sofa.  And there were framed photographs all over the place. Seriously.  This Trumplodite's older son must have been a football player in high school since there was a wall covered with framed pictures of him in his uniform, and his prom date, and the prom invitation and football certificates - in all, probably around 30 of them.  One wall was dedicated to the 85" television on which NFL Today was playing.

While this is a facsimile picture, it was pretty much like this

From the living room you could see into a 'home office,' and I know he would hate for me to say this, but I'm using that word liberally since there were stacks of paper all over the place, and I'm talking stacks here, not 1" or 2" piles, but 6" - 8" stacks, a lot of them.

And this Trumplodite was not the most friendly of people, the original delivery truck couldn't get to his house because of it's location... and it was their fault, so I got stuck delivering it in a smaller truck, which meant the delivery was late and that (in his mind) was my fault.  In fact, as I was carrying in boxes of faux hardwood flooring, I realized that in this guy's mind everything he didn't like was someone else's fault.

Still, I am happy to say I survived my brief stint in the Home of the Enemy, and I suspect that the black hatred seething around his head will only grow after Tuesday's election.  He's going to need to blame somebody.

Blogging, no big bucks there

For some unknown reason there are a number of people out there who believe there is quite a bit of money to be earned blogging.  Surprise, this is, for the most part, horse shit.  Now I'm not saying people aren't making money off of their blogs, but they are few and far between.  How do I know?  Well, I belong to a community of bloggers on Linkedin and the question was put out to the group.  Out of all the responses, only 5 claimed to be putting good money in their pockets.  The vast majority said they did it either for fun or had yet to receive any revenue.  Most of the comments were on the amusing side.  Evidently you need to average at least 25,000 hits per day to even scratch the income surface and a lot of those hits need to be clicking on your ads.  In some cases the ads, themselves, are not free. Nobody wants to pay for an ad no one else has any interest in viewing.  I've seen bloggers plead for people to click on the ads.  When that begins to happen you are in a very bad place.

For me, the joy of blogging is in being able to say what I want.  I get to tell people about things I find interesting.  I get to point out what I believe to be stupidities to people.  Now and then I publicly question why something is happening, or why certain people do things.  If people read what I write, that's fine, it's just as fine with me if they don't.  Any one who starts blogging because they believe they're going to make their fortune at it has their head up their ass.  It's like wanting to be a major league baseball player, or be in the NFL or AFL, or any other sport.  Millions of people dream, but those who actually make big bucks are almost as rare as hen's teeth.