Bear Act

There is no recording of this. There was no videotape. It was Chicago.

I think I was four years old, which would put this at 1956. A group of kids from the Neighborhood Club, that was the name, went to be on television. I had never seen a television.  Lee Phillips was the producer. There was a bear act. The trainer grabbed me out of the group of kids to ride behind the bear on a scooter.

The bear had silver curly hair. I didn’t smell anything. I held onto the big massive wall of curly hair. There were extremely bright lights. I squinted at the cameras and looked away. I wondered what the cameras were. I waved to the kids. Then the dog showed up. The dog perched its paws on my shoulders while we rode around in a circle. The dog’s big head was next to mine; I could smell the dog.  I didn’t know from bears or scooters, but I was afraid of dogs.  Perhaps the bear was affected by my fear because it roared, which also startled me. I had a feeling like:

-uh oh

The trainer called the dog off. The dog was like:

-What? I’m working here.

The trainer took me off the scooter.  I went back to the kids. One of the kids said:

-You rode behind the bear!

I nodded. I felt I had let down the act. Later I saw the trainer smoking and he glanced at me.

We got to all run into a cave and each get a present. I opened mine and got a dolly. A girl got a Tommy gun style squirt gun. Lee Phillips made us switch.

BlogSpot Sucks

BlogSpot just created a beta software update for statistics. BlogSpot used to pollute my view count with my own visits.  It offered an option to turn that off but then it didn’t keep it clicked. Why would someone want to count their own visits? Now it throws me into Analytics which seems overly concerned with Google users.

I used to be on Open Salon.  When that closed I chose BlogSpot believing there would be permanence. It was tedious cutting and pasting my entries. Who thought there would be so many? I lost my dates and comments. You would think that there could be an easier transition. That may be working now.

Why is it so difficult to have an index or table of contents?

I had AdSense on Open Salon. BlogSpot sent me over to AdSense with a new ID which AdSense rejected. I am now trapped in a perpetual user ID embrace from which there is no release. Please don’t send any scripted solutions unless you have tried them yourself.  AdSense sucks as well. You might think AdSense and BlogSpot had better coordination.

Amazon EBook sucks. Why is XML proficiency a requirement for publishing an EBook with any features?  Why doesn’t Amazon have its’ own editor so that I can structure the book within the reader the way it should be rather than down and up loading it over and over? This reminds me of TurboTax preventing free self-filing.  TurboTax sucks. Hello Amazon! If there is a self-publishing industry to create EBooks, you are doing it wrong.

Why isn’t there a common directory for voicemail, text and email? How many decades now?

These companies should require that their employees actually use their products.