February words of wisdom

Told you so. --Your Intuition

Once in a while, blow your own damn mind. --Unknown

The older I get the more I understand that it's okay to live a life others don't understand. --Unknown

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Some people's idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they want, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage. --Sir Winston Churchill

If you can't stand solitude, perhaps others find you boring as well. --Mark Twain

Never give up hope. Situations can change overnight, problems can dissolve in the light of a new day's sun. --Leon Brown

Pause and remember, the past is over and it cannot be changed, fixed or undone by continuing to think about it. The quicker we can get over our mistakes, understand the lessons and move forward, the healthier we become to ourselves and everyone around us. --Jenni Young

I like thinking big. I always have. To me it's very simple: if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. --President Donald J. Trump

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the ongoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worse enemy to creativity is self-doubt. --Sylvia Plath

Write about what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open. --Natalie Goldberg

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. --Barbara Kingsolver

When in doubt, have a man come though the door with a gun in his hand. --Raymond Chandler

Never discredit your gut instinct. You are not paranoid. Your body can pick up on bad vibrations. If something deep inside of you says something is not right about a person or situation, trust it. --Unknown

Being a good person does NOT mean you have to put up with other people's crap. --Unknown

Writers are lucky. Whatever the mood, no matter the longing, the writer can use his words to connect himself to any world he wishes to visit. --Alan Zweibel

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down. --Kurt Vonnegut

Note to self: Don't measure your progress using someone else's ruler. --Unknown

People who love to eat are always the best people. --Julia Child

You can tell who the strong women are. They are the ones you see building one another up instead of tearing each other down. --Unknown

There comes a time in your life when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don't. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living. --Jose Harris

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine. --John C. Maxwell

If you start thinking about being likable you are not going to tell your story honestly. --Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

What are you going to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains? --Dorothy L. Sayer (Gaudy Night)

This country has shed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other nations in the history of the world combined, and I'm tired of people feeling like they've got to apologize for America. --Fred Thompson

In the book of life, there are happy chapters, sad chapters and exciting chapters. Don't be afraid to turn the page and see what the next chapter is about. --Unknown

The man who has no imagination has no wings. --Muhammad Ali

When the devil keeps on asking you to look at your past, there must be something good in the future he doesn't want you to see. --Unknown

If someone treats you like crap, just remember that there's something wrong with them, not you. Normal people don't go around destroying other human beings. --Unknown

Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life. --Mark Twain

There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility. --Steven Spielberg

I have been broken. I have known hardship and I have lost myself. But here I stand, still moving forward and growing stronger each day. I will never forget the harsh lessons in my life. They made me stronger. --Unknown

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart. --Maya Angelou

Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude. --Ralph Marston

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it. --William Arthur Ward

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more. --John Burroughs

The less you respond to negativity, the more peaceful your life becomes. --Unknown

I no longer force things. What flows, flows. What crashes, crashes. I only have space and energy for things that are meant for me. --Unknown

Oh good, I'm not the only idiot who does this

I also excel at completely blanking on what I put on those lists while at the store, then remembering after I've shopped and left. It's a gift.

I haven't watched a pageant or an awards show in years...

But I understood this much:

Apparently the Oscars broadcast was so caught up in other things, they announced the wrong Best Picture winner for the first time ever.

Maybe it's time to stick with what you know and stop telling the rest of the world how to live.

This is what tone-deaf looks like

So IMDb has followed through on their threat to shut down their discussion boards.

Since the announcement was made a few weeks ago, users have flocked to IMDb's social media accounts and made it crystal clear that they did not want to lose this feature.

This last comment is what's so amazing about this corporate clusterfuck - absolutely zero response from IMDb to its users since the original announcement. Nothing. Users have bombarded IMDb's social media accounts with pleas, threats to delete accounts and apps, confirmation of deletion of accounts and apps...and nothing. Not a peep.

I have to think that this whole fiasco really diminishes IMDb in the eyes of the public. Not only did they broadside their users with the loss of a very active feature, but they then went radio silence in response to the outcry to save the boards.

I realize the boards had their fair share of trolls, but apparently it hadn't gotten bad enough for people to stop using them. And would it have killed IMDb to do a little moderating and banning trolls via their IP addresses?

One commenter pointed out that with the exception of being able to leave reviews (which apparently aren't interactive) the loss of the boards really just makes IMDb another version of Wikipedia. It doesn't even provide news that can't be found elsewhere on the net. But one thing is clear: IMDb dropped a popular feature, then didn't care enough and couldn't be bothered to respond to its many users who protested the decision. And that, my friend, is a ginormous customer service fail.

A few weeks ago, prior to the announcement, I would never have imagined IMDb as the next internet entity to begin a downward slide toward being the next My Space. Now it's at the top of the list. And it could easily have been avoided, or at least handled professionally. I know IMDb is owned by Amazon, but I think the question isn't so much who owns it, but who's running it. Because they just effed up massively.

The penny/tire test

File this under "You Learn Something New Every Day". I had no idea.

My tires are relatively new, but since I'm a total girl when it comes to cars, I'm pretty dependent on my local Toyota dealer to let me know when something needs to be replaced. This is something to keep in mind for the future.

Thanks to the CHP for this advice.

Bob Ross: The gift that keeps on giving

I wonder what Bob Ross would think if he knew he'd be living in people's hearts and minds and in pop culture more than twenty years after his death. All because of a low-budget PBS show and happy trees.

This one is still my favorite, though. If only the CSI franchise was still around to tackle this storyline:

Comic noir

I'd love to be able to write like this. My stuff comes out just so straight forward.

Occupation: Fool

Celebrities and politics...I just can't. They're so convinced of their own superiority over the unwashed masses that they can't just live and let live. This also translates into trying to find offense everywhere, even - and especially - where none was ever inferred or intended.

Which brings us to this highly entertaining example of a celebrity making an absolute fool of herself on Twitter. I give you the raging intellect of Sarah Silverman, and more importantly, the responses by people smarter and more reasonable than her (which is pretty much everyone outside Hollywood):

Because...

So Twitter fired up the grill and roasted Silverman.

Ah yes, the "rubber bullets" (aka earplugs). They never get old.

I have a feeling Silverman will claim it was just a joke, but I don't think anyone's buying that outside of her diehard fans. And also that she'll delete the thread once she realizes how dumb it makes her look, but fortunately for the rest of us, the internet is not only hilarious, but it's also forever!