Opened Facebook this morning and I get one of those - Happy New Year's Eve Bob! - Just thought you would like to view all the political memes your "friends" shared or liked this year.
It then ran a slide show where memes flip in and spin out and since it's been running for the last 4 hours I decided to give you my own year in review.
When I was a freshman at Aquinas College in 1972 I took a class in Speech. One of our projects was to make a presentation to the class and my theme was - Is Paul Dead? - Paul being Paul McCartney, the cute one of the 4 Beatles. Evidently Paul had not been seen in public for a year or two and people who are into things like that suggested that he was actually dead and for contractual reasons the rest of the band was mum about it but they did hide clues in their music so their true fans would find out.
There was a song on one of the albums, I can't remember it it was on Magical Mystery Tour or The White Album, which had a blank space after it ended and then a minute or two or random noises. If you had that vinyl record on a turntable and rotated it backwards at just the right speed there was a place where it very clearly said "Paul is dead". And then there were pictures of Paul on album covers which were clearly photoshopped. My teacher didn't buy it but half of the class did and isn't that what's important?
"Fake news" isn't new, but this year we finally have a name for it.
This year it seems like half of Briton's musicians, from Ziggy Stardust to George Michael, have actually died, almost everyone except for Sir Paul, still kicking around after 45 long ones. American celebs, from boxers to movie stars havn't fared much better. And with such an expiring crowd I feel bad for them. Johnny Carson, the long time past host of The Tonight Show, said often that his greatest fear was dying on the same day as a President or a natural disaster, which of course would get all the big headlines.
Now we can wonder if someone is actually dead or if they just didn't want to perform at Trump's Inauguration.
Ah, the year of vanity, from the guy coming in to the one going out with pen and phone in hand.
On a brighter note, this year I published my first two books.
The interesting thing about writing a book and publishing it is that unless you are a well known, no one except friends or family will ever find out about your book no matter how good or bad it is. Unless of course you find a way to promote your effort. Even though my books are listed on Amazon and formated for Kindle and the titles may go out on catalogs to major retailers, there are already millions of titles out there with hundreds of thousands new ones being added each year and the odds of being discovered are very small.
Books like mine (not going through a major publisher) used to be called Vanity Publishing but now there is a much more friendly and sexy term attached to it - Indie Publishing. I am now a proud independent publisher who paid zero dollars to get my books published. I did not have to pay upfront for a garage load of books and can order for myself 1 or more at a very inexpensive price.
However I do want to do things to promote my excellent and unique work so I am working with a Christian book marketer who has written a very nice review of my first effort, GLORY TRAIL They gave me 10 out of 10 stars. Can you beieve it? Perhaps this will be nothing more than vanity marketing but we will just have to see.
May the year 2017 find blessings for all of you and your families and for me and mine as well. May God bless and protect our country and may the well springs of revival open up to renew and heal this land and it's people.
And thank you, thank you, thank you for having visited my blog this year.
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