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Look to the right of this blog post and you will find a collection of recommended items relating to my current writing. If you purchase from Amazon through the links I provide here, I get a very small commission. But you already know how that works, so let’s talk about this blog and nasty, grasping commerce.

I primarily keep this blog as a place keep a portfolio, and stay in practice as a writer. It is not, and I never expect it to be, a money-making enterprise except insofar as it helps me generate more work. Still, it would be nice to defray some of the costs of running this website. Hence an Amazon widget, and the occasional appearance of an associate referral link, as a nod in the general direction of “monetization”.

A part of me that resents doing even this much. My encounters with sales have always left me feeling rather degraded. I remember once, the summer before I started college, I made the long, hellishly slow drive down US-41 in response to a want ad for sales reps. If I had been a bit more worldly, I would have realized that it was basically a Ponzi scheme, but I was desperate for a job and the ad called for someone with no discernible skills. So I found myself packed into a crowded conference room with about thirty or forty other men, most of us quite young but a few of us clearly older and recently unemployed. We were addressed by a twentysomething in a too-large suit wearing a watch the size of a tea saucer and a couple large rings on his fingers. He reminded me a lot of Boiler Room.

He wanted us to sell knives and cutlery, and talked about what great knives his company produced. God help me, but he cut through a tin can with a pair of shears and he cut through an old leather shoe. Then he talked to us about how much money he’d made the year before (it was a lot) and he put on a video from his mentor, who made even more money. And so could we! Now that we had seen firsthand how good, how cutting these knives were, would we have any objection to selling them to friends and family? Everyone agreed they were very impressive blades, and we’d be honored to have them in our kitchens.

Then the kid in the suit called us into his office for individual interviews. I sat down across from him and he said without preamble, “You know, Robert, based on what I’ve seen today, I think you’re exactly what we’re looking for in a sales rep. Do you think you could handle this job?”

What could you possibly have seen? All I did was sit and listen. But I didn’t say that. I said I could do the job, and received a packet and instructions to attend training the next week. I would, of course, have to buy a sample knife kit.

I never did. I knew enough to be uneasy and didn’t commit to anything, and my father explained how lead-generation works and what the job would really entail: sitting in the kitchens of friends, family, and neighbors with a case full of knives and mutual embarrassment between us. Once I had run through my acquaintances, the cold-calling would begin. He said that some guys are good at it, and are built for it, but he wasn’t sure I was. Then, driving the nail into the coffin, he said, “It’s sort of like Glengarry Glen Ross. Do you think you could do what Al Pacino does?”

Years later, just before I started freelancing, I worked at a really low-rent content mill. I’d say more about the place, but I’m not sure what the terms of my non-disclosure agreement were, and they were some of the pettiest motherfuckers I’ve ever worked for. Suffice it to say that users submitted articles for free, stuffed full of links back to crummy online stores that sold penis-enlargement pills. I felt like I was standing on a corner in the worst slum of the internet, listening to all the cheap hucksters and shills screaming at each other at the top of their lungs.

“I USED TO WORK A 9-5 JOB NOW I MAKE $1000 EVERY HOUR FROM HOME!”

“THIS IS A PHOTO OF ME ON MY PRIVATE BEACH IN MAUI!”

That was my life and I hated it, and I hated the con artists who were wasting it even more.

I can live with the Amazon links because there are some things I will recommend that you might not have heard of, and if you’re interested you can buy them through those links. I won’t ever be pestering readers about buying merchandise they don’t want through my referral links. If you want the item, and you want to do me the favor of using my link, that’s great. But I’ve no interest in being a sales rep in my own internet home.

The other thing I should mention is that if I ever do have enough traffic to justify putting up ads or seeking sponsorship, I will be very, very picky. Whenever I see a “Local Mom Lost 50 lbs Following ONE GOLDEN RULE to a FLAT BELLY” ad, with some low-res snapshot of someone’s love handles, I feel a little queasy. If I ever saw an Evony ad on my own site, I would just want to burn this motherfucker down.

For the foreseeable future, though, it’s just going to be the Amazon links and widget. I’ll try to keep them both relevant to what I’m talking about here, and I’ll try to make sure I’m pointing you to things that are maybe slightly off the beaten path, but certainly worth your time. That is, I hope, kind of what this blog is about.

The truth is, I’ve never much cared for Thanksgiving Day. When my family used to host every year, it meant a day and a half of housecleaning while my parents became testier with every second that brought us closer to Zero Hour. Plus, I hated most of the food we made for the feast. Green bean casserole? A box of stuffing? That weird can-shaped blob of cranberry “sauce” quivering atop a china serving dish?

And turkey has never really deserved its reputation, when we get right down to it. It’s 50 / 50 whether it’s going to be tasty or bone-dry. My sister might have finally cracked the code last year when she brined the hell out of it, but that’s probably the only memorably delicious turkey I’ve had.

As for the celebration, well, for years that meant dealing with my mercurial grandparents and aunt. My grandfather was perhaps the only one who seemed legitimately happy to be eating with us, and most of that was sweet potato-induced. “Hooo!” he’d cry as he peeled back the aluminum foil over the dish. “Look at that!”

But my grandmother or aunt would usually decide, without warning, that it is time to leave right now and vanish into the car before the coffee and pie had been served. Sometimes my grandfather would just disappear after dinner, and then we’d look out the window and see him, arms folded, in the back of the Buick.

Dessert conversation among my parents, sister, and brother-in-law usually revolved around what was that all about? On the television, we’d make a desultory effort at watching the Lions get their asses kicked, but the Lions have been unwatchably bad for as long as I can remember.

So I’m not really very sorry not to be celebrating Thanksgiving Day with my family this year. I feel terrible that I’m now reduced to seeing my sister and her family about once or twice a year, but the holiday itself has always been a bit too much trouble, too strongly associated with anxiety and inconvenience.

But I am crushed to think that Wednesday night, for the first time I can remember, I won’t be sitting down to spaghetti casserole by candlelight with my parents. We won’t be watching Jason Robards’ You Can’t Take It With You, which my parents recorded off PBS many many years ago, or drinking my father’s chocolate eggnog at the intermission.

Almost as bad, I won’t be putting up the Christmas tree this year, which traditionally marks the first time my parents break out The Chieftains’ Bells of Dublin and the John Denver & The Muppets Christmas album. Thanksgiving itself might be the heart of the holiday, but the real family traditions lie on either side of it. And this year I couldn’t make it.

My partner and I have a nice weekend planned, and God knows we need a break. We couldn’t spare the time to make it back to Indiana, so we made reservations at our favorite restaurant in Cambridge. We have some great movies to keep us company through the weekend (I’m looking forward to introducing her to Easy Living) and plenty of sweet treats and relaxing beverages. My mother passed along the spaghetti casserole recipe, and my father air-mailed us a copy of You Can’t Take It With You. I have the supplies for chocolate nog. It will, in some ways, be the first Thanksgiving that is my own, and in others it will be very much like home.

But I can’t shake this sense of dislocation. For over twenty years I’ve been home for Thanksgiving Eve and I’ve hung decorations on Friday afternoon. Even when I was away at college I made sure to make it back no matter how hellish the traffic got around Chicago. So as I drink my coffee here in Central Square, and watch last light fading over Mass Ave., I keep asking myself, “What am I doing here?”

I caught about ten minutes of FOX News while I was eating at a Wendy’s in central Pennsylvania. The big news they were covering was the fact that Iran was testing a missle with a 1200 mile range, which would only be mildly interesting to me if I lived within 1200 miles of Iran. Nevertheless, they brought out a shill from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who dutifully informed the anchors of what a grave and terrible threat Iran poses.

Then they cut away to talk about Bank of America distancing itself from ACORN and wondered aloud if this spells the beginning of the end for that organization. Personally I don’t read much into it. Bank of America is probably just preoccupied with making sure they’re charging their debit cardholders the full $350 of overdraft fees per day that BofA is legally entitled to. Still, FOX seems to think it’s bad news for ACORN that America’s biggest legal loan-shark is severing ties.

The final story they covered was the terrifying statistic that only 1/4 of all terrorism suspects are ever brought to trial. The anchors sounded pretty frightened of the thought that 75% of all terrorists are just going free, but their legal expert was on hand to assuage their fears. In his two minute segment, he said the figure was actually just a testament to what a great job our law enforcement and intelligence agencies are doing. He liked the way that sounded, so he repeated it about five more times until we got the right associations: law enforcement, intelligence agencies, great job.

It’s terrifying to think that people watch that network and think they’re getting the news. Someone from the Foudation for Defense of Democracies is treated as an unbiased expert, and the people watching at home have no way of knowing that this guy’s meal-ticket depends on advocating unrelenting interventionism. The only thing this guy probably ever defended was a master’s thesis. FOX tries to whip up some fear over the fact that terrorism suspects are going free, and never considers the possibility that, hey, maybe some of these guys are wrongly suspected. Nor do they even ask if 75% of terrorism cases are so weak that no prosecutor dares take them before a judge. Nope, FOX news just wants you to worry about all the terrorists that are no walking the streets, waiting to terrorize some more.

I laugh at FOX news a lot, but it scares me. It is packaged to look and sound like legitimate news coverage, but it’s a propaganda machine that attracts a vastly greater audience than real news. It’s existence is antithetical to the nature of an informed society, but it is also guaranteed by a free one. The contradiction never ceases to trouble me, and I’m not sure how it will ever be resolved.