Sunday, February 7, 2021

Interlude

Yeah, not much has happened since the last interlude but I still feel like I need to post something. 

 I actually got a homemade card that I could post on my blog where it would make sense.

So I received via Postcrossing from sallymo.  Hats off to her for managing to create homemade cards that are probably are not thrown in a rubbish bin by all the people who write "NO HOMEMADE CARDS" in their profiles. 

I actually wrote to Postcrossing to ask them when the first instance of "No Homemade" or "No Ad cards" first appeared on someone's profile.  I also asked what country what the person from.  If I knew they would tell me I would take bets on which country said it first.  I have my iDEas what country might have said it first.  [glares in postcrossing].  But how long had Postcrossing been running before the first INSTANCE of someone making a card request that denied certain types of cards like homemade or adcards?  The inception?  Weeks?  Months?  I am curious.  

As mentioned in a previous interlude, I have been going through my old posts and transcribing them so that can be cut and pasted as text.  Originally I did not want to even post the backs of the cards.  I felt like it was supposed to be something private and secret between me and the receiver.  But I kiboshed that pretty quick.  Because. Why?  What is the point of that?  Who wants to look at a bunch of postcard images without the backs?

Occasionally since then, I have had a few that I have not posted the reverse side only because I realized it was more of a first draft that I wanted to re-do for a future card.

Then I shifted to concern that people might stealing my writing.  But I realized, how will anything of mine get stolen if no one is reading it in the first place?  I guess I will cross that bridge when I come to it.    If I don't have the writing up why would people want to come to my blog anyway?  To look at the images of postcards?  They can do that on Ebay.  It would break my heart that people were MORE interested in the pictures than what I was writing.   I could accept that people were AS interested in the pictures than my writing. 

So I started to transcript the text...but I have a couple of years' worth of cards to do.  It sounds like it's a lot but I probably only did 50 or so cards a year.  I have gone back as far as 2016 or so. The idea was so that people could take the text and enter it into a translator.  I've had a few people write in their native language...but they did so in a cursive script which text grab does not work too well when pulling data.  I am sure the same bodes for my crappy handwriting.  

But the act of going back and pulling the stuff out of the cards is tedious and time-consuming and I became frequently annoyed with myself because of how long it took.  I could be actually writing cards.  Another issue is that this process is typically done on my desktop and with my 3-year-old...I can not accomplish much on it between the hours of 6am and 7am before she realizes I am no longer in bed.  I am on the computer and SHE TOO WANTS TO BE ON THE COMPUTER RIGHT NOW SITTING IN MY LAP AND SNEAKING TAPS ON THE KEYBOARD WHILE I AM ACTIVELY TYPING.  My hobby became frustrating and something I do not want to do.  

I had the brilliant idea to contact Fiverr.  And pay an awesome someone to transcribe the postcards...leave the transcriptions as comments...and I would simply move the comments into my blog later.  Depending on how this works out I might simply not transcribe any of the future ones. Hopefully actively "hobbying"...will be creating new cards and writing new things.  So right now...I have "hired" jjwood687 to do the work I am too lazy and distracted to do myself.  So in the coming weeks, I hope to have all the past cards punched up. Then I will get these posts up more regularly since I won't have to agonize over the transcriptions and stuff.  

I really hope this works out. 

Postcard #202: Morning in America

 


TEXT:

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01/21/21 - Portland OR.  It's Fuckin raining.  44 F

Well after an armed insurrection attempt five dead people, a final tally of 400k covid deaths could we finally have a new president. Republicans want to find Unity...now. I am so god damned sick of being the ones who have to capitulate when outraged which is the problem nothing really outrages them. Nothing tangible. "Rights" "Religion." We have to always move on when something tragic happens. "What could have been done?" "This was a single, lone event." No. I am done. I want people held [accountable] for their actions. How we could not collectively called Q-Anon fucking assholes.  We could not collectively call white supremacists fucking dirtbag shitheads.  I want to ask how we got here...but we have always been here. -TM

Sent via Postcrossing to anicka22.  Probably one of my favorite profiles so far.  Completely blank.  The only way it could have been better would have been for them to have written one word in the profile so that it would appear that they did not simply overlook it.  I got this postcard in Spain.  I've had it for several years and from the looks of it someone else had it before me on display.  

I was obviously angry here.  I really suck at first draft postcarding.  I left out words.  I left out grammar and punctuation.  I was a lazy bastard for this card and it shows.  

Saturday, February 6, 2021

Postcard #201: Special Delivery



 Text: 

Portland, OR,

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44 It's friggen raining

but at least it's not snowing

I pulled up to the house pretty much the same time as my wife did. I pulled to give her room to pull her car into the driveway.  Looking towards the road I saw a plastic white garbage bag. The sort I have in my own kitchen with red drawstrings.  I parked my car and walked to the mailbox. Junk mail flyers. (But I did get one postcrossing card!) I figured I could use the junkmail to go and pick up the trash. As I got closer I noticed the bag was nearly empty... but there was something in the bag. Black. It stuck to the inside of bag and it carried enough mass that the wind did not move it. I picked it up. It was soft, wet. And started to move it to my garbage cans, my left hand like a tight pincer holding the bag within the protective burger king coupons as I crossed the yard. I smelled something foul. A smell known all too well from life... and work, I almost did want to recognize it. Once I admitted that I know the smell I knew it would make me gag. I then thought about how it does not make me gag at work when my patients... poop... shit Tom. It's Human feces. Human SHIT You ARE HOLDING HUMAN SHIT! I started to gag and wretch.  I still smell it every time I have to burp the garbage can.  Honestly, I smell it even when I look at the can. - TM

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Sent via Postcrossing to Drey01.  Did not give me a whole lot of guidance no homemade or Ad cards. I really would like to send an ad card to the first person to ever put that in a profile.  I wonder if I could write to Postcrossing and ask them to look at their records to see when the first time "NO AD CARD" was placed in someone's profile.  

I am pretty late getting these up.  They are already arriving at their sites.  And I already have another interlude post coming.