Honesty Box
With the nights drawing in – and with bills for renewing hosting, domain registration, security, and so forth all upcoming – it’s time to remind patrons that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there are three buttons below the fold with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. If what happens here is of value, this is a chance to show it.
If one-click haste is called for, there’s a QR code in the sidebar, at which you point your phone, and my PayPal.Me page can be found here. As requested, I’ve added SubscribeStar and Ko-Fi accounts, via which love may also be monetised, whether as one-off donations or monthly subscriptions.
Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link, or via the button in the sidebar, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Feel free to buy things wildly and in bulk.
For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last seventeen years, in over 3,000 posts and 200,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.
Do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.
As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.
By all means consider this an open thread.
Oh yes. The buttons:
Tip jar pinged. Thanks, barkeep.
Ker-ching!
Bless you, sirs. May your bread fit into the toaster regardless of orientation.
PING!
Bless you, sir. May you plug in the correct charging cable, not the really old one, thereby avoiding a helpful message that your device will be fully charged in 35 hours.
#TrueLifeDrama
I suppose the moral of the story is to throw out all of the charging cables from deep in antiquity. As opposed to hoarding the bloody things.
Lest farce ensue.
Ping. 🙂
Bless you, madam. Should houseguests descend, may your bathroom be pristine and your toilet paper plentiful.
As opposed to what happened last time.
Kaching!
Bless you, sir. May you not be confronted by the prospect of returning home with a vastly inferior brand of white sliced loaf.
#TrueLifeDrama
Have you thought about doing a (paid) Substack?
Oops forgot. PING!
I thought about it, briefly, a couple of years ago, when looking for an alternative to Typepad. But Substacks, as a platform, a format, strike me as fairly generic, and I wanted something more distinctive, and more flexible. I follow a handful of writers on Substack, but, again, the uniformity of presentation doesn’t help me to keep them in mind. Even the good ones, sadly. I tend to forget they exist.
Also, paywalls are a risky business and you can simply find your readership shrinking dramatically without much obvious financial benefit. Many people are now accustomed to reading things for free, indefinitely, which isn’t ideal, given what it takes to keep a place like this running. And adverts would just bog everything down, look like shit, and generate negligible income. Hence these fundraisers, during which I attempt to exert cheap emotional leverage.
Bless you, sir. May your toast never be scorched beyond all salvation.
Hope that clears my tab. Keep up the good work, barkeep.
I will continue my measly subscription but I insist the money be used for more cooking tips and maybe instituting a Blogging Thong renewal fund. That old one must be pretty crappy by now.
Sent a small ping of appreciation.
Bless you, sirs. When grocery shopping, may you not pick the trolley with the randomly defiant wheel.
We’d soon exhaust my repertoire.
[ Strokes well-thumbed velour blogging thong. ]
Now pondering whether I should attempt The Other Half’s sea-bass thing. Just baked in foil with a little oil or butter, spring onions, a bit of garlic, and a drop of unsweetened lime juice. Great with some posh bread. Nothing else needed, really.
Ping!
PING!
Ooh sea bass. Nommy.
Bless you, sir, and bless you, madam. May you be spared the indignity of realising that the long and rather stylish coffee scoop you’ve just bought doesn’t actually fit the equally stylish but not quite tall enough coffee container.
LOL. I feel your pain.
Lately, I seem to have encountered quite a few shopping trollies with defiant wheels, resulting in a continual struggle to prevent the damn thing veering into the shelves or crippling some small child. I’m developing forearms like Popeye.
Though I did laugh at the exchange of knowing glances when I passed a lady who was evidently locked in the same life-or-death struggle.
Pinged.
Pinged.
Bless you, sirs. Should a neighbour knock at your door one evening, due to being in desperate, slightly amusing, last-minute need of garlic, may you be able to oblige.
My usual and one for yourself. 🙂
One pint of advocaat coming up.
And bless you, sir. May your oven be pre-heated.
Thanks to all who’ve chipped in so far, or subscribed, or done shopping via the Amazon link, including all those much too shy to say hello. It’s much appreciated and is what keeps this place here.
PING
(Now having sea bass for dinner.)
Should a neighbour knock at your door one evening, due to being in desperate, slightly amusing, last-minute need of
garlican antique charging cable, may you be able to oblige. 😀consider your tip jar pinged.
I feel neglected: It’s been ages since David has cast aspersions on any aspect of American food preferences.
Bless you, madam, and bless you, sir. May changing the duvet cover be a feat of élan, akin to ballet. Not the usual cack-handed farce.
My influence is terrifying.
I hover above such petty things, obviously.
I do sneer quietly, if that’s any comfort.
Is ‘XX’ the new swastika?
Cold comfort at best.
*ping*
Bless you, sir. May crowds part for you. In a good way, I mean.
Would it help if I mentioned that some of my ancestors were … French?
[snarls at Amazon for ruining a perfectly good thing for US residents]
Since I can no longer do any shopping in support of this blog, I’ll wait until I get home and use the credit card that is less likely to freeze my assets for who I donate to, a la BoA and the Trudeaupian response to the covid trucker protests. This blog still seems to be off the radar for now, but given the current governments of both the UK and the US, and their treatment of people slightly to the right of Chairman Mao, I’m extra paranoid.
I’m pretty sure my tab has gotten fairly large of late – let this be a reminder to settle that bill forthwith.
Another Amazon annoyance: Kindle editions becoming unavailable. My bookshelves being over-full, I thought I’d buy the Kindle edition of Toynbee’s A Study of History, but although volume 2 is available volume 1 is not: “This edition of this title is not available for purchase in your country.” What nonsense is this?
I’ve never thought of this place as particularly radical. That’s certainly not something I’d consider a goal, or an end in itself. If anything, I think of it as pretty obvious stuff, rather matter-of-fact. But maybe I’m not the one who’s moving in a radical direction. Maybe the scenery has moved.
From the point of view of many of the liberals I know, you’re an effing Nazi.
I’d be surprised if many knew of this place, glorious as it is. They don’t often drop by.
Still, I suppose I should grow a moustache, if only to twirl it.
@aelfheld: A meme that perfectly encapsulates what the left has done.
Can’t quite picture you as Snidely Whiplash.