"Please don't be related!"

Years ago I set up a Google alert on my last name. I did this to keep track of times I was mentioned online-- which was sometimes "interesting". It also alerted me to my newspaper columns being published. Did. Once upon a time. Never anymore. Not at all for the past few years.

Now I only get alerts about highschool sportsballers and whiny, entitled statists around the country who share with me the name "McManigal". But never anything about my newspaper columns. It's weird.

It may have something to do with the newspaper's updated paywall, or with them doing something else differently. Something I may not be aware of.

But it's interesting and disturbing who makes the news, and for what.

Even though I have a very low opinion of sportsball, and an even lower opinion of anything tied to kinderprison, those whiny, entitled McManigals-- looking to someone else to save them from their own choices-- are the ones who bother me the most. Yet these are the people served up by Google?

Even though I ask for subscriptions and donations to keep me going, I never imagine they are owed to me. I put my product out there and people can support it or not. I am not entitled to any support and I'm not going to whine when it doesn't come. (Although I sometimes beg when a special need arises.)

Those people make me glad my dad was adopted, which means I'm probably not "blood-related" to any of the whiney statists Google keeps showing me. What a relief! (Probably for them, too.)

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Writing is my job.
I hope I add something you find valuable. If so...
YOU get to decide if I get paid.