We all have a few go-to things we use to cheer up, like Old King Cole who “called for his fiddlers three.” Over and over again, I find myself returning to three quick online videos, when the Tree of Life shakes in The Winds of Adversity, and tumbles me out of my Happy Place.

The shocking thing about this list is that only one of them is a cat video…..

Here’s the Cats with Thumbs video (be sure you watch to the very last second):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6CcxJQq1x8

Here’s the Singing Duck, for difficult days. (Jack says when he hears this coming from my computer, he’s the one who ducks.):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRFoiD6Pptc

And here is The Goat, which you can pretty much pop like a happy pill before doing something you dread:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=793433460668309&set=vb.207933782551616&type=2&theater

And then, just when I thought the Internet couldn’t get any better, someone sent me a link to the Stephen Colbert report on A***on’s new lawsuit. A handful of Little Bookstore Goodreads reviews have said things like “unnecessarily harsh to A***on, which is a great service for self-publishing authors to get their works out there, not to mention great prices.” (BTW did you know that A***on owns Goodreads?)

Mhmm. Dream on, children, that Big Daddy loves you. Meanwhile, watch this. We small business owners are–over, and over, and over, smiling like the evil bad putters-down of the Big A that we are:

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/t1nxwu/amazon-vs–hachette—sherman-alexie