We’re about to run headlong into Thanksgiving, and you know what happens after that: 33 days of relentless Christmas shopping!

Many of us do a lot of our buying through Amazon.com, and there’s a simple way you can do that and support EricDSnider.com at the same time. Every time you click an Amazon link from here and subsequently buy something — even if it’s not the item you originally clicked on — I get a small commission. These small commissions help do things like pay our hosting costs, feed the Laotian kids who work in my sweatshop, etc.

So when you feel an Amazon mood settling upon you, simply come to EricDSnider.com first, go up to the “Buy Stuff” tab at the top of the page, and click the “Shop on Amazon.com” link. That takes you to the regular Amazon front page, and any shopping you do will count as a referral from me. In the process, you win my undying gratitude. What more could you want?

(You can also save the Amazon link as a bookmark in your browser. However, you have to make sure your browser has saved the entire coded URL –

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2F&tag=thelandoferic&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325

– and not just a basic http://www.amazon.com.)

As you may have heard, the Hollywood writers are on strike as of today, and so in solidarity, I have refused to write a “Snide Remarks” column.

J/K! I’m totally J/K. The reason I didn’t write one is that I didn’t have any ideas. But it sounds so much more principled to say it was on purpose, doesn’t it?

More bloggy stuff later today, including a post about the writers strike and how it affects YOU, the average TV-viewing American.

Hey, taco fans! Don’t forget that tomorrow (Tuesday) from 2-5 p.m., every person in America is entitled to eat a free taco at Taco Bell! (Note I said “entitled,” not “obligated.”)

This is because Taco Bell pledged that if someone stole a base during the World Series, they’d give everybody a taco. And sure enough, someone named “Jacoby Ellsbury” on a team called the “Boston Red Sox” stole second base during Game 2.

There are a couple of downsides. One, it’s Taco Bell. Two, it’s only for the regular hard-shell taco, not the better-tasting soft taco. But hey, it’s free, and while you only get one, there’s nothing stopping you from going to every Taco Bell in town, or as many as necessary before you’re not hungry anymore.

I like the legal mumbo-jumbo they had to put at the bottom of the web page promoting the giveaway. It’s pretty elaborate for a taco giveaway. One of the main points is that if you suffer harm from the taco, you won’t hold Major League Baseball liable. Your beef (ha!) is with Taco Bell. Duly noted.

Frequently, when a comment-poster here on EricDSnider.com realizes he has made an error, he will come back and post a new comment correcting it, while also lamenting the fact that we have no “edit” feature on the site. If he could edit his previous comment, he wouldn’t have to post the follow-up correcting it!

Sometimes these lamentations are expressed in such a way as to imply that there are many, many sites that allow user comments which also enable users to come back and edit their comments, and that EricDSnider.com is merely behind the times.

We would love to implement this feature here. If you know of a site where this is done, please point us in that direction so we can copy their system.

I personally do not know of any such sites. Every site I know of that lets you edit your own comments is also a site that requires you to register in order to post comments in the first place.

We don’t want that system. We like the current system, where anyone can post, on a whim, without having to register a user name and password first. And under that system, I am not aware of any way of letting the posters edit their comments after the fact. If you’ve seen a site that does it, lemme know.

(Of course, it is also possible that when posters express frustration over our lack of a self-edit feature, they are fully aware that such a thing is not common and that their desires fall under the category of Wishful Thinking, similar to “I wish this site rewarded me with cash every time I visited!” or “I wish this site caused my computer to give off a lemony fresh scent!” In that case, I wholeheartedly agree that it would be awesome.)

I have a couple of things to mention that are unrelated but that both fall under the category of Making the Site Better.

First, I’ve gotten better at recording the podcasts for “In the Dark” and “Snide Remarks.” Maybe you listened when I first launched them back in December, thought, “Good heavens, was he recording this on an airplane runway?,” and never listened again. I would not blame you.

But as I’ve gotten more practice with them, I’ve found new ways to improve the sound quality. Specifically, I stopped using the lousy microphone I had lying around and started using my iMac’s built-in mic instead. It’s actually better than the one I paid money for, especially when I choose the “use ambient noise reduction” setting. There is a noticeable improvement in quality between the podcasts now and the podcasts a couple months ago. So you might give ‘em another try.

Second, you might have noticed that we’ve added some Google ads on most of the site’s pages (although not here on the blog, yet). This isn’t Making the Site Better so much as it’s Making the Site More Profitable.

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This week’s new films are “Hairspray” and “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.” So, you know, it’s a big week for the gays.

“Hairspray” is as delightful, upbeat, and entertaining a musical as has been produced in many, many years. Having seen the Broadway version, in which the gravel-voiced Harvey Fierstein played overweight housewife Edna Turnblad and earned a laugh every time he opened his mouth, I was skeptical about John Travolta taking the role for the movie. It didn’t help, of course, that nearly everything Travolta has done in the last 10 years has been horrific, and that the same applied to the director, Adam Shankman, whose previous work includes “The Pacifer,” “The Wedding Planner,” and “Cheaper by the Dozen 2.”

So you can imagine my rapturous surprise, then, when both the director and the actor proved to be just right, as is the entire film. It’s a genuinely positive, happy, feel-good movie, in the best possible way. If you come out of it and you’re not humming, then you must have done something wrong. Go back in and watch it again.

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I do not have a new “Snide Remarks” for you this week, but to stave off the unfathomable sadness that announcement would otherwise bring, I have something else instead: a special “Snide Remarks” 10th anniversary feature highlighting the “important” entries in the column’s history. Some never-before-told behind-the-scenes stories are part of this feature, including one about how a particular column prevented me from getting a particular job. Intriguing, no?!

I’m going to post it as a separate entry right after I post this. I do hope you enjoy it, and please watch for a new “Snide Remarks” next Monday.

We love the fact that EricDSnider.com readers are able to post comments on the reviews, columns, and blog entries. It lets us know what you think about the issues addressed by the articles, and about the articles themselves. It also gives us a chance to laugh at how bad a lot of you are with spelling and grammar.

There are just a couple things I want to mention that perhaps you will keep in mind as you go about your comment-posting.

- If someone posts something ridiculously illiterate or dumb — e.g., “OMG, the Covenant is teh best movie evar and u only don like it cuz ur jelous” — just let it go. In 99.9 percent of those cases, the idiocy of the comment is self-evident. We don’t need to have 10 comments immediately following it in which the person who wrote it — who probably is not even a regular visitor to this site and won’t see your responses anyway — is torn apart for being so bad with spelling and grammar. Yes, yes, we all weep for the future generation. We don’t need to say it every time.

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Surely you lie awake some nights thinking, “I’ll bet EricDSnider.com requires time and money to operate, yet doesn’t bring in much time or money in return. Are there ways I can support the site and keep the ‘Snide Remarks,’ the movie reviews, and the entertaining blog alive and thriving?”

Rest your weary head, dear reader. There are many ways you can support the site!

- Buy stuff. We don’t have much of it left — the CDs are sold out, and so is the first “Snide Remarks” book — but there’s still some merchandise over at the merchandise page. It is reasonably priced and just as reasonably entertaining. Many other people have bought this merchandise and have gone on to lead healthy, productive lives.

- Support our advertisers. When you click on a link to Amazon and subsequently buy something, we get a tiny kickback — even if the thing you buy wasn’t the item you originally clicked on. As long as you got to the site from EricDSnider.com, it counts.

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While you weren’t looking, my brother and webmaster Jeff, acting more in his capacity as webmaster than brother, added a new little feature to the site. It pertains to links. Let’s say I was linking to XKCD, a very entertaining web comic that often deals with math and science and other matters of geekery. See that little icon next to “XKCD” in that link? That means that if you hover your mouse over the link, a small window will pop up showing you what the linked page looks like. Move your mouse away and it disappears. Fun!

What purpose does this serve? Almost none! But it’s nifty, so there it is. It’s only for links that take you away from EricDSnider.com, since we figured you don’t need previews of what other pages on this site look like. (They’ll look like the page you’re already on, only with different text. Duh.) And if everyone hates it, maybe we’ll take it away again. But everyone won’t hate it! It’s nifty!

Actually, it is useful when I’m linking to a few specific sites. If it’s an Amazon link, like this one, instead of showing you a picture of that Amazon page, it presents you with a text description of the item being linked. (Harry Potter 7, in this case.) It does the same for Wikipedia links, IMDb links, and probably some others.

Anyway, there it is, in case you hadn’t noticed it. Enjoy your mouse-hovering!

EDITED TO ADD: For those who do hate it, you can disable it simply by mousing over one of the links and clicking “Disable” in the upper right corner of the pop-up box. As long as you have cookies activated, it will remember to disable the feature whenever you visit the site.