Month: October 2013

  • Halloween and Web Ghosts

    I feel haunted by bots and idiots who lure me back here with their incessant postings of spam comments on posts that have not been “active” in about 173 years. I just don’t get the mindset of those who think “it’s the way to go” when it comes to developing business, visibility, or whatever it is they want to “develop.”

    Red LeafWho knows, maybe all they want to do is plant a virus on my computer.

    Anyway, now and then I choose to respond to the stream of notifications that I have “new comments” to moderate, and then I decide I’ll hang about for a few minutes to see what this new platform is about.

    Here’s a small “secret:” I really don’t like WordPress.

    I know all “serious” are all about the marvels of WordPress and its assortment of themes and what-have-you… but even though I have had blogs on this platform for almost a decade, I find this THE hardest and THE least intuitive and user-friendly.

    Where’s my WYSIWIG? How the HELL can you have an anno 2013 application without at at least an option for a WYSIWIG editor? And why the ferk isn’t this thing widget-driven, in the first place? And why the ferk can’t I just drag and drop an image into this text? How do I get the text to wrap… it’s not HTML, and I don’t have access to the CSS. Use inline CSS commands? REALLY bad form…

  • Seriously, people?

    So, there’s a new Xanga.

    Oddly enough, I am reminded of this on a daily basis because I get little notices to “moderate comments.” Of course, they are not “real” comments… just a variety of not-very-creative attempts by spambots to create artificial backlinks for useless stuff nobody cares about.

    177-OrangeFlower-130925aMakes me sit and wonder about that, for a moment. “That” being the way so much of our world “runs” on “Not Very Creative Marketing of Useless Stuff Nobody Cares About.

    And it’s not just stupid spam in your mailbox or in comments on your blog, it’s garishly colored plastic doo-dahs screaming at you from the shelves of A Wal-Mart Near You™.

    From where I am sitting, it really feels like we need to UN-create the world we have created and are living in. We seem to have fabricated a world in which the income we depend on to buy food (and garishly colored plastic doo-dahs) is inextricably interwoven into a chain of events that makes it essential that we “participate” in creating aforesaid doo-dahs. In other words… if we don’t buy (“consume”) the useless plastic doo-dahs, we won’t have the job that buys us food.

    Of course, that’s a very simplistic way of looking at the chain of commerce and consumption. But no matter how you turn it, the shoe does seem to fit. In so many ways.

    When I was a kid, “buying furniture” was something you did ONCE, after you left home. It was when you traded in your “student crates” for the coffee table you expected to be using for the rest of your life. Furniture wasn’t a “fashion statement” that required you to change it out every few years to “keep up with current trends.” Sure, you probably spent $400 on that coffee table, rather than $39.99 at Target.

    You might be thinking “What’s the big deal? So I buy 10 coffee tables in my life, instead of one.”

    Let’s keep in mind that “coffee tables” are just a metaphor, here.

    The point is that it’s about more than just the cost of coffee tables. It’s that you make TEN trips to Target or Wal-Mart, rather than one trip to a cabinetmaker, or a local store. It’s that you support faceless mass-market stuff TEN times, rather than a “real” person. It’s that you give your time and bandwidth to buying coffee tables TEN times, rather than once. You consume fuel, time, worry and bandwidth TEN times, instead of ONCE. Not only do you help “feed” the “machine” so many of us (at least philosophically) rail against, you waste an assortment of personal and global “resources” in your efforts to “support” it, even while despising it.

    “Oh, but I don’t have a CHOICE!” is the most common refrain.

    We always have “a choice.” Whenever we claim to not “have” a choice it’s usually a reflection that we really don’t like any of the choices… and their consequences… we are faced with. “Would you like a sharp stick in the eye, or a shit sandwich?”

    Ehhmmm….

    It’s easier (or more palatable, or whatever…) to claim “not having” a choice and then moaning and groaning about the outcome “happening TO” us, rather than being active agents in our own lives.

    How does this relate to spammy comments? It’s all part of the same “edge of desperation” trying to create incomes out of… nothing-of-value.

    Think about it. It’s everywhere, all the time.

    Only WE can choose to change it… by becoming conscious and aware, and acting from consciousness.