A number of conditions this past week came together, all seeming to point to one course of action. First, was my ire (July 21 entry) at the amount of comment spam I’ve been receiving here lately (and from the sound of things, that’s not getting any better). Second, Miniluv’s server went down, and that site’s domain name got taken up by some unscrupulous jackass, making Mike and Court (temporarily) homeless. Third, I came to the realization that I just don’t have the time to devote to all of the parts of blogging that you don’t see - installing upgrades, updating Blacklist, rebuilding, deleting comment spam, etc.
All of these things came together in such a way, and at such a time, that Mike and I decided to launch a new endeavor - Eat the Lettuce. From the site’s first entry:
ETL is a joint project between Dana from Note-It Posts and Mike from Miniluv. Aside from the typical content you ve come to expect from Dana and Mike we will be featuring He Said/She Said style articles.
There’s already one of those He Said/She Said articles (or HSSS’s, for short) up for your perusal. We take turns answering the age-old question: “What is the Purpose of Foreplay?” Besides the HSSS, you’ll see the same kinds of posts you've come to know and expect from me here at Note-It Posts, as well as lots of great, interesting material from Mike. Mike also did the entire installation and design of the site, and will very graciously be managing all of the duties that go into keeping a blog going, meaning blogging is still a possibility for me.
I don’t know yet if I’ll keep posting here or not. I know I will keep updating the Bloggers With Boobies and Bloggers Who Support Bloggers With Boobies blogrolls, at the very least.
[A boy] has been riding, and boating, and playing cricket, and both body and mind have been roused to energy; and so, when he comes to study, he has a sense of power, which acts mentally as well as physically, and enables him to grasp difficulties, and master them. The girl, on the contrary, has been guarded from over fatigue, subject to restrictions with regard to cold and heat, and hours of studey, seldom trusted away from home, allowed only a small share of responsibility;- not willingly, with any wish to thwart her inclinations - but simply because, if she is not thus guarded, if she is allowed to run the risks, which, to the boy, are a matter of indifference, she will probably develop some disease, which, if not fatal, will, at any rate, be an injury to her for life.
- Elizabeth Missing Sewell in The Principles of Education, Drawn from Nature and Revelation, as quoted in Inside the Victorian Home by Judith Flanders
This is like a building-sized version of what my To-Be-Read stack looks like:
A note to all those who might be making ice cream this summer: if you intend to add nuts, make sure you chop them itty-bitty. Big nuts do not suspend well in the ice cream, and you end up with nut-bottomed soup.
Now that the baby has been born (he’s doing great, by the way, and already up to over 12 pounds) and I’m almost fully recovered from the delivery, I’ve been slowly resuming the appearance of a normal life. My business is doing well, and I’m working on other ventures on that front. I’ve started doing a few recreational things (scrapbooking with friends, shopping) away from home. I’ve also slowly been building up the number of household chores I do.
Now, it’s no secret that I am no Suzy Homemaker. Anyone who knows me in meatspace (and many who known me online) have been forewarned about this fact. I hate mopping, I hate washing dishes, I hate folding laundry, I LOATHE dusting, I can’t stand cleaning windows, etc. I think it’s the never-ending-ness of it all. Take straightening, for example. Now, when you straighten a room in my house, it involves first picking up approximately eight million, seven hundred and two thousand, nine hundred and forty-seven toys and books from the floor, and finding homes for them - toy boxes, cardboard boxes, plastic boxes, trash cans, wherever. Then you have to clear out all of the dirty clothes that have accumulated on the floor. Socks, in particular, appear to thrive on my floor’s own little ecosystem, and there are always dozens of mismatched ones around the house. In my next life, I shall invent Velcro socks that stay firmly attached to a child’s feet until his or her parents explicitly remove them.
After clearing away toys and socks, you must pick up the bits of paper. My children get their own amounts of junk mail, and they love to open, peruse, and shred it. Bits of said mail always find their way to my floor. Finally, you get down to the nitty-gritty - vacuuming! I have four indoor cats* and dogs, including a Sheltie and a long-hair cat. We live on a farm, surrounded by fields that are actively worked all year ’round. Besides the inevtiable pet hair, dust, dirt, and grass seeds find their way into my floors via shoes, paws, windows, doors, and Fedex delivery. I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you drop a bit of food on my floor, do not - under any circumstances WHATSOEVER - attempt to retrieve and consume it. It is lost to you forever. The cleanup crew will be around later to take care of it for you.
If you get past the picking up and the vacuuming, you should grab the camera - quick! You are no doubt too exhausted for dusting, and this, frankly, is as good as it will get. Snap a picture quick, because in less than two minutes, my minions will have dragged out at least half of the toys you so carefully put away, and they will again be scattered around the room. The dogs and cats will come by, gleefully shedding their winter coats in clumps on the newly-vacuumed floor. If you’re very lucky, our oldest, most cantankerous cat will leave you a nice vomitty present right in the carpet.
So, in a matter of about ten minutes (fifteen if one of the gremlins happens to be napping), you’re right back where you started. So what’s the point?
* Note: As the cats were not the sole purpose of this post, this does not qualify as cat blogging. I’m still safe!
I've come to terms with the fact that I could fry bacon on my belly every night at 2am and then mop up the gristle with the biscuits I've baked in my armpits. - Heather Armstrong
Yeah, I know, it doesn’t make sense… you gotta go read the whole thing. She may be my new favorite female humorist.
Update: Sadly, she has no RSS feed. Pity. :(
You know, I think actually finishing the ink from a ball point pen may be the most satisfying feeling ever. You know how it is - you start dozens of pens going, you have a jar/can/coffee cup/other container full of “started” pens, but how often do you ever finish them? I think I can remember finishing maybe four pens in my whole life. But when you finally do it, finally get down to the very end of the ink, somehow you feel like you have produced, you haven’t wasted, and you’re justified in moving on to another pen.
*sound of crickets chirping*
What?
Here’s a dirty little secret - outside of SexyHusband’s daily journal, the only blogs I read are those who have RSS feeds available. For those who don’t know, RSS is a way to syndicate your site. When you do an entry, your RSS feed is updated with the entry’s pertinent information. Once an hour, my RSS reader, Newsgator, goes around to all the RSS feeds I’ve subscribed to, searching for changes. If there are any, it sends an email to my inbox (it’s integrated with Outlook) and filters it to the appropriate folder. The folder turns bold, just as my inbox does when I have new messages.
That bold folder is my cue to read you. I need a visual cue, since I’ve discovered that if I am left to my own impulses, I will not remember to come by and read your site. I finally realized this, and decided I would only read sites with syndication. For example, go to The Everlasting Phelps, and look at the upper-right. Just under the Blogs for Bush logo, you see it says “Syndicate this site (XML).” XML is another syndication feed that Newsgator can handle. All I have to do is right-click that link, click “Subscribe in Newsgator", and I’m in business! Newsgator gets the most recent 15 entries, and from that point on, all new entries are retrieved as well. Sweet! If Phelps didn’t have syndication, I’d never remember to read him.
I don’t know how reading this way impacts traffic statistics. Most MT blogs use the default syndication settings, which means I get an excerpt from an entry (first 30 words or so), but not the whole entry. If I want that, I have to go to the site. I prefer to get the WHOLE entry in my inbox, since that saves me another click, another browser window, and having to download a site’s graphics. I know, I know, it’s lazy blog-reading, but the point is to get people to READ you, right, not necessarily to have them come to your site to do the reading?
Update: If you’re interested in altering your RSS 1.0 feed in a Movable Type installation to display the entire post, rather than an excerpt, you can copy mine - it’s in the extended entry. Just replace what yours says with this.
Update #2: The tags in the actual code make the template not render properly here, and I’m not going to spend the time changing all of the unusual characters to their HTML variants. Basically, all you have to do is change one line in the default template. Where it says $MTEntryExcerpt, change that to $MTEntryBody. Simple!
Hey, Troy, it’s not exactly what you were looking for, but it is me, with a gun (August 7 entry).
Update: In the extended entry, it’s me, with a bigger gun, still.
I’m shooting my friend Steve’s Colt Sporter 9mm.
I’ve made no secret of my position on abortion (April 26 entry): I am pro-life. That is, I believe the child a woman carries has its own civil liberties and rights equal to its mother. I believe it is a person at conception, and I believe abortion should be re-criminalized. I do not believe there should be an exception for rape or incest.
Which begs the question, which exceptions do I think are valid, if any? It’s not like I have a specific checklist, or anything, but a friend’s recent experience proved to me that there are some.
My friend (let’s call her “Emily"), has a son, four years old. She and her husband have been trying for over two years to have another child. They seem to have no trouble conceiving, but carrying to term is a much different issue. She’s had four miscarriages that I know of. Recently, she announced she has lymphoma. She also announced that she was once again pregnant.
This posed a difficult decision, both for her family, and for her doctor. Lymphoma is a very aggressive type of cancer, and any oncologist worth his salt will tell you that you have to treat it aggressively, and quickly, even if a woman is pregnant. For a woman in her first trimester, the recommendation is a “therapeutic” abortion. Emily was ten weeks along when she found out she had the cancer.
She decided to try to keep the baby, and to proceed with chemotherapy. Sadly, about two weeks into treatment, she lost the baby due to spontaneous abortion (miscarriage).
This got me to thinking, though; what would I do in a similar circumstance? Chemotherapy - particularly during the first trimester - most likely will cause a greatly increased risk of introducing birth defects to an otherwise healthy baby. Delaying treatment causes an increased risk of death of the mother, leaving her first son motherless. So whose rights are paramount? The baby’s right to (possible, if the mother survives long enough to finish the pregnancy) life? Or the mother’s right to the best medical treatment available, and (possible) life? This is much murkier water for me, and shows me that the abortion question is much more complicated than a simple “yes” or “no".
I have to say that, in this particular case, if I were the mother - particularly if I had older children - I would have terminated the pregnancy.
Whether I could have ever forgiven myself is another question altogether.
I went out shopping today with my two-year-old daughter and newborn son. On the way home, I saw three quail, one pheasant, and a six-point buck. If:
a) I’d had my shotgun,
b) it were hunting season,
c) I had a buck tag,
d) it weren’t illegal to hunt from a vehicle, and
e) I weren’t wearing a miniskirt,
we’d be in for some damn fine eating for the next couple of months. Deer sausage, mmmmmm!!!
Thank you to everyone who made suggestions about dealing with my comment spam dilemma (especially Rob), and also to those who let me know they enjoy reading what I have to say. I really needed that, though I wasn’t fishing for it. I’m considering lots of possibilities of what to do, from closing comments to old messages (which would be my least favorite alternative) to moving to a different blogging software, to using a different commenting system. It all comes down to time to implement (time being my most scarce - and hence, most valuable - resource). But I’ll think of something, and I’ll keep posting in the meantime.
I have just about gotten fed up with comment spammers. They are sapping all the joy from blogging for me. This morning, I woke up to almost 30 comment spam. I deleted one using Blacklist, then tried to use its “Despam” feature to clean out the rest. I keep getting a 500 “Internal Server” error, and so I had to go delete all the comments one by one. I went to clean the bathroom, and when I came back there were THIRTY MORE. I tried the Despam feature again, with the same results. I have to say, this makes me want to completely pull the plug on the whole operation. I have very limited time as it is now, with three kids, and I WILL NOT spend hours every day cleaning trash out of a blog. Blogging with comments disabled just wouldn’t be the same.
I’m fed up. So I guess this is a plea. Either someone can help me figure out why I keep getting the 500 error, or I quit. I just can’t waste the time doing cleaning on my blog, when I should be cleaning my house or doing paying work instead. Or hey, maybe even blogging!
I should also say that I subscribe to the Blacklist RSS feed, and report all new occurences, so my blacklist is usually up to date within at least the last three hours.
Congratulations to the Fieleks on the arrival of their new baby girl.
There’s been a lot of hoopla lately over the possibility that the Bush administration may be looking into procedures for delaying the November election (a charge which the administration denies). Now a bunch of people have gotten their panties all in a bunch about the notion that people are even CONSIDERING what should happen in the eventuality of a major strike on, say, fifty or so polling places across the country. House leaders have even gone so far as to propose a resolution (not a bill) saying that a terrorist attack will never delay American elections.
This strikes me as monumentally stupid. First of all, who can foresee the future? Who knows what the terrorists are planning, or how it may impact our ability to hold elections? Suppose al-Qaeda were able to distribute enough cells to take out a third of the polling places in the country, simultaneously. Or suppose a dirty bomb were released on Election Day morning over all of Manhattan? Or suppose an attack were orchestrated on the power grid in New England, taking out electricity for the entire Northeast? What then? “Elections go on!” say the pundits. OK, but how? And where? What are our fall-back options? What is the full chain of command for local polling commissions? These are the kinds of questions we absolutely DO need to be thinking about. We’d be fools not to, considering that a) another terrorist attack in the US will happen, it’s only a matter of time, b) Homeland Security has admitted there is chatter about al-Qaeda committing an act of terror to impact our national elections, and c) they were successful in Spain. Hey, I’d love if we could find a way for elections to go on in any eventuality, but the plain fact is anybody can come up with a number of scenarios in which they JUST CAN’T.
Second of all:
No national election has ever been postponed, the resolution says, noting that federal elections took place as scheduled during the Civil War, World War I and World War II.
This is not your father’s war, folks. This is a war like no other, with an unseen and (largely) unknown enemy, who does not adhere to the usual rules of war. We were blind to the new rules before, which is why we got caught so completely off-guard on September 11, 2001. We shouldn’t be dumb enough to let it happen again. Delaying an election by a day, or a week, or a month, is definitely not something anyone wants to see happen (despite the scarem rhetoric of the usual suspects), but it would not be the end of the world, should it come to that. And at the very least, we need to think about it and not just stick our heads in the sand.
The Java Diva nails it:
I have heard that there are children who one day decided that they are finished with diapers, march themselved into the bathroom to use the potty and never look back. (I liken them to unicorns. A beautiful, mystical creature that everyone wishes they could see for themselves because apparently they bring good luck. And really, what is luckier than not having the go through potty training? Not much, my friend.)
Liberal Larry has now reached a new pinnacle of funniness. I want him. I want him BAD. I want to bear Liberal Larry’s love child, and I say this as a woman who, just three weeks ago, bore an almost-nine-pound baby boy. I remember the pain and the anguish; it is fresh in my mind. And still, I want that man’s seed. He MUST PROCREATE. Do you really want talent like this to end with him?
Still, Sean Hannity and his ilk made a big joke out of how Kerry and Edwards spent most of the afternoon practicing the “hike” position. Limbaugh said Edwards throws like a girl. Excuse me, but the man played football in high school - and fabulously, I might add.
But don’t be fooled - although they like to do manly things together like play football and ride their tandem bicycle through great big mud puddles, Kerry and Edwards have a soft, cultured side as well. The fabulous duo recently brought the house down with a misty-eyed performance of “Evergreen” at a Radio City Music Hall fundraiser. Kerry further wowed the audience with a stunning blue opal pendant he proudly wore around his neck, a replica of the one made famous in the film, Titanic.
“Isn’t it faaaabulous?” he told the crowd. “Lil’ John gave it to me. I’ll never take it off.”
Edwards - who is secure enough with his masculinity that he doesn’t mind being called “Lil’ John” and patted on the ass in an obviously heterosexual manner - put his arms around Kerry in a completely non-gay fashion and gazed longingly into his eyes.
“You’re welcome, Big John,” he cooed. “It looks fabulous on you!”
“No, Lil’ John,” Kerry corrected him. “It’s YOU who’s fabulous!”
The two friends then retreated to their tour bus to play some more football.
My very favorite part is not even in that excerpt; it’s the quote from Trent Lott. But you’ll have to go read the original to find out what it is.
I’m in a picture-posting mood, so here are my two oldest gremlins, in a rare fit of not trying to kill each other.
There is a point at which children go from being excited about getting a call from their aunts and uncles, to being horrified, bored, and otherwise put off by the event. A point at which they deign to tolerate such a call. You can hear it in their voices, in the one-word answers, in the clipped, forced tones. In the “ma’am”, if you’re Southern.
My nephew Don has crossed that line.
*sigh* I feel old.
Harvey of Bad Example would like to know how to say a particular phrase in a variety of foreign languagues. So if you speak any of them (languages, not phrases), head on over and help a brother out.
Which brings up a new topic, Harv… while you’re busy filling out your blogging family tree, and seeing if you can remember everywhere you might’ve dropped a seed or two… how about us blog-sisters and blog-brethren? Hmmmmm?
Liberal Larry has finally read enough of my entries that he has been converted to the wisdom and joy of capitalism. He’s now got his own Cafepress store, full of items that point out how Bush has enhanced his life. The pink tee is tempting, if a bit underpriced.
Took me awhile to get back around to this, but
here are the before-and-after pictures from my haircut last week (in
the extended entry, out of courtesy for those who don’t care, or who
have limited bandwidth). Incidentally, in the background of the “after”
picture is my wedding portrait, so you can see how long my hair has
ever been (ain’t that special?).
“That’s why [Kerry] stand’s shoulder-to-shoulder with the NEA to insure that every student leaves the public education system smart enough to vote democrat in November, but not so smart that their intelligence is insulted by anything democrats say.” - Liberal Larry
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s Frank J’s blogiversary, but you know what? When it was MY blogiversary (June 29), only two people linked to me, so I’m linking to them instead. Nyah!
OK, I very, very rarely buy Cafeshops gear (bit pricey), but I HAD to give this guy a little love. That site is friggin hilarious. It’s visual, so I can’t excerpt it, but I guarandamntee you, you’ll laugh.
Tiger hand. Rawwwwwwwwwwr!
“Red meat is NOT bad for you. Now blue-green meat, THAT’S bad for you!”
- Tommy Smothers
Apparently the UN is going to be conducting a War on Spam, rather than a War on Terror.
The United Nations is aiming to bring a “modern day epidemic” of junk e-mail under control within the next two years by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute, a leading expert said Tuesday.
Ooooh, maybe they’ll issue some more resolutions! I’m sure the very thought has the spammers just quaking in their collective boots!
“(We have) an epidemic on our hands that we need to learn how to control,” Robert Horton, the acting chief of the Australian communications authority, told reporters. “International cooperation is the ultimate goal.”
Now, I couldn’t have made up a quote to sound more UN-like than that. International cooperation is the ultimate goal. Not actually catching and punishing the perpetrators, but cooperating. Don’t it just make you all warm and fuzzy inside?
For what it’s worth, I don’t think any amount of international cooperation is going to do a damn thing about email spam. It’s a technological issue, not a legal one. Even in countries where they DO have laws against email spam, you just can’t enforce them, because the technology is not there to catch the bad guys in time to do so. Solve THAT problem, THEN start talking about global enforcement.
I spent a considerable chunk of my time today deleting close to 100 comment spam. Even with the MT blacklist in place, those fuckers got through. Today’s spam was from a group of people (I’m guessing Caribbean in origin, based on the names they used, but that’s a total guess) who are particularly stupid, because they only linked the URL name in their messages. See, the way comment spam is effective is if you can get some commonly-Googled phrase (say, “free big dick") to point to your site. You do that by linking said phrase to your site in as many places as possible. But if your site is EroticaXtreme.com and you link the phrase “EroticaExtreme.com” to your domain name, you’re not gaining anything in terms of Google-value (if someone is searching for a domain name, they probably just meant to type it in their browser, anyway). So, today, I got 50 comment spams - all on different posts - each of some jackass linking to his own name. Idiots.
I’m still happy with the Blacklist (and need only look at my Event Log to see how much crap it’s filtering), but it’s only as good as its last update. So guess what I’m going to go do now. :)
Update: In my purging zeal, I inadvertently deleted a couple of real comments. I’m very sorry about that, and I promise, it was not intentional.
“Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.” - John Wilmot
“The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it’s unfamiliar territory.” - Paul Fix
Two hundred and twenty-eight years ago, our nation was born. On that day, a brave group of men put pen to paper, and signed their names to a document that, in all probability, was to have been their death warrant. It was, unquestionably, an act of overt treason, but of treason against a government that had continuously overstepped its bounds to oppress and repress its citizens. On that day, the elected representatives of the thirteen colonies declared all its residents independent of the rule of England, and of England’s king. That Declaration of Independence was paid for in the blood of thousands of brave men, young and old, who had the courage to fight - and die - to throw off tyranny, and to help give birth to something better.
Happy Birthday, Lady America. Long may you live.
Liberal Larry recently attended a book signing by Bill Clinton, and he reports on the experience.
Hundreds, if not thousands of adoring housewives, single mothers, same-sex couples, and menopausal circus dwarves stood in a long line stretching all the way out into the lot and around to the back of the building…We hunkered down and got ready for a long wait, fondly reminiscing about the glorious Clinton years - an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Although Clinton had flaws (he was only human), there was a chicken in every pot, a pie in every window, and a Chinese communist in every nuclear laboratory.
I had looked forward to this day for months. There were so many things I wanted to say to the greatest president in American history. We owe him so much gratitude for giving ordinary people a voice, if not a very reason to live. Thank you, Mr. Clinton, for a lifetime of compassionate and selfless service. Thank you winning the peace, for securing the freedom we so cherish. Thank you for curing AIDS, and taking arsenic out of the drinking water. Thank you for a living, breathing Constitution, and for a woman’s right to choose. Indeed, thank you for granting women their dignity, and leading the feminist movement into the 21st century.
“My panties are so wet,” Peaceblossom said, squeezing my hand.
“Mine too,” I confessed.
There’s more, of course.