Readers and writers blog

I’ve been browsing our spam — damn, we get a lot of it, so much that I suspect it may have disabled our comment system, probably by choking it to death. We’ve had a number of complaints from readers who’ve emailed me that they tried to post comments but were unable to get through.

Ah well, if that happens, just send the comment to my email address — it’s printed several times in the lefthand column of this main page — and we’ll transfer it to the ‘comments’ section. On the other hand, if you don’t want to comment, that’s fine, too.

The reason I’ve been browsing spam — well, frankly, I’ve also been sitting here playing scales and chord progressions up and down the fingerboard of my guitar. I guess that Woodstock thing got me interested again in actually practicing the guitar every day, not just playing it once a week at our singalongs at the local senior citizen home.

So, dum, dum, dum, dum, scales from G to B from the sixth to the first string, then dum, dum . . . etc., C to F^# from the fifth to the first string, including I, IV and V chords, then I, I^dim, V⁷ and I descending runs, for each of the scales. I find it relaxing, which tells you something about me.

Now, that spam. Some of it’s pretty funny. One that purported to be from the Culinary Institute of America managed to spell the second word in the title as ‘Instatute.’ One from the ‘IRS’ seeking confidential information promised me a tax refund but dropped the first ‘h’ out of the word ‘whether’ and advised me what to do “if u don’t receive your refund.” One from ‘PayPal’ told me to resubmit my private codes — but told me in French.

And then there’s the Russian spam — ICQ номера, спам сервисы, e-mail спам и многое другое. . . Sorry, PrivateShop, I don’t need any instant messaging, spam services, email spam or any of the many other services you offer. But how the hell do they know I speak Russian? That was 40 years ago, courtesy of the Army Language School.

Well, anyway, the reason I have time to squander on all this stuff is that I finally got caught up — again — reading all the sites on our blogroll, all 44** of them. This time, because of personal commitments, I was nearly two weeks behind.

Karen McQuestion, author of one of those sites, McQuestionable Musings, was talking the other day about how hard it is to blog regularly. I told her in a comment that I found writing some of our blog entries more like work than fun.

Of course, I’d get them done more easily if I didn’t spend so much time reading our blogroll. But that is fun.

I want to know what mess June has gotten into at work at Bye Bye, Pie. And just where Don Croner has gotten himself to in Mongolia. And just what Jim is thinking in his perfect world. And what Bernita is writing in the world of magic realism. And what Franklin is knitting.

By the way, one of the sites on our inactive list, vox clamantis, has an exchange of letters presented by its indefatigable author, Michael Moore (no, not the filmmaker, the peripatetic philosopher), that challenges the 19th century news coverage of the notorious Montana vigilantes.

See, you wouldn’t know that if I wasn’t wasting so much time.

And now . . .

Today’s new offerings in Works:

• Chapter 24 of R.J. Keller’s novel Waiting for Spring. Tess discovers Brian’s sister, Rachel, is now pregnant by her drug dealer boyfriend, who beat her when she mentioned an abortion. Tess agrees to help her get an abortion and not to tell Brian, fearing he will throw his life away by killing the boyfriend.

– Sid Leavitt

NOTES:

*You know, I hate those blogs where the author admits having nothing new to say but then goes ahead and says it. I call them ‘dear diary’ blogs. This entry seems like one of them. I apologize.

**The number has been reduced by one — Robert Lashley’s The literary thug, now missing for more than a month. Robert, if you read this, please let us know if you go back up.

***The image above is a Flower Diary, complete with lock, key and sparkle accents, for girls 5 to 10. It’s available from Imaginabox.com.