Day: May 29, 2018

What?

Fandango11 Comments

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Some weird shit has been going on recently on WordPress. I’m getting a bunch of comments, most of which are being tagged as spam by Akismet, but a few are getting though, that simply say, “What?”

They all have a similar URL. It starts “www.sexy.” followed by three to five seemingly random letters, followed by “xyz.” And I’m getting between 10 to 20 such “What?” cooments a day.

Is anyone else getting these garbage comments?

Also, last night at around 10:30 or 11:00 pm PDT, I was unable to save a post I had just written. I got a message saying that my draft post could not be saved and when I went to check my draft folder, the message on my screen said my draft folder was empty. When I checked my published posts folder, it said that it, too, was empty. Egads!

I signed off of the WordPress app, shut down my iPhone, and then signed back onto my iPhone and to the WordPress app, but this time I couldn’t get anything…even my stats! I thought I had lost my whole blog.

I checked other apps: Facebook, my newsfeed, Google, iTunes. Everything but WordPress was functioning as usual.

I waited about 40 minutes and tried WordPress again — and everything was fine. The draft post I had been working on was there. So were all the others in my draft folder as were all of my published posts. And my stats were showing again. Phew!

So did any of you experience a WordPress outage for around 40 minutes last night or was it just me?

Unexpected and Costly

Fandango17 Comments

The comic books, mostly superhero-type comics from DC Comics and Marvel, cost ten cents each back then. The packs of baseball cards, sold by Topps and Fleet, cost a nickel each and included seven baseball cards and a flat, square piece of pink bubblegum.

I’d buy five comic books and two packages of baseball cards each week. I’d ride my bike back home and take the wrapper off of the packages of baseball cards and sort them out. And after reading the comic books, I’d stack them in piles based upon the characters.

I continued to buy baseball cards and comic books for years until I got distracted when I was about 17 by girls. But in the meantime, I had built up a significant collection of both comic books and baseball cards.

After high school I headed off to college for four years. When I returned home after graduating, I discovered that my vast — and priceless — collections of both comic books and baseball cards, which I had stored in the basement of my parents’ house, were missing.

I asked my father about my collections and he told me that he had thrown them away, explaining that he needed the space in the basement for some other purpose. “Besides,” he said, “that was kid stuff. You’re an adult now.”

That was unexpected. And costly.

Written for the new three-word challenge from Teresa over at The Haunted Wordsmith. Today’s three words are “boy,” “wrapper,” and “unexpected.”

MLMM Photo Challenge — Heavenly Bodies

Fandango3 Comments

img_1437“I was inspired by a photograph from NASA in which the sun and the moon were set up in juxtaposition with one another” explained the artist. img_1439“That’s what gave me the idea for my series of photographs where I juxtapose a heavenly body and a woman’s body.”

“But your work is rather macabre, don’t you think?” the interviewer asked. “And some might say it’s a bit misogynistic and even sadistic, given that all of your subjects that you’ve juxtaposed with the moon, the sun, planets, and stars are women who are tied up or in some sort of physical or sexual distress.”

“Well, yes, but that is the message I’m trying to get across, actually,” she said. “You see, by focusing on a woman’s body and her appearance in our society, we are objectifying her. Even the term “heavenly bodies,” when regularly applied to a woman’s appearance, gives the impression that a woman is defined by her body and not by her substance. Women should be recognized and appreciated for who we are on the inside and not merely for what we look like on the outside.”

“And that’s why you chose ‘Heavenly Bodies’ as the title for your show?” the interviewer asked.

“Exactly,” the photographer said. “Heavenly bodies aren’t so heavenly when women are treated as mere objects subject to the more sadistic nature of men, are they?”

Written for this week’s Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Photo Challenge (photo credit: Luis Gonzalez Palma), and for today’s one-word prompt, “juxtapose.”

Let It Bleed — The Down Side of Magic

Fandango6 Comments

9424D891-551E-4F48-BDA7-09EB45860D0FKyle was a skeptic when his best buddy told him about the spellcaster. “I’m a stock broker, right? But truth be told, I didn’t know what I was doing and my clients weren’t at all happy with me,” his friend told Kyle. “I was probably days away from getting canned so I asked her if she could help.  She recited some sort of incantation over me and within a few days I became a wizard at my job. Now I’m taking in the boatloads of cash and have a stable full of wealthy clients. It was like a freakin’ miracle.”

After hearing this tale, Kyle, who was unlucky in love, decided to see if there might be a spell to help him be attractive to beautiful woman. So he went to see the same spellcaster, told her what he was looking for, and asked if she had a magic spell that could work for him. She said she did.

And boy did it work! Suddenly Kyle was in demand and he could pretty much take his pick of the most beautiful women around. And then he found the woman of his dreams and Kyle still couldn’t believe that he was actually dating her.

When they first started going out, every time he looked at her, that old song by America, “Sister Golden Hair,” came to mind. Especially the verse that goes “Well, I keep on thinkin’ ’bout you, sister golden hair surprise / And I just can’t live without you, can’t you see it in my eyes?”

But after a while Kyle began to feel that there was trouble in paradise. Sister Golden Hair was a jealous bitch. Despite her incredible beauty, her jealousy was driving Kyle crazy.

Kyle decided to pay another visit to the spellcaster to see if she could do anything to rectify the situation. She told Kyle that all she could do was reverse the original spell, and while he was reluctant to lose his sway over the most beautiful women, he asked the spellcaster to remove her spell.

The next time Kyle saw Sister Golden Hair, things between them got awkward quickly. After a few moments together, she reached out and held both of his hands and, with tears streaming down her cheeks, said, “Kyle, we need to stop seeing one another. Suddenly the magic is gone.”

“Yes, I feel that way, too,” he said, barely able to hide the look of relief on his face.

Written for this week’s Let It Bleed Challenge, where the prompt is the word “magic.”

And in case you’re not familiar with the song I referenced in this tale, here it is:

Twittering Tales — Summer Breezes

Fandango4 Comments

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I remember that it was incredibly hot that summer. I feared that we would all surely perish.

One day father came home from work carrying with him an enormous electric fan. Within moments of plugging it in, it pushed most of the hot air right out of our home.

It was a godsend.

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Written for this week’s Twittering Tales prompt from Kat Myrman. Photo credit: Alistair MacRobert via Unsplash.com.