Day: August 17, 2019

The Cocktail Party

Fandango8 Comments

86F93390-863E-4455-B15F-8F4C5A9FF66A“Kris, why must you always flirt with every man in sight?” Matt angrily said.

“Oh please, Matt,” Kris said. “There’s no need for you to be jealous. This is a cocktail party and I’m just being sociable. You know that we need to aggressively promote our film if we’re going to get anyone to pick it up.”

“I don’t like feeling as if I’m pimping you out just so that we can enrich ourselves,” Matt said. “We’ll eventually persuade one of these fat cats to finance the distribution of our movie without you having shove your tits in their faces.”

“You’re cynicism is on display, dear,” Kris said, sarcastically. “But in the interest of getting the funding wrapped up, I’m going to let your snide remark slide.” Kris handed Matt a drink and said, “Relax, sweetie and watch me work the crowd. Oh look, darling, there’s that rich guy from Warner over there. He looks like a guy who needs to have my tits shoved in his face.”

Word of the Day Challenge (flirt), The Daily Spur (film), Your Daily Word Prompt (enrich), Ragtag Daily Prompt (eventually), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (cynicism), and Daily Addictions (slide).

A Daily Double

Fandango7 Comments

BEFD8BE2-DB4F-415D-9A10-6E9A3FA0205CToday was a double nomination day for me! That’s right, a Daily Double!

Dragon Warrior, over at Den of Dreams, nominated me for the Liebster Award. And Beckie, over at Beckie’s Mental Mess, nominated me for the Mystery Blogger Award.

I am always honored when other bloggers give me and my blog a shoutout via a blog award nomination. So thank you, Dragon Warrior and Beckie, for your recognition.

I’ve designated my blog as an award-free blog, but not a question-free blog. So rather than following all of the rules for these two awards, I’m going to answer the two sets of questions these bloggers asked.

First, Dragon Warrior’s questions:

Introvert or Extrovert?

I would call myself an “outgoing introvert.” I enjoy spending time with close friends and family, but I prize and protect my alone time.

Do you listen to your head or heart? 

I’m more analytical than I am emotional, so I’m probably more of a head guy than a heart guy.

Do you worry more about future or present?

I’ve reached the age where my future is finite, so I’m all about the present. 

Prospecting or judgmental?

I’ll be honest. I’m not sure what Dragon Warrior means by “prospecting” and how it contrasts to “judgmental.” When I think of prospecting, I think of people with pans prospecting for gold in the old, American gold rush days, or of college students prospecting for after-graduation jobs. The word “judgmental” has a very negative connotation, as in people being unfairly judgmental about others. But I believe that each of us makes judgments all the time. What am I going to wear today? What am I going to have for lunch? Who am I going to spend my time with? What movie do I want to go see. So I’m going with judgmental.

Ocean or hills?

The hills with an ocean view.

Family or friends?

Don’t you dare ask me to choose between family and friends. How dare you?

Courage or Acceptance?

I would love to say courage, but if I’m being honest, I’d have to say acceptance. Or maybe courageous acceptance.

Fire or Water?

Depends upon whether I’m cold or I’m thirsty.

Science or History?

This is a tough one because I like them both. History teaches us about the past and how we got to the present, whereas as science teaches us about how we can take the present and turn it into a better future.

Underground or underwater

Over ground and over water.

Lighter shades or darker shades

Let there be light.

And now for Beckie’s questions:

What are your aspirations in life?

To make it last as long as I can, since I believe that once this life is over, there ain’t nothing after that.

If you had $5000, what charity would you donate it to?

I’d donate it to the campaign of whichever Democratic candidate has the best chance of getting that moron, Donald Trump, out of office.

What is your favorite kind of music to chill out to?

Classic rock, baby!

How would you rate your experience on WordPress? 1 being lowest, 10 being highest.

You picked a helluva day to ask me, as I just posted this earlier today. So right now I’m leaning closer to a 1 than a 10.

Have you gained real friendships through blogging?

I would like to think so. I may never meet in the real world any of the bloggers I interact with here in the blogosphere, but I genuinely like and care about all of them. Well, most of them.

Of Reblogs and Spam

Fandango54 Comments

I blog almost exclusively using my iPhone. And, as they say, “there’s an app for that.” It’s the WordPress app for iOS, the iPhone’s operating system.

According to WordPress you can “manage your WordPress blog right from your iOS device: create and edit posts and pages, upload your favorite photos and videos, view stats and reply to comments.”

For the most part, all that is true. I use the WordPress iOS app to meet most of my blogging needs, especially the reader, where I can go visit the blogs of the other bloggers I am following.

However, I noticed recently that, when I came across some posts from other bloggers that I thought were particularly reblog-worthy and I pressed the Reblog button on these posts, nothing happened.BE72560F-84CA-4047-AF8E-50F94AD6B94DSo I reached out to the Happiness Engineers to tell them that my Reblog button wasn’t working. After explaining in detail the steps I was following and attaching the requested screenshots, I finally heard back. Here is what they told me:

“The view option in the reader was intended to be a way to view a post as it would appear in a browser, but was not intended to be used as a web browser. Simulating web browsers like this is resource intensive and so we recently made some changes to make some of these buttons less functional. If you want to be able to use the reblog button, for now I would suggest going to your posts in a web browser and clicking on it there.

“I have been chatting with my developers about how this change is affecting the work flow of the users and we are looking for other options to improve these changes. I will add this concern to the conversation. Thanks for letting us know.”

Seriously? The brilliant, “customer-focused” minds at WordPress decided to make some features in the WordPress app “less functional”? WTF, WordPress?

Check your spam folder, please.

On an entirely unrelated note, at least a half a dozen of you have mentioned that my comments have ended up in your spam folders. Maybe the Happinesses Engineers are tired of hearing from me and this is their way of retaliating. But you may want to check your spam folders regularly — I check mine daily — to see if you’re missing any legitimate comments they may have been inadvertently swept up in the Akismet net.

SoCS — The Ponzi Scheme

Fandango12 Comments

C582E9AE-AD58-4CDB-AA22-224B12FD1339For this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Linda G. Hill has directed us to “find a word that uses ‘co’ as a prefix and use it in your post.”

When I read this prompt, I was reminded of a brother and sister I used to know back in the day. They were very close. One might even say that they were overly close. They seemed to be totally codependent. You never saw one without the other.

After they graduated from college, they became coworkers at the same financial planning firm. They even bought a co-op together in Manhattan in which they cohabitated.

They became very successful at their jobs, but the two of them fell in with a few unscrupulous coworkers at their firm and participated in a Ponzi scheme in which they bilked their clients out of millions of dollars.

Once the scheme was uncovered, the brother and sister went before the grand jury and were indicted as co-conspirators in the fraudulent scheme. As co-defendants in the criminal case that was brought against them, they met with their co-counsels and agreed to cooperate with the authorities. Claiming to have been co-opted by a few bad apples at the firm, they testified against their coworkers. As a result, they were granted the ability to co-exist at the co-op they bought, rather than face prison time.

That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Let’s Kiss and Make Up

Fandango21 Comments

90845c34-4fb2-41f4-b531-5722047d754c.jpeg“Excuse me,” the man asked a passerby dressed in female clothing who was very heavily made up, “Are you a drag queen? I’ve never met an authentic drag queen before.”

In a voice that couldn’t really be described as distinctively male or female, but had a tone that was definitely acerbic, the person said, “I am not, good sir, a drag queen. I am a transgender woman.”

“I’m not sure I know what that is,” the man said. “Would you mind giving me an explanation?”

The transgender woman got a big grin on her face. “Let me put it this way,” she said. “I’m a little bit Latino and a little bit Latina.”

“So are you a man dressed up as a woman or are you a somewhat masculine woman?” the man asked.

“Ay caramba!” she said, “I thought by now our society had become civilized enough that this wouldn’t still be an issue. I’m so tired of being asked endless questions about what it means to be transgender.”

“I’m so sorry, sir…or, um, ma’am,” the man said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“No problem, sweetie,” she said. “Let’s kiss and make up.”

Written for these daily prompts from yesterday, which I didn’t have time to get to until now: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (authentic), Ragtag Daily Prompt (acerbic), Nova’s Daily Random Word (transgender), The Daily Spur (explanation), Daily Addictions (grin), Your Daily Word Prompt (civilize), and Word of the Day Challenge (endless). Photo credit: Pinterest.