Day: August 18, 2019

Apparently I Comment Too Much

Fandango27 Comments

89A3898D-1086-495D-9E49-DCEC7C6863F5I mentioned in this post yesterday that at least a half a dozen of you told me that my comments have ended up in your spam folders. Well, it continues to happen, as three more of you have told me today that you retrieved my comments from the fiery depths of spam hell.

So I decided it was time to address this conundrum head on. My bright idea was to reach out directly to Akismet to review my account and find out what’s going on. And that was when I discovered that around 13 months ago, in late June 2018, I contacted Akismet with the same problem. I even posted about it here.

Here is how Akismet responded last year:

Looking at our logs, it looks like you’re leaving a lot of comments in a very short amount of time, which imitates the behavior of a spambot, which is why Akismet keeps catching you as spam.

I suggest you to slow down a little bit with the rate of commenting to avoid this inconvenience in the future.

Akismet must have jiggered something last year because my comments on other bloggers’ posts stopped winding up in their spam folders.

I don’t mean to sound plaintive, but saying that I was commenting too much and too frequently was so not true then and is so not true now. And that I’m mimicking the behavior of a spambot? Seriously?

I think perhaps another blogger with whom I was having a bit of a political debate about the role of guns in mass shootings may have gotten pissed at me and tagged my comments as spam, which would be a cruel thing to have done. Although the guy’s an asshole, so it wouldn’t surprise me. But that’s just conjecture on my part.

In any event, I just contacted Akismet again and am awaiting their response. I’ll let you know when I hear back. In the meantime, this is a wrap.

Written for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (conundrum), Daily Addictions (bright), Your Daily Word Prompt (review), Ragtag Daily Prompt (plaintive), Word of the Day Challenge (cruel), and The Daily Spur (wrap).

 

Weekend Writing Prompt — Tinkertoys

Fandango6 Comments

00E94325-8B23-463B-984F-12496C0D6BCFAs a kid, I liked to trying to figure out how things worked, and I figured there was no better way to do that than to take them apart. Unfortunately, when I would try to put them back together, they never seemed to worked anymore.

My father told me that I could no longer tinker with any of the things in our house. But that was okay because he bought me a wonderful Tinkertoy set.

(75 words)

01AB86A6-CF5F-41D4-B4E4-02B067678270Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where we are challenged to write a poem or piece of prose using the word “tinker” in exactly 75 words.

Sunday Photo Fiction — Where’s the Murder?

Fandango5 Comments

21888A13-762B-4E7D-B67E-9F04E5B56C7D“Look at that big crow, Dad,” Brian said, pointing to the large black bird on the sidewalk.

Daniel looked around. “I wonder where the murder is,” he said.

Brian gave his father a quizzical look. “Did you say ‘murder,’ Dad?”

“Crows, Brian, usually hang out in groups and a group of crows is called a ‘murder.’”

“Why? Are crows dangerous?” Brian asked.

“Not at all. Back in the day, son, groupings of many animals had colorful and poetic names. A lot of them were based on old folklore and superstitions,” Daniel explained. “For example, one folktale says that crows would rgather to decide the fate of another crow.”

“Wow, like a jury of its peers,” Brian said. “That’s so cool.”

“Yes, and in the past,” Daniel added, “many viewed the appearance of crows as an omen of death because they are scavengers and are generally associated with dead bodies, battlefields, and cemeteries. They are thought to circle in large numbers above sites where animals or people are expected to soon die.”

“Is anyone going to die around here, Dad?”

“Don’t worry, Brian,” Daniel smiled. “Even if a murder of crows show up, no one is going to actually be murdered.”

(200 words)

Written for today’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt from Donna McNicol. Photo credit: dbmcnicol at Pixabay.

Who Won The Week? 8/18/19

Fandango22 Comments

10CC3057-4EEA-4C80-B8C1-700C0FC6C906Last week I introduced the Who Won the Week prompt. It was met with limited success. But sometimes these things take a while to catch on, so I thought I’d give it another shot.

The idea behind Who Won the Week is for you to select who you think won the week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

My selection for this week is the country of Greenland. I admit that I rarely think about Greenland, and it’s not because nobody from Greenland has ever visited my blog. However, Greenland has been in the news recently because of concerns for its rapidly melting glaciers due to climate change.

But this week we found out that Donald Trump has his eyes on Greenland. He wants to grab it by its resources and he believes that when you’re President, you can do that. Yes, the orange moron wants to buy Greenland.

Greenland, a Danish territory, has strategic value in terms of military activity and natural resources. So, deal maker Trump has decided he wants to make America great again by buying it.

But Greenland resoundingly rebuffed Trump’s landmass grab-ass desires and said no way.30C76BCF-C713-4463-9CCF-B89E634984EFYou go, Greenland. Tell Donald Trump to go pound sand. You get my vote for Who Won the Week.

So tell us. Who do you think won the week?

Song Lyric Sunday

Fandango16 Comments

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams has asked us to “write about a song that references another group/artist in it.” The song I chose is Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke.”

The song was written by Stevie Wonder for his 1976 album, Songs in the Key of Life, as a tribute to jazz legend Duke Ellington, who had passed away two years earlier. “Sir Duke” was released as a single in 1977 and reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and was ranked as the number18 song of that year.

In addition to Ellington, Wonder references other musicians in this song, including Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, and Sodarisa Miller.

About this song, Wonder said, “I knew the title from the beginning but wanted it to be about the musicians who did something for us. So soon they are forgotten. I wanted to show my appreciation. They gave us something that is supposed to be forever. That’s the basic idea of what we do and how we hook it up.”

Here are the lyrics to “Sir Duke.”

Music is a world within itself
With a language we all understand
With an equal opportunity
For all to sing, dance and clap their hands
But just because a record has a groove
Don’t make it in the groove
But you can tell right away at letter A
When the people start to move

They can feel it all over
They can feel it all over people
They can feel it all over
They can feel it all over people

Music knows it is and always will
Be one of the things that life just won’t quit
But here are some of music’s pioneers
That time will not allow us to forget
For there’s Basie, Miller, Sachmo
And the king of all Sir Duke
And with a voice like Ella’s ringing out
There’s no way the band can lose

You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over

I can feel it all over-all over now people
Can’t you feel it all over
Come on let’s feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
Everybody-all over people