The last time in my life when this many big changes came raining down on my head I wanted to duck for cover and run. Life was collapsing around me and I was stuck just dealing with it as each moment came along. This time, it feels like some of life is falling apart, but I don’t feel as bombarded by it as I did the last time. I recognize some of it is me actively making the changes, like buying a house. Now my work is going to have to change, and even though it was a change I was contemplating myself, I had planned to do it in steps, climbing off the mountain and up the next using lots of equipment and footholds. Now I’ve been pushed and I’m grasping frantically trying to regain my footing. My attention was elsewhere, focused on this lovely new home. I wasn’t prepared and it’s not fun being shoved when you’re not ready. Here I am trying to finish a book and buy a house, going along doing my thing, and wham! I guess that is how it is for people sometimes.
Month: June 2012
Spammers
The spammers on WordPress who really, really want us to post their comments and crap are getting more clever. I wonder what third world country the drafters of these gems call home. Some of them go to great lengths to get me to believe they are a real person with a real comment and not just someone trying to infiltrate the system. The problem is that their comments have absolutely NOTHING to do with anything I wrote, and their grammar, spelling, and style are atrocious.
For instance, in response to a Pure Med Spa post, one spammer wrote:
I go there every summer. Been there 6-7 times. Speaking of the rorest and comfort, it’s excellent (and I’ve been to many other 5-star hotels so I can compare). Since you can find almost everything on the website, I’m going to tell you what the website does not: the rooms are very comfortable, very clean and nice, you will find many restaurants for your taste, many bars to keep you hydrated and happy all through the day, all kinds of water sports, archery lessons, water games, water gym, a fitness center and a friendly and caring staff. The food is great in the main restaurant you can find anything, from Turkish traditional food to sushi, and there are other restaurants as well (Turkish, Italian, sea food and barbeque restaurants). As for the beach and the sea, you can find beaches with clearer, bluer sea elsewhere in Antalya, such as in Kemer. The sea is a little bit wavy and therefore not very clear, you can come across seaweed floating on the water. But it’s great on the beach, you will find watermelon and corn service, iced towels that will relieve you from the hot weather. The nights could be a little bit boring, there is a show after dinner and there’s a disco, foam parties on certain nights, but for the ones who are looking for a crazier nightlife, the hotel staff is taking you to Lara to great clubs and parties.The pool area is very nice, around th olympic it’s quiet and peaceful, there’s a huge bar few steps away. There are enough sunbeds for everyone, and you get towels which you can change for clean ones as many times as you want during the day. Note that the rorest is a really big one and it is a 10-minute-walk from the beach to your room.I would recommend that you try to book a room on the upper floors and with a sea-view.The farther the room is from the elevators, the better the sight is (well you’ll have to make a few steps more but if you enjoy visual beauty, it’s really nice from the balcony at night especially if the moon is out!!) But there are also honeymoon villas, a VIP place, which make your vacation turn into an even more luxurious dream! You can order everything to your room, and your balcony opens up to the swimming pool, you won’t even have to step out of your villa but staying there is more expensive.I think you’ll really like it there. Here’s link to the website in English: If you have other questions, feel free to ask.Addition:Sorry, I have no idea about where to find the cheapest price. The prices are totally different for strangers.
That’s quite the comment! It bears no relation to anything in the post. I think some computer algorithm pulled the word “spa” from the title and then they inserted this little travelogue, hoping I’d believe it was real. Problem is, the Pure Med Spa posts are NOT about traveling to a spa. Not even close. They are about what ripoff artists the owners are. If this commenter goes there often, they are probably missing a few thousand dollars and have been burned by lasers.
The other common type of pretend comment are the blow smoke up my ass comments, those who want me to believe and be therefore excited by the fact they are telling me how wonderful I am as a writer. Oh, you’re so great! Your post is the best ever! Then they offer some small suggestion. This is all written with wretched grammar and even worse spelling. SPAM. Here is one of these:
Well, the actual post is in fact the best on this worthwhile topic. I agree with your results and will thirstily look forward to the incoming changes. Just stating thanks won’t just be satisfactory, for the wonderful clarity inside your writing. Let me at once seize your rss to stay knowledgeable of any revisions. Good work and a lot success inside your business endeavors!
Thirstily? That’s pretty intense yearning for what I write. The funny thing about this comment is that it was in response to a post about my winning lottery national via an email message. Kind of apropos, in a perverse way.
Then this, in response to my article on long term nursing. Obviously, an algorithm or whatever pulled from the word breastfeeding, but no human read anything I wrote. It says:
try the feed play sleep routine, i.e. brefoe bedtime give your baby his usual vegies and milk then let him play for about an hour or so and then let him sleep. if he wakes go into his room without turning on the light do not look at him but reassure him that you are there until he calms down and let him settle him self he may a cry a while but this is normal.it will get easier if you stick to it I did with my children and they still wake every now and then but they know I am there if they need me they are now 4, 7 years and 10 months.
First of all, I think this opinion on childrearing is a bunch of shit and that letting children cry it out teaches them not to trust. But that’s not the point. Note the lack of capitals at the beginning of sentences? Note the run-on sentences? “Brefoe” and “Vegies.” It’s not a real commentator. It also bears no real relationship to what was basically a post-feminist argument, and not a parenting article. Spam.
Good luck spammers, trying to figure out a way through. I have to give WordPress credit. They caught all but one of these and dumped them in my spam folder. I saw them because I check spam for real comments.
Princess Slaying Dragons
I had a dream and it opened my eyes. So funny how this happens sometimes, during sleep or its edges our brains open and admit ideas we cannot consider during the day when the mind is wearing a suit, playing the daytime role and maintaining its vigilance. Yes, it keeps us operating, but in its watchfulness it keeps up walls that can block out the useful too.
In the dream, drifting there in the foggy place before I was awake, I saw her wearing a ninja scarf and holding out a sword, ready to battle with me. I stood and looked at her, then turned and walked away. She stood there holding out the sword as if in protection, but I had no business with her, and her sword would not protect her. I took up the hands of my children and we walked a path up the side of the mountain.
She says she is certain that with a tiara and cape she could conquer the world. She says that she is fierce, a ninja of the good and awesome. She sees herself as a brave warrior, protecting victims and innocents, and that she is doing so from strength. Yet I understand that all this external valor really masks of an almost pathological, fundamental sense of insecurity, which may be so buried she isn’t even aware it is there. Deep down, in the places she may not even visit, she does not believe that she is worthy. As long as she maintains the facade, as long as no one else can see this truth, perhaps she too can forget what she really feels, deep in these hidden crevices of her soul.
Recently, I communicated directly with her and she did not like this at all. She believed that I was delusional and therefore cut off any communication, believing that she did so from power, from strength. I am superior and you are not worthy of my time, the action said. I am better than you.
The truth though, was that I made her uneasy because I had already been somewhere she has not yet been willing to go. At a level she cannot comprehend with her mind, she knew this. Yet the hidden place deep within her understood. It knew that I was facing this fear, was staring it down, was climbing the mountain and learning to ignore the battles that do not matter, and this knowledge terrifies her in that fundamental, unconscious place. She does not understand that I was not challenging her at all, and would turn away from unnecessary battles with her because real power comes from the realization of inner strength, not from the slaying of a perceived adversary. What she truly needs to understand is that I am not her foe, and that her only true enemy is herself, that a cape and tiara will not give her the power to conquer the world, but that really loving herself will give her the strength to realize she doesn’t even have to fight.
I wish her well on this journey.
Random Thoughts on Everything and Nothing 