Greetings From Planet Spam

As an intermittent blogger who can't seem to get on a regular publishing schedule, I sometimes go weeks (months) without looking at the "dashboard" of this blog. Sometimes I'll pop on the site just to jot down some note for an article I'd like to write, when time permits. Other times I may look through old drafts, trying to breathe new life into an idea which lost appeal, or lost out in the daily time lottery around here. Usually the effort of slogging through several hundred writing attempts that never made publishing grade is agonizing enough to make me close the tab in discouragement. Rarely do I look around behind the scenes and see what kind of traffic has been visiting here at Polite Ravings.

But for some reason, a few days ago, I decided to poke around the stats pages. It was nice to see that, whether I post new material or not, there are still a few people finding me and reading a bit. Of course, since some of those new readers are finding me on some Uzbekistan google channel, I have a feeling that my wit and charm are lost on them. And God love Lego fans. I posted just two articles mentioning Legos, but, perhaps due to the frequency with which I used popular search terms (Legos, ninjago), that post stills get lots of hits, and occasionally a total stranger (and Lego fan) will comment on the old article.

While reading the comments, I noticed a tab that I don't remember noticing before. It was more like a button and and said "Spam." I wasn't sure what to expect, since the only spam I know about is the crazy list of email messages I dump periodically, with subject lines that promise to share Kim Kardashian's diet secrets, Katy Perry's eyelash secrets, and an a variety of unnamed secrets involving the word "enlarge." I've never known where spam comes from, and I don't know how spam finds my email account. All I really know about spam is that it is to be avoided. It's bad, and I should never open anything that looks suspicious because that can lead to more spam. 

So, I wondered, should I click the "Spam" button on the comments page and see if my blog is getting enlargement offers?

I clicked. I looked. I laughed! This was a different kind of spam. Turns out, there are many bloggers out there who are even more desperate to find readers than I am. The techies who advise bloggers on increasing traffic have evidently designed a formula for "mutual admiration spam" (my invented term - can someone design a cute piece of clip art with that phrase on it? We can share the royalties.)  I'm guessing this process involves the ambitious blogger conducting searches for terms that relate to their blogs, and when they find another blog that uses similar terms, they send a "comment." I say "send a comment," which is probably pretty naive, since I imagine these are computer-generated comments of some kind. They must be, because they are so horribly worded, cobbling together some thin reference to a search term in my blog, paired with praise for my blog in general, then, (the big payoff to these spammers) a link back to their website.

This may not sound interesting, but when I share some of the garbled messages you will understand why I had to bring this to the attention of my dedicated readers. These comments are some kind of human/computer hybrid-speak...a kind of new, helpless and witless language for peddling your product while reaching out to strangers. It's reminiscent of credit card offers for dogs or the deceased. Here is an example of what I'm talking about, in response to my post entitled To Your Health! 

"Asking questions are really pleasant thing if you aren't understanding something completely, except this post provides good understanding even. My homepage..."

I used this example first because it is the most recent and it fits the generic pattern. There are literally hundreds of variations on this theme - or there were until I deleted them. Many of the comments are in response to that particular blog post, which is tagged for aging and health, and therefore draws more general search traffic. Since a large number of spam comments read very similar to the one above, that suggests to me that there is some formula for creating this kind of fake response while sneaking in a link to another blog. I'm very glad that Blogger weeds these out, since there are hundreds more of these spam comments than there are real ones!

But let me share a few of the more humorous fake compliments for my blog. They are so touching in their utter lack of sincerity:

"You make running a blog look easy. The overall look of your web site is fantastic, let alone the content material!"

"Content material" will make a good addition to the Repetitive Redundancies file. And yes, dear reader, it is easy to run a blog when you forget about it for months on end! There are dead and expired gadgets everywhere...this joker never took a peek.

Here's another example of an extravagant compliment for my blog, written by someone/ something who/that clearly has not glanced at my bare-bones effort at design:


"Wow, amazing weblog structure! How lengthy have you been running a blog for?"

or this over-the-top analysis:


"Its an amazing post in favor of all the web visitors; they will get benefit from it I am sure. Feel free to surf my site..."

I know it is tempting to think the writer is just someone for whom English is not their main language. But after reading pages and pages of these, a pattern emerges that suggests the spam comment formula works something like this:

Compliment site feature

+ mention sharing blog post

+ state benefit to web audience

+ add link to own website

= instant anonymous comment

Here's one of many that fit that boring pattern but made me chuckle:

"Excellent post...I'll certainly digg it and ...reccommend it to my friend...I confident they'll be benefitted from this web site. Please check out my website..."

(Note that the writer chose two different spellings for the same term in this brief message.)

Several comments mention the importance of the issue I'm writing about and compliment my great research or excellent insight into this concern. If they didn't end with a pitch for their website, which is unrelated in any way to the post, I'd probably be fooled and touched by those comments. But here's an example of a comment attached to my fluffy, 95% content-free post called Say It With Flowers:

"Excellent research of your blog. This paragraph is genuinely a pleasant one it helps new internet viewers who are wishing in favor of blogging. See my site at..."

Since the post contained photos of flowers and plants around my house, I'm not sure how it helped "new internet viewers." But the research - there's no research, there is just a map and a fake calendar charting my interpretation of Gulf Coast weather! Could it be that a webcrawler service found this chart and identified it as weather research? That is rather chilling, isn't it? Someone could be quoting my "research" right now, in a speech or paper citing more definitive proof of global warming. Who knows?

Likewise, several of the comments to To Your Health! mentioned they would put a link on their website back to my post. I don't know if anyone remembers that blog, but it began with another of my lame charts designed to look like a pop-psych "test" to help the reader discover hidden signs of diseases. It is satire! I'm a housewife, not a doctor, but look at this sample comment:

"I think this is among the most important information for me. And I am glad reading your article. This will mean much better for the website viewer and reader. I show articles and sell the weight loss on..."

As I look at these comments, I'm very glad I didn't stumble on them sooner. When I began my blogging efforts, I was desperate for feedback, any feedback. I would have lapped up this eloquent but confusing comment for Am I a Hoarder? when I published it back in 2011:

"Ahaa, its fastidious dialogue concerning this article at this place at this website. I have read all that, so now me also commenting here. Visit my website at..."

I gather this writer missed the point about the fill-in-the-blank method of creating convincingly sincere spam. 

If you are wondering why I didn't just cut and paste these comments in their entirety, Blogger doesn't allow that. When I tried to highlight text, I was prevented from doing anything except deleting the entire post or converting it to "not spam." That meant I had to hand-write all the entries I wanted to quote, then type them into this post. Can you imagine how hard it was for me to write and type these errors and misspellings - twice? But I guess that policy protects all of us from being maliciously quoted or used as spam against others. And perhaps by quoting them I'm breaking some fine-print clause in the Terms and Agreements for Blogger use. But I love bad writing, I love the folly of people trying to pretend they like something they've never seen, and I am enjoying learning about how web traffic and back-linking really works. So I had to share these amusing comments, just as I always want to share bad writing, wherever I find it.

And I saved my favorite for last, because I am not entirely sure it is spam. The writer links to a website that is actually related to the post topic (health), and after the obligatory compliment for the layout and content, the writer makes an interesting point:

"I do have a couple of questions? for you if you tend not to mind. Is it only me or does it seem like a few of these responses come across like coming from brain dead folk: :-P"

Hey, keep them coming.

Be All That You Can Be - Digitially, That Is

Oh, no.  Not again.  I just spent hours and hours and hours that I can never recapture reading stuff I don't understand.  Why do I search the technology topics?  It's worse than looking at Cosmo before going shopping for a bathing suit.  I feel so hopelessly unfit, unfashionable and uninformed.

I love having a computer - specifically a laptop - that I can use to for fairly simple tasks.  I generally only have a few tabs open at any given time:  Facebook, AT&T (email), Accuweather, Ebay, Craigslist, and RealClearPolitics are my most frequently-visited sites.  I know that's boring but I'm just being honest.

When I need to know about something boring, particularly about computers or technology, I search the question or topic, and read until I find my answer.  Then I close the window and go about my business.  I'm rarely curious enough to go surfing around once I've found what I was looking for.  I squander enough time chatting on Facebook and dreaming on Ebay.  God help my children when I look up something about the Norman Conquest or anything else interesting to me on Wikipedia; I start link-hopping and lose track of time.  Last time I did that those poor girls didn't bathe for a week - I got very caught up in the bloodbath at Hastings and the Plantagenet succession.  So I have to keep my "surfing" to a minimum if I ever want to get anything done.

Turns out, this is the wrong way to be on the Web.  Especially if you want to build traffic to your own site, like my blog.  I should be interacting more at the sites where I find interesting stuff.  I am supposed to introduce myself everywhere I go, being sure to drop lots of hints about what I buy, where I live, my areas of expertise, etc., while I visit.

That's exactly the sort of indiscriminate information-sharing I've been trying to steer clear of and teach my children to avoid.  But it is the number one piece of advice for increasing readership.  One of the articles I read suggested registering at 10 new sites per day.  What?  By the time I do that, I've used all my allotted writing time.  Do I really have to flirt openly with 10 websites per day to get noticed?  Really, I'm just not that kind of girl.

But this is the advice I keep getting from Google searches like "get my blog read."  As poorly-crafted as that search term sounds, it netted about 2,760,000,000 results in 0.19 seconds and yielded some amazing articles with tremendous potential.  Problem is, they are over my head.   I enjoyed the initial pleasantries of "21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic,"  by Rand Fishkin (click here to leave my whining and read his article), but it quickly became a how-to for the cyber-savvy, which isn't me.  It's not that I can't understand the vocabulary, acronyms, charts, graphs or suggestions.  It's just that the thought of going to all those sites and registering and interacting with lots of strangers kind of scares me.

This article, and the other six I read before I was overcome with temporary pupil vibration and scrambled brain wave syndrome (the dreaded TEPVI/SCRABRAW syndrome - warn you loved ones!) desperately want me to become more connected to the Web via a multitude of helpful social networking sites.  To get maximum exposure, I need to be on Twitter, LinkIn, StumbleUpon, Pinterest and Reddit, in addition to Facebook, which already helps me waste an enormous amount of time daily.  How am I ever supposed to get the laundry done if I have to go 'round to all those places all the time?

And then there's the content.  Well, I write what I want to write, so there's no getting around the fact that my topics may not be from the top-tier buzzwords.  But all the experts say that, if the writing is good, all you have to do it drop in a few keywords so that the SEO (search engine optimization) machine can do all the work to get you found by millions of readers.  Um, sorry...does that mean I need to title all my blogs including the word "Kardashian?"  That could actually be fun, and I may give that a try one of these days.  I'll bet traffic would double if the title also included the word "affair."  How about this one:  "I Think My Husband is Having an Affair with a Kardashian."  I think I'll try it and see what happens.

So I have to join a bunch of online country clubs and special-interest groups, then I have to use subliminal tricks to embed my otherwise-innocent text with search-worthy terms.  I also have to let Google do some analytics and tell me all about you, my readers.  I have only twelve followers and only average around 20 visits per day (need to post more), but somehow Google can extract meaningful data from that traffic.  Google can tell me what other sites my readers visited, suggesting topics that may generate more interest.  Even with my tiny bit of traffic, Google says I should have advertisers.  Those must be some pretty desperate companies, if they want to advertise on the blog equivalent of "Current Trends in Telegraph Communications."

I'm also supposed to offer to guest-blog for some of my favorite bloggers. Unfortunately, the few I read are huge and mega-successful, like Confessions of a Pioneer Woman.   I expect that'll go over big.

Dear Pioneer Woman,

   I really love your blog.  You make me laugh and cry.  I love the pictures of Charlie.  Now that you have a bestselling cookbook and and a bestselling biography, you are probably tired of writing.  Plus you are just so busy being Pioneer Woman, it's probably a drag to have to stop and write about it all the time.  So on that odd day where you are hungover or there's a brush fire that your whole resourceful family spends hours and hours putting out, I'd be glad to step in and throw together a blurb so you can have the day off.  Just let me know.

Sincerely,

Michele Arnett

Composing a letter is easy compared to some of the suggestions.  One tip is to add a link to my blog in my email signature.  I've been trying to figure out how to have an email signature since the first time I noticed how my husband's emails always end with the same long jumble of information, like his job title and three phone numbers, which I already know.  I'd like to have one of those cute signatures, because I write and answer a ton of emails (since I don't text and no one else I know talks on the phone).  I could add a nice signature and include my blog link, so that innocent, unsuspecting people would spend hours distractedly reading my wit and wisdom, thus increasing my traffic and making me more attractive to paying advertisers, like the Vienna Sausage people or perhaps a foot fungus treatment.

Naturally, every article suggests using design features that make your blog look professional.  I definitely need help in that department. (I wonder what the experts would say about the picture that used to be my header - me asleep on the chaise, with a book and 3 dogs on my lap - not very professional...)  My daughter keeps asking me to let her redesign my page, and I know I should let her work her magic.   I try adding gadgets (see the survey on the right sidebar) and changing around pictures, but it's really not my thing.  I'd rather be writing and let someone else be my style consultant, you know?

Below is Suggestion #20 from the article I mentioned.  See if this makes any sense to you:

 Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare, Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you're producing on the web and wherever you're doing it, tie it back to your blog.

I thought most of these sites are for photos, videos and artwork.  Why would a writer have a profile on YouTube?  I thought that was for funny dog tricks and the secret cameras at WalMart.  Anyone who has seen my blog knows I am no photographer.  What on earth am I going to do for YouTube?  Produce a how-to video for making cushioned clothes hangers?  And what is a Web 1.0 site?  Clearly, I'm doomed to be trampled in the frantic race of ever-improving technology, just as surely as the pony express was trampled by the telegraph.  Woe is me.

So I think I'm going to hang up the idea of expansion/improvement/modernization.  I don't think I'm a multi-platform kind of blogger.  I don't think I'll be doing any guest-blogging gigs.  I don't think I'll subscribe to weekly updates of search terms and traffic vector/trajectory reports.  I think what I'll do is keep writing about what strikes me as interesting, without regard to Kardashians, Eli Manning or The Voice (popular search terms - can't hurt).  I'll keep working on my novel, which is going in crazy directions without my permission.  I'll remain a low-tech kind of entity, and allow the potential for advertising revenues and millions of followers to pass me by, because I'm too lazy and/or too scared to jump into the cybersphere with both of my virtual feet.

I'm just here, writing my schtick.  I won't waste any more time reading articles when I have no intention of following the advice.  Either people find me or they don't.  Right now I'm just like any other old. unremarkable hardbound book on the shelf, dusty with few signs of handling.  Hopefully one day I'll get moved to the nightstand.

Thoughts from the Cave, Installment One

I'm the female equivalent of a curmudgeon when it comes to electronics.  Relative to my friends, at least, I see the cutting edge of technology and immediately head in the opposite direction.  I'm not against technology, or advancement, per se, but the pace of change is much too swift for my feeble mind to grasp.  I'm such a cavedweller, I actually only use my cell phone to make calls.

That said, there are some pretty nifty gadgets out in the big, wide world.  As I illustrated in a previous blog, some of these gadgets are so darn cute, they are virtually indistinguishable from other cute gadgets. (If you didn't see my ground-breaking investigative piece on this vital issue, click here.)

By far the most ubiquitous piece of modern gadgetry is the cell phone.  We are fast approaching the day when the term "cell" in "cell phone " is an unnecessary modifier. I racked my brain for a full 15 seconds, and I cannot think of one person over the age of 18 who doesn't have a cell phone.  I suppose you could argue the case that these devices are considered a necessity by today's standards.

Some of my friends know the features and specs of smart phones in the same way as previous generations knew about cars. They don't just know about their phone, they know phones.  And many people are not just dependent or attached, they are downright affectionate toward their device.  I know a grown man who names his phones, and routinely refers to them by their moniker.  As in, "Has anyone seen Bridgette?  I thought I left her on the charging station, but she's not here!"

When I was a little girl, my granddaddy had a 1959 yellow Chevy Impala that we called "Old Yeller," which doesn't seem silly at all to me.  After all, naming a 4000 pound piece of machinery, or a yacht, or a mansion seems acceptable; but giving a name to a 4.8 ounce device that becomes obsolete 15 minutes after you leave the mall?  Silly.  Ounce for ounce, it seems like a cell phone couldn't measure up to a muscle car for inspiring adoration and pampering.  But what does a cavewoman like me know about such things?

When I was young, I remember my dad and uncles holding car conversations that went something like this:

Daddy:  Did you see Bubba Junior's got a new Plymouth Fury Rally Sport QE2 with the Dorsalfin package and separate tailpipes for black and white smoke?

Uncle:  Yup.  Did you get a look at the wingspan on those tires?  And he got the over-and under shifter with the clutch in the glove compartment.  Those 14 V-8 cylinders hum like a beehive.

Daddy:   That 7000 BTU engine has major pickup for a small car.  He outran a Fish & Game Warden at the State Park and made it across the Causeway in 8 minutes flat.  And he gets damn near 10 miles to the gallon!  Damn fine car.

Uncle:  He said the trunk holds 2 deer carcasses, 7 tackle boxes and a full keg.  Guess that makes it a true multi-purpose vehicle, too.

Daddy:  Damn straight.

The glazed-over eyes, the dreamy, wistful look, the poetic phraseology: every age/generation has that one special item to worship.  I've come to the conclusion that I'm living in the age of cell phone worship.

http://www.writingforums.com/visual-arts/123144-iphone-worship-d.html

Recently, I was sitting in a restaurant with a large group of women, and a similar discussion arose regarding someone's new phone.  Unlike our cars, which were scattered around the parking lot and fairly difficult to compare, most phones were either sitting out on the table or held in hand, like a fashion necessity.
 

Again, here are some genuine, made-up conversational highlights:

Desperate Housewife #1:  Did you see Prissypants Hotshot's new phone?  The new LGAT&TG&Y Canteloupe with the built-in teleporter?  It's nice, but why did she put it in that tartan plaid sleeve then plug in fuchsia earbuds?  Gag.

Desperate Housewife #2:  I saw it, but it hurt my eyes so I pretended I didn't.  Why didn't she wait for the new Blueberry with the Eartooth?  It comes pre-loaded with 10 million apps, including one that warns you when your botox is wearing off.  She needs that feature.

DH1:  I told her to wait for the new generation of the HI-Phone, the one that reads your mind so that all you have to do is say "hi" to activate the psychic chip, then it carries the conversation for you.  So you can something useful while you drive, like a manicure touch-up.  But she said she couldn't possibly wait 2 weeks for it to hit the stores.  Her last phone was, like, 6 months old, and she felt like it was on borrowed time.

DH2: Look at poor Esther Cavedweller...she's too ashamed to even put her old phone on the table.  It has a visible antenna!  I think it was handed down by some relative who came over on the Mayflower!  Once, we were having lunch at The Snooty Soup & Bread Emporium and it started making a noise in her purse.  The ringtone was like, so Wilma Flintstone.  She pretended not to hear it, but people stopped slurping just stared and snickered at the odd, blipping noise.  It was so awkward.

DH1:  I know, bless her heart.  You just want to hug her and say, "Here, you can hold mine for a minute, until you feel better."

DH2:  I did that once, but she screwed up my turn on Words with Friends, so I locked her out with the retina scanner.  I mean, I'm sympathetic up to a point, but don't go messin' with my phone!

My humble little phone has a special pocket in the Red Bag of Splurge.  It's safe and protected in there, and I almost never lose it, but it's hard to hear through the excellent sound-dampening qualities of Vera Bradley quilting.  Fortunately, I get few calls, because, as a non-texter, you have to TALK to me on my phone.  It's an old-fashioned custom, difficult for some to master, a quaint holdover from those bygone days of land-lines and home phones.

So I enjoy making life difficult for my tech-savvy friends, like purposely misusing tech terms to get on their nerves.  I've learned that people don't like it when you call their iPhone a Blackberry, or vice-versa.  But a few months ago I acquired my own device that turned me into one of those geeky gadget-worshippers:  I got a Kindle e-reader.  It's possible I may love it too much.  In fact, the next installment of blog is dedicated to my sweet little Kindle, Jane.

 Until then, I'm crawling back in my cave for a little light reading...

Letting March slip through my fingers

If I died today, the most truthful thing that could be chiseled on my tombstone would be:

Here lies Michele Arnett, who never ran out of excuses.

I mean, today is the last day of March, and for reasons I can't explain, I still have roughly the same to-do list as I did at the beginning of this month.  Where did the time go?

I don't watch much tv, I'm not having an affair, I don't drink (during the day, anyway), I'm not a therapeudic shopper, I don't have a month's worth of dinners in the freezer...what the heck have I been doing this month?

Answer:  Internet.

I can lose an entire morning looking at the antiques for sale on craigslist Chicago.

I spend valuable hours chasing down k-cup deals on ebay, effectively canceling my minuscule cost savings in lost time.

  And facebook - well, facebook has become a problem for me.

Once I get caught up on everyone else's business, I jump on a word game and blow another hour.  It's inexcuseable, and I'm preparing to disentangle myself from all but the most cursory involvement on that site.  I'll check in on my kids' activity and a few friends who are far away and not available for regular conversation, but I need to quit posting the status of my laundry on that site.  And the local weather.  And my complaints about the length of whatever season I happen to find myself in today.  I truly don't care about your laundry or your weather - what makes me think you care about mine?


Like many in these parts, the long winter, cold temps and long-lived snow made it very easy to commune via laptop, Ipad, etc., for months on end.  I'd go from facebook to craigslist to ebay to Land's End Overstocks to various news and blog sites before the kids were even on the bus.  Fire off a few emails, play a few games of Word Drop, glance at the clock and it's noon.  Time loses all meaning when you get caught up in surfing, shopping, catching up on stuff.  But when I look up and and entire month is gone, it's time to take my time more seriously, while taking a vacation from OPS (other people's stuff) shopping.

 So I'm setting this goal for myself - wean self from facebook over spring break (next week).  I still want to publish my blog posts there, because frankly, I don't think anyone besides my mother would read Polite Ravings if I didn't smear it all over facebook and Google Buzz.  So I'll stay plugged in, but I'm going to attempt to severely limit my visits to the virtual party room and try to see and talk to people the old fashioned way - in person, or on the phone.

That's right, I'm going to waste more time and precious natural resources dropping by your houses, calling you during dinner, sending silly cards with dogs in sunglasses for no reason, and emailing hilarious recycled jokes and videos to you.  I know you can't wait until I stop using facebook for my social hub.  Now I'm going to be bothering you from multiple communication platforms.

It's going to take some planning, but I'm committed to rediscovering social networking without the aid of a computer.  Today I already talked to 3 people on the phone, and visited two at their homes.  It felt good, and I even got hugs.

And there is no doubt that hugs beat

 

by a country mile.

Still here

In response to the kind friends who noticed I hadn't been blogging much lately, I submit this poorly-thought-out installment.

I've actually been writing quite a bit in recent weeks, but I find my ideas haven't been flowing so well.  I wish I could blame it on the cold, as I do everything else.  Frozen brain cells or some such excuse would fit quite well.  But that's not really the case.  I think I have an attitude problem.


Firstly, some part of me wants to submit a funny and meaningful think-piece every time I hit the "publish" button.  Even though the size of my audience is small, your feedback has been so helpful and your support so important, that I feel like a lazy pseudo-wordsmith just cranking out chore lists, bird pictures and the occasional wisecrack about our government.  I want to say something more meaningful, more useful, more helpful.

I also get a little annoyed at my own behavior when I do post a blog.  I check the stats constantly, even though I know I shouldn't care, and I even read spam comments, just in case some best-selling author decides to leave me some free advice.  Clearly I'm too preoccupied with the reactions of others.  I can't honestly say I'm just writing for myself.  If I'm only blogging for my own satisfaction, why do I respond to the readership statistics in such a needy manner?

I'm kind of depressed about the whole subject of books and writing, too, if you want to know the truth.  (Not that I'm writing a book, but the subjects are connected in my thinking processes.)  Everywhere I go, it seems I'm reminded of the demise of the printed word, and that saddens me.  In my city, a free-standing Barnes & Noble closed a while back, in order to move into a beautiful new addition at our mall.  Their original building still remains empty two years later.  More recently, Borders filed bankruptcy and is closing my local store as part of the effort to stay in business.  Two mega-bookstores will stand empty less than 5 miles from my home.  That seems ominous.


Experts assure us that Americans are reading as much as we ever did, just in different formats, and I hope they are correct.  Because it's clear that Americans can't write worth a darn anymore.  Writing as a basic skill seems to have been in a constant state of decline (according to my elders) since I was a child. Communication technologies like texting have accelerated the process drastically, in my amateur opinion. Everywhere I look there are abbreviations and slang that used to be in limited usage; now "4" is an acceptable substitute for the useful preposition "for" in almost any venue.  And since when did it become acceptable to write "u" instead of "you?"  Who decided that?  People with tired finger syndrome?

But abbreviations have always been with us.  What's really reached an abysmal state is the creation of a logical, meaningful sentence.  Take a gander at a few ads on Craigslist or ebay and tears of laughter quickly turn to tears of sadness, when you read the examples of adult writing skills on display.  Some would say I'm being picky - what's a misspelling between friends?  Would that it were only a spelling issue.   People who can afford to buy and sell expensive antique furniture, cars, lake homes and jewelry, cannot describe their precious possessions in words and language that would rate a D-, and that's grading on a curve.


Well-written print media seems to have become irrelevant.  I spent a few minutes browsing the bargain table at our soon-to-be defunct Borders the other day.  So many books, with glossy covers, glowing reviews ("...without a doubt, the finest debut high school vampire trans-gender novel I've read in the last five minutes..."), and thrillingly high hopes by the author, stand in huge piles, marked down several times, until a $25.95 hardback published by a once-great publishing house is going home with deal-seeker for $2.99.  It depressed me to see so many unwanted, unread books.


We bought my mother-in-law a Kindle e-reader, and she has thoroughly enjoyed the convenience of the device.  Being disabled, she is an ideal candidate for such technology, and I'm very glad that it is available to her.  But contrast that to a woman in line ahead of me at the grocery store recently.  Her tweenage son was annoyed because the battery in his iPhone was dead.  The lady handed him her e-reader (a nice Nook, I think), and suggested he find something to read. To this helpful gesture he rudely replied that he didn't feel like using "that big pile of junk."  Dealing with her son in distracted-parent mode, she ignored his mouth/attitude/ingratitude and offered her iPhone to placate the poor, neglected child (I named him Damien.)


I don't know where I'm going with this line of thinking, but for some reason these scenarios seem connected and the outcome concerns me.  How can someone not like books?  How can an author put his heart and soul into a project, get it published, and then see it gather dust?  How can it be that the neighborhood book store has gone the way of the neighborhood soda shop or greengrocer or shoe store - a place for people to visit for the purpose of buying something tangible from a human who speaks and smiles to you, and knows something about the product you seek?


I suppose this melancholy is the reason I've been unwilling to publish any of my raves lately.  These thoughts aren't funny.  But to hold back my words unless I can be sure of causing a grin is not healthy for me - as a person or a writer.  So I'm going to post some of these less-than-cheerful essays over the coming days, and I hope I don't turn anyone away with my "Debbie Downer" routine.  


Yes, I'm an optimist.  That hasn't changed.  And I lead a blessed, mostly easy existence, for which I'm very grateful.  But I'm in a mood, and I can no longer pretend that bothersome trends don't bother me.  They do concern me, and I want to work through some of those concerns here.  


So my future ravings may be less funny, less slapstick, less day-in-the-life silliness, but I promise I'll keep it polite.

Please help me replace this four-letter word.

I remember the first time Eric mentioned reading someone's "blog."  I quickly doused him with hand sanitizer and asked what he was talking about.

"Whatever is this 'blog' of which you speak, dear husband?"  This is how we address each other in my polite household.

"I'm not Mr. Darcy; stop talking like that."  He rarely plays along.

Anyway, he explained that "blog" is the slang abbreviation for the compound term "web log."  That didn't help.  I don't even understand the difference between the internet and the World Wide Web (I'm always distracted thinking of ABC's Wide World of Sports and that poor somersaulting skier whenever anyone attempts to explain the two.)  Several years later, after repeated exposure to the blogging phenomena, I came to the conclusion that a "blog" is anything that anyone wants to write about, usually unedited, posted on the web for anyone else to read.

Of course I had to have one.  In every color.

But really, couldn't someone think of a better name for this form of writing and publishing?  The word "blog" is unattractive enough it it's original form, but the present tense "blogging" sounds positively disgusting!  Before I tell someone I'm blogging, I want to check the mirror for nose debris and make sure my zipper is all the way up.  I don't know if I'm unusual, but the word just carries such negative vibes for me.

"I have a blog" has all the charm of "I have a canker sore." 

"I write a blog for The Weekly Pimple.  Have you ever read it?  It's called 'Busted.'"

"Honey, if you are blogging again, please turn on the exhaust fan!"

For some writers, blogging is just journalling on the computer, keeping a "web diary."  But in our abbreviation-prone society, these terms would quickly become "compujourn" and "webdi."  Less grating terms than "blog," but clearly not an improvement. Others write in essay form, to demonstrate humor or promote their views to a wide audience.  Perhaps they use "blog" because no better term has presented itself.  But I can't imagine William F. Buckley or Ann Landers bragging about their "blog."  Buckley would have already come up with a new term.  (Of course, Dave Barry probably loves it.)

In the paper-print age, professional writers used inoffensive terms like novel, essay, dissertation, study, editorial, treatise, and column to describe their product.  These words may evoke fear or boredom, but they don't make you want to grab the antacid.

I don't want to think of a new term myself, I just want someone else to do it with my preferences in mind.  Gentle reader, please find or create a word to replace "blog."  Although I appreciate the free website I'm using to publish my thoughts, the words, "I have a blog on Blogger.com," don't gently roll off the tongue, as in, "I have a column in Cosmo."

So come on...I want all 8 of my followers and the other two anonymous readers to get right on this.  Show your originality!  Usher in a new age of ________ing on the web.  Give us a new name for blogging.  Al Gore is the father of the internet, one of you could be the mother of the webdi (I'm "webdiing?"  That's got problems.)  See, even my silly examples are crap - hurry before someone starts using them.  Stay on the computer until you find a suitable term to suggest, then send it as a comment to this post.

I'm giving you a perfect excuse to stay in your jammies and play on the computer all day.  Just tell the spouse and kids you are "working" on an important internet "project."  You can thank me later.

A Game of "Which is Which?"

20" computer monitor

20" flat screen tv

I've gotten quite a bit of humor mileage out of my "techno-challenged" status.  And although I'm not as dumb as I make myself out to be, (but almost), I think I've discovered part of the problem.

You see, many electronic and computer gadgets look alike.  At least they look alike to me, and I'm the only judge who matters at this point.

I don't know when I first noticed this problem, but when dvds were introduced shortly after cds, and I was still trying to understand music on magnetic tape and television broadcasts over invisible airwaves, I guess I knew this day would come. 

compact disc

See, I just don't get the invisible digital world at all.  I believe in it, I accept it and I guess even manipulate it.  But I don't get it.  Nevertheless, computer chips and nanotechnology seem to control many aspects of everyday life here in America.  So it's in my best interest to at least understand those components and be able to recognize them when I see them.  

But so far, I'm still confused.


Sometime during Christmas shopping season, I noticed that I couldn't recognize the devices on my kids' Christmas lists on store shelves or in sale flyers.  I had to read the full ads for almost every gadget in order to find out what it was.  And it slowly dawned on me that it's not just because I'm lagging years behind in my personal technology.  It's because a lot of this crap looks alike.

Example 1:

Who knows what these two items are?  I'll grant you they don't look exactly the same, but in a sale ad, without context or size reference, can you agree that they both look like a flat black box?

Example 2:  These next two are very dissimilar in actual size, but you must admit they share some common features: 

             

If you came from a place without electricity and modern conveniences, like Neptune, would you honestly be able to tell much about these items from these pictures?  I thought not.

Example 3:  This set of three items should be a bonus question. 

Who knows what these three devices do?  Can you see yourself laying the cordless phone on the rabbit ears when the battery dies?

Example 4: Since I was shopping for an e-reader for my mother-in-law's Christmas gift, I definitely saw the resemblance between those and some smart phones:

Example 5:  I had one particular item on my gift list this year.  Can you guess by the pictures which one it was?

 

Example 6:  The way media technology is advancing, we may not need our old portable cd players much longer, but make sure you know which one of these to throw out:

Example 7:  This is probably the most obvious source of confusion for many people.  Which one of these rings to alert you of an incoming call?

 

True, the other one emits beeps for other reasons, but I know from experience you can't order Dominos with it.

Example 8:  Two more very different items in very similar packaging:

Example 9:  No one can fault me for finding these different tools strikingly similar in appearance:

 

I wonder how many parents have seen one of those sticks among their teenager's possessions and launched into the no-smoking lecture...

And for our Final Jeopardy round...

Example 10:  This would truly be an unpleasant mix-up:

 

I hope I've made my point, and some of you "modern" types laden with all the most up-to-date gadgetry will understand why some of us hopelessly backward folks seem to be laughing at you.  

We've seen you trying to text on your external hard drive.

~M

Quiz answers:

1. left- iphone hard case  right - external hard drive

2. l- front-load washer r- digital camera

3. r- cordless phone charger c- tv antenna b- wireless router

4. l- nook color r- iphone 4.725.a

5. l- fabric steamer r- shop vac

6. l- portable cd player r- IRobot Roomba

7. l- tv remote control r- cordless phone in charging base

8. l- powder compact r- gameboy advance sp

9. l- cigarette lighters r- memory sticks

10. really?

Lessons from the Facebook generation

I saw the movie, "The Social Network" yesterday.  It was very enjoyable as a story, and the juveniles who portrayed all those geniuses and billionaires and Harvard bluebloods gave impressive performances.  I understood the movie, because even though it dealt with highly technical stuff (server loads, megabytes, Morse code), the central story was about friendships, love, sex, heartbreak, betrayal and loss - a soap opera.  I understand that story arc, even when it's framed in Gen-X speak.  Incidentally, if you are a female with eyes, the scenes with the twin brothers rowing crew were well worth the price of admission. 


I guess the title of the blog is misleading, because I'm not yet sure what lessons I've learned from this generation reared on life via technology.  My own children are part of this culture, and I think they are pretty nice people, so I can't write off the whole techie generation as a bunch of social misfits and wire-headed loners.  I'm sure lots of nice teenagers own multiple laptops, have a gps on their phone, and know how to hack sophisticated security systems.  Am I a bad person for hoping that my kids never need technology that badly?

My beloved Flipper - the resuscitated "phone only" phone

A very tech-savvy friend got a new I-Phone Number 4 recently.  That looks wrong - is it version 4, ap 4, generation 4, 4 gig, 4 hz, 4 watts?  I don't really know why it has a "4" after it, anymore than I know why it has an "I" in front of it.  I know I'm supposed to be wowwed by it, but the only thing that caught my attention is that it is bigger than my little drowning survivor.  It won't slip easily into one of your pockets, but that's okay since I think they are meant to be worn, like a wedding ring, or some other kind of social identifier.

I wonder if some wit has invented a name for people who use technology without any understanding of it.  Is there a one-word description for someone like me? Technophobe?  I enjoy and use certain products of technology, like the laptop and the cell phone, but I struggle against dependence issues. I don't text or twitter.  I don't like abbreviations stemming from texting. When it comes to devices, I settle for minimal features and I dread upgrades.  I also can't tell if I'm watching a show in HD or not.

   If I had the choice between getting an I-Phone and getting my favorite chair recovered, I'd choose the chair, and not just because it's $70 less than the phone.  I guess it's because I find these devices useful, but not that interesting.  I don't have the courage or the energy to eschew all technology and convenience and go live in the woods away from civilization.  I definitely don't want to go back to a time where you couldn't look up the word "eschew" without having to get up from your chair, walk across the room, hoist the Websters, put it down, go back across the room for your reading glasses...well, you get the drift.  I like the fruits of our high-tech lifestyles, I'm just not sure what they say about us. I love convenience, but I don't love the machines.


I am even confused by trying to figure out what my central issue is.  Am I upset at my dependence on my laptop, the internet and instant communication?  Or are they just a convenient scapegoat for the laziness these devices make possible?  For example, I can honestly say I almost never make long-distance phone calls to anyone I'm friends with on facebook.  Sadly, the site seems to have made voice communication almost unnecessary.  Announce your plans, intentions, thoughts and raves in your status and it's everyone else's responsibility to know what to do with that information.

I also hate to admit how many books I have bought online, rather than wait for the library copy to become available.  Waiting for what I want has become a lost skill.  When watching an item on ebay, do I wait out an auction or pay a few cents more for a Buy-it Now?  Just check my feedback.  Is it any wonder that I struggle to  teach my kids not to expect instant gratification? A Facebook chat is so much easier than a real spoken conversation - talking on the phone...that takes real effort.  Suddenly I'm feeling nostalgic for the days when Eric used to complain about the long-distance bill.


A "long distance" call - does anyone even think that way now?  My girls have no idea why you even have to dial "1" from the home phone but not from the cell.  To them, a phone number always needs an area code.  They've rarely had to observe an ironclad phone call time limit, or wait their turn to use the only line in the house.  And they never suffer the disappointment of missing a call - if we can't be reached on the home phone, there are four cell phones here, and 3 computers with multiple messaging networks on them.  E-vites don't get lost by the USPS like invitations can.   They've rarely ever had to crack a musty encyclopedia for information, or sit through an endless recording to find out store opening times or movie show times. In their world, getting information doesn't take work, so much as it takes creativity.

Oops, I'm still rambling.  I guess I'm stuck trying to figure out what I've learned from this generation that has the brilliance to invent Facebook, the I-Phone and Resident Evil.  I know that a poll of 18-25 year olds revealed that they rated the song "I'm A Survivor" by Destiny's Child as a better song than "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, which I find unnaturally disturbing. That single data point just may demonstrate how vast the gulf is that separates our generations, taste-wise. And really, when I think about it, that generation probably doesn't care if I learn anything from them or not.  After all, I blanched at the idea of my mother learning to disco dance and ran the other way when my uncle challenged me to play "Asteroids" at a college bar. When you are young, you'd rather die than witness old people trying to be cool.  I guess that's how the Harvard kids feel about seeing all of us bored housewives on facebook these days.