Classic Thag, June 2011: Memoirs of a Schlemiel
Bill, Elaine, I’m sorry about the damage to your apartment. I’ll do what I can to fix or replace whatever got damaged. I was trying to keep the place well while you were gone, and did OK for the first couple of weeks, but then circumstances conspired against me.
I’ll try to give all the details in this message so you don’t get completely shocked when you see what went wrong, but I do understand that beholding it all with your own eyes upon your return will nevertheless give you pause. I apologize again for causing you that.
It all started when I went to check on the plants on my way out of using the bathroom. I knew they hadn’t been watered in at least a week, so I found a glass in the kitchen and brought some water over. I didn’t want to overdo it, so of course I didn’t empty the glass completely. But I accidentally whacked the glass against the side of the ceramic planter. Not only did the glass go flying, but I gave myself a nasty cut on the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. I tend to faint at the sight of my own blood, so I knew I had to do something about the bleeding right away. I ran to the bathroom – and slipped on the spilled water.
I sprawled on the living room floor and cut myself all over my hands breaking the fall. The blood got all over the rug, but I couldn’t do anything about it at the time, since I needed to administer first aid. So I got myself to the bathroom as quickly as I could and sat on the toilet. But I didn’t notice I’d left the seat up when I was there before, and fell in.
I couldn’t get myself out so easily because my hands were all cut up, but I had no choice. I tried to grab the hand towels to give myself a grip, but only lifted myself an inch or two when the towel rack came off the wall and hit me in the ribs. I was knocked back down into the toilet. I was finally able to wiggle into a position where my elbows could support my weight as I slowly unstuck myself from the toilet bowl. Now I was soaked as well as bloodied, but I managed to stand up and move toward the sink. I wanted to brace myself on the vanity, because I already felt faint from the pain and bleeding. But I didn’t make it, and collapsed into the bathtub.
The shower curtain broke my fall a little bit, but only because it was torn completely from the curtain rod. On the way down my head hit the soap dish and knocked it off the wall, and my arm hit the faucet lever and turned on the hot water. It took me a minute to realize what was happening, but by then, scalding water was coming out of the spigot all over my midsection. I jumped up, screaming, and leaped out of the tub, hitting my head again on the now-bare curtain rod and knocking it down.
I leaned over as fast as I could to turn off the water, but the curtain rod had come to rest just so, and it poked me hard in the crotch. I doubled over and fell into the tub again, splashing bloody water all over the bathroom. I did manage to turn off the water and slouch against the outside wall of the bathtub, wondering what I should do, but I blacked out again.
When I came to, my bleeding had stopped, but I hurt all over from the cuts, the burns and the bruises. The Schillers from downstairs heard the commotion and came up to check. Poor Mrs. Schiller. She slipped on the little puddle of water as I did and banged into the planter. She hit it with her head, knocking it onto the floor, where it smashed and dumped soil everywhere. Mrs Schiller was knocked unconscious, but Mr. Schiller came in right after her and called an ambulance, but it took him a while to hear my groans as he fussed over his wife. He carefully made his way to the bathroom and saw me amid the wreckage, whereupon he had a heart attack and collapsed, knocking over an end table and causing the lamp to smash on the floor. The exposed filament was now touching the fringed edges of the blood-stained rug, and the rug began to smolder. It took me a minute to realize that I smelled something burning, but I gathered my remaining strength and hobbled out to the living room. I kicked the lamp away from the rug and stamped out the burning part, but didn’t notice that the still-exposed lamp filament had come to rest against the front flap of the sofa.
The sofa burst into flames. I hobbled over to the kitchen and filled a pitcher with water, which I then threw over the flames, repeating the process a couple of times just to make sure. The second time, some of the water landed on Mrs. Schiller, who came to and sat up; the third time, I must have missed the couch and got her full in the face. She lunged at me and began pummeling me, and as you can imagine, I was in no condition to defend myself. But very quickly she looked over and saw her husband. She, too, gasped and clutched her chest, and soon collapsed. The paramedics arrived a few minutes later.
Again, I’m sorry for the trouble, and I’ll do what I can to make things better. Please relay my good wishes to the Schillers when they are released from the hospital, which I understand could be any day now.
Oh, and I think my wallet fell out of my pocket somewhere in the bathroom. Possibly into the toilet. Please check and let me know.
Gregg
Watchdog: Obstructionist Israel Plans to Continue Existing
The organization hopes to make its Hebrew logo irrelevant as soon as there are no Hebrew speakers left between the River and the Sea.
Tel Aviv (AP) – In its latest report on what it calls Israeli intransigence, Peace Now calls attention to the Jewish State’s declared intent of maintaining itself despite opposition from hundreds of millions of opponents. Peace Now called the news “disappointing” and “yet another example of the Netanyahu administration’s willful political and demographic blindness.”
In advance of a visit to the area by US Secretary of State John Kerry, the Peace Now report covers numerous areas of Israeli activity as it affects the question of the dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It characterizes the Israeli assertion of the country’s right to exist as a way to establish certain facts on the ground that would make accommodation of any good-faith proposals by the secretary unlikely.
“Once again the radical right-wing government of Netanyahu and his ideological allies have demonstrated their complete unwillingness to consider dismantling the entire Zionist enterprise, which we have long maintained is the only just way to resolve the issues surrounding the Occupation of Palestinian territory,” the report’s conclusion reads. “Only by subjecting Jewish Israelis to expulsion, genocide and oppression at the hands of Palestinian hordes can this administration satisfactorily demonstrate its commitment to a negotiated peace.”
Former Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer said his organization focuses on Israeli settlement activity in the Occupied Territories, referring to all areas acquired by Israel in war. Since Israel secured its initial existence by defeating several invading as well as local armed groups, that definition applies to all areas currently under Israeli civilian or military rule.
“International Law does not distinguish between territories acquired in a defensive war and those captured in an offensive war,” explained Oppenhemier. “In which case all of the areas that the nascent Israeli armed forces secured in 1948 and 1949 are to be considered illegally occupied. The question of 1967, ” meaning the additional territories captured by Israel from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in a pre-emptive series of operations against amassing enemy forces, “is merely an extension of the same illegality inherent in Israel since the beginning.”
The report calls on Netanyahu to negotiate the complete relinquishing of all Israeli territory in good faith.
As its practice has always been the Netanyahu government ignored the Peace Now report, but others welcomed it. “We have been claiming the very same thing for generations now,” said Haled Mash’al, the now-retired head of Hamas, the Islamic militant movement that runs the Gaza Strip. “We are not wedded to the sword. If the Zionist entity would agree to destroy itself, we would let it do so unmolested.”
Four Moderately Annoying Things WordPress Doesn’t Tell You
You’ve been pouring out what passes for your soul into your blog and are wondering why, despite your, uh, creative efforts, your material has somehow not fired the public imagination and made you famous, rich, and an object of near-religious veneration. Or perhaps you have yet to experience the crushing disappointment of a masterpiece ignored, but wish to prepare yourself for the inevitability.
We’re good for the latter bit. In no particular order, here are some of the frustrating features of the WordPress blogging platform:
Useless Referrer Stats
If you’re really into SEO and the search engine referrals help you, you’re probably not reading this right now. And you probably should get a life. For the rest of humanity, even if the stats worked properly they would be of limited use, if any. Do I really need to know that someone reached my blog by searching for some random phrase that happens to occur on a post I wrote back in 2011?
Compounding the annoyance is the near certainty that no actual humans are performing 99% of these searches. And that if I perform the same search, my blog doesn’t even show up in the results. This one is not just annoying, it’s mystifying, because there seems to be no earthly reason for a bot to manufacture search terms in order to leave a nonexistent trail.
WordPress Doesn’t Count Views Through Their Site In Your Stats
Let’s say your content is good enough that another WordPress blogger – we’ll call her Stacy – decides to subscribe to your blog. Stacy will be informed every time you make a new post, and if the news moves her to do so, will click through to it. Great! But you have no idea that’s happened unless Stacy comments or Likes your post (more on that below). WordPress doesn’t care to let you know that the people who care about your content the most, the ones who have actually registered interest in what you have to say, have visited.
This blog has almost 350 subscribers. That’s almost as many people whose gaze you avoid on a typical walk from one New York City avenue to the next. Or the number of times a professional baseball team performs manual crotch adjustment in a typical nine-inning game. And while we harbor no illusions that anywhere near every single one of those lovely subscribers – and they are a lovely bunch, if a bit reticent – sees all the posts we make, WordPress does not alert yours truly to the fact that these folks – have we mentioned they’re lovely? – have done so. Makes audience management a bit pointless.
Ah, but if your content is good enough they should be expressing that in visible ways, right? Not exactly. Which brings us to:
WordPress “Likes” Are About As Useful As A Rotting Llama Carcass
If all you want is to feel good that someone has found your content worthy, the WordPress Like can provide those warm fuzzies. So maybe a taun-taun carcass. If you’re like most people, however, warm fuzzies don’t cut it. You want attention. Credit. You want it known that others have liked it. There’s got to be a way of making a Like visible to the subscribers of those other subscribers. You know, the way a Like on Facebook becomes visible to the friends of the one who did the liking.
There’s No Alert When A Post Has Been Shared On Social Media
You can keep track of which of your posts have been shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, or any of the other online substitutes for an actual existence, but you have to track down on your own whether that’s happened, and it’s not very illuminating. We, for one, would love to receive an alert of some sort when a share happens, since we are, just as you, an attention whore. Just as WordPress can alert you instantaneously that MarmiteGlutton33 has liked your post about your guinea pig’s ingrown toenail, it should be able to alert you when someone has gone one better and actually shared that content with an even larger circle of readers.
It might also be nice to know who did the sharing, if their privacy settings allow that information to be conveyed. We’re not holding our breath on that one. Especially if it’s MarmiteGlutton33. Good grief.
************
That’s what we find annoying about this platform. At least they got rid of the yodeling with every page load.
Repenthouse: the Magazine for Porn-Again Christians
Condé-Nasty’s other recent success.
New York, New York, May 12 (AP) Condé-Nasty Publications announced today that starting next month it will begin selling a magazine aimed at the growing demographic of Porn-Again Christians, called Repenthouse. The magazine will come monthly to its subscribers and be available at nudesstands across the country.
With the release, Condé-Nasty thus hopes to penetrate the coveted demographic that worships Jizzus. A pokesman for the organization, Li Bido, said that Condé-Nasty had been probing the Porn Again market for some time, and biding its time until the moment was ripe to thrust itself onto the scene. “There’s a tremendous amount of exposure we can expect with this venture,” said Bido. “It’s not often that a mainstream publishing outfit seeks to establish itself as a presence in such a niche market, I’ll admit, but with our industry already strapped for cash, finding the sweet spot for our product can spread doors open wide for us in other arenas.”
Repenthouse represents a formidable risk for Condé-Nasty, however. If the magazine fails to penetrate the market to a significant degree, and does not stimulate sufficient subscriptions or sales to warrant its continued issue, the venture could showcase the publisher’s impotence or give it the stigmata of an outfit already on its knees.
“It’s an ambitious idea, I’ll give them that,” allowed Larry Flynt, an industry veteran with significant experience. “But they can’t exactly expect to be wearing divine protection. While I don’t yet see the Four Whoresmen of the Apocalypse breathing down their necks, but if sales are flaccid the whole enterprise will be blown to Kingdom Come,” he warned.
“But if they pull it off, I’ll be the first one to give them a hand; jobs are scarce enough, and anyone who can stimulate growth in this business will be snatching up profits,” he added.
At Condé-Nasty the mood is decidedly optimistic. “Things are definitely looking up for us – we have a few tricks left up our sleeves,” said President Lou Brickant. “Our religious values really come through with Repenthouse: our thrust in God and our fleshes of divine inspiration will be evident to any Porn Again reader. We have plenty of material over which our subscribers will want to linger – we don’t veneriate the saints the way Catholics do, but there’s a decided reverence for foreplague and the Sin-optic Gospels.”
Please Like Mightier than the Pen on Facebook, where the screwballs responsible for this have already been sacked.
8:00-9:30: Existential Shame
Please Like Mightier than the Pen on Facebook, if you’re even capable of liking anything anymore.
