I admit it: I’m having a tough time generating “care”. I know this is because of my mom doing poorly — even more poorly than expected, frankly — but I can’t help it. It’s hard to continue forward. I have an aching lump in my chest that makes everything else just that much harder. I can muddle through my day at work and put on a good face for Julia, but it takes effort.
I’m supposed to run at lunch. I’m supposed to run a half marathon this weekend. It’s the last thing in the world I want to do right now.
Sorry, just bellyaching.
My wife is a saint. I can safely say this. The lengths she’s gone to help my mother through chemo is astounding. I’m humbled at the depth of her love and compassion.
Yesterday was a rough day for my mother. She couldn’t get on top of her nausea overnight and into the morning and got to the point where she couldn’t even sip water. Cat took her into the oncologist’s office and mom was having a rough time, in a great deal of pain and vomiting.
My mom now has a “port” in her arm where they can “easily” tap into her veins to get the chemo in. You and I think that and we picture some science fictiony looking thing on the outside of her arm, a relatively painless Matrix-y gadget. We are wrong. This port is a plastic goo-gah inside her arm. To reach it still requires a needle. A needle my wife had not yet seen. So when the nurse went to start an IV to try to get fluids and medicine in mom there appears The Needle.
“Oh my God, that’s a huge needle!” my wife exclaims loudly and with considerable ire.
The nurse looks at her as if she had sprouted a carnivorous tulip from her forehead. “That’s probably a lot more information than she needs right now.”
My wife immediately realizes her faux pas and reddens. She was mortified, of course. Horrified that she couldn’t keep her mouth closed. It was such a shock to her. She had the idealistic image of the way the port would be accessed, something akin to a CAT-5 Ethernet connection, say. Instead it was an enormous barbed, hooked monstrosity that punctured through to the injection site. Her horror was manifest.
Tactful she sometimes is not. Luckily Mom has no memory of this.
I’ve recently been targeted by comment spammers. This is nothing new, frankly. I’ve bellyached about it for years. Luckily I rarely see it with Spam Karma in the house. Let’s put numbers to the beast: I’ve gotten 242,742 spam comments to date on this blog. You can do the math on that, I’m too lazy.
For the most part I never see them. They get relegated to obscurity in the spam section of my comments. Hell, at this point I have so many in the database that I get fatal memory errors in PHP on my hosting provider when I try to delete them. It’s cute.
What’s all this then?
Over the past week or so I’ve gotten a few in the inbox. They haven’t made it to any of my live pages because I still have to bless unknown commenters, but I take a look to see what it is. Here’s an example:
A new comment on the post #617 “Killing Referral Spam” is waiting for your approval http://www.coldforged.org/archives/2005/01/25/killing-referral-spam/
Author : Home Care Worcester (IP: 212.159.96.178 , essentialsystems.plus.com)
E-mail : stacie@essentialmarketer.com
URI : http://www.worcscare.co.uk
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=212.159.96.178
Comment:
Hmm. I wonder if this is what those links that came up on my site were? I don’t think so because I’m not very knowledgable and as far as I’m aware I don’t know how to access my site logs but I did click on something by accident and a couple of links came up that I was able to delete. If it happens again, I’m going to just ignore them. Thanks for the information!
Remarkably appropriate comment. However, incredibly obvious SEO gaming link. But, actually having an email address about marketing? Really?
That wasn’t the last one or else I wouldn’t be writing.
A new comment on the post #1004 “An Open Letter to GameStop/EB Games” is waiting for your approval http://www.coldforged.org/archives/2006/11/08/an-open-letter-to-gamestopeb-games/
Author : Worcestershire Nursing Homes (IP: 212.159.96.178 , essentialsystems.plus.com)
E-mail : stacie@essentialmarketer.com
URI : http://www.find-a-nursinghome.co.uk/worcestershire
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=212.159.96.178
Comment:
An edited form of this letter will be whizzing its way to a company who have recently screwed me out of almost fifty pounds for a ‘pre-order’ item I wanted. It’s a total scam, there was never a need to pre-order (as if they didn’t know) and everyone else just bought it without having to pay to reserve it. I won’t be falling into this trap again, but thanks for showing how communication should be done!
And another.
A new comment on the post #1180 “Goozex: The Good, The Bad, The Annoying” is waiting for your approval http://www.coldforged.org/archives/2009/02/25/goozex-the-good-the-bad-the-annoying/
Author : Computer Repair Franchise (IP: 212.159.96.178 , essentialsystems.plus.com)
E-mail : stacie@essentialmarketer.com
URI : http://www.computertroubleshooters.co.uk/computer-repair-franchise
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=212.159.96.178
Comment:
It’s really hard to find a good site that allows you to swap and borrow things. It only ever seems to come together when it comes to buying and selling. I’ve read a whole page full of complaints about Gamefly and another about Goozex so you’re clearly not alone.
Who the hell are these particular people?
They work ethically
Our SEO team work tirelessly to deliver value to your brand through search engine optimisation. We always work ethically and will protect your brand by shielding you from risk.
Meaning angry bloggers fed up with having these folks crafting fake replies to boost their customers’ search rankings won’t contact the customers. I don’t know about that. For instance, I wonder if “Prince Hotels”, who the kind folks at essentialmarketer.com assure us their “partnership is in full swing as we help Prince Hotels hit no. 1 in Google”, know that this is what SEO entails. Sure, find your keywords, find your best headings and do up your site right, then go out and spam the living shit out of every blog in existence. That’s ethical. Then again, reading their tight “ethical standards”, they obviously meet them.
I wrote the spammers. I couldn’t resist. I’m sure it’ll go in the bit bucket since even their site doesn’t list people by the names of Lynne or Stacie — I wonder if it’s John or Steve or Doug or Richard that gets kicks out of playing a chick… I bet there are frilly panties involved! These guys even have videos! This is my favorite of the bunch.
Hi Doug! Fascinating information on Link Quality. I’m curious how my little website, demonstrably not a government organization, charitable organization, or even a corporation, merits being regarded in such lofty terms! Obviously my site represents a “Quality Link” to the rocket scientists at essentialmarketer.com since they’ve expended effort to get comments posted so as to boost the PageRank of Prince Hotels and nursing homes or computer repair shops. By their own standards my site shouldn’t be a good place to try to get links from: I very rarely discuss hotels, nursing homes or home care. Sure, I have a PageRank of 4, but still.
I just don’t get it. Go play elsewhere.
(I actually know why, I just figured the title would boost my SEO. 
)
- That's the way to even it up, #Habs. #
- Getting psyched up for the afternoon interval run, changing clothes, reaching for shoes that I forgot to pack. Power deflated.
# - I suspect that there is no organic matter under TheEdge's hawt knit cap. Just a shitload of Roland gear and complex neural interfacing. #
- "The Pens are 25-0 in the Sidney Crosby era in the playoffs when leading at the start of the third period." Oopsie… make that 25-1. #NHL #
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The Scar, by China Mieville
It is only ten miles beyond the city that the river loses its momentum, drooling into the brackish estuary that feeds Iron Bay.
The boats that make the eastward journey out of New Crobuzon enter a lower landscape. To the south there are huts and rotten little jetties, from where rural laborers fish to supplement monotonous diets. Their children wave at travelers, warily. Occasionally there is a knoll of rock or a small copse of darkwood trees, places that defy cultivation, but mostly the land is clear of stones.
From the decks, sailors can see over the fringe of hedgerow and trees and bramble to a tract of fields. This is the stubby end of the Grain Spiral, the long curl of farmland that feeds the city. Men and women can be seen among the crops, or plowing the black earth, or burning the stubble—depending on the season. Barges putter weirdly between fields, on canals hidden by banks of earth and vegetation. They go endlessly between the metropolis and the estates. They bring chymicals and fuel, stone and cement and luxuries to the country. They return to the city past acres of cultivation studded with hamlets, great houses, and mills, with sack upon sack of grain and meat.
The transport never stops. New Crobuzon is insatiable.
Excerpt from “The Scar” by China Mieville
China Mieville has a fascinating writer’s voice. In every review you’ll ever read about his work you’ll see the words “gritty” and “dark”. I’m not going to discontinue that trend. Perdido Street Station, the spiritual precursor to The Scar within the same universe and whose events directly precede this novel’s, was exceedingly grim with its imperfect denizens and horror-themed plotline. The Scar inherits all of the grittiness and a different though equally affecting darkness.
Mieville’s works are best experienced fresh and blank. Don’t read the blurb, don’t try to figure out where you’re going. Frankly, you’d almost certainly be wrong. Perhaps more than any comparable author, one can never quite tell where the story is taking you until late in the game. The Scar starts simply enough with a young woman on the run — as it turns out she’s on the run due to fallout from the events in Perdido Street Station but I’ll say no more on that score — traveling on a boat. From such humble beginnings we light upon the topics of slavery, piracy, self-modification, illusions of control, loyalty, and delusion. There’s magic, mysticism, deadly and hideous creatures, and plenty of things for those fearful of deep water to shiver about.
Mieville’s characterizations are nuanced and interesting, though some characters you might wish to know more about are painted in disappointingly broad swathes. Bellis Coldwine, the aforementioned young woman on the run, is the nominal protagonist. Her history is satisfyingly vague especially early on, as are her motivations. She — and frankly most of the characters in the book — are pulled along by events quite out of their control, though Bellis tries to varying degrees to affect these grand events for her own reasons. Or are they? Some overarching concepts of The Scar are delusion, lack of control and manipulation. Bellis acts in what she thinks of as her own best interest, but is that really why she acts? Is it really in her best interest? Is her best interest even a valid one given the impact of her actions on others? Bellis is not the only character faced with such decisions, but she is perhaps the most profoundly impacted.
Few worldbuilders create such vividly detailed spaces yet completely inhospitable ones. A rich place to hear about but one no one would care to live in for any length of time. The descriptions of the environs of the “city” in which they live is full of wonderful organic detail, fabulously intricate and one would imagine completely overwhelming if actually experienced.
The Scar eventually reads as a series of quests which strikes a bit of discord in me. However, Mieville constructs the quests with texture and impact such that it’s still effective. Overall The Scar presents a dizzyingly, tumultuous journey through fantastic — in every sense of the word — locales, a broad cast of undeniably different characters and a world inhabited by some completely repellant things. And it’s a journey well spent.
I gave The Scar 4 stars on Goodreads.
- May 5th, 2010 at 4:44 pm · I can hardly believe that there's another scandal involving an ultra-conservative, family-values, anti-gay crusader with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar. I know, right? I'm glad that the ultra-conservatives are getting all these obvious outliers out of the way so the good work can keep vigorously stroking forward once they're all gone. I mean surely this guy is the last of them, right? The ones that are left are obviously appropriately staunch, cock-hating puritans. Man, hypocrisy is so sexy. · (0)
Today is Julia’s 7th birthday. That’s fairly momentous and I admit I get a bit misty thinking of how far she’s come in those 7 years. But that’s beside the point. I decided I would go and “eat lunch” with her — actually I’d sit with her while she ate… bygones — at her school. This is something parents can do. Cat is well-known there, but I’ve never done it. Figured it would be a nice surprise for Julia and give us a chance to chat some and for me to meet some of her friends.
Instead what I got was half an hour of herding little hellions. The teacher felt that with a responsible adult there it was peachy for her to let me “watch the kids” while she had a conference with another parent. So while I sat across from Julia I had a delightful half an hour of attempting to convince a few malcontents to sit down and behave like, well, my daughter. Who am I to them? Diddly, that’s who. One kid in particular I simply gave up on. From throwing pickles around to wearing a hamburger on his head for a while, never in his seat, and it didn’t matter at all what I — or the 3 other teachers who attempted to intervene — said. What was I going to do? What power do I have in this place? None. There were things I’d like to have said or done but that would just get me a lawsuit.
Apparently my daughter’s teacher is a blessed saint to put up with this every day all year long. Half an hour in and I could have cheerfully never laid eyes on that kid again.
I’m sad because what was supposed to be a pleasant birthday surprise ended with me barely having the opportunity to say 10 words to my daughter.
