Tag: Mystery of the Reality

In this wide world of surprises…some good, some not so good, some downright nasty, it is always interesting to see what comes up in your comments.

A reoccurring comment that totally baffles Momma (anyone else get this?) is the one that says something like, how can I contact you, when it is obvious they are contacting you already.  What is that all about?

I mean, if they were at all serious, the Commenter would leave a valid email address or some such cookie crumb trail so that poor Momma could actually find out what is on their mind….like do they want to give suggestions (aka criticism – probably) or extend a book deal (probably not).  If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck or Spam, eh?

Then there are the comments that sound like gibberish, blended together by a computer who is not yet fluent in any language.

Now, it may be Morse’s Code but although Momma is old (enough), she wasn’t even born till the 1950’s so she does not speak, translate or even have a clue what the message is.  Now, that new fangled state-of-the-art technology shown on the big screen or in TV programs, sometimes tries to befuddle you with what letter to keep, which to discard to get the hidden message but that is way above Momma’s pay grade…so we suspect more Spam, somehow sliding under the tried and trued anti-Spam security fences anchored in place, guaranteed to dispel this problem.

And it doesn’t stop there.  There are lots of so called comments hitting the site that are actually trying to sell you just about anything in the world from shoes, to clothes, to insurance….and SEO’s (Search Engine Optimization) tools.

Why you could spend a fortune getting more visitors who would probably try to sell you something you have no use for.  It seems the World of SEO’s is very keen on Momma’s blog going viral and are absolutely sure if she would just open her purse, her blog would be an overnight success…even though,  it is heavy in words and light in images…not a good thing for today’s world where visual stimulation comes from pictures, videos, anything but the written word.   You can’t fool Momma…besides she tried a free (of course) SEO and ended up deactivating  / deleting  it because it seemed to slow down rather than increase traffic. Anyone else have that experience?

Still, never despair, we tell you because Momma has a system (true Virgo that she is):

                                             Momma’s Comment   System

                                                     Deletes Comments                                                         1 Step only:    From everyone who wants to put a hand in her pocket and sell her anything.  There are too many hands in there already spending her money….and it is getting crowded….

                                                   Approves Comments

Step  1 -Sounds like a rational comment- no sales pitch (yeah)                                         Step  2 -Looks up IP address                                                                                                  Step  3 -Makes sure no Spam associated with IP Address                                                Step  4 -Discusses w/Jakita (true story)  / Responds / Approves

All this being equal, Momma can  use her discretion, follow none of the above four steps and approve your comment if she jolly well feels like it.  It is not really a democracy I live in.

Truly, Momma wants you to know she totally values your feedback and is tinkled pink to hear from you.  It makes her day to know someone, somewhere out there is on the same wave length….that she is not in a vacuum….

Once you hit that publish button, you never know what forces will suck up or catapult your heartfelt renderings….

And may God (and the Hackers) have Mercy on our forever faithful Blogging Souls.

Country folk, you know, they play the long game. You won’t see them posting incriminating pictures or videos on Facebook or Instagram.  No Twitter feeds for them.

No, they see you, catch you dead right or wrong, in some compromising circumstance and they file the indiscretion, in their Dirty Deeds Bank so that they are one up on you, like a Guaranteed for Life Threat, hovering over your head, but hey, who is counting?

Still, this was top-secret…..so secret that one of your family or even you, may be aware of its existence, but you never divulged your knowledge not to your mother, father, sister, brother, best friend, the local police or even the parish priest.  You had the burden of the secret because the powers that had been given you….. the gift of scrying (or the curse),  the ability to see what was and will be,  depending on which way you tipped the kaleidoscope.

And so it came to be that when Misfit Mollie passed on, the bucolic country doors were flung wide open,  by the volumes and volumes, meticulously  written in cramped handwriting about the art of scrying and the members of the community who were involved, like the church deacon, the kindergarten teacher, the family doctor and the judge, who put your second cousin, twice removed away for twenty years on trumped-up charges.

Maybe the poor judge had been under the influence of the mirror image pool. Maybe, when he gazed in to the pool, he saw strange, inexplicable moving shapes. Maybe he thought his real calling in life was to help the hopeless move to a looping netherworld to await rescue by the Secret Society of Scryers and Oddballs.

 

It was shocking, unbelievable but…..where was that mirror image pool? Maybe it was time to take a gander, to see what all the fuss was about, you know…..because no one really believes in those back woods ways, do they?

Misfit Molly, well, that was understandable, no one in the town had much to do with her.  She needed something to fill her days…..but the judge, the deacon, the teacher, the doctor.  ‘What is this world coming to?’ they wondered.

Once the town police got a hold of the story, it was up to them to decide if a crime had taken place.  Could charges be laid? Did money exchange hands?  On the surface, it looked like no harm, no foul, but what about the judge and the second cousin twice removed?  Was his sentence more divination than interrogation?

The first step was to approach the SSS (Secret Society of Scryers ) listed in Misfit Molly’s ledgers and ask for the location of the mirror image pool.  It was like the members had all been struck with amnesia.  They all gave a different location and none of them led to a pool, a brook or a teaspoon of water.

Seemed they had taken an Oath of Silence (that’s what Secret Societies do) and would rather face the local jailhouse than betray the cause.  Oh, there was a lot of digging to be done in impregnable territory before the truth (if the truth) would rise like a Phoenix and satisfy  the largely curious, yet mystified inhabitants who could not believe such chicanery had taken place without their knowledge.  But even more important….Could anyone actually see their past, present or future in a pool?

If it were so, just get out of my way.  Oh, lots to learn, lots to tell.  Country folk can be so conniving!

 

 

It came to pass that Momma and RIP Daddy took vacation, back to Momma’s place of birth, where things were not always what they seemed or even explicable, at times.

The baseball game was always a Right of Passage, separating the Men from the Boys, that you must endure (word chosen to relay Daddy and Momma’s poor attitude) at least one night of their vacation on the ball diamond or they may not be invited to the

Bonfire which could happen any moon lit night on whatever beach was chosen by the organizers, but kept secret to the last-minute (kind of like the Raves in Toronto where kids get on a bus with windows covered in order to keep the location a sworn secret from helicopter parents, who inevitably turned in to snow plow parents, as their kids mature). It was no normal game with teams.  Each person came up to bat, like live looping disco music and the guy with the most home runs for the night won. Lucky for Momma she was so bad they didn’t use her as a catcher or an outfielder.  She could not hit or catch a ball to save her soul but it was not for naught – at least Momma gave her fellow players something to laugh about.

Somehow the subject of ‘remember whens’ turned to the night Starlight hit the ball out of the park.  Like a winged angel, she seemed almost airborne as she passed the bases, her long blonde pony tail flying behind her.  At home base she collapsed in shock because all these years and all those times up to bat and she hadn’t come close to connecting, before that night.

No one knew what happened to Starlight.  She had not been home, must be over thirty years now, the players all agreed. They all pondered and wondered what life had rolled out for her because everyone has their ups and downs, no doubt about that.

All of a sudden, from the players at the picnic table, there were gasps and excited voices, ‘Look, look out on the field. I don’t know if you can believe this, but I am told it was like a white light bathed the field.  There was, Starlight at bat. She connected with that fastball and sent it out of the park, over the trees to an unknown destination, and made her famous run once again, pony tail flying behind her, around the bases, home safe, to a cheering crowd.  And as quickly as the show started it ended, leaving all the players, Momma and Daddy as well, in the dark once again and speechless.

What had just happened?  Was Starlight still alive? Had she astro traveled when she heard the reminiscing?  Was Starlight a Starbright in Heaven twinkling down upon them and thought that it would be fun to once again entertain them with a home run?

Please, if anyone can figure this out, let Momma know because it drives her crazy not being able to come up with a logical explanation.

And you know those Right Wing, Born again, No-Booze for Youse (but still fun) all-related-to-you-somehow-types never would talk about it again.  No, they all took the Fifth Amendment.  It was, like erased from their memory bank.  But Momma knows…. it still haunts them.

It was an old house, a sad house, a dilapidated house, sitting high up on the hill, the doors sagging, the glass panes broken.  Sometimes, when we were out for a walk, Momma and I would pass by and I would beg her, ‘Tell me that story again. Momma’.  You know Momma.  She loves spinning tales.  I have long ceased trying to separate the Fact from Fiction because we all know how strange the truth can be.

Many, many years ago a middle-aged couple moved from the city to our home town, bought a piece of land on the hill, built a house with the mountains behind them, the ocean in front of them.  They appeared gentrified and uppity to the local folks, as well as reclusive, so no one knew much about them, where they came from, if they had children. No, no one knew.

Somehow Mr. and Mrs. Uppity lived among them without blending in, which was unheard in this part of the country, where the neighbor’s knew if someone cut a tree down on your property on the second concession, without your permission.

It was like an invisible fence ran around their property that shielded the privacy of the Uppities and kept the locals out.  Sometimes you’d see the locals just standing on the road, staring up the hill, saying, ‘It’s a strange, strange world, we live in, when you may not even know who lives beside you.’.

Time passed. Mr. Uppity went to his  greater reward.  And Mrs. Uppity?  No one knows what happened to her.  Did she run away in the middle of the night? Did she head to the mountain for a stroll, take a wrong turn and become disoriented, entrapped forever in the deep, dark forest? Is Mrs. Uppity somewhere in that rambling old house, like down in the cellar, scrounging for potatoes, harvested the past fall or  up in the attic, digging through trunks of memorabilia? 

Or… was Mrs. Uppity from outer space conducting an experiment to understand human relationships, like marriage?  Was she one of ‘them’, in human form? Did the space ship come and ‘Beam her up, Scottie’, to report to the Space Alien Commander and Chief, once Mr. Uppity died? And could it be the Extraterrestrials that hold parties in the lonely mansion on the hill? What is that Momma? I never heard of Extraterrestrials before.  Later, Jakita, I’ll tell you what I have heard and saw, later.

Finally after many years, the locals scaled the invisible fence and peaked in the windows.  The supper dishes were on the table, dinner still on the plate, as if Mrs. Uppity left in a hurry. The closets were full of clothes, the beds made meticulously. Like here one moment, gone the next.

Over the years, things happened, no one will lay claim to.  The dishes were all broken and flung across the floor. The furniture has been ravaged whether by the Two Footed or the Four Footed, who knows? All the locals can say for sure is that it has been said every few years on a moonlit night, the lonely  mansion on the hill is flooded with g;owing lights.  Sometimes you can hear music and loud voices coming from the open windows.  Then as quickly as it started, it ends abruptly, and the very silence can deafen you.

We never knew what to make of it, Momma told me.  No one could figure them out in life so it is a sure bet, we don’t understand them in death.

What a strange story Momma.  I got to tell Gen, Ruby, Tigger and Babby about the lonely mansion on the hill. We’ll wrap our heads around it and figure it out.  I promise.

Now you know, because I keep you informed, Momma has your average or maybe just above average knowledge of computers because, well, she is a Baby Boomer.  What else can be expected? However, when it comes to Cloud Computing or Cyberspace application, poor Momma is at a total loss and admits the Millennium Generation are miles ahead of her.

Still, although it is beyond Momma’s pay scale to fix computer snafus, at least she can recognize a problem and run with it, because as I have said in the past, she is Quite Contrary. Please do not tell her it can’t be done because, she will turn to me and roll her eyes. Then behind the very backs of the advice givers, she will go ahead and give it a whirl.  The important thing is  Momma gets up, and dusts herself off if she falls flat on her face (again).  Come to think of it, she is just like me!

If you are asking for a ‘for instance’, we will start with a blog.  Many good souls told her stay out of the Blogging Swimming Pool.  Who could be interested in the interpretation of life through the eyes of a Hog Dog (me) or those Cool Cats who are street urchins, without grace or manners.  They asked legitimate questions, like:

• Do you know how to write code? Well, no.
• Do you know about Plugins? No, again.
• Do you know how to customize (I’ll learn), optimize (Is there a plug-in for that?) or categorize (Aren’t all girls are born to do that)?
• Can you create tags so Search Engines find you? Uh, what happens if I don’t?  Oh, no Visitors to the Site?  I’m on it because Tag, your it or your out!

Then there were the fear mongers who let Momma know she was inviting trouble.  The hackers would be relentlessly attacking, the Spam Bots would be mushrooming in an attempt to take over time and space.  It seems there are so many unknowns that you must have your gold  or silver or ivory inlaid sword with a heat-treated serrated blade to run a thorough surveillance.

Even though we have the most recommended plug-in for Spam, we have had our share of the absurd.  Comments that have 50-75-1000 links to nefarious businesses that sell products  from A to Z.  We never knew there were so many types and colors of shoes in existence. Then there are the players and the well, not G-Rated sites.  It is all good. That is what delete is for.  Still there were those treasures among the trash, sincere readers who would send a comment or ask a question about a post. Then one day it stopped.  No more Comments – no one was pushing links, sending a ‘howdy’. The silence was deafening for a blogger.

So Momma contacted her Spam Fighting Comment Plug-in Team.  They were perplexed but gracious. The Millennium Staffers tried to make Momma see that their plug-in was just dandy and proof positive was she was getting no comment spam.  Momma is not easily convinced so she sent her own proof. Even those in her social network, vetted by Google, over the years, were sending comments that did not reach the dashboard. Meanwhile the questionable unknown origin messages somehow crashed through all barriers in place and landed in her email, not even in her spam folder.

And then, a miracle. One day Momma went in and by George, she had Comments. The good news now is that we very rarely get those comments with a thousand links anymore.  Slowly but surely a handful of Comments are making its way to our Blog. We do not know if the Anti Spam Gods relented, the Millenniums drank the Koolaid or if Momma, in her ignorance, did some unwitting deed to jump-start the process.  All we know is the end justifies the means….doesn’t it?

So Bloggers, if you want feedback, there is always hope.  If you look at the sun and squint your eyes just so, you will see a the light.

The Comments you long for maybe hanging about in Cyberspace (or possibly caught on the top of a tall Douglas fir-tree) and  may someday make a crash landing on your very own Dashboard! So drop us a line. Give us your analysis. The Hot Dog and Cool Cats are waiting!