MLM No “Q” – Randomly Spam

So, I have nothing to talk about today because the book report I was going to write today has the forbidden letter right there in the freakin’ title (despite that it’s one of the least-used letters in the English language!) so I thought I’d talk about a weird trend I’ve been seeing in spam comments in the last, I dunno, six months or so?

Formerly, all spam generally fell into two categories:  spam that was pretending to be random comments and spam that was directly trying to sell me on their advertising services for the products they for some reason think I’m selling.  (Seriously, if they’re trying to target businesses, why are they sending their spambots to blogs?  Most blogs are not advertising products for sale.)  Well, that and the more direct lists of links, but the spam filter trashes those right away without bothering to send them to the spam folder, so they don’t really count.

Now, I have never really understood the point of the random comment ones.  They don’t contain links, and even the e-mails, fake user IDs, and URLs don’t always contain any indication of trying to move a product or get people to go to some site where they’ll pick up a virus, or whatever it is that the people behind spambots usually want.  But usually one of those three factors would have something obvious, like they’d put the name of a product as their user name, or the URL would be to a store page.  (There have always been make-me-laugh things about those random comment ones, of course.  Like the ones talking about “great paragraph” or “so much informative” on a post on my dolly blog that consists exclusively of a photograph and zero words.  Or the one today that was talking about “I passed this on to a colleague who is doing some research on this” on not a post (despite that it started with “nice post”) but a page which listed some of the dolls I would someday love to add to my collection.)

This new trend, though, it’s really weird.

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MLM No “P” – This is getting old.

Really, this whole Missing Letter Monday thing is getting old and asinine.  What use does it serve?  Well, aside from giving me some slight semblance of actually being around.  Most of the time, it’s either old material dredged back out, or it’s just dumb rambling (like this) to fill a few words and make believe I’ve said something.

So on the one hand, I totally want to cancel this feature.

On the other hand, if I do that, who knows how long it’ll be before the next time I say anything; the blog might go quiet until October 4th.  (Or, more likely, until I finish the book I’m currently reading.  Or until the thing I ordered from Etsy last night arrives, ’cause I wanted to do a Doctor Who rant, ’cause some folks who don’t know the original show really tick me off sometimes.  And yes, that will make sense when I fill in the blanks.)

The thing is, of course, that I’ve been doing this for two years now.  I’d originally wanted to see others join in (and at first a few did) but it never became a thing across even a small fragment of the blogging world.  And that’s okay.  But it does bring to mind the question of if there’s actually any reason to continue going.

Aside from the fact that MLM has been the majority of what’s gone out from this blog of late.

*sigh*

I don’t have any answers and haven’t decided what I want to do.  But I know I’m frustrated with things as they stand right now.  And I don’t feel like I have the time or the creativity to use as much energy for these as I did in the beginning.

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MLM No “O” – “Meh”

Meh.

I had an idea regarding this MLM.

I really did.

It was neat.  Interesting, even.

Sadly…I can’t remember it.  Even the slightest bit.

Can’t win ’em all, I guess.

.

..

…

(Can’t win ’em at all, really.)

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MLM No “N” Repost – “Jugurtha”

“Jugurtha”

He ruled from Africa, circa 118-104 BC.
We have to go by what his foes wrote about him,
Much later, after he was dead.
(Mostly, we have Sallust’s word to take.)
He fought Rome, but why?
We have guesses, mostly.
(What else is there?)
Too bad his real story is lost.

Metellus tried to defeat him
By bribery or the suggested treachery of allies.
Marius built forts.
Lots of forts.
Marius also brought troops.
Lots of troops.
Lots of fresh troops, poor troops.
Too excessive to be fought well.

But it was treachery after all.
Bocchus (whoever that was) betrayed
Jugurtha to Sulla.
Sulla got a triumph;
Rome would fear the loom of dictatorship.
Jugurtha’s last laugh?

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How desperate am I to repost this awful piece?

Also, was that supposed to say “taught” well or “fought” well?  Seems hard to make that mistake, but…ugh.  I forgot much over the last two years it would seem.

First posted 08/31/15

MLM No “L” – “Nothing”

Nothing

Nada.

Zip.

Zero.

The big empty.

Not a thing.

< 1

(Which reminds me, stop using ❤ and pretending it’s a heart!  Because it’s not.)

Nothin’.

Not even a speck.

(That’s how much inspiration I have for today’s post.)

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MLM No “K” Repost – “The Heartless Queen”

“The Heartless Queen”

When the Queen was a little girl
Her mother told her
A little white lie:
“It’s my own fault
That your father doesn’t love me anymore,
But I’m sure he’ll love me again soon.”

But her mother was wrong,
And her husband never loved her again,
And she wasted away loveless and alone,
And soon the future queen was without a mother.
But her father had decided that he didn’t care for wives,
So he didn’t re-marry;
He preferred the single life.

When her father died,
The little girl became the Queen at last,
And she made her first proclamation to her court:
“I shall never wed, and I shall never love,
And I will not have a heart,
Because only through a heart
Can a queen be hurt or die.
This is the command of your Queen.
See to it.”

One of the men of the court objected.
“It is impossible not to have a heart!”
He complained.
“Perhaps it is more possible not to have a head,”
The queen replied.  “Let us find out.
Off with his head!”
The headsman obliged.
It was not possible to live without a head.
The men of the court scrambled to obey their queen.

They found doctors.
They found wizards.
They found witches.
They found shamans.
They found priests, faeries, giants and ogres.
But no one could remove the queen’s heart
Without her dying in the process.

MLM No “J” Repost – “The Tale of Lazyboy”

The Tale of Lazyboy

Once upon a time, there was a young girl. Her family was poor, and she had no choice but to marry young to the man her father selected for her, the owner of a tavern. It wasn’t a happy marriage, and her husband died when she was still young and childless.

So when she found a baby boy washed up on the beach near her tavern not long after her husband’s death, she thought her prayers had been answered, and she told everyone that it was her own son, and that they simply hadn’t noticed she was pregnant because she was so slender. They didn’t really believe her, of course, but they were too polite to say so.

At first, she was very happy with her new son.

That didn’t last long.

She expected him to start doing chores around the tavern as soon as he was able to walk and talk. But he kept expecting his mother to love him and cuddle him and treat him like a son instead of like a servant.

By the time he was five, she called him by his name so rarely that she had almost forgotten he had a name, and by the time he was fifteen, the tavern’s patrons tended to call him Lazyboy if they called him anything at all.

Lazyboy wasn’t much more than eighteen when he thought he had found a way out of that miserable tavern at long last, but all that had happened was that he got a dunking in the sea near the astronomer’s tower, and then had a long, wet slog home again. And then he got a long lecture from his foster mother for getting his clothes all wet, as though he’d done it on purpose.

In the end, Lazyboy was only able to get away from his unhappy home the way most other young men his age were: the king went to war with a neighboring kingdom, and all the young men got called up to serve in the army if they were able. Lazyboy didn’t want to kill anyone, but he didn’t see that he had any choice, and anything had to be better than staying where he was!

The war was horrible, as wars always are, but at least it was a short one, as few wars are. In fact, it had taken longer for the army to march to the battleground than it had for them to be horribly massacred there.

Once the slaughter was over, the survivors had only to march back—on their own pace!—to be free to return to their lives. And Lazyboy was in no hurry to return to that awful tavern, so he decided to take “the scenic route”…

…which meant that instead of returning to his own kingdom, he went deeper into the kingdom his army had utterly failed to invade.

MLM No “H” Repost – “Alcides”

“Alcides”

Strongest son of Zeus,
Bane of lions and boars.
(Drunken boor!)
Persistently targeted
By papa’s jealous wife.

Wooer of Amazons,
(And lover of pretty boys,)
Groom of two wives,
Sire of many sons.
(But no girls?)

Argonaut,
Completer of Twelve Labors,
(And sometimes 13,)
Killed by a centaur’s trick,
And a friendly pyre.

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Especially lame, I know.  But it’s 1 minute to 10 pm, and nada’s been posted yet.

It was a last minute post the first time, too.

Originally posted 1/18/16

MLM No “G” Repost – “The Story of the Many Moons”

The Story of the Many Moons

Once, when it was very dark, the horned moon felt curious and went to speak to Mother Sky. “How many sisters do I have?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” Mother Sky answered. “Does it matter?”

“Maybe not,” the horned moon admitted, “but I still want to know.”

“I really can’t tell you. You’ll have to find out for yourself.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” the horned moon concluded, and left Mother Sky’s side.

She didn’t know how to find out how many sisters she had, but she was determined that she would, no matter what.

“Do you know how many sisters we have?” she asked the first of her sisters she came across.

“I have no idea,” her sister, the waxy moon, replied. “What does it matter? There are always moons in the sky.”

The horned moon asked several of her other sisters the same question, but their answers were no different. The wide moon didn’t know, the new moon had no idea, and the silvery moon was clueless. Even the full moon herself was without a clue.

The horned moon decided she would have to set out on a journey to seek her answer. Surely down in the lands below someone would have counted the number of moons in the skies above their heads. Surely!

Soon after she arrived on the flat lands by the curved mountains, she found the face of Mother Earth. “Mother Earth, how many sisters do I have?” the horned moon asked. If Mother Sky didn’t know, then maybe Mother Earth knew!

“I don’t really know,” Mother Earth admitted. “Doesn’t Mother Sky know? They cross her face, after all.”

The horned moon shook her head. “No, she doesn’t know, either. That is why I am on a journey to find out how many moons there are.”

“Very admirable of you, my dear,” Mother Earth told her proudly. “Be sure to take care on your trip. Not everyone on the surface of the lands below is as kind as your mothers and sisters.”

The horned moon promised to take care, and went on her way.

MLM No “F” Repost – “A Tale o’ Seven Suns”

“A Tale o’ Seven Suns”

Once upon a time, there were seven suns in a land that was very, very bright.

“Where are you going?” the eldest sun asked one morning, as the youngest was leaving the sky.

“I’m going to shine on the land below,” the youngest sun answered.  “And I don’t need your permission to do anything!” he added, leaving in a snit.

But he didn’t come back.

The other six were very lonely without the youngest around.  But they carried on shining, even though the light was a little less bright without him.

Several days later, the next youngest sun decided to leave the sky, too.  The eldest sun asked him where he was going.  “What do you care?  I can go where I want!” he snapped, and departed even more quickly than his younger brother had.

And he, too, didn’t come back.

The remaining suns were a bit more somber when they realized two brothers were missing, but the sky was still very bright, so they soon put their worries aside and resumed shining unconcerned.

Only the eldest sun continued to worry.  And his worries grew to the point where he almost stopped shining when he saw the third sun heading towards the lands below.

“Where are you going?”

The third sun didn’t even answer.

And he didn’t come back.

When the three youngest suns had been gone many days, the eldest sun said that none were to leave the house, and then went to speak to Mother Sky.  He explained to her what had happened to her three youngest suns.

“I thought it had become a bit darker,” she commented, with a yawn.  “They’re probably just lighting the world below.  Don’t worry so.  They’ll come home when they get hungry.”

“But we don’t eat!” the eldest sun objected.

“What could happen to my precious suns?” Mother Sky assured him.  “Go home and try to relax.  You worry too much.”

The eldest sun was not reassured by his mother’s words, but he relented and unlocked the door to their home, and reluctantly allowed the middle sun to leave when he wished to go down to the world below.