Looks like it's getting time to abandon Blogspot

It's not just that there are hardly any readers here, but what's this new formatting problem? Do we need to be coders to post anything with paragraph breaks now? Everyone seems to be moving to Substack. Probably I should.

Reading List Modifications Notice

 

Readers looking at the bar on the left of this page, which is titled If You’re Not Going To Read Me, Read Them, will notice a few modifications. Some links have been removed, several more added.

Here’s why:

One of the “eye-openers” of the SMO – for those who have been in a coma since 23 February 2022, that’s Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukranazistan, which is not a declared war – is how many people and organisations have revealed their true colours. It involves not just the usual suspects – the rainbow-ragwagging liberal media and assorted paid propagandists and politicians – but “anti imperialist” sites and what I’d thought were normal people.

It is somewhat of a surprise to watch, for instance, someone who one’s known for over a decade, once a funny and intelligent woman who used to raise laughs on the Comics Curmudgeon where she was a regular commenter, degenerate into a self-lobotomised demented harpy calling her own political tribe’s opponents “nazis” while supporting and cheering on genuine Hitler-saluting swastika-tattooed Waffen SS-pride-parading prisoner-murdering blueyellow-ragwagging nazis in Ukraine. So, she’s gone.

As is Antiwar, which has been sliding towards irrelevance for years, to be precise since the death of Justin Raimondo, and which has now fallen to the point where articles by political science postgraduate students in Amerikastani universities are presented as credible on military strategy.

Some blogs are dead – haven’t been updated in years – and I have no reason to believe (since I don’t know them away from Blogger) that they will ever update again. Gone.

At the same time I’ve found people who are emphatically worth reading, though I do not necessarily agree with them always or even most of the time:

Awful Avalanche of yalensis, who posts a daily article, usually on the human aspects of the SMO, and who has grown to be an online friend.

The Reading Junkie, an Amerikastani living in Russia, and his Russian wife. Always interesting.

A Son Of The New American Revolution by Larry Johnson, “former” CIA. Often wrong but always worth the read.

Moon Of Alabama by Bernhard, former German military intelligence. Again often wrong but always readable.

Your “Great Reset” HQ, by Jacob Dreizin. Look past the deliberately over the top self-aggrandising language and you’ll find some of the best analysis and predictions on the net about the conflict in Ukranazistan.

Simplicius’ Garden Of Knowledge, excellent in depth analysis, albeit occasionally willing to bend facts to excuse Putin’s blunders.

 William Schryver, again excellent analysis.

Some didn’t make the cut:

Reminiscence Of The Future by Andrei Martyanov, a wildly overrated mass of stinking sewer gas whose arrogance is only matched by his worthless “analyses”.

The Junkyard Of The Faker by Andrei Raevsky, self-deleted and also wildly overrated.

The Strategic Culture Foundation: articles of a distinctly uneven nature.

South Front: ditto.

Big Serge: Fundamentally useless since paywalled.

Armchair Warlord and Dr Snekotron on Twitter, since with Melon Husk’s changing of the Twitter settings you can’t read them without signing in anyway.

I may add more to the reading list if I find them worth it.

Meanwhile, take a look at these.

Help Me Out Here (Or Out Of Here)

Google Plus is being murdered on 2 April.

Back in the day, until about 2017, I used to be very active on Google Plus. It was the anti-Fakebook, free of adverts and cat videos, with a high intellectual level, and, at first, little to no censorship.

But Google was not making any money out of it. So it killed it.

The writing was on the wall for a while, really. Google stopped, for all intents and purposes, maintaining Google Plus around 2016. It allowed it to wither away, while looking for an excuse – any excuse – to kill it off. And the wishes of its users be damned.

That excuse came in the shape of a “security breach” a year or so ago, which even Google admits did not expose its users’ data to anybody (unlike, you know, Fakebook). But, rather than just fixing the breach and moving on, Google chose to close down the social network altogether.

It’s just the latest in a long, long, line of things Google has killed off. And it almost certainly won’t be the last.

The next, or the next but one, or the next one after that, I believe, will be Blogger.

Why?

The signs are unmistakable.

Between 2006 and 2012, I was on the greatest blogging/social media website ever created, Multiply. It was killed off after being taken over by a South African corporate criminal called Stefan Magdalinsky, who was far too greedy for his own good, and chose to convert it into an e-shopping network. While he only murdered Multiply in 2012, the signs had been clear since mid-2011, though, that the site was doomed. And those of us who recognised those signs, like me, began to look for an alternative site to move to.

Today, I see those same signs in Blogspot.

Let’s be clear about this – I do not trust Google as far as I can throw it. I do not trust it to not kill off Blogspot, which it owns, because it can.

But, more than that, I have some observations.

First, most of Blogger is free. It has no adverts. The majority of users don’t pay Google to use it. What that means is that Google is not making any money from it, and we know Google is all about money.

Secondly, and, yes, I am blaming most of you who are reading this, blogging is headed down the road to the same extinction that visited such concepts as chat rooms and Orkut. Why? Simple. You don’t read. Even those of you who would think nothing of writing ten thousand word long stories ten years ago don’t want to read anything longer than ten word long memes and tweets now. You don’t have to pretend – I can see it in my stats. And that means, in turn, that I have less and less incentive to spend my spare time doing the hard work of writing. Right?

Right. And though I’m just one person, the whole of Blogger is headed down the same route. And it's getting worse. People who used to write a hundred or more posts a year ago can scarcely be bothered to type out one or two short blogs in six months now.

Do you think Blogger and its owner Google are unaware of that? They are not unaware of that. No.

The other signs are equally clear. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but Blogger has become, essentially, maintenance-free. Spam comments are no longer delivered to spam folders, but to your inbox. All these years, and Blogger still hasn’t managed to create a comment edit function, something, you know, just about everyone else has had for fifteen years if not longer. And more!

Recently, it’s become harder and harder to post or edit posted articles. Typically, when I post something and click on save, I get this:

 An error occurred while trying to save or publish your post. Please try again. Dismiss

And no matter how many times I click, I keep getting it. Only if I open a separate window to my blog do I see if the damn thing has posted/updated or not.

This is most definitely Not A Good Sign. This is not a sign of a site which really cares any longer whether it still exists or what the hell you do on it.

In other words, it’s a site which is, sooner or later, doomed.

As such, I have decided to look for another blogging site. I need, at the very least, to create an online backup of my posts here. Here are my requirements:

1     It needs to be free (I can’t pay in dollars even if I wanted to, and I don’t).

2     It needs to be no-censorship, as Blogspot still is.

3    It needs to be easy-to-use (without any fancy formatting troubles).

4     It must have no limits on uploads (unlike WordPress, for example).

5    Readers ought to be able to comment with the minimum of trouble.

6.    I need to have a reasonable expectation that it won’t vanish tomorrow.

I realise that most of these points could be addressed by my own website, but I’ll be frank.

First, much as I want my own site, I cannot afford it, and will not be able to in the foreseeable future. You realise that unlike a lot of other bloggers, I do not have a donate button, I do not beg for money via Patreon from you people, and anything I put online is free for you to read and share. But by the same token, I do not make a penny for my writing, and I cannot afford to divert funds from more important purposes in order to pay to maintain a website of my own.

Second, I have zero skills at web design, and the costs of paying a professional web designer to set up a website for me are far more than I can even conceive of affording.

Third, a readymade blogging site comes with other users and readers. This is not true of a website I have to start from scratch. I do not expect more than five of you (you know who you are) to follow me wherever I might go.

Therefore, I need suggestions. Tell me what other blogging sites (not WordPress, thank you, I already use it for my cartoons and I hate it, thank you very much all the same) you know about.

Thanks in advance in case you have suggestions. Or, you know, not.

Leaving Facebook

A few weeks ago I left Fakebook permanently and forever.

This was not a spur of the moment decision. This was a decision I had been mulling for a long time, and delayed, I believe, for far too long already.

Here is why I left.

I had had enough.

I had had enough of the drama queens, who think every moment of their existence is worth shouting out to the world. I had had enough of the liberals and their “Russiagate”, their anti-Putin rants, and their rainbow flagwagging. I had had enough of the “transgender activists”, the “gay rights” rubbish, and the neurotics who validate their existence by how obsessively they use Zuckerberg’s site.

I had had enough of pretending, even by my silence, that I give a damn about homosexuals or “transgender” people, or breeders who pretend that not spawning is somehow selfish and anti-human. I had had enough of Jew-hating Holocaust deniers, zionazi-supporting fascist vermin, Islamomisiac racists, Modifellating Bhaktonazis, and the rest of them.

And I had had enough of Amerikastanis. Back in 2003, when Bush invaded Iraq, I had made a statement that went like this: “If you are an American citizen, and you do not go out of your way to explicitly prove that you are opposed to the warmongering policies of your government, you are a war crimes enabler and a war criminal as far as I am concerned.” That was after 90% of American citizens had approved Bush’s declared “crusade” against the world in 2001.

Think about that a moment. 90% of American citizens supported a war of aggression without end, against people who had done them no harm.

There is no forgiveness for this.

Oh, I tried. Over the next few years I deluded myself into the mistaken belief that only the government and the media of America are corrupt and evil, and that the basic American has the same redeeming qualities as anyone else. That idea began to die when the blood soaked war criminal George W Bush left office to be replaced by the even more vile blood-soaked war criminal Barack Hussein Obama – and the very same Americans (people whom I had known for years) suddenly traded their opposition to war carried out by the Shrub for enthusiastic approbation of war carried out by the Mulatto Messiah with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Still, I hung on. I hung on until the Amerikastani 2016 election and its aftermath (which is still dragging on to this day). I hung on to see the same Amerikastani liberals who allegedly opposed American wars proudly pose with their spawn in uniform; I saw them become cheerleaders for the same FBI and CIA which they had been shrilly condemning a decade earlier. I saw people who spent their time hating everything about Trump either stay completely and deafeningly silent on his wars abroad, or attacking him because he simply wasn’t doing enough killing.

I repeat – these were the very same people.

And I had had enough.

Finally, I have gone right back to my position in 2003, which I now am fully convinced was essentially correct: “If you are an American citizen, and you do not go out of your way to explicitly prove that you are opposed to the warmongering policies of your government, you are a war crimes enabler and a war criminal as far as I am concerned.” I would however add one extra phrase: "... irrespective of the party in power in your country" after "policies of your government."

I do not intend to be fooled again.

Telling them this was, and is, pointless. Amerikastanis think they know everything already. As President Putin said recently, after unveiling Russia’s new missiles, Russia had been begging Amerikastan for years to understand that the current path led down to nothing except dangerous confrontation, but Warshington would not listen. “So listen now.”

They did not listen to him, either. Putin doesn’t really have an option; as a national leader, he has to deal with Amerikastanis. But I don’t.

This was another major reason why I left; I wanted to limit my exposure to Amerikastanis as much as I could. It was essential for managing my own stress levels, on top of everything else. On other social media I use, I interact either with relatively few Americans (who are not Amerikastanis, but thinking humans) or where politics are not discussed, like on the comic satire blog on the left of this page.

Then there was Fakebook itself.

What is Fakebook?

First, it is a tool of enslavement. Fakebook is like a drug; it drip feeds you “likes” in an effort to make you a neurotic whose self-worth is measured in those likes, and who therefore keeps trying to get more. In order to get those, of course, one has to fit in with the tastes of one’s contacts (Fakebook keeps suggesting an ever expanding list of contacts) and so you find yourself conforming to whatever propaganda Zuckerberg decides you should believe. And he censors the rest.

This censorship is both direct and indirect. Fakebook direct, or overt, censorship is crude and highly visible. Links from RT or other non-Amerikastani or NATO-controlled media disappear quickly; I once had a link from RT vanish within thirty seconds of posting it, while one from the CIA-controlled Washington Post on the very same topic, saying the same thing, stayed intact. That’s obviously to compel adherence to the War Party line, as is the arbitrary banning of (invariably pro-Russia and pro-Syria) users for any or no reason whatever.

The indirect, covert, censorship is much less well known, and that is the one that makes a lot of money for Zuckerberg. You may miss this fact, but Fakebook has no content. None. It’s like an empty building. All the content is provided by users, and all of it is free of cost to Zuckerberg. He just has to make money from it.

And he does it by quite simple means. You have a page on Fakebook where you want to post your music, or art, or writing, or anything that you want the world outside your contacts to see? Fine, you can do that...as long as you pay Zuckerberg to promote it. If you don’t, said page might as well not exist as far as 99.99999999% of Fakebookers are concerned; they’ll never see it.

Then there are the adverts. Fakebook keeps trying to mine data, endlessly, so that it can tailor adverts to you. Any of the “games” your idiot friends keep trying to get you to play aren’t games; they’re tools to get information about you so that advertisers can hit you with their lies. And, of course, the data also goes to the CIA. Of course it does.

I was sick of the attempts to brainwash me into a neurotic zombie spending every waking hour making money for Zuckerberg. I was sick of the censorship. I was sick of the “promoted material” being pushed on me.

This was although I was using far less than all the tools Fakebook kept trying to push on me. I did not download the Fakebook App. I refused to use Fakebook Messenger or Fakebook Lite. I did not play any games. I disabled all text messages and emails from Fakebook. And still it was far too much to tolerate.

So I quit.

Even quitting wasn’t easy. Fakebook makes it as hard as possible. The site only gives you, from the site itself, an option to deactivate your account, meaning it’s still there, and any time you sign in it gets activated again. There is a way to permanently delete your account, but you would never know it from Fakebook. Google “How to delete my Facebook account permanently”, and you will find a link on this page. From it you can apply to have your Fakebook account deleted. But you would never know it from the main Fakebook site. Even then I had to wait two weeks before they wiped my Fakebook permanently.

How do I feel now that I am without Fakebook? Do I miss anybody? Do I have any withdrawal symptoms? No and no. As I said in a farewell message I put up before I left, those who were interested would know where else on the net to find me already. Those who didn’t know weren’t interested. And I am far from surprised to find that just one single person followed me to my alternative sites, no matter how much many of them pretended sorrow (or, a sad emoticon, :( ,because writing a line is too hard and taxing on the attention span) at my leaving Fakebook. Just one, who left one message for me on VKontakte and stopped being active there. The rest of those who are still connected to me on alternate sites were already connected.

I am still writing my novel, and I am still drawing cartoons, and I have some more peace of mind since I freed myself from Zuckerberg’s shackles. If you think you should, too, you know what to do.

Goodbye, Fakebook, won’t ever be back, won’t miss you.

 

[Image source]

A Note To Readers

From now on, unless I use my cartoons to illustrate an article or story I'm writing, I will no longer be posting said cartoons on this site. They will be posted on my cartoon site, Raghead the Fiendly Neighbourhood Terrorist, only. This is to make sure my writing is visible to visitors to this site who click on the front page only, which is the vast majority of visitors.

This need not dismay readers who come here to see the cartoons. Look on the left of this page. See the list of links called "If you're not going to read me, read them"? You'll see the link to Raghead there, and it will be updated each time anything is posted on that site.

Meanwhile, thanks for reading, and I love you all.

Allegedly.

Note to Readers

For some reason, which is absolutely not my fault, my reading list, which I had kept on the left of this page - you know, the updates of your latest posts - has disappeared. Vanished. Utterly. And there does not seem to be a way to set it up again.

What this means is, unless I go to my dashboard, I don't know if you have posted anything. And the dashboard does not, on my mobile phone, show more than a few posts. And most of the reading I do is on my mobile phone, while I use my computer to write and draw.

This is extremely annoying. It is more than annoying. As far as my reading your posts goes, it is damned crippling, that's what it is.

I suspect that this is an attempt on the part of Blogger to reduce services to free accounts to compel people to switch to paid accounts, which is obviously not an option for me.

So, this is my request. If you are connected to me on social media, please tag me on links to posts you put up. Alternatively, post comments to this blog with the link. I'll see the comments in moderation, and I'll get to your posts.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks in advance.

I really must get my own website, where the TOS are whatever I want, soon.

An Appeal to Readers

This is one of those times when I have to make an appeal to you all. Because you’re important, right?

In fact, what would I do if there was nobody to read the stories I write, the comics I draw, or look at the paintings I occasionally create? What would be the point of my sacrificing leisure, sleep, reading, and a social life to do all that if you weren’t there?

See how important you are to me?

So now I’ve got all the flattery out of the way, let me go to the important point.

Look up to the top of this page. Also, go to my comic strip site and have a look at that as well. See that big DONATE button? You know, the one that looks like this:

Oh, that’s right, you can’t see it. Because it isn’t there.

Let me remind you that everything I put on this site is totally free and for your enjoyment (or not-enjoyment, as the case may be). Either way, I am not asking for your money, and I will never ask for your money for anything I post here, any more than I’d ask you money for a gift I’d present you.

You all – those fifteen or twenty of you who are regular readers, or the hundreds of others who might have dropped in once or twice in your lives – are of extreme importance to me. Without the encouragement of your presence, your readership, I would have no incentive whatever to write, or draw, or create in any way whatsoever. After all, all that comes out of my own time, the time I might have spent doing something else. And when you like something I do, and say so, it gladdens me down to the part of my liver which might go well with Fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Though I do not want anything from you in material terms, I would dearly love it if you could do me a favour in return. No, I repeat, I am not passing round a hat. I am not asking you to do anything that will take any effort at all on your part. What I’m asking for is absurdly simple.

No, it is not your soul, though that's both absurd and simple. 

Right?

It’s just this:

If you like anything I like or draw or paint, or my blog in general, please don’t keep it to yourself. Share the link(s) online on your Fakebook, Google Plus, Twitter, or whatever social media; on your blog if you want; tell your friends and relatives. It requires almost zero effort; the share buttons are there, right below this post.

See?

Some of you are already doing this, and to you I am profoundly grateful. To the others, this is just an appeal. I don’t plague you with petitions you should sign, I don’t ask you to show your appreciation with cold hard cash or the digital equivalent thereof; all I’m asking for, and that without making it any kind of condition whatsoever, is that you just share. It’s not that much to ask for, is it?

Whatever you decide, as long as I am physically and mentally capable of writing, drawing and painting, I will continue presenting my creations to you, and I will thrill at your pleasure at it. Your sharing or otherwise won’t affect that.

And, once again, thanks for reading.

~ Bill.

On Google's New Anti-Adult Material Policy

Those of us who have Blogger accounts will know by now that Google – the owner of the Blogspot platform – has “changed its policy” on a certain burning topic of the day.

So as of the 23^rd March of 2015, people who have Blogspot accounts won’t be able to display photos and videos of this very, very divisive and controversial topic, not even if behind a warning page, in public.

I’m sure we’re all very thankful to Google for this action on our collective behalf, of course; but what exactly is it that they’re protecting us from?

Is it, let’s say, gun-worship and proponents of unrestricted firearms ownership? No? Well, is it at least against racism and Islamophobia? Has Google banned cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb for a turban or naked with his posterior in the air? No, too? Has then Google banned, say, photographs and videos cheerleading imperial wars of aggression on the far side of the planet? What do you mean, also no?

So what is this topic which is so divisive, so controversial, so abhorrent that Google has decided to wipe it off the face of that part of the earth it controls?

 I’ll just let the website state it in its own words:

Starting March 23, 2015, you won't be able to publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity on Blogger. ^[1]

Which is, actually, a 180 degree reversal of its previous stand, which was:

"Censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression." ^[2]

But there you have it. It’s sex and nudity that Google has suddenly decided it doesn’t like. Of course that’s totally understandable. I mean to say, sex, the tender and beautiful activity without which none of us – including the people who run Google – would be in this world. How can one not ban it? And nudity, the state in which we enter said world and in which state we all are, under our clothes.

How could Google not ban these two terrible things, I say?!??

Meanwhile, of course, Google is perfectly happy to let, for instance, people set up multiple and anonymous accounts on its social network, Google Plus. Now on the topic of allowing net anonymity, I am a bit of a fanatic – I am totally, absolutely and without reservation against it. My stance is clear; allowing people to be anonymous online merely opens the door to trolling, lying, cheating, bullying, and spreading propaganda. If people aren’t willing to use their real names online, they should stay away from the net. If that inconveniences them, well, that’s just too bad.

Let me make this point: anyone’s “right” to online privacy ends at the very point where everybody else’s right not to be bullied or lied to begins. There is more than enough evidence that online anonymity strongly reinforces and promotes bullying and trolling ^[3]  [4].  Also, as the respective levels of trolling on Facebook – which has adopted an uncompromising anti-anonymity policy – and Google Plus, which explicitly uses its policy of allowing fake accounts as part of its USP – show, anonymity breeds trolling, lying, and spreading propaganda. But Google is fine with that. Just as it is with the fact that Google Plus, for example, has a page run by ISIS (yes, that ISIS) which repeated reports asking for action has done nothing to remove.

Yes, as you might have noticed, I am feeling a mite miffed about Google.

Not that Google is completely against nudity, of course. It does realise that there are situations in which nudity just might have to be shown. Therefore:

We’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts. ^[1]

So, assuming we aren’t discussing vaginal anatomy, we can still get away with nudity as long as it offers “substantial public benefit”. What the hell is “substantial public benefit”? Who decides what it is? Google?

Let me say right now that this doesn’t particularly affect me, because the sum total of sexuality and/or nudity on my blog is restricted to a couple of paintings, one of which is by me, and a few photographs of the Venus of Willendorf. At least I think it doesn’t affect me, since nobody has ever suggested that the Venus of Willendorf is obscene, unless it’s ISIS and Google is obviously fine with ISIS. Also, Google has not contacted me like it apparently has done with other people.

However, the fact that I have not yet been directly contacted does not mean that my blog won’t suddenly be made private and restricted to members only on 23^rd March. I mean, I’ve used the word “sex” many, many times, and

Currently, Blogger blogs marked as "adult" include LGBT and "outsider sexuality" diaries, erotic writers, transgender activists, romance book editors and reviewers, sex toy reviewers, art nude photographers, film-makers, artists such as painters and comic illustrators, text-only fiction writers, sex news and porn gossip writers, LGBT sex activism, sex education and information outlets, fetish fashion, feminist porn blogs, and much, much more ^[2]

Besides, censorship is a slippery slope. Once Google has begun censoring one thing, how long till it censors another? How long before those of us who have anything to say that Google doesn’t like are banned? That Google doesn’t care much about our concerns is clear, About a year ago, I lost a huge number of photographs and cartoons on my site, and repeated complaints to Google did nothing to even elicit a response, let alone resolve the issue.

Even though Google will be kind enough not to delete existing blogs which have nudity and/or sex, this is virtually a death sentence, since

Restricting blogs which contain explicit content to ‘private only’ effectively kills them off. This is like offering a library where all the books in it are invisible to the readers unless an author is standing there and personally hands each reader a copy of their book ^[5]

I have to say, of course, that Google has a right to change its policies if it wants. It can turn round and say this, or that, is displeasing to it, and therefore is banned henceforth. It can do all that, and those of us who use its services have no choice but to grin and bear it.

Or we can leave. Vote with our virtual feet.

So here is the problem. I have already moved my online home twice in my life, from Orkut to Multiply in 2006, which was relatively easy because I had little content online back then, and from Multiply to Blogger in 2012, which was a much more difficult and painstaking procedure. Each time I started off new and had to slowly build up a readership, which in the case of Blogger is still very poor. On Multiply, any one of my articles would elicit perhaps twenty to a hundred or more comments. On Blogger, I’m lucky to get two, and amazed if I achieve five.

However, I am seriously beginning to consider moving again. If I do, I will not, ever again, trust my online creations to a third party host. I’d rather have my own website where I, and nobody else, set the terms of service. I had considered that in the past and the only reason I had not done so was the fact that it would be too expensive (I priced how much it would cost, both as a first time expense and as a recurring yearly rental, which, of course, I don’t have to pay on Google). The time is coming, though, where there might no longer be a choice about that.

So if on 23^rd March you find this blog inaccessible, that means Google has attacked it, even though there’s nothing in it to attack. Too bad, but there’s going to be nothing I can do about it.

Until then, aux barricades, mes amis.

Sources:

^[1] https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/6170671?p=policy_update&hl=en&rd=1

^[2] http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-bans-explicit-adult-content-from-blogger-blogs/

[3] http://thedailybytetwentytwelve.com/2012/10/30/social-media-and-cyber-bullying-how-anonymity-online-is-breeding-a-generation-of-trolls/

^[4] http://academicearth.org/electives/psychology-internet-troll/

^[5] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/24/google-warns-sex-bloggers-to-clean-up-or-get-out

Meanwhile, here’s a photo that should be totally acceptable to Google, just for you.

[Source]

Oh, wait, her feet are showing, So sorry about that.

Important Notice

Readers will note that suddenly a lot of pictures have disappeared from this website.

There is a reason for this, I think. In fact, I am convinced that this blog is under attack from Blogspot itself. 

First was a fake copyright violation complaint against me two weeks ago. I received a notification that one of my articles - a totally innocuous parody of a 19th century poem - had been cited for an unspecified copyright violation by an unnamed complainant. I immediately filed a counter complaint and after several days got a response from Blogspot saying that they'd reinstate my post in two weeks unless the complainant (who I am convinced does not exist) files suit against me. The two weeks are almost up and of course so far no suit has been filed. 

Last night I came on to Blogspot and noticed a lot of my photos were missing. Now I always upload images after saving from my hard drive, not by hotlinks, so they aren't affected by their status on the original website. But even images from Raghead - original artwork by me - are missing. At first I thought it was my slow net connection which was to blame, but it's the same even on my phone. And I haven't heard a single other person having this problem. 

I can't afford a website of my own with unlimited upload limits otherwise I'd have set up one long ago. That's out.

From what people tell me, Blogspot's follow-up on complaints is poor, and I don't in any case know where to start. I need some advice.

In the meantime, I am thinking of moving to another website. For the time being, except for Raghead, I am not going to upload any pictures on this site.

Why I've been away, and so on

First, let me assure you all that I am alive and well, and thank you for your concern.

Sometimes, I do take breaks from writing – but this wasn’t one of the usual breaks. Nor was I going through one of my periodic cycles of clinical depression. No, I wasn’t arrested and renditioned to some charming prison where I was waterboarded and stress-positioned, et cetera, either.

So why haven’t I been online?

Simply put – I was going through a personal identity crisis revolving around my life as a writer and cartoonist. And the trigger was a rejection slip.

A couple of years ago, I’d finally finished writing a novel called Fidayeen. This was my third completed novel, and in my opinion (and of a select circle of friends who read and commented on it) it was good. Certainly it was the best novel I’d written, much more streamlined than my first (Rainbow’s End) and more serious than my second (The Call of the Khokkosh).

Now, I’m no longer a beginner at the game of trying to be published. I know that it’s almost impossible to be published – no matter how good you are – unless

                1.     You have an inside link to the publishing industry – one reason why almost all Indian authors these days are media professionals, and/or

               2.     You have a story which “sells”.

Of course I’m no media professional, but I thought Fidayeen – which features jihadist terrorism in Kashmir – would sell. So I did send it off to some Indian publishers (the mainstream ones). I got rejection slips from all, except one – and that rejected it after a few months.

Then someone let me know about an agent. I sent it to him and he said it wasn’t saleable without rewriting. He’d be glad to tell me how to rewrite it – for a “reading and analysis fee”, of course.

Screw that. I’m not going to fall for these transparent attempts to rip me off.

Anyway, I then sent it to a New Zealand e-publisher. She sat on it for nine months and then – after repeated emails from me – informed me that she was rejecting it. I’m pretty sure she never got around to reading it – nor did anybody else.

So, I reached a point where I began questioning if anybody really cared.

Some time ago, I was a member of a website called Multiply where I had a hell of a lot of readers, and I used to get a lot of feedback. Some of it was favourable, some not – but it was always interesting. Well, Multiply folded for reasons which had absolutely everything to do with the owners’ greed, and left us bloggers stranded high and dry – bereft of the online network of friends we’d spent often many years developing. Suddenly, I found I had almost nobody willing to read anything I wrote.

I’ll just mention something here – to me, believe it or not, writing doesn’t come easy. In fact, writing is pretty goddamn hard, In order to write something, I generally have to give up reading, rest, sleep and exercise to sit pecking away at a keyboard – and half the time I’m not even satisfied with what I spend hours or days writing. And, then, you know, I don’t exactly react with joy when I get almost no views or comments.

So, I asked myself a question I’ve asked before: Do I really want to do this?

And my mind answered: No.

So I stopped writing. Completely and absolutely. I didn’t write, I didn’t go online, I didn’t do a damned thing along those lines. Instead, I slept. I read. I worked out. I went on a vacation with my girlfriend and slept some more and had a fairly good time. And I came back and went back to work – and I still had no desire to start writing again.

Then I began to get depressed.

There’s a thing they say – that writing isn’t something you can stop. If you do it, you’ve got to do it, whether you like it or not, because it’s a monster which has you by the throat and will never let you go. I resisted it for a while, but I think at the back of my mind I knew I’d have to start again someday.

So...here I am.

I actually started writing several days ago, and I’ve got two stories half-written; but they are on my laptop, and last night my laptop’s LCD screen went kaput. It’s in for repair but will take at least two days (and possibly five) before I get it back. So, in the meantime, I’m filling you in.

Let me just say something – anybody who has ever read me – I appreciate it. Thank you.

I hope you’ll continue.

And, let me repeat, I’m back.

Let’s get on with it, shall we?

Major spammer attack on Blogspot?

Or is it just my site? Each time I visit the pending comments page these days, it's full of spambots leaving comments which end with links to whatever it is they're plugging. Of course, since I've enabled full comment moderation, all I have to do is click on spam and they're gone.

Is it only I, though, or is everyone having the same problem?

New Look

Let me know what you think. I was kind of getting tired of the old template.

New Posting Policy: Full Moderation Activated

Due to a recent surge in the number of comments from sources which are equivalent to spam, including impostors, this blog is now switching over to moderation of all comments instead of those only two weeks old or more.

For the time being Anonymous posts will still be allowed, but if required that will also be converted to registered users only.

Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.