The Ominous Comma

Although I am not normally known in blogging circles* for my wealth of technological wisdom any more than for my strenuous research practices or hard hitting journalism,** every once in a while, in the heat of blogging passion I have been known to tackle the occasional technical issue.

Of course my efforts usually do little to stop these issues, or even slow their progress as they rampage down the field of digital mayhem, heedless of my attempts to reunite them with the tender embrace of gravity; but as a Licensed Internet Resource I am obliged to make the attempt.

That or face discipline from a panel of my peers.

Just one of the peers I’m not interested in facing.

So in this spirit of foundless optimism, I present my latest intra-personal conversation… interrogation in the hope of sparing you, my dearest of all readers any unnecessary pain in your blogging endeavors.

WordPress Woes - A Fictional Interviewer^TM Interview

Fictional Interviewer: Well Brent, it’s been a while since our last interview, good to have you back.

ME: Sure.

FI: So is it true that you have your own weblog now?

ME: Yes. We’re standing in it.***

FI: How exciting.

ME: Well, its somewhere between total ecstasy and a tooth extraction.

FI: What?

ME: Blog ownership. That’s how exciting it is…You did ask.

FI: It was more of a statement, actually.

ME: Suit yourself.

FI: So, back to your blog. You’ve been using WordPress for a while?

ME: Yes it’s been WordPress from the beginning here at The Ominous Comma.

FI: So then, you must be aware that when you delete an entire category of posts like say Navel Gazing, the actual posts under that category are not deleted?

ME: Yes.

FI: And that those same posts will instead revert to the next highest category that they are assigned to, or lacking another assigned category, back to being uncategorized?

ME: Yes, I’ve always thought that arrangement was fairly well idiot-proof.

FI: But were you also aware that when you delete a “parent” category like say Entertainment with dozens of “child” or sub-categories, that those same sub-categories are also deleted, dumping your posts into an unsorted pool of chaos that you can’t re-categorize because those categories aren’t really gone but instead lurking in the depths of your database, refusing to link to anything, invisibly blocking all attempts at salvage? Did you know that Brent?

ME: That fact has recently come to my attention.

FI: So would this discovery of yours have any connection to the Comma’s recent fifty-percent reduction in its overall number of categories?

ME: (Massaging temples.) Isn’t there some childhood trauma of mine you should be hiding under?

FI: I’ll take that as a yes.

Moral of the Story - Don’t Mess With The ‘Press

So remember friends:

When writing, strive to be in a category all your own.

And when mucking about under the hood of your blog, be careful, or that’s exactly how you’ll end up.

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*It is a little know fact that many of the basic functions of blogging circles, especially those consisting of maternal bloggers, are actually derived from sewing circles, a primarily American phenomenon in which women would gather together to discuss their kids, their husbands, their kids, local gossip, their kids, recent adventures, their kids, their kid’s recent adventures and occasionally produce an erratically stitched garment or two.

Today’s blogosphere is great improvement over that primitive network, as it involves fewer needle-related injuries.

** If I were to grace journalism with personal violence, however, I would probably start here.

*** For sixty-two and a third bonus points: Name that Quote?

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This program was sponsored by humor-blogs.com the most hyphenated name in humor bloggery.

Also sponsored by Alltop.com the most unspaced phrase in digital aggregation.

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Related posts:

Letter To My Subconscious

My Subconscious Responds

Apology To My Subconscious

The Harsh Demands of Internet Explorer

A Furious Feed Of Fantastical Facts

Camille, the Hot Comma Momma is gone.

At this very moment her Grammatical Hotness is south of several borders having slipped all bonds of affection and quite a few of duct tape to launch upon a secret mission deep in the steamy bowels of Central America.*

Yet again.

For some people this turn of events comes as no surprise, particularly those who have for years secretly wondered what has kept a woman of such unmitigated foxitude attached to a man like myself.**

Even individuals who are above this sort of relational speculation do not appear to be particularly shocked by her disappearance, having heard her speak for months of her excitement to soon be “off to Nicaragua,” a statement I had always taken rather figuratively.

But now the reality of her absence has hit me like a flaming asteroid, bringing with it the extinction of all my happy delusions.

It seems like only yesterday, after her last disappearance, that I set out to make sure this sort of thing would never happen again. I explored the possibilities of moats, magnets, and bungee cords without any great success. I tried superglue, pheromones, and even subdural GPS tracking chips, all to no avail.

Then I got desperate.

Although I now regret it, I eventually retained the services of one Doctor Harold Toboggans to help me in maintaining my tentative hold on love.

The Doctor is In - Or At Least He Was

I chose him not because he was affordable, or had any experience in spousal containment, but mainly to get him off my doorstep, which in hindsight was probably not the best criteria to use in the selection of a specialist.

He took the job for an exorbitant fee and using arcane methods I lacked both the heart and the courage to investigate, he promptly delivered results: eleven months of continual residence and domestic bliss from my travel-happy wife.

Unfortunately, in the wake of the doctor’s unexplained disappearance the effects of this treatment seem to have evaporated, taking with it any hope I had of reliable Camille confinement.

The strangest part of this entire ordeal for me is the way my wife’s long-delayed departure has revealed the first and possibly only act of billable service performed by Dr. Toboggans.

Which has created a bit of a quandary, causing me to question one of the most fundamental assumptions of my existence:

What if Doctor Harold Toboggans is not the square root of all possible evil?

What if he’s just lonely, and misunderstood, and opportunistic, and incompetent, and supremely pompous, and simply in in need of a hug?

What if I start to miss him?

I’m not sure I’m prepared to live like that.

Hurry home Camille, before I do something I’ll regret.

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*Somewhere there is an essay begging to be written upon the consistent use of gastrointestinal imagery in postmodern pseudo-intellectual humor.***

**Duct tape. I mentioned that fact only two sentences ago. One of the sentences was really short. I don’t think it was technically even a sentence. It was more like a word and a period. Seriously, if you can’t even remember that far back then…Then I may never have to write new content again.

Problem solved, please return to your previously scheduled paragraph.

On second thought, maybe you should start again from the beginning.

***one, two, three: not it.

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Don’t not do something you will regret by not clicking on Humor-Blogs.com. Or no, I’ve kind of confused myself at this point.

But I’m sure alltop.com can get it straightened out.

For those of you who have remained strategically ignorant of my previous video endeavors, most likely by scorning my humoron-filled Weekend Bonuses in pursuit of life outside of the net, this bold technological leap forward may come as a bit of a shock.

You may be faced with several questions right about now. Deep, meaningful questions regarding the nature of image, substance, and mankind’s tenuous grasp of the obvious.

Those questions, however, don’t seem to match the answers I have prepared, so I thought we would stick to simpler ones, the kind answerable in one word or less.

Like these:

A Video Blog?

- Yes

Is this sort of thing really necessary?

- No, not really.

Must he be everywhere?*

- Yes. Yes he must. So much must he, that he may well write the remainder of this his post in the third person.

Or he may just cut to the video

Iron Maiden Deficient from Brent Diggs on Vimeo.

That was the much vaunted Video Blog

(In case you’ve been comatose up to this point.)

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*As an added educational bonus the phonetic phrase “Musty be everywhere” is part of our new Talk Like A True Memphian speech program which proudly enables hapless internet victims to converse in the quaint idioms normally reserved for bluff city natives.

Today’s phrase can be used to describe any manner of skunk-related roadkill.

Just another thankless service of the Ominous Comma, recently voted most likely to use the words Dry Witty Humor for no apparent reason.

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Although humor-blogs.com doesn’t talk like a Memphian, it does Walk Like An Egyptian.

Alltop.com is happy just to Walk Like A Man.

The following exchange is a conversation with God, as expertly alluded to the title.

Me: So God, what do you think of the churches of Memphis? I recently heard that we have more per capita than even Rome. Impressive, huh?

God: Yes, there certainly are a lot of buildings here, and some have really interesting architecture. Then again there’s some that look like converted catfish restaurants. The truth is, Brent, ever since I finished the universe, I’ve pretty much stayed out of construction. These days I’m a lot more interested in the service sector.

Me: Really? I can’t say that I noticed.

God: (sigh) Yeah. Good help is hard to find.

Me: Help?…Oh right, christians. I know what you mean. They can be kind of weird, kind of freaky. Scary even.

God: They had a rough childhood, you know. Always getting beat on and fed to the lions and such. But they never stopped feeding the hungry or taking care of the poor in those early years, they made me really proud.

Me: What happened?

God: You know how kids are. They get to a certain age and they start thinking they don’t need you anymore. That they’ve got it all figured out. Of course, I’m supposed to keep providing the blessings: the sun, the rain, cheap labor in the third world. Other than that they just want me to not bother them while they sit in their rooms and talk to their friends about me.

Me: So basically, you’ve got teenagers?

God: Yeah.

Me: Sorry.

God: I know. I forgive you.

Images courtesy of inflatablechurch.com

This has been The Ominous Comma. We will now return you to your previous frivolity.

Once you subscribe that is.

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The Comma can still be seen at humor-blogs.com and alltop.com.

You might need special glasses however, and possibly a note from your mother, so be prepared.

When I first discover Alltop.com I was really excited.

At last, I thought, a network for and about people like myself.

People with a deep and abiding interest in the joyous and rather dizzying field of gyroscopy.

Finally, I had found a forum in which to celebrate gravity, centrifugal force, coriolis effect and the many other stipulations of physics that keep my mind whiling like a dervish.

Without the slightest hesitation I besieged Guy Kawasaki, himself a nexus of conflicting forces, begging admission into this exclusive gathering.

I could tell he was reluctant to let me in on the action by the way he kept sprinkling the phrase “not if you were the last blogger in Laos,” throughout his emailed replies, but still I persevered.

Three weeks and five pajama-grams later he relented and I was finally set to spin.

Imagine my surprise when after a short while I started receiving targeted blog traffic looking for original humor.

At first I was stumped. Where was I going to find this humor everyone was demanding? Life for me seemed to spiral out of control.

But once I stumbled across the burgeoning humor outsourcing market of Bolivia, things took a positive twist.

Alltop.com because one good turn deserves more than a bad pun.

But probably won’t get it.

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Image courtesy of Just us 3