Ffolkes,
I surrender….. My email wins, or rather the WP email ‘bots win. I got busy yesterday running errands for real life, and couldn’t get to all the email that came in. So, I figured I’d get up early and knock it down this morning, from the 150 that I left in there last night when I crashed. This morning there are 268 in my Inbox….. and by the time I finish this Pearl, that will no doubt grow to an even 300…..
I can’t keep up. There are at least two bloggers that are publishing about 30 times a day each, one with pictures I have no interest in seeing (in addition, he will often post the same article or pictures four or five times in a row, within minutes of each other), and one with re-blogs of just about every blog they visit. Then at least one a day from the over 140 blogs I follow….. I’m dead…. I’ll never get caught up, unless I get ruthless and just delete all the ones I have now, without reading any, to get caught up.
SIGH…. a dilemma, and the only other way to cut back the emails is to Unfollow a bunch of folks. I don’t want to have to do that, for several reasons, one of which is that I’m a softy, and don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings if I can help it…..
I’m sure others have this problem, too; how do you deal with it? Is there a way to turn off the email notifications without unfollowing a blog? I’d ask WP but it seems to take forever to get a response, if they answer at all, so I’m asking y’all first; if you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments, and thanks in advance for anything you can tell me….
Housekeeping out of the way, we can now get down to the whole point of this getting up early….. a Pearl….. shall we, then, go Pearling? Let’s do…..
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And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
— Henry W. Longfellow (1807-1882) — The Day is done
Apparently, what has stolen away is my Muse…. pearls seem to be hiding from me, inspiration is AWOL, and she’s nowhere to be found. I am almost tempted to fall back into the Assassin’s story from yesterday, just to get things moving. I hate to set a precedent like that, though, they can become habits too quickly. Now if only Longfellow’s poem would come true, and my cares were all to fade away, maybe they would find the Muse and send her home…. it may be the only hope I have….
“You know that feeling when you’re leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip over? Well, that’s how I feel all the time.” — Steven Wright
Well, maybe not all the time, but right now for sure…. the search for a suitable pearl goes on…..
Baby! Baby! oo-ah oo-ah! Baby! Baby! oo-ah oo-ah! — Not Smart Bee, I hope….
Okay, that’s it… all this time and effort, and THIS is what I can find…. more than just pathetic, it is beginning to look like conspiracy….. and the only thing to do in that case is to go back to bed…. I’ll see you in a while….. Sometimes, one has to retreat in order to have any chance to win….. Patience, I’ll be back (Ouch, sorry…. didn’t mean to inflict any Arnie on y’all….) Hang in there…..
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I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read.
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), “Ozymandias” (1819)
Apparently, going back to bed for a couple of hours helped…. can’t yet say if my Muse has shown up, but within moments of resuming my search, the above showed up. Even without the lesson this poem teaches (of humility before the sands of Time) its sheer beauty is enough to have it grace this page. I am encouraged, and we shall now resume the search for more pearls with a lighter heart…..
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“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!” — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Here is a subject upon which I’ll bet I can rant without any warm-up, mostly because I happen to agree with the sentiment completely. I find this quality in a human being to be incomprehensible, as well as scary, and often wonder how such folks live to the age they have achieved, considering their lack of survival skills. Mother Nature is usually not kind to those who would ignore her rules and regulations, (and she doesn’t care why….) choosing instead to live with their heads cocooned in cotton; for most of history such folks as can do this were summarily executed by the Universe at large, a sentence generally carried out in short order when proof of their stupidity arose. “Oh, look! It’s one of those pretty sabertooth kittens…. how cute! Here, kitty, kitty…..” Or some similar event; you get the picture, I’m sure….
“What a fool cannot learn he laughs at, thinking that by his laughter he shows superiority instead of latent idiocy.” — M. Corelli
However, as civilization has progressed, the penalties for such actions have been downgraded, due to the advances in medicine, and cultural mores that dictate how the weaker and more vulnerable in society are helped to survive (more of that faith-based denial of natural law….). Now, instead of being summarily removed from the gene pool, these walking statues, with heads of marble, are not only kept alive, they are kept alive long enough to breed, thus increasing their numbers, and providing more candidates for the churches and institutions that rely on their numbers for new recruits, recruits who will never question what they are told…..
It is a vicious, self-sustaining cycle, which will last right up to the point of species extinction that we are rapidly approaching….. It won’t bother them much when the world ends because they will deny it right to the end, but it is going to be a scary ride for those of us who have their eyes wide open…. for sure……
“Der christliche Entschluss, die Welt h\”asslich und schlecht zu finden, hat die Walt h\”asslich und schlecht gemacht.”
(The Christian determination to find the word hideous and bad, has made the world hideous and bad.)
— Friedrich Nietzsche
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“Well, here I am in AMERICA.. I LIKE it. I HATE it. I LIKE it. I HATE it. I LIKE it. I HATE it. I LIKE it. I HATE it. I LIKE.. EMOTIONS are SWEEPING over me!!” — Zippy the Pinhead
I’m very close to pulling out what little hair is left on my head…. This is the best I’ve found in the last 30 minutes, and to say the least, I’m very disappointed. Though it is strange enough to tickle my whimsy, it isn’t strong enough to carry me into either a rant or a subtle discussion of hidden meaning; there isn’t any! I’m going to have to resort to drastic measures, I guess…. I’ve never encountered such a dearth of material. Every oyster I see is pearl-free and now it looks as if the beds themselves are shifting and moving, trying to hide from me. Well, one more try…..
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The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) — The Last Leaf
One may always trust poetry to save the day. Or, if not save it, at least support it long enough to get done with the day’s work. These two short tastes of beauty and grace will serve to end this fiasco for today, and carry it into tomorrow, when I trust I shall find reality to have resumed a more amenable shape, bursting with pearls, and more grist for my mill…. I only hope these do not serve as an elegy…..
So perish all, whose breast ne’er learn’d to glow
For others’ good, or melt at others’ woe.
— Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 45
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I believe today’s offering has reached a new pinnacle of weird…. I felt the whole time as if I were swimming through cotton candy or spider webs, pulling at me, sticking to my legs and arms, and keeping me from getting anywhere. I will need to think about this today, it has been a severe struggle; I’m already exhausted, it isn’t 9 AM yet, and I have a lot more to do today. (Without even thinking about the 300 emails awaiting my reluctant attention…..
Well, so be it…. pissing and moaning about it isn’t going to get anything done, so I’ll leave it at that…… Here is hoping that your day goes better than mine has begun. I plan to go hence and try to persuade things to move along more in my chosen direction, so, we’ll see…. As long as I can avoid any further attention from Murphy, I should be okay…… Y’all take care out there….. and May the Metaphorse be with you….
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.
gigoid
Kowabunga!
gigoid 
Hey if you come up with someway to be articulate, kind, and sensitive to all the bloggers you follow, let me know. I’m at the point where there might even be some cash involved. lol
Be encouraged!
Stephen…. see below…. my generous and supportive followers have responded, and given me the solution I needed. So, just come back to this page when you are notified of this response, and you can scroll down to see what folks have clued me into…. it will be, I believe, exactly what I need to get a handle on this…. no charge…. 🙂
For the overwhelming e-mail… While signed into WP go to “Blogs I Follow” and click “Edit List” this will show you all the WP blogs you are following. From there you can select how often you would like to receive e-mail notifications from them – instantly, daily, weekly or never. It’s a handy way to lighten your e-mail load. However, to keep up with what’s going on I have to go to “Blogs I Follow” and scroll through periodically, clicking open any I would like to read. The plus side is from that page you can “Like” a blog that looks good at first glance without actually spending much time reading it. Oops I just gave away my secret.
Liz…. thanks… I couldn’t find that settings function for anything! I’ve shut them off entirely for the time being, so I can go through and deal with the ones I have now. For a while, I’m going to try the method you describe, as I have a number of blogs that get a lot of my attention over others, and this way will be a faster way to check them all out, at my own pace…. I should have put that plea in a blog over a week ago…. I’ve been driving myself nuts trying to get to it all…. Now I can concentrate on my content again…. 🙂 How did you like today’s title? I think it’s one of my best ever…. and it sounds delicious, until you read it the second time… weird is my thing, I guess 😉
Glad to help.
I thought the fried wing-nuts was a menu item at Burger King maybe? 😉 Although I’m not sure how bleach, color-fast or otherwise, fares when heated. Chemistry was too long ago.
🙂 My process for deciding on the titles for Pearls is a strange and wondrous one, and does not yield to description well, but I’ll give it a shot….
Mostly, I sit, staring at the email form subject line, letting words and images play across my inner eye, like a movie with no plot, no beginning, and only limited to my all-too-fecund imagination… when something jumps out, or stops in front of my vision, I consider it more closely, and either accept it, or move on… once I’ve got the first word or image, the rest of it is built using the same process, only with that word as the sort-of focus of the search…. It has always worked well in producing statements and phrases that are not only highly non-sequitor to itself, but to anything in the accompanying material, as well as being either amusing, frighteningly weird, or just plain silly… I enjoy it, and it kind of wakes up my whimsy, so I have it close at hand when I dive in for pearls….
More than you ever wanted to know, I’m sure…. 🙂 But, it may explain the presence of the color-fast bleach in the recipe….as far as it can be explained….
Can’t you just NOT answer all the e-mail…or just make it one comment to everyone? And you know what I’m all about, just photos mostly, so you don’t even need to say anything or hit the like button, or anything at all, and I wouldn’t be offended. When I started my blog a few weeks ago, it became just a “me” place…a place to put the photos and just share the amazement I see in nature every day, especially flowers. It’s nice to get positive feedback, but it’s not something I live for. So, PLEASE, you can get rid of me and I’ll still follow you…and with love too. 🙂
Carol… thanks for the offer to unfollow without guilt, but I think I’ve got it now… two or more of the more techno-savvy of my followers provided me with the way to control the delivery a little better, so all will be well (thanks to cowgirliz, Doug, and Lizzie Cracked for their input)… so I’ll still see you around the comments…. 🙂 I couldn’t unfollow a Berzerkeleyite anyway….not enough of us around, to my way of thinking…. especially the talented and pretty photographers…. 🙂
Okay, well, if I ever get to be too much for you…you know what to do. Thanks friend. 🙂
I have the same problem: there are so many interesting blogs and just like you, I receive lots of notifications. I check my mail very regularly, like a lot of posts and try to comment as much as I can. But it does take a lot of time and discipline… And when I am traveling, I simply don’t have the time for it all.
go to your dash board
then blogs I follow
bottom of the page
Delivery frequency (settings)
then you’ll see a toggle to stop all
………….
if you want to pick and chose per follow
go to the circled w drop down to reader
then- blogs I follow
after blogs load
edit list
and pick and chose
Doug…. thank you X 3! With what you, Lizzie, and cowgirliz have given me, I think I’ve got it under control…. I’ll stop them all for a time, and just go to my favorites thru the follow list every day, at least until I have worked through the 360 that built up before I got it shut off…. What a clusterfuck! Now at least I can concentrate on my content again for a while…. thanks again…. 🙂
If you have not seen “Idiocracy” you must. I do not promise that it’s a fantastic movie, but it is what I fear to be an accurate glimpse into the future.
I will check that out…. literally.. my town library has a very extensive DVD collection, so they probably have, or can get, a copy of it… thanks, I’m always looking for more stuff to read and/or watch, and I’m a life-long SF aficionado, so this fits right into that niche for me…. thanks!
If nothing else it’s good for a laugh or two. Enjoy!
you can change your notifications in the reader I think.. or.. if you go to blogs I follow….blogs you follow not I 🙂 and there should be a list of notifications choices…you can choose to have the bloggers you mention sent as a daily or even (gasp) weekly digest…I have one some like that too.. also in settings..under discussion or writing or reading..not sure you can set up your notifications….such as if you want to receive and email everytime someone likes your post or only when they comment…. but going to blogs I (you) 😛 follow… will let you decide how often you receive notification without having you unfollow – yes I feel the same way.. cause I get all butthurt when my number goes down and I wonder who..who left me and how can I make it up to them…I am sensitive like that I guess 🙂 …if that doesn;t work..well I will poke around a bit..if I find I was way off on where exactly the list is..I will let you know or if I find a less vague way of explaining it… see..its not just you brother..:-) blessings..and I enjoyed today anyways as always… I like it here…
Lizzie… thanks! With your admittedly rambling response (which nonetheless has the essential info I needed) and what Doug and cowgirliz gave me, I think I’ve got it licked, so to speak. I’ve shut them all off for a time, until I can chop down the 340 in my Inbox… for a while I’ll just go visit the folks I follow, such as yours, daily, to see anything new…. the rest will have to wait their turn…. but I don’t feel anywhere near as stressed over it now, thanks to you guys…so thanks again… and I’ll see you around the comments…. 🙂
you are welcome..wantd to make sure you could still come my way today 🙂 if it makes you feel ANY better at all… I have 954 in my box… I seriously procrastinate on my email.. I have a draft in there somewhere to you about the damn landlord lol…no I didnt forget…all in good (Lizzie) time. sorry..I have been slacking for real… make sure you come check out the Mental Moment today 🙂 Yoga! relaxing lol.
I will…. no worries! 🙂
Oh I almost forgot. I think found a reverse pearl for you in a post from a guy I read often.
Tertullian had a gift for the deft turn of phrase that was so pronounced that Augustine, that legendary spoilsport, is said to have remarked of something Tertullian said, This is said with more spirit than truth. At one point, while debating Christ’s death and resurrection with one of the prominent heretics of the day, Tertullian rather famously stated, “Certum est quiz impossible est.”
“It is certain because it is impossible.”
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/republican-party-0512#ixzz1sPpkyhgZ
Thanks, that is a good jumping off point… I looked at a pearl yesterday that said much the same; same logical line that leads to unexpected realms…. you’ll see it in coming days, I’m certain…. Thanks again, for this, and for helping to save me from drowning in email…. couldn’t for the life of me figure out where that setting was…
Doug… just finished reading the article you pointed me to…. a very well thought out and brilliantly funny piece, and wickedly accurate as well… it will indeed make for some good thoughts for a future pearl… so thanks again…. 🙂
I’m in the same boat you’re in. I enjoy all the blogs I subscribe to, however some reblog everything they read, and some post 4 to 5 times a day. I just can’t handle all that comes across my screen, plus my own writing endeavors, and living life fully at the same time. Sometimes I just go down the list and delete them all, hoping I’m not missing a really good post.
After reading the comments here, I’ll try doing what others recommend. Change the how often to notify me screen..
Aye, the responses I’ve received will, I think, prove quite useful…. I’m shutting them all off for a time, until I get a better handle on it, and will go through my blogs once a day to see who has posted… if I don’t have the emails to deal with, I’ll have time to do that…. the community does it again! In Ireland they’d call it “comhair” or community, to describe how the members all support each other when needed…. I’m very thankful for it…. it has de-stressed me quite thoroughly… 🙂 Take care, & I’ll see you around the comments….
I too was overwhelmed by repeaters. So I read who I follow under the ‘reader’ section of the dashboard. Sometimes I miss blogs I like to follow, but I really try to get to people I enjoy reading. I was overwhelming with e-mails, over 400 at one time. Had to stop e-mail notifications and now I simply, read. Not that I wanted it that way, but had little choice. Hey, Ned, you mind if I put a link from my site to yours? I appreciate your comments. Tony
Tony…. I don’t mind a bit… It’s always nice to hear that folks are enjoying what I write.. 🙂
I know what you mean… I stopped all the emails for now… I went through today and took care of all the ones that were cluttering things up, and now am down to only about 30 or 40 left of ones I want to make sure to read… It took most of the day…. but, I’m looking forward to a little more space now…
Thanks for linking to my site… one of these days I’m going to figure out how to get my favorite sites onto my page; still not fully conversant with how my theme works… It’s still a work in progress I guess… any who, I’ll see you around the comments; I always enjoy your blog, so I’ll be back, you can be sure…. Take care….
Sorry Ned, haven’t even read your Pearls yet, but wanted to talk about e-mails first. The suggestions people have left here are really good. I’ ve tried a number of things, when I get just too doggone far behind I just pick out my special people and then delete the rest and start over again. If you miss a few posts it ain’t no big thang. I don’t really like to just skim and push the like button as I know how much I enjoy getting comments on what I write and I’m sure others feel the same way. Besides I really do enjoy most reading most blogs. I don’t know how many blogs I follow but it’s no where near 140. Phew! That’s Soccerers apprentice e-mail hell! 😀 Resist. Urge. To. Push. Follow. Button. Ok, now back to Pearls and yours is the last read of the night!
Thanks to my generous followers, it is now an issue solved… and I feel way less stress today…. 🙂
Well maybe YOU weren’t feeling it when you wrote it but it’s a fine post when all is said and done. I liked the quote on religion. I dont’ know how I feel about it. I think organized religion is odd, fake and stupid but I do believe in a higher being that teaches through tough love mostly. When I say believe in I think I mean want to believe in or have decided to believe in. I saw a little blind boy at the park yesterday. He followed my grandsons footsteps on the play structure to the slide. He believed that if he went the same direction as the footsteps he was on the right track. My grandson is 2 and 1/2. Well he was right. Clayton led him to the slide and he slid down right after him. He believed and he made it. I guess in some strange way that’s how I feel about God.
Great story, and an excellent metaphor; little kids are much closer to being naturally good, aren’t they?…. My own views on the concept of God are perhaps unclear, and that is partially by intent. Discussions of religion often get heated, even amongst friends, so I try not to go into it other than peripherally… but your view is a good one, as far as I’m concerned, as it concerns itself with only what is, or rather, should be important, which is our relationships with each other, and with the other creatures, and things, that inhabit this universe with us…. so, if it works for you, and it obviously does, good on ya!
Take care, and Blessed Be….
“Our relationship with each other and creatures and things.” So true! The creatures and things are the easy part. It’s the “each other” that’s really the true challenge! HA!
Well, I suppose that’s true, and hardly a surprise, as humans are easily the biggest assh, er, most challenging to relate to…. 🙂
Haha!
Reblogged this on gigoid and commented:
Ffolkes,
The urge to blog is strong in this one… Sort of. It’s still there, anyway. To sublimate that urge, here is a rather good early example of the ramblings of my mind during a period of my life filled with physical pain, before the healing properties of cannabis had been revealed to me. All in all, that guy seems now to have been laboring mightily, but, without much hope of change on a personal level. I suppose that goes to prove what I’ve always said, i.e., the value of the journey lies in the journey itself, not necessarily, or even likely, the destination…. I hope you enjoy it, & I’ll be back with some fresh nonsense in a day or two…. Be well, & happy as you may be….
gigoid, the dubious
😎