Musings and Mirth

Ebay Kind of Sucks Now

I have not bought a single thing on ebay on over a year. I decided, recently, to sell some stuff on there, however, and I’ve discovered that ebay has become a horrible assemblage of traits all rolled into one site. First, once you sell something sellers do all sorts of creepy things to ensure they aren’t getting cheated. They immediately open a case and that takes the money out of your paypal account and puts it “on hold” until the case is resolved. Ebay has put this entirely in the hands of creepy people out there in America. There is no first step needed, they simply open the case. Almost everything I’ve sold on ebay has had a case opened – if you don’t email them immediately, if the package is even a day late – they open a case. Worse, I sold a few things and the end total for ebay fees was around $300! Not worth it, my friends.

Perhaps if you can play by the “new” rules you will do well on there but I don’t think I got time for that.

At the Mercy of Google

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Google oh Google oh Google. When did it turn out that Google completely controlled how we run our sites? Google has the power to shut down your website if they suspect it’s spreading Malware. But there are weird kinks along the way. Sometimes you can ask them to remove the warning and they actually do in a timely manner. Yesterday, I had the warning up on my other site, awards daily.com, for an entire 24 hours before it even showed up on Google’s own webmaster tools. That meant I couldn’t request a review except to go to their forums. I did that and they kept coming back at me with additional scans where they supposedly found malware. But my security team that protects my site, the awesome Securi, said that what they found wasn’t Malware. I have requested the warning be removed but this will be 48 hours later — traffic is dying by the minute. Yes, I understand they want to protect everyone else from Malware – I get it. What freaks me out is how much power Google has now. It should freak you out too.

New To Pot

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I hadn’t smoked pot for twenty years until recently. The last time I had smoked it the night ended in a dark room with worries of someone spying on us. Whatever pot did to my twenty year old brain wasn’t good. I smoked it as a pre-teen, starting as young as 13. I smoked it on and off with my friends – because what else was there to do in Upper Ojai, where I came from. It always made me feel like I was smarter than everyone else or that I knew them all better than they knew themselves – or I knew the truth that they were running from. It was very isolating. I hated it after a while. I loved and love my brain. I love the way it thinks. I love having it cleared to think. I love nothing more than being inside my own head and have no problem being lost in for hours. But after twenty years I decided to give it a whirl again to see what it would do. Turns out, it isn’t half bad in my old age. In fact, it’s quite good. Maybe too good? While I like my brain it’s occasionally fun to have it tuned to a different station. It feels like brain yoga, being stoned. But the last time I smoked it I felt those familiar paranoid feelings returning. Every time I said something I had an out of body experience and a critical voice that scolded me – as if to say, “how dare you speak?” So I probably won’t be a pot smoker for long, I figure.

On the other hand, I did note a couple of really great benefits. One, no PMS at all. No symptoms, no pain, nothing. I also noticed that it took away my nervous anxiety. Those two things alone make it worthwhile. What I need is a mellow hybrid of some sort that keeps the brain yoga part but doesn’t keep the paranoia/critical voice part.

Anyway, thought you, two readers of my blog, should know this.

Needless to say, it should be legal. What a waste of tax dollars policing something that can be grown in the ground.

Recently…

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Rolling out of bed at 12noon
Noisy beach town long since awake
Cries of children let loose on the playground for lunch,
A few moments I linger
Giving pleasure comes easily to you
I am hot and dry as the California coastline,
wrapping its arms around the swollen Pacific
holding it there,
keeping it from spilling over
Lips taste of cinnamon coffee,
as if from Florence,
dizzy with the pleasures of a morning
our fluids washing off our bodies
a shared shower.
It would be routine, maybe,
but who gets used to this?
It is a stolen glimpse
As life-changing and beautiful as a wide-winged pelican
gliding by, then diving under.
Before the end, come here.

Question Authority

As more details come to light about the Fritzl case, one of the weirdest and saddest stories I've ever read, it has reinforced the idea that nothing good comes from being blindly obedient. If you don't question authority bad people get away with things. I've learned...

About Me

I spend way too much thinking about me. This is the blank space where that paragraph should be.