Daily Blague

As a result of recent comment-spam attacks, I have made a few slight changes. Expect no real inconvenience. Even if you have posted here before, your next comment will bring up a little message about comment moderation, begging your patience pending approval. Thereafter, you won't see the message again, but will be able to comment as in the past.*

Yesterday's attack - there was one on Sunday, too (just what I needed) - led my Web host, Hosting Matters, to disable the posting of further comments to the Daily Blague, Miss Gostrey's Guide, and Good For You. This was brought to my attention by a would-be commenter. I was nonplussed at the unilateral, no-notice action, and I think it would have been nice to receive a little message from whatever bot it was that fiddled with my site, but I quickly saw the wisdom of the operation. If you ever find that trying to post a comment brings up a 404 message - "Page Cannot Be Found" - you'll know that I'm being attacked and am closing down for the moment. (I will try to post a temporary message to this effect.) Open up Notebook - it comes on all PCs (is there a Mac counterpart?) - write your comment, and when comments open up again, you can simply cut and paste what you wanted to say. This is as good a time as any to remind you that comments involving thought and numerous sentences ought always to be written out and saved not in the Comment box but somewhere else on your machine.

The spam attacks consist of hailstorms of various spam messages, all peddling the usual things: painkillers, erectile dysfunction remedies, porn sites of every hue, and better mortgage deals. I have been attacked on a very small scale by an online casino spammer, but this party does not participate in the bulk mailings. Who, I wonder, who responds to this junk? It reminds me of a paleoconservative joke. Ten years after public education was made universal in Britain - for some reason, the year 1880 comes to mind  for the anniversary - a prominent Tory lord was asked if he had discerned any effects of the new institution. Indeed he had, he said: dirty words were now appearing a foot lower on public walls. I resist it stoutly, but I am often besieged by the idea that universal literacy is a mistake.

Jason Kottke linked the other day to a photograph on Flickr that, aside from being evidence of Life Before Elevators, brought back a refrigerator-sized memory. Until I was seven, we lived in an apartment building on Palmer Road just over the Bronx River from Bronxville proper. Upstairs, there lived the very Irish and very stout widow of a policeman; I daresay he must have been an officer. Aunt Peg, as we called her, took a tremendous shine to me, and I think might literally have smothered me with affection if I hadn't been a restless kid. Whether it happened once only or several times, I don't recall; what does come back to me sharply is the thrilled of watching the little green basket make its somewhat jerky way down from Aunt Peg's window to the back yard. I don't remember what was in the basket - disappointment, probably - but the pleasure of wondering what it might be was immense.

Of course, our building had elevators. This was a stunt, I should think, perhaps conceived by Aunt Peg as a wee bit of transgression against the building's respectable, mod-con proprieties. I do know that my mother did not at all approve of Aunt Peg, both on grounds and because she was jealous of alternative fountains of love (even, to some extent, her own mother, who adored me rather wildly, and who inadvertently tipped me off about adoption before I knew anything about it with perpectual "reminders" that I got my red hair from her). My grandmother was also stout. Perhaps it was the affection of these two ladies that has made me stout.