I Blame The Patriarchy

Meanwhile, does the following describe you?

You’ve just finished reading one of my posts (for which eminent deed, if you’ll excuse the interruption, you deserve the gratitude of a nation) when an unfamiliar sensation washes over you. A few moments pass, but the sensation lingers. What tha — why, it’s the warm glow of brainiac transcendence! But what gives? you ask yourself, brushing a tear of happiness from your eye. Whatever could be the source of this unusual but most welcome psychical ease?

Suddenly you are awash in understanding. You and I, you realize, are two hearts that bleed as one. In fact, you are so utterly and completely in accordance with my totally awesome thesis that you’ve begun to physically effervesce with thoughts of profound, emphatic, and enlightened praise.

Or, somewhat more implausibly, you have spotted a flaw in my reasoning, and, like Folly, are anxious to freely upon my Wisdoms crack your jokes.

In any event, your only desire is to share your grandiloquent oratory with the world. To that noble end you compose an elegant morsel of argumentation in the comment box. You spell everything correctly, you eschew cliché, you even close your HTML tags. Then, with a brisk tap of the middle finger, you click the “Blame” button. But oh no! The spamulator has nuked your oeuvre!

You try the whole thing over again, but once more the result is bupkis (although, let’s face it, this is probably for the best, since your first comment was way better).

Or perhaps you are a first-time blamer, and WordPress has rejected your registration flat out.

Either way, you’ve got animadversio interrupta, and it’s harshing your mellow.

In fact, as the sands pour through the hourglass, you begin to wonder what it all means. You stand before the mirror, asking yourself “Why me? Why?” Over and over in your increasingly tortured mind the possibilities churn: whatever you could have done to wound my gossamer sensibilities? Did you inadvertently use an ellipsis? No. Did you begin a sentence with the pre-verbal utterance “Um”? Negatory. Did you liken me to the Nazis or pepper your metaphrasery with such sentiments as “U fugly harey bitch, what U need isa good fcuk”? No, of course you didn’t. The only possible explanation for this brutal comment murder is that I have an irrational, personal grudge against you.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Take heart, young onion. Nothing could be further from the truth. Before you send me an email in which you have a cow, I implore you to take a few moments to contemplate the facts:

I promise, I do not have it in for you personally. I don’t even know you. It’s the spamulators, I tell you. The spamulators (and there are three of’em), to whose innermost thoughts, unfortunately, I am not privy, have merely gone all crunk on your ass. They got no reason. They got no rhyme. They are just lines of indifferent and flawed code written by indifferent and flawed geeks looking at internet porn.

Because the spine-tingling life of a spinster aunt frequently takes her beyond the perimeter of her bungalow, I regret that I am unable to sit at the computer 24 hours a day monitoring the comment flow. Although I do my best, I do not kid myself that my efforts are adequate. Still, ever since my secretary Phil quit (in retrospect, maybe I should have given him that day off to take his sick baby to the hospital after all) it’s as good as it’s gonna get.

Some tips to get you through these tough times

• If you expect your comment will be an invaluable contribution to human endeavor (and if you don’t, why are you foisting it off on me?), use a text editor, rather than the comment box, in which to compose it. Even if you don’t get spamulated, the World Wide Web may still devour it whole if you fail to take this step.

• Do not use Internet Explorer.

• Recall that we have never met, and resist the urge to imagine that I have taken a dislike to you. That you’re reading I Blame The Patriarchy at all is enough to recommend you as a true sport.

• Suck it up. Let it go. Yes, your comment was witty and insightful, and I sympathize, but let’s face it: this blog is pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme.

• At the risk of coming off like one of those tiresome busier-than-thou ‘popular’ bloggers who selflessly and ceaselessly goes to extreme unpaid lengths for her readers so why don’t you cut me some slack already, I’m begging you to cut me some slack already. Please allow a few days to elapse before expecting a resolution to commenting issues. Even then, owing to my efforts to maintain a life outside of my computer, reading email is something I don’t get around to every single day; a few days, or in some cases, weeks, may pass before I can get back to you. Take this personally if you must, but I reiterate: I don’t dislike you.

Really!

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