Just Say NO to Related Post Links on WordPress


A day ago, or so, WordPress added a new feature that essentially allowed them to show post links to other WordPress blogs that are related to whatever post a reader might be reading. My husband turned this feature off after reading a blog post that pointed out that a reader might confuse these links with the idea that they were simply other posts on the blog he/she was reading. This could lead to problems if said reader were to click a link and be taken to a blog post somewhere else that might be offensive.

I didn’t think much about that until a link appeared under my recent piece on MIley Cyrus that was titled “Bill O’Reilly Wants to Fuck Miley Cyrus”. Aside from the “I need a spoon to scoop out my mind’s eye” factor, that isn’t exactly what I want to show up as a link under a piece I wrote for my blog. And that’s what it gets down to. This is my blog. I want to decide what links to post within a piece of writing.

For now the feature stays off although this will cost me views and potential readers. I am not ready to let WordPress dictate my links.

Publishing Opportunities? Where? When? How?


I found this publishing opportunity via another blog called Mommy Writes. I am not the best writer on demand, although I am improving, but I thought I might be able to pound out a couple of pieces that would pass muster for this anthology. I have to say, I am in awe of niche bloggers. They manage to find topics that are so simple and yet so full of writing potential and therefore interesting to a vast audience. Me? I am too egocentric I guess. (What?! NO argument at all? Thanks, so very much.) I just write about any old thing that pops into my head, flits across the day’s headlines, dances in front of my eyes on the dvd. I am just a topic of the nano-sec kind of girl.

I run across writers too who spread their blogging out over several blogs so as to create a separate space for each specific type of reader. That way no one has to wade through blog entries on say…potty training when they really come to read about the blogger’s latest outdoor trysting spot with his/her significant other. It’s a really good idea but as someone who ran three blogs simultaneously – and was basically using the same post for each blog – I can’t wrap my mind or my meager talent around it. I have enough to do furnishing this blog with material and writing my fiction and creative non-fic for, hopefully, publication in a print forum someday.

I have run across online opportunities that seem challenging and fun, but nothing has come of them yet either. Rob reminds me that I shouldn’t expect too much too soon. Good (or not so is my fear at times) as I might be, everyone starts out at the same place and that is what “aspiring” means. And okay, my aspirations are great and varied, so it stands to reason that my doubts sometimes match. But I am working on a great story idea now, courtesy of a conversation with my husband about the current food shortage in the world, and I have solved a problem with my serial sci-fi stories and just need to sit down and apply my solution. I saw an opportunity to write for a feminist/activism blog (yeah, I know I say I am not a feminist but I have been quacking too much of late) that if I am lucky might allow me to write a piece or two. I sent a query and am waiting to hear back and waiting and waiting and feeling a little like the red-headed step-child in the process.

The realist in me therefore is planning for the fall and applying with the school district for a library assistant or teacher associate position. Anything but teaching in my own room really. Applying for a teacher’s license is doable but only if I want to take a Mickey Mouse course or two to satisfy some Franco requirements that the province just added to the to do list of new teachers. The course requirements variation from province to province (state to state back in the U.S.) is the worst kind of pandering to regional universities. It’s all about sucking a few extra bucks out of you and not about helping you be a better educator. Digression though. Rob thinks a job will also help “socialize” me a bit and it probably will but I have always found that for the most part, work friendships often don’t survive the job by much. There have been but a handful of exceptions in my life to that rule and I treasure them, however, they by and large are situational.

I am also going to put in an app with the city of Fort Saskatchewan. I am still bummed about missing out on that cool museum job but I didn’t have my work permit in time to apply. My massage therapist tells me to inquire about the posting to see if it was filled. Her husband works for the city and apparently many of their postings go unfilled due to the lack of qualified (read “educated”) applicants. We are still in a boom economy up here and anyone with the tiniest bit of education is working for the oil companies in some capacity. However most of the jobs that go begging are in the service industry or the medical fields.

It’s dumb to be glum about what is really a great life just because I can’t write for anyone but myself, my husband and the handful of people who come to this blog (and thank you, thank you my loyal followers and commenters especially – I love comments. They make me feel less like an idiot screaming into the vacuum of cyber-space). I just want a chance. Catch a break. That miserable Catch-22 of “experience” is biting my bum in the most unfair way.

Miley Cyrus? From Autobiography to Slutty Photos


Miley Cyrus is a 15 year old singer and actress who is making Uncle Walt and Mickey some of the easiest money since they began pimping the Disney Princesses for all they are worth. She is the star of a hit tweeny-bopper show on the Disney Channel, that coincidentally co-stars her Achy Breaky Dad, Billy Ray, as – surprise – her dad. Her fans cover the gamut of girls from preschool to high school and her recent tour sold out in something like a nano-second, I’ve read. Last week I was not surprised to hear that the reigning nice girl pop princess was offered a seven figure advance to write (herself probably – the kid is just that talented) an autobiography of her life. At fifteen. Sounds plausible to me. You? Okay, I think it might read something like this:

I was born to a one-ish hit wonder country star known for his mullet and tight jeans. By the time he’d played that song for all the money he could wring from it and his acting career on the WB panned out, I was finally old enough and miraculously blessed with a bit of talent myself (and most importantly wasn’t fat or facially challenged) to be pimped groomed for a career in the business.

or something like that.

Today my husband tells me that the acrid taste of presidential politics, with all it’s racial and gender slurring fun, has been displaced by a scandal involving the next Britney Spears tweener cross over to female singer/actor/writing star – our own sweet, innocent Miley. It happens. Annie Leibowitz is a camera toting siren that has led many a celebrity into the twisted world of art cleverly disguised as slutty photos to help prevent the middle class from infiltrating the the ranks of the nouveau hipsters. She’s just a kid despite her talent and fame and money and stage parents and predictable future as a deeply troubled and in need of many, many years of therapy. It happens to a lot of very young celebrities only a generation or two out of the trailer park.

And the pictures? Run of the mill pseudo-suggestive. The kind any parent could order up at the JCPenney Photo Studio. I have seen the ad:

Bring the kid and too old for them attire and we point, click and photoshop. Pictures with inappropriately dressed father (or mom/son) are entirely optional. REALLY. No pressure from us at all.

Miley Cyrus is probably a nice kid. Her folks are probably good parents. The photos are, inappropriate, but not much more so than the senior photos I saw during my last two years as a high school teacher. The big question is why? When so many teen stars implode at ever younger ages, why would you take the chance with your daughter? She’s fifteen. There is time for the adult career when she is an adult and if she is truly talented, she will make it. Why push? Why risk her reputation and yours as a good parent?