Okay, so it’s another swirly thing. Still “Wordless Wednesday Whirlpool” is a better title than “Wordless Wednesday Swirly.”

Maybe I could have called it a “Wordless Wednesday Whirly.”

Okay. You convinced me. I’ll title this post “Wordless Wednesday Whirly.”

Hey! Look at that! WWW! Cool, eh?

For more photos, visit Wordless Wednesday.

What if songs started with the second verse?

You know, skip the first verse and jump straight to the action.

But, then the second verse would be the first, and the third would be the second, so you’d then need to start with the third verse.

In so doing, the third verse becomes the first verse, making the fourth verse the second verse.

If you start with the fourth verse, then that becomes the first verse and the second verse is the fifth verse, if there was a fifth verse, which there may not have been.

And, if there was, you’d start with the fifth verse, making it the first, necessitating that you start with the sixth verse, which there less likely is to be.

Even if there is a sixth verse, at some point down the line, there will not be a second verse, so if you started with that non-existent second verse, you would have no song.

And that is why songs start with the first verse.

On the other hand, if you start with the second verse and end up with no song, what you have is silence.

And silence can be beautiful. Sometimes, it is silence that is harder to find than song. Song can drown out other sounds, especially if you pump up the volume loud enough, which may not be a good idea, depending upon the loudness required, because that may harm your hearing.

But, silence can not drown out other sounds. Other sounds must not be there in order for silence to exist. Thus, the most beautiful song may be that of silence.

Thus, whether you start with the first or second verse, there is something that can be appreciated.

So, in the end, it probably doesn’t matter which verse you start with, or if you have any verses at all.

Now.

Listen.

To the silence.

Okay, so maybe “banned” is pushing it, but I was thrown into moderation and that’s almost just as bad.

So, JD posted about how 80’s music videos saved her life and mentioned that she had to sit down and stop dancing when a Debbie Gibson song came on.

Well, I can’t let that stand. Or sit. Or not dance, or whatever.

So, I left a comment challenging her on that.

Guess what?

My comment got thrown into moderation!

Was it a fluke? I tried again.

Moderation… again!

Look! Here is the proof:

What is the deal with that?

This may be the start of another round of blog wars…

Above is a photo I took of a rocket blasting into deep space.

Pretty cool, eh?

Well, with the magic of Adobe® Photoshop®, we can pretend that we are watching the rocket launch on an old TV, as if we are back in the 1950’s, watching the dawn of the Space Age.

Where’s Commander Corry when you need him?

Anyway, the whole adventure has to take place in our imaginations, because the original image was not a rocket launch at all. It was simply a plane crossing the sky.

But, you can see how a little manipulation with Photoshop® can turn an ordinary image into something more adventurous.

By the way, if you want to play a little space game I made on Sploder, here is my Space Blaster.

So, I have this website that I started putting together (and had hoped to have had launched by now) a while back. A few weeks ago, I upgraded it to the latest version of the software package I was using.

And upgrading it broke a few things, mostly in the design area, which I had spent an amount of time customizing. As I was busy with other projects, I just set it aside.

Yesterday, I decided to jump back on that site. I spent some time going through the new CSS and making my changes where the software package had added new stuff.

Today, I uploaded my new css file, only to discover it didn’t make one bit of difference.

The problem is that this particular software package has a funny way of implementing themes. I’m sure a number of you are familiar with WordPress and its themes and plugins, right? This particular software package does things differently. Instead of considering themes as themes, it considers them plugins.

Okay, so far. And, by structuring your plugin properly, you don’t modify any of the base css files of the software package. It’s just that whatever you put in your plugin will override the base css files, thus allowing your customizations to display rather than the default settings.

Make sense so far?

So, you just modify your theme-plugin and, whenever you upgrade, you needn’t worry about changing all those base css files. Make sense? Sounds like a good idea, right?

Well, except for the fact that part of the software package includes its own plugins that add certain features. And, some of those plugins have their own css files.

And, that’s where you run into problems. You see, being a plugin, it overrides your custom settings in your plugin. And that means that apparently the only way to customize the site is to change any css settings in each of the other plugins.

Which means, when you upgrade, you’ll need to go through all those core plugins and change things again, so far as I can see.

Which is stupid.

Which is why I am frustrated.

And which is why I’m thinking about tossing the whole thing and trying to come up with a new idea for this particular website.

Sometimes, you try to help people.

You try to be constructive and offer helpful information.

And then you realize you’re probably participating in an exercise in futility and are just the latest in a line of people to try to help, only to end up feeling like they are banging their heads against the wall.

I won’t go into specifics, but let’s say that you encounter someone driving a rickety-old car around town. It runs. It runs rather well. But, it was built in an era before windshields, so it has none. Nor does it have a paint job. It’s bare bones metal. It has no airbags and no seat belts. The seats are uncomfortable and the trunk is too small to even carry a spare tire.

A dwindling number of people will even ride in it as a passenger anymore. Those that do mainly do it for the nostalgia and little else.

The old car is expensive to maintain. It costs about five to ten times as much to keep it running as it would to run a newer car.

Despite this, the car owner thinks the car is the top of the class and that to switch to a modern car–you know, a car with windows, windshield wipers, paint, bumpers, seat belts, airbags, comfortable seats, cup holders and a decent-sized trunk–would be a downgrade.

The car owner seems to think the problem is with the passengers, and not with the car itself.

And, it is seemingly an exercise in futility to convince the car owner otherwise.

You know, every day it seems I get spam advertising big savings on Hydrocodone.

I’m not sure why I would want to buy discount Hydrocodone through some online pharmacy I’ve never even heard of and advertises itself through spam.

I often wonder what kinds of scams these are. Maybe they’re a mix. I really don’t feel like investigating, and I’m not trying to pass myself off as a journalist here, so let me just speculate on some of what I imagine are the possibilities.

A. Credit card number theft (and/or ID theft). You see this great offer for Hydrocodone and you just can’t pass up a good deal, so you whip out your credit card and hand over your personal details. Who knows what happens to it then? Maybe you’ll get your Hydrocodone. Maybe not.

B. Fake or poor-quality drugs. Assuming it’s not A, and you do get your drugs, who knows if they are even as advertised or even safe? What if it’s just a fake? Just stuff thrown together and made to look like a Hydrocodone pill (tablet? powder? liquid? I don’t know how this stuff comes.) but it’s nothing more than filler. No Hydrocodone at all. Or, maybe it’s cheaply-produced Hydrocodone. Who knows if the mix is right? Maybe it’s too weak or too strong, either of which could presumably pose a health risk. Plus, who knows what the purity is like. Maybe they make this stuff alongside other drugs, so who knows what might be mixed together in it.

C. A & B. Maybe they do both. Ship you fake or poor quality Hydrocodone and, then when/if you catch on, they’ve still got your credit card number and personal details, which they can then sell.

Of course, it’s possible they’re sending you the right stuff, but I would think that highly unlikely. I certainly wouldn’t risk buying drugs through some pharmacy I only heard about through being spammed.

And, in case you were wondering, as I was, what Hydrocodone is, apparently it is some kind of opiate used for reducing pain. It’s also a cough suppressant. Apparently, it’s like codeine or morphine.

And since you can die from too much morphine, I certainly wouldn’t want to be buying morphine-like drugs over the Internet.

The thing is that the reason they send out so much spam is that some people fall for it. So, there are people out there either risking their health or financial information, or both, on what are very likely fake or questionable “pharmacies” online.

At any rate, I don’t know what the truth is here. But, for me, I will continue to toss those discount Hydrocodone eMails into the spam bin.

Busy.

So, as far as blogging goes, I’m swirling it in today.

Some people phone it in, but I’m being different by swirling it in. Cool, eh?

Yeah, well it loses some of its originality when I need to explain it to you.

Okay, not real 3-D, but simulated 3-D. You know, the one where you may get a headache after a couple hours of watching it, especially if there’s no original plot and the characters are one-dimensional. Simulated 3-D.

In this case, it’s an anaglyph. That means you need your red and blue glasses. So, go and grab them and take a look at the alien in the picture. “Oh what fun and what surprise!”

Actually, the simulated 3-D on this one isn’t as noticeable, possibly because of the black background or possibly because I’m just learning how to do this.

At any rate, enjoy!

I feel like I should have something more substantive today but, after rejecting a couple other post ideas I had, this is all you get.

I call it “Shattered Spring.”

A brightly color image in pretty spring colors, then twisted, crumbled and shattered, kind of like our freedoms, but that’s a subject for another day.

Anyway, enjoy the shattered spring.