I’m getting hammered with spam on this site all of a sudden. It’s overwhelming Akismet, and the spam program I just installed, Defensio, is still on a learning curve about what constitutes “spam.”

For now, so that I can get something done (other than deleting email notifications about waiting spam), I’m *temporarily* disabling comments on all posts. I’ll look at this further tonight and see if I can find a better solution, though! See updates below.

(And for my random thought of the morning –”spam hammered” could actually be spammered. And this is a spamergency!)

Update #1: An online pal — who’s about to become a BELOVED online pal if this works — just sent me a link to a different plugin with a glowing recommendation. So I’m re-enabling the comments and trying Cookies for Comments instead. Yay!

Update #2: Just tested that plugin. I didn’t see anything amiss as a regular user on the site when I posted a test comment to this post. I’m hoping the solution is this simple — it blocks the spammers without hassling commenters. *crossing my fingers*

Thank you, Donncha, for the tip!

I find this cartoon series irresistible, and this one was worth snatching. I only wish other web-based cartoons would make it easy for copyright-sensitive bloggers like me to post favorites without having to go through the cumbersome process of asking permission. (BLaugh, the lazy in me loves the “cut and paste this code” in you.)

Put down your diet Coke, and push the bowl of Chex Mix away from the keyboard. Are you ready? Good. Because I don’t want you to spray anything onto your keyboard or computer monitor when you read the hilarious Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About.

Oh, it’s cumulative. At first, it’s just mildly amusing. Then you’re grinning, more and more broadly. And pretty soon you’re snorting like a crazed hyena, wiping away tears of laugher and trying not to shake the bed so hard you wake up your husband, who’s already gone to sleep for the night instead of surfing the web like the amusement addict that you are.

You might call this funny Brit a less urbane Thurber, but whatever you call author Mil Millington, I can’t resist things like this:

• “Margret thinks I’m vain because … I use a mirror when I shave. During this argument in the bathroom - our fourth most popular location or arguments, it will delight and charm you to learn - Margret proved that shaving with a mirror could only be seen as outrageous narcissism by saying, ‘None of the other men I’ve been with,’ (my, but it’s all I can do to stop myself hugging her when she begins sentences like that) ‘None of the other men I’ve been with used a mirror to shave.’ ‘Ha! Difficult to check up on that, isn’t it? As all the other men you’ve been with can now only communicate by blinking their eyes!’ I said. Much later. When Margret had left the house.”
• “Margret simply cannot stop hanging things from every defenceless lampshade, rail or drawing pin-able piece of ceiling space. Mobiles built from small, wooden, peasant figures, baskets of plants or vegetables or toiletries, angular crystals or tiny, twirling shards of coloured glass, wind-chimes - oh, pale, waltzing Lord, the wind chimes.”
• (On the installation of a dreamcatcher over the bed) “Guess which one of us hung that up at some point on Friday, and which one of us walked into the bedroom sometime later and said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. I’ve often thought how not at all irritating it would be to have a bunch of feathers dangling just in front of my face all night, and I’ve also frequently been overcome with a sudden sadness that I had no means of a casual arm wave as I slept somehow entangling itself in ribbons and a suspended hoop so as to bring a halogen lamp crashing down onto my sleeping face. Yet, I’ve never thought of bringing the two together - now, that’s genius.’”

I’ll analyze the writing later, to figure out some of the pacing and phrasing that made this site glow with vibrancy for me. But for now, I’m such a convert that I do something I NEVER do — sign up for a mailing list to get more.

Because that site? It’s humor heroin.

P.S. Buy his books here. We really need to support authors like this. :o)