Years of WordPress

Today is my anniversary, my WordPress anniversary, and I am indebted to WordPress for this beautiful journey in writing. I don’t know how many years has it been, but it surely was enough to put all the alphabets on my keyboard to use. It used to be just w,a,s,d, ctrl and space. I have now begun a new adventure on a new platform called Swell. It ain’t going swell, but it’s doing something. Check it out!

https://www.swellcast.com/nextlevelnothin/df86b039-6387-4070-b13a-0ded69a3e1d3/thanksgiving

Papa made it to the editor’s pick a few days ago. So that shows how low the company is willing to stoop.

How to find out if WordPress is suppressing your blog

Talk to Carl

Be nice

Wait… Carl can’t answer your calls because his iPhone didn’t come with a charger.

Looking back

The more I write, the more I regret writing stuff in the past. Dear God, some of my old posts are so embarrassing that I regret having to follow my own blog (WordPress, by default makes you follow your own blog. Pretty deep, if you think about it). Having said that, those are the posts that got me here. I am pretty sure an older me will look back at this post and get embarrassed. That’s what life is. A series of looking back at the fuck-ups. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter where you look because there’s stars everywhere.

That last quote doesn’t make any sense, but I need to believe that I said something smart, so I am going to leave it there.

Blogging advice

What do you do when you feel the urge to write, but just can’t think of anything? What do you do when there are beautiful thoughts in your head, but they refuse to come out as words?

You let it go.

Maybe call your mom and confirm that you weren’t a mistake. 

Expectation Vs Reality

I expected my fever to subside quicker than the time it took for Reddit to turn into Facebook, but that’s just not the case. It’s taking longer than the time it took for people to realize that YouTube is turning into Cable TV.

I gave in to Chrome

The good news is that the “Chrome” I’m referring to is not a nickname for drugs. I’m referring to the internet browser. I used to be the kid with all the cool apps. One app to view YouTube videos, another app to download them, yet another app to rip the audio from them. Not anymore. Big boy loves simplicity now. I don’t like clutter on any of my devices(this is really starting to sound like a Google ad). I use Edge on my PC. That’s it. Not Chrome, not Mozilla, just Edge. Boring, old, simple, Edge. I use Chrome on my phone, not Edge, and definitely not that Opera shit(faster, safer, my ass). Am I living in my own bubble by doing this? Nah. I don’t think so. I’m just happy with stock apps.
Unfortunately, that all changed today. I had it with Edge. It was giving me so much trouble, that I just had to install Chrome. Here’s the problem with Edge. I run into problems when I visit some questionable websites, namely WordPress(Ah! The irony, or some shit like that). To name a few:

1. The font would turn red. This is not a joke. The fucking font on WordPress would turn red, and stay that way until I restart the browser. Talk about some bloody mysterious shit.
2. Browsing WordPress would use up all of my computer’s memory. That’s right. Reading blogs about social anxiety would use up 8 gigs of RAM. I can’t afford a therapist for my laptop.
3. Typing words at the end of a sentence would replace words at the beginning of the sentence. Look, I realize I’m coming off pretty delusional right now. I realize that. But this shit actually happens to me. Me! Out of all the great writers on WordPress, the internet-demons chose to fuck with me. I’m not a writer. I don’t even read books. The last time I tried reading a novel, I forgot what it was about, halfway into the book. So I decided to fuck it and watch the movie instead. Having said that, I now have a whole new level of appreciation for books. That shit really hits the heart. I still hate them though.

Dental scare

As a kid, were you scared to go to the dentist? I was. Everything about it was scary. Let’s begin with the gigantic spaceship-light that hovers through the whole procedure. Who designed that? Why do you have to sacrifice your eyes to get your teeth fixed? That shit is overloading the eyes. Next, there’s the doctor, in search of cavities. Dude’s on a lunar mission. He’s all suited up, ready to dig into your exposed nerve endings. For some reason, he thinks that his frightening smile will calm you down. Suddenly, he starts talking to you about your school, choice of clothing, and favourite food (all really personal shit, by the way), like he’s a member of the family now. What we don’t realise is that the sneaky bastard is gathering vital information that he will later use to break you down. Then, there’s the nurse. She wipes your face and sticks a tube in your mouth. The tube sucks out all the water and saliva. She’s like the good guy, but then, you notice that she doesn’t stop STARING. Now, I really don’t mind some female attention. However, the death-stare would go on for the full procedure. I know, it’s her job, but anyone who stares at me for longer than a minute straight, is a threat. Plus, she’s having a virtual reality dream inside my mouth. So, I signal her to reposition the tube, because the sucker has stopped sucking, and my mouth is overflowing.

Then the procedure, aka, mouth-rape, begins. The commencement of the mouth-raping is signalled by the sound of what appears to be a chainsaw, but really is just a little spinning Beyblade. As the construction workers enter your mouth hole, you make a promise to yourself. “I will do whatever it takes to never be in this situation again”, but that rarely happens. Oh! I almost forgot to mention the TV that’s supposed to calm you down, but instead bores you to such an extent that you lose all sensation. 

As an adult, I am still scared to go to the dentist. I sill have my childhood fears. On top of that, I don’t want to sell my house to pay the doctor. I prefer to keep the house. I like my house. Jokes aside, dentists are cool. They are doing really good work. It’s not fun to fix people’s disgusting mouths. Plus, they help me smile with confidence(even though I’m crying inside).

Poseidon and winter’s anomalies

Long, long ago, in a small town called Topsia, lived a woodpecker named Poseidon. How did he get the name Poseidon, you ask? None of your business. I’m telling the story.
Now, Poseidon was a careful pecker, the kind that flies around with safety gear, like Tom Cruise. Poseidon’s only dream was to see his daughter get married to a industrialist named Timothy Olyphant, but alas! She was gay. News of her gayness spread far and wide, even to the nearby zoo. Now, the zookeeper of this zoo was a religious fundamentalist. When he saw two of these birds doing it at the water fountain, he lost his goddamn mind. He shooed them away.
That’s right. This guy wakes up in the morning, goes to work, and shoos away gay birds. If you thought your life was meaningless, think again and again and again.

Push it to the max

Loneliness has started to creep in. So I welcomed it like an old friend, and then took it to the park, because if there’s one way to beat loneliness, it’s to drown it in a sea of people. Lucky for me, it was one of the weirdest parks I’ve ever been to. Prepare for pictures that no one asked for.

Random cottage in the middle of the park, that doesn’t let people in, hence the fresh look.

 

Unlucky visitor who got turned to stone by park authorities when she tried to leave the park. #parkfears

 

Some of the visitors were captured by park authorities before they could leave the park. They are now forced to smile at new visitors.

 

“They gouged my eyes out and turned me into stone, but they gave me a cap. I kinda like it here now. It’s better than my desk job at Cisco”.

 

Kiss fans still rocking the tongue trick

 

Some of the visitors who were captured tried to revolt against park authorities. They went full-on war mode.

 

Oh, then there was Egypt

Money

I read an article in the paper today. It was about BIG DATA. I don’t know why I typed that in all caps. Maybe its’s to incite FEAR. Is it working? RELATIONSHIP, COMMITMENT, RENT, UNEMPLOYMENT!

Scary words. Anyway, the article had all the fancy quotes. “Data is the new oil”, “You are the product”, “Google needs to pay”. So here’s the deal. We know all these companies are profiting off of everyone who browses the internet. They study people’s online activity and make calculated assumptions. Assumptions, that other companies are willing to pay big money for. It helps them sell their products better. For example, if you search for a kitchen knife online, google tells its friend, amazon, that someone’s in the mood for some cooking. Amazon quickly sends you a mail about all that sexy kitchenware it has to offer. That’s right. All those condom ads on YouTube, appear for a reason.

It’s not just marketing. Companies study behavioural patterns. Entertainment companies want to know which parts of a movie excites you the most, so that they can make better movies. So, all this is fine. We already know that this is happening. What intrigues me is that the author went on to say that these companies need to start paying people for the data they collect. So that means, Google has to pay me for allowing it to study my interest in 90s cartoons.

I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s like getting paid for giving up privacy.

For no reason, here’s some music.