Anyhoodle, I ran across the Dancing Queen of Eastleigh here and I just wanted to say that she is my spirit animal. I haven’t got the strength to do this right now, but if I did, I would. Because this queen needs some backup princesses to really make this look work.

• 

  Tim Wayne 2 weeks ago

  I wonder if this woman knows she put a smile on the faces of over a hundred thousand people.

  · 21

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  Jane Rowland 2 weeks ago

  Hi Tim, yes she does know, through me taking this video I have now met her and we have become friends… she is so pleased she has made people happy and she still dances at the bus stop every day. :D

  · 27 in reply to Tim Wayne

Rob Ford and Pals

Ladies and Gentlemen, by now you’ve heard the rumour that Rob Ford, mayor of Toronto, has been caught on video smoking crack (and wearing unbecoming clothing). The owner of the video wants $100,000 for it, apparently not figuring that Ford would have that much hush money handy. That’s only three cents from each Canadian, so I thought it would make a nice exercise in national unity for us all to band together and buy this thing.

I sensed a need. I filled it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting the IndieGoGo fundraiser: Buy Rob Ford’s Crack Tape!

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has a lot of enemies. Do any of them have enough hatred to band together and purchase what editor John Cook of Gawker says is video of Rob Ford smoking crack?

Is it even worth $100,000? Maybe not to one Canadian, but to all Canadians?

This Victoria Day, let the nation band together, from sea to shining sea, from the far North to the southernmost reaches of Ontario, as one, united in their distaste for this mortifying homunculus.

For just three cents per citizen, we can assure the final ruin of Ford’s colourful, storied, allegedly indictable celebrity once and for all.

Are you with me, Canada? I SAID ARE YOU WITH ME???

*if we don’t reach the magical goal (asking price + 4% Indiegogo fee) we will make a bid of whatever we’ve gathered. If the bid is rejected, we don’t need your money after all.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC:

My mayor smoked crack first.—
Lizzie O'Leary (@lizzieohreally) May 17, 2013

Meanwhile, in Vancouver:

Our mayor runs an organic juice company.—
stefan (@boring_as_heck) May 17, 2013

and there IS no key

Ah, GPOY right there. I often feel like the smartest person in the room, but some days I literally feel like the only smart person in any room or even outdoors, all the way to the sky and including any spelunkers or snorklers currently under the surface of the planet. And then I go to Facebook, where I receive confirmation of this.

Yesterday I went to a meeting of people interested in a particular do-gooder nonprofit where the project lead spent FIFTEEN MINUTES defining the words in the title of the talk. If he didn’t think we knew what those words meant, why did he think we were there?

It’s spam, man

Ah, AutoDM spam! That takes me back; back all the way to 2009. Mariah Carey wants to know what love is. The Glee cast found somebody to love. Alicia Keys and Jay-Z were in an Empire state of mind.

And spammers had just discovered Twitter.

The revolting Auto-DM, in which a marketer automatically privately messages some “Like us on Facebook and ask me about MLM marketing” garbage, is a noxious remnant of that time, clinging to its loathsomely recrudescent existence with brittle, shattered claws, refusing to let go, refusing to acknowledge that, in fact, it is noxious spam.

And today I got one.

Now, I’m not cruel. Okay, sometimes I’m not cruel. And people do get hacked, do authorize apps which then go bad and start DMing spam. So I generally give them a heads-up along the lines of “oh, and did you mean to send that spam?”

And so it was on Twitter today, when I got an autoDM from @Hvacrpro, a self-proclaimed “World Shaper, Media Shaker,Game Changer & Innovator’ Progressive Democratic Union Party. Love my Country, & Christian, Live2Tweet&Love2Live,Teabagger whisperer” and Blogspot blogger. Oooh, colour me impressed!

It went something like this.

5h

Hvacrpro @Hvacrpro

Hi! You can auto follow back, find unfollowers, unfollow inactive users, check for fake followers, and more FREE at bit.ly/14quajJ

3h

raincoaster @raincoaster

Or I could become offended by this spam

16m

Hvacrpro @Hvacrpro

spam is sales, promotion and marketing… this is not the same its an automated message, get with the times.

Not exactly sure what his brand of “conservative corporatism” is meant to conserve, but I don’t know many corporations who’d be happy to admit they’d hired this loosaire.

GPOY, bitch please edition

I can’t take credit for the title: that was all the doing of Gabriel, of Vankleek Hill fame. He thought the original title of my profile as a WordPress.com tech support forum volunteer was completely inappropriate: Meet a Forum Volunteer: Lorraine Murphy does lack a certain zing, does it not?

I’ve apparently answered 60,000 questions in the forums, and if I had to guess I’d say about 5% of those snippily (scroll through this blog for examples like this one). I didn’t include this in the interview, but once I got an email from a senior support staffer w/r/t a snarky reply I’d made some rando who insisted on being given instructions for something basic but NOT, god forbid, either a copy/paste of the info in the support docs or a link to the appropriate page: nooooo, he wanted someone to put the exact same thing into words in a completely unique way, just for him/her/it, because he/she/it was a very busy person/thing and couldn’t be bothered to read prefab answers but wanted bespoke, immediately, and for free.

My reply began, “Listen Princess…” and continued from there. The staffer emailed to say he probably SHOULD have deleted the thread, but it was just too damn funny, so it’s out there still somewhere in the archives. Happy Hunting.

But back to the glorious interview with ME ME ME! Here’s a taste of the wonders that lie within!

You’ve posted over 60,000 replies in the WordPress.com forums since 2006. Thank you for your support! What types of questions do you like helping users with, and what do you find the most rewarding about contributing?

I like answering someone’s first question the most. People are often shocked by how fast they get an answer, how clear it is, and how they can put the solution to work right away; they’re very grateful, and it’s wonderful to see. The next best thing is when people who’ve asked questions in the past come to the forums and start answering questions themselves.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from your volunteer experience in the forums?

Meaningful, strong relationships can be forged over mundane, repetitive questions about domain mapping. Really, my forum experience at WordPress.com shows that humans are, even in the midst of technology, fundamentally human.

One of my friends reported that his (positive) comment on the post had been first held in moderation, then deleted. And he didn’t even swear! They’re awfully careful at Corporate WordPress Global HQ, and very, very polite. As you can imagine, there was a titch of editing to my responses, but I’d tried hard not to swear so they didn’t change much except to cut for length.

One of the commenters called my situation a “rags to riches blogger story” which shows you how low people set the bar for riches nowadays, although it was very nice of her.

Anyhoodle, it’s very good for hits. Why, between this with it’s two hundred plus social shares, and the Mummified Fairy Post, now enjoying a renaissance thanks to some random OTHER mummified fairy trying to steal its thunder, looking at the stats graph is like travelling back in time to the glory days of Follow links on the Global Tag Pages. Sigh. It seems so, so long ago now.

We had to blog in black and white back then, kids. Uphill in the snow.