Category: Bloggus interruptus

Block editor

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Once more around the block.

Some of yis have noticed that commenting via Safari seems to have been restored, all praise to Cthulhu, may Its tentacles grow ever longer.

Last night I heard from a code wrangler at Automattic who advised thusly:

This issue has been forwarded to our development team. I cannot give a time frame on when the issue will be fixed but a workaround is to disable “blocks in comments.”

Huzzah, etc. Remember the last time we had trouble with comments? How it forced me into finally abandoning the Classic Editor for the Block Editor, and changing themes to boot?

Yet now, here we are again. Because not only are comments buggered without the workaround, pending a solution from the development team, it could be that the advanced age of my current “new” theme, Penscratch 2, may be part of the problem.

Thus, a tip of the Mad Dog Safari Hat goes out to our own Steve O’, who suggested as much in — wait for it — comments.

Meanwhile, cheers to Jason the Code Wrangler for kicking this thing up the chain of command and recommending the workaround, which works.

While we await the Wisdom from On High I may slap a new coat of theme on an old blog and ask you Safari users to try commenting there. Steve O’ and Pat O’B have been able to comment on this junkpile, which runs on Independent Publisher 2, but I think that theme is a tad long in the tooth as well.

Is this thing on?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

While we await the wisdom of the WordPress Wizards, SAO — one of our longtime readers who can still post comments — suggests that the Dog Blog’s theme, Penscratch 2, may be at least part of the problem.

Penscratch 2 is an old theme — not as old as its predecessor, Kubrick — but still, plenty of white hair in its ears and a stoop to its bony shoulders, plus it seems to have forgotten where it left its keys to the comments. Also, it may have shit the bed.

So, while we wait — and wait, and wait, annnnnnnnnnnnd wait —I need someone who is still unable to comment using Safari, DuckDuckGo, or whatever to try adding a comment to the most recent post, “Age limits,” at this unused blog, which runs the Independent Publisher 2 theme.

Thanks in advance. More as we learn it.

Oh, eat me. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
“Phone appétit, monsieur.”

¡Basta ya! I embarked on a news diet yesterday. As in “fasting.”

Throughout the long Fourth I consumed exactly zero news, save for checking the weather to see if it was suitable for the healthy outdoor exercise.

And really, I could’ve just stepped outside for that.

But still. Shit.

The media had been keening without letup at a pitch that made an Irish wake look like sitting zazen. The Internet is said to be bottomless, the way a cup of joe used to be, but they came perilously close to filling the fucker up.

The fans in my 10-year-old MacBook Pro were approaching a Boeing level of failure. Every hot take a platter of steaming horseshit, smack in the gob. In my Father’s Bistro there are Many Dishes, I mused blasphemously. I sure as hell don’t have to eat this shit.

So I pulled a Level One Roberto Duran: “No más, no más.”

As mentioned in the previous post, yesterday I took my coffee on the couch, not at the desk. After breakfast Herself and I went for a short trail run. I followed that up with a 90-minute ride.

Then I set a loaf of bread to baking, poured the fixings for Sarah DiGregorio’s chipotle-honey chicken tacos into the Crock-Pot, argued with the Voices in my head about which of our many subscriptions we should cancel, entertained Miss Mia Sopaipilla, and served up the grub.

The three of us dined in front of the TV, streaming a couple episodes of “The Bear,” season three. (Spoiler alert: There was less hollering, even when Sugar was in labor.)

Afterward we joined the neighbors for their annual fireworks extravaganza in the cul-de-sac. No flyers or boomers, just ground-level sparklers and sizzlers. But an enjoyable tradition nonetheless.

One of the grandkids was leaping and cavorting throughout, trying to grab a handful of smoke, as grandpa performed his pyrotechnical wizardry. I caught my share of the exhaust while sitting down, in my clothing, eyes, and windpipe, and both Herself and I had to hit the showers afterward to hose off the residue of whatever those wily foreign devils put in their whizbangs.

The Republic I left to its own devices. I expect there was no shortage of counsel, and plenty of fireworks, too.

• Meanwhile, a housekeeping note: If any of you have tried and failed to post a comment recently, and you are using an Apple device, the problem may reside with the Safari browser. Herself was able to comment from an M1 Mac Mini using Firefox. I’ve pinged the WordPress people and will get back to you with whatever they have to say. But in the meantime, you might try using another browser to make your voices heard.

Sour note

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
“We should get $2 mil’ for this gig. One for the snatch, the other for this cool ransom note.”

I hope none of yis paid this tab.*

March has been heavy on various home “improvement” projects, visitations, landscape maintenance, a decline in the healthful and refreshing outdoor exercise, an abnormally spastic conga line of nightmares in the headlines, and an accelerating oscillation between exasperation and ennui that eventually led me to declare — and mind you, I’m quoting from memory, which is an unreliable source in the best of times, but it seems to me that these were more or less my words — “Fuck this shit.”

When even I find my musings unamusing, concerning perhaps, possibly even actionable, and yet the only place to run is off at the mouth, well … it’s time to batten the gob. Tick a lock. Zip it. Nobody wants to hear that shit, not even me, not even for free. “Tell it to Anne Frank,” as Jim Harrison’s titular character in “Warlock” was said to quip to those who whined about life’s difficulties.

So, yeah. An extended period of the shutting the fuck up seemed prudent. You’re welcome. We now return you to our usually scheduled blog, which is already in progress.

* Sorry, no refunds. Yrs., etc., The Kidnappers.

Double dumbstruck

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

Gassing up for the long commute.

“This heat’s not good for the brain. Turns out nothing much is good for the brain in the 2020s. TV rots it, the Internet turns it to jelly, the miserable climate bakes it, 90 percent of what we call ‘work’ is deliberately designed to actually erase the human brain; this has been proven. Podcasts: Now there’s a guaranteed way to reverse years of book-learning and social skills. There’s online gambling, TikTok … and then Queen Elizabeth II passed away and it was like a Bat-Signal in the sky to make everybody go extra double-dumb. … Only in Ireland did they seem to sort of be enjoying it all.” — Ken Layne, “Like a Hurricane,” Desert Oracle Radio

You said a mouthful, brother.

The news has been so relentlessly grotesque that I found myself double-dumbstruck, which is to say rendered speechless by astonishment while simultaneously catching a puck in the gob from a wildly flailing eejit.

The prospect of commenting on any of our ongoing Dumpster fires felt like pissing into the drinking water in Jackson, Mississippi — an enhancement, to be sure, but not a solution any sane person would swallow.

So I kept it zipped. Averted my eyes. Instead I watched the hummingbirds mobbing our feeders; the little buzzbombs will be leaving us shortly. Played with Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who remains extraordinarily kittenish for a 15-year-old cat. Rode the bike(s) — 130 miles last week, 140 this week.

With “Better Call Saul” in the rear view we branched out a bit in our evening TV-watching. I can recommend “Letterkenny,” (absurdly funny Canadians); “This Fool” (snarky South Central working-class vatos); “Belfast” (The Troubles through a child’s eyes); and “The Sandman,” derived, like “Watchmen,” from a high-gloss DC comic of which I had been ignorant.

• Honorable mention: “Funny Pages,” a bent coming-of-age story about a teenage cartoonist who gets an up-close-and-personal look at the subterranean bits of “underground comics.” Could be straight out of “Zap,” “Bijou,” or pretty much any other comic you read back when weed was still illegal. And yes, Your Humble Narrator recognized more than a few unsavory aspects of himself in this film.

What about literature, you ask? Check out a couple road-trippers on the ragged edge: the cabbie Lou in Lee Durkee’s “The Last Taxi Driver,” and the shaggy mercenary Will Bear in Dan Chaon’s “Sleepwalk.”

• Honorable mentions: “Night of the Living Rez” by Morgan Talty (his first book; dark tales of a Native community in Maine) and “Homesickness” by Colin Barrett (his second; darkly funny tales of the Irish at home and abroad).

If none of these diversions from the daily disaster does the trick for you, find a hummingbird to watch or a cat to play with.