In the entry before this one, directly below, a commenter posted with the message:
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often. Margaret”
Perspicacious Poster Larry e-mailed TG and pointed out that this Susan (or Margaret) had been sending the same message to many, many bloggers, leaving her URL to click on. No, she doesn't really think that TG's blog is enjoyable reading, and yes, she's a scammer just trying to get people to click on her website. After learning this, TG did some investigative work and found that it's not just one person, but many people who are sending this message around to bloggers. Shame, shame, though really, there is no, or very little, shame on the Interweb. I know, duh....
Let's cleanse our palette with a new library story. This in from Audie:
“When I was a young boy, the library was part of a municipal building which also housed the police station. You couldn't enter the library from the front door. Instead, you had to walk to the side of the building and go in through the basement garage where all the cop cars were parked. This also served as the entrance to the "real" police station. If you needed to pay a parking ticket or wanted to talk to an officer, you went through the front door. You used the side door if you had to book a belligerent drunk or strung-out hippie. Or, you know, just wanted a check out some Maurice Sendak. Where the Wild Things Are, indeed.
I don't really have memories of being there with my mother, though that seems understandable to me now. I don't expect a hippie felt very comfortable walking through the police station. The library was small and dark, but the kid's section was in its own room. They even had records for children; I had a fondness for Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales. I read of John John Twillinger, Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, Little Tim, Babar…
And I was always careful to return my books on time. After all, wasn't that the real reason why the library was in the same building as the police station?”
Back when I worked for Congressman Steny Hoyer (well before the internet, I might add), we received a letter from a young "constituent" who said his name was also Steny. As I recall, the young man's father had died so he didn't know the origin of the name but just wanted to "share." Of course, given that Steny is a very unusual name, we wanted to respond and it was up to me to draft the letter. For some reason, however, I began to smell a rat. I called a friend who worked for Caspar Weinberger, and, low and behold, they has received a similar letter from a young man named Caspar.....we checked others and sure enough, someone had written the same letter to several other prominent politicians. I can't imagine why they would have wasted their time; maybe to collect a bunch of letters from Washington, DC politicos, all saying how sorry they were about the father and how carrying a name like Steny (or Caspar) was really important, even if you were whipped regularly in the school yard....Needless to say, I did not have to write a response and we never knew who wrote the letters. I think the media got onto it and maybe there was a piece in Roll Call. I'm sure there are lots of people these days sending modest notes to bloggers such as Susan sent to TG...but I still can't understand why and wouldn't it be great to have that much time on your hands!
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