So, from time to time the Postmaster at the Swiftpassage webs will get a robotic email from the WordPress system cheerfully informing me that qrrkcft@numnutz.lv, or some equally prosaic entity, has applied for citizenship as a “member” of this blog. More excitingly, they might have placed (or attempted to place) 173 or so new spamments, offering up their insights on what’s here to read, along with enticing offers for  services, or goods. Most often the latter are pharmaceuticals with charmingly mispelled names, such as Ciagra or Vialis.

( Incidentally,  and appropos of nothing at all, my father’s preferred hair grooming tonic, back in the “Mad Men” sixties was a fragrant liquid called “Vitalis”, which was fortified with a magic ingredient called V-7, which made his hair kind of stiff.  Google tells me this hair-groom is , through the good graces of the Clairol company,  still available at Wal*Mart and through Amazon. Wikipedia, however, seems not to have heard of it. Indeed, the disambiguation choices at Wikipedia for Vitalis are intent on sorting out a platoon of Middle Age monks and saints, most of whom lived in hermetic seclusion, probably because of poor hair grooming, due, perhaps, to a lack of stiffness?)

Because I cannot vouch for the safety of Ciagra should it be a pharmaceutical, although, I suppose it MIGHT be a simple transposition error for the plural of cigars in Latvian,   (Well, noo,  Google-translate tells me that “cigara” in Latvian means “weed”.  Oh, wait,  I wonder!  Now, that’s a pharmaceutical I’d not have suspected…),  nor can I report on the efficacy of Vialis,  it seems prudent to remove these offers and links to commercial websites!  However, I could imagine making an exception for “Vialis, With V-7”. Yes,  I’d let that one pass.

Long story short,  this is the kind of problem a web blog develops when IT SITS TOO LONG!

I have been remiss!  Bless me WordPress, for I have sinned! It have been almost SIX MONTHS since my last confessions here,  and we have both suffered for it. In this, the new year, the first since the expiration of the Mayan calendar, I shall make amends. I am determined to post something, A N Y T H I N G, at least monthly,  to extirpate my past sins of omission, and to expiate the Mayan gods, who have so graciously allowed us this new year, at least until the next asteroid lines up on us.

I feel better already! Now, I’ve got to go run an errand; it seems I’m running low on hair gel…