Last Updated on: 8th January 2014, 10:10 am
We are, in fact, still alive and well. In my case I should probably add the word finally to that alive and well part, since not being well took like 5 days away from me.
Whatever’s going around right now…don’t get it. It’s far from the worst thing you’ll ever have, but it has this way of wasting your energy away to nothing yet tricking you into thinking you’re well again and ready to take on the world. That and being tired even after you’ve slept your life away all day gets really old really quickly. Lazing about and watching TV is fun, but not when it’s your only option.
Between that, a concert, some houseguests and Carin being a whole lot more unavailable than before, nothing went up for a week. Oh well, it happens. But I’m once again among the living so we should be back in business.
I’m thankful that I was well enough for the Steven Page show on Thursday. Considering how great it was, it would have been a shame to miss it. For me, missing out on Barenaked Ladies concerts has been a thing since before most people outside of Canada knew who they were, and I was starting to worry that the curse was going to extend to shows by anybody that had ever been associated with them. But I made it and it was awesome. If they had decided to play all night, I’d have been happy to sit there and watch.
I remember when he left the band a couple of years ago wondering how either side was going to carry on without the other. It seemed like they were to each other what bread is to sandwiches. But after giving his solo album a few listens since I got it last Christmas and then going to the show a few days ago, I can tell you for sure that Steven Page is doing just fine. The solo tunes feel right at home beside his BNL work, which isn’t something you can always say when somebody goes out on his own.
Speaking of his BNL work, it really struck me while I was there just how many of their best songs are his. I don’t always remember exactly who wrote what, but there’s never been any mistaking who sang it. Steven Page is a hard guy to replace because nobody else quite sounds like him. If anybody’s gone to a recent BNL show, how do they get around that and how weird is it hearing all of those songs sung by somebody else if they even play them? I imagine they have to play them since without them there’d be not much left, but how can it possibly be the same? Does it even need to be the same? Am I thinking this is more an issue than it is because Steven Page and his new band were able to be the Barenaked Ladies and the new band so seamlessly? Whatever the answer, go see him if you get the chance. You won’t regret it.
Now I’m off to continue trying to put life back to normal, which apparently involves deleting the 1100 and counting spam comments that have been hitting the site all weekend and into today. Only 2 of them made it through the filter which is impressive, but I’d love to know what’s causing the spike. I’ve been kinda off the grid for a while, so is this happening to anybody else?
And this…this is the part where the post ends abruptly.
>I'm wondering if something is up with comments or if all my posts suck. I haven't gotten any comments since the audio blog, though I know that doesn't necessarily even mean anything. Glad to have ya back!
>I've been kinda catching up on the posts I missed over the weekend and I was surprised you didn't have any comments too. Usually you're full of them. Have you noticed drops in your visitor numbers lately or anything? I certainly wouldn't say the posts sucked, so could be a case of a whole lot of people like me who were reading but being quiet about it.
>There's a drop, probably because I had gotten out of the habit of writing very often. I don't get many hits from Twitter, that's one thing I've noticed. I haven't gotten spam comments though. That's weird.
>We've done really well off of Twitter. I thought it would help, but I've been surprised at times how much.
Odd that you don't get much in the way of spam. Maybe it has to do with the fact that our blog is so much bigger than yours in terms of posts. Whatever it is, be thankful. It's quite annoying, especially at times like this when the things come in sometimes 30 at a time.
>Do you get the spam in email or something? I never check my spam box at Blogger. I never get any. Maybe since I've got comment moderation?
I haven't gotten much traffic at all. It's mostly the readers I'm used to that pop up on recent page load activity. A lot say no referring link but go directly to a post, so I suppose those could be Twitter. I'm thinking most of the people who follow me just don't care to read if it's not about the Rays haha!
>Yup. Every single comment that hits the site also heads straight for our email. I can't imagine having to moderate all of this.
The Blogger spam filter works very well as far as not letting the crap actually publish. It makes the odd mistake, but nothing's perfect. We see it but you don't, which is nice. But I think we'd see quite a bit less of it if Blogger's way of disallowing annonimous comments wasn't so goddamn stupid. You can choose not to allow them, but that also shuts out the ability for people to comment with a name/website address without having to register with some sort of service. Not everybody wants a Google account or a Live Journal or any of that other stuff, and there's no good reason why they should have to set something up just so they can leave comments on a Blogger run site.
>Wow, I only moderate real comments. I don't get any spam. I agree. I've got anonymous posting enabled for those with no accounts. It would be nice if they could just enter a name rather than have the bots able to select anonymous.
>The spammers are capable of entering names too, but most of ours has always come from the nameless ones. And because of the way I feel about people having to register I can't just turn it off.
>I seriously have to catch up on your blog. Man I'm spent after work.
>It shouldn't take you too long to catch up on her stuff unless you put it off much longer. She's doing the post every day thing now, but before that hadn't been saying much on the old bloggeroo. Oh no, I just said bloggeroo. You're starting to rub off on me after all this time hahahaha.
And you're a funny sort of spent. You're all boing boing boing day was great when you get home, then some jerk knocks you out with delicious food and you have no desire to touch a computer…which I can't blame you for.