I am sitting on my deck drinking coffee from my Badcock and More mug. We have a fire going and I’m wearing long sleeves and sweatpants. Summer is dead. Long live fall.
I am also wearing rubber shoes and my feet are cold.
We’re listening to The Cramps on Randy’s phone. The music sounds tinny, like listening to AM on a transistor radio. I’m thinking about making some bacon to go with our lemon blueberry slime muffins.
I am disconnected.
And that is very nearly true!
I am out of sorts because I don’t have my laptop (or I didn’t when I first wrote this). The world is not at my fingertips. It’s just me, ink, paper and my thoughts.
Well, it was just me and my thoughts after waging the battle of the blue pen.
Randy brought out a single notebook and a pen and I said that we would both need one. He went back inside and came out with a second notebook and a black ink pen. He then attempted to switch the blue pen with the black pen.
Randy: Here, you get the black pen.
Me: I like blue ink. I want the blue pen.
Randy: I went in and got everything, so I get the blue pen.
Me: Did you hear the part where I said I like blue ink?
So, anyway, I used the blue ink pen to write this post.
I belong to a writer’s group on Facebook and the women in the group are hilarious, totally supportive, and talented. I love this group. This is where I can post thoughts that I am uncomfortable to post here, or heaven help me, on my personal Facebook page.
I stopped writing for a moment and turned to Randy.
Me: Oh man. Did I tell you what I did last night?
Randy: Accidentally posted something stupid on Facebook?
Me: Fuck you, it could have been something else.
Randy: Doubtful.
Me: I posted something on my page that I meant to post in my writer’s group. It was perfectly fine for the writer’s group, but on my page it sounded needy and raw and stupid.
Randy: Tequila and social media don’t mix. What did it say?
Me: Hold on and I’ll read it to you.
Me: Opinions, please. Is the pop up window that asks blog readers to subscribe annoying? I mean, I kind of think they are annoying, but not enough to make me storm off in a huff or anything. And I have one on my blog, which I’m thinking of renaming hypocritical rubber shoes in hell. So..what say you? Annoying enough to get rid or, or effective tool to gain subscribers.
Which brings me to part two of this post. HOLY FUCK it takes me forever to gain subscribers. How should I entice new readers? Boobie pictures? Keeping in mind, I am 52 and boobie pictures might be more of a threat than a treat.
Randy: Dumbass.
Me: I know. I didn’t even realize it until I noticed people who aren’t in my group were commenting on it.
Randy: What did they say?
Me: I don’t remember. I deleted the post. I think they were pretty much half and half on whether or not the pop up thingy is annoying.
Me: I think I’ll write a blog post about this.
Randy: Okay. So, you are upset that you accidentally posted those thoughts on your Facebook page, yet you are willing to write it in a blog post? That seems reasonable to you?
Me: I know! Right? Weird how that works out.
So, anyone who reads this who also commented on my Facebook post, sorry about deleting you. I just spazzed.
Also, if you are so inclined, an annoying little box will be popping up in a moment. Why don’t you subscribe? I’d like to say if you subscribe, then the box won’t pop up anymore, but that would be a lie. The point is, you’re stuck with the box either way, might as well subscribe.
To be honest, I despise those pop up boxes. I’ll be in the middle of reading a post, then BAM there it is covering the whole screen. It’s like a pop-up ad from the early 2000s.
I am, however, willing to brave them here just so I can read about your misadventures on Facebook.
Haha. Thank you, Scott. Yeah..a train wreck, no matter how small, is always worth a view.
I’m a dinasaur and thought I had to keep filling it out and subscribing long after my initial subscribing. What a relief knowing I will continue to receive your wisdom without having to regain entry. All joking aside…your worth it!
Oh man..if nothing else, I am glad this post cleared that misunderstanding up. In your defense, it should stop popping up after you’ve already subscribed. That makes sense.
I’m not a fan of the pop up box but am a complete hypocrite (so much for An Honest Sinner) because I have them. They help but I know people hate them. I guess I just view them as necessary evil…kind of like social media.
I feel about them the way you do. Not a huge fan of them, but they don’t bug me THAT much.
The first rule of writers group is no one talks about writers group bwahahaha.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who accidentally posts on their Faceplant page.
Pop-ups don’t bother me now; in the great realm of things they’re nothing but a blip on the radar. It’s the big bleeps that might be a UFO or a colon exam we should be worried about.
Right? Right?!?!
or a UFO AND a colon exam.
Here I was getting all disappointed and as I hovered over the comment box BOOYAH. I hate the damn things too. Especially when they want go away. That better no said…I have one too. I’m always here though…so forgive me for not biting??
I’m totally good with that…I’m just glad you’re here.
Go get some socks on those tootsie !!
Thank god I don’t have Facebook still stuck in the one finger typewriter sort of thing and there’s a lot to be said for pen and paper Ha Ha no pop up box and I don’t get myself in trouble hitting the wrong button BUT if it wasn’t for technology And pop up box I could not subscribe and read your great story’s .
I STILL don’t have socks on…but my feet are always hot so I am kind of digging the cold feet.
Hate the pop up messages but tolerate them because they’re on ALL of my favorite blogs. I would have one if I were smart enough and not too lazy to learn how to put one on mine.
I am guilty of accidental posts on my personal page that has zero association with my blog or my book. And every single time I have a mini heart attack.
I’d still be down for a boob pic. Just sayin.
Randy keeps asking me when I’m putting my boobs on the internet….
I do the same thing every time one of hose pops us: “man that’s annoying. I already subscribed! Fuck off, auto message!! I need to put one of those on my blog.” 🙂
Hahah…same here.
I admit it. I hate that box. I also haven’t subscribed because I read you through Bloglovin’ and I don’t need another thing clogging up my inbox. I am actually more likely to miss you there than on Bloglovin’!
Awesome! I don’t care how people get here, honestly…I’m just glad you are here.
I hate those things, usually when I’m in the middle of reading a local news story where they’re describing the mass murderer as sounding exactly like my husband- and then BAM – pop up. I scramble to get rid of it only to find out that the mass murderer is the wrong age, wrong ethnicity, wrong county, etc. Whew, lucked out again! (Poor Ken).
all that is between you and the next scary serial killer….pop ups.
I don’t mind the popup box; it’s easy to get rid of. But I hate the obnoxious ads on others’ sites that refuse to leave, so I end up trying to read around and under them. Aggh! And worse than that are those pictures over in the right margin of the things that live in our stomachs! They scare me to death.
I love all the ‘Fight Club’ references. My daughter and I saw that on vacation and it is one of my all-time favorites.
I haven’t seen that movie in years, I love it though.
The pop up box hurts my feelings. It makes me think “Don’t you know I’ve already subscribed? Don’t you care about me enough to keep track? I thought this was a personal invitation, because you wanted me, in particular, to subscribe. But no, not only is this an open invite to anyone who lands on your blog, you’ll never be content with the number of subscribers you already have, no matter how loyal we are.” Wait…this is the computerized journal my therapist makes me write in to process my of feelings of betrayal, my trust issues, and to be completely honest about my deep insecurities, right? I hope so, because it sure would be embarrassing if anyone read this.
HAHAHHA…it can be our secret.
I don’t mind it too much. It usually pops up while I’m watching your twitter feed scroll by on the side bar, and it doesn’t interfere with that.
You have 793 subscribers, which is up, what? 127 from the 666 that I teased you about having a couple of months ago…
I check this blog every day anyway, so I don’t really need inbox notifications, and I don’t have one of those beepy things to tell me when I have a new email (I’m a Democrat fer chrissakes, that little thing would be going off every five seconds from the “Can you give us $3” crowd).
So you know what? Fuck it, I’ll subscribe. At least your blog let me decide for myself, unlike Aussa’s blog which just signed me up anyway, and still gives me pop-ups to boot…
Yeah…it’s a steady stream of the three dollar people…
Yeah, I have been growing, it just seems slow. I don’t even know why I’m impatient about it.
Oh, and I’m a black-ink-and-Pilot-pens kind of guy… Anything else and the ink dries too slowly. Being left-handed means I drag my hand through the stuff I’ve just written, and ball point ink smears all over the place.
Okay, I got the pop-up box asking me to subscribe so I was totally confused. I thought I had subscribed that’s how I was reading your blog via my email instead of following you via FB as I’ve always done. I must admit to an irrational fear of signing up for anything worthwhile via my email. It may be a commitment thing, or it may be a fear of getting one more thing in my inbox. All the good stuff gets buried beneath all the shit-eating spam bullshit.
I don’t care how you get here…I’m just glad you are here!
So what do you have against black ink? I’d always take the black pen over the blue… Always…
And I have no pop up box on my blog but a chimp could count my subscribers on one hand…
I don’t know why I don’t like black ink…I just don’t.
I love your conversations with Randy. They always make me smile and laugh. As for the pop up? I hate pop ups especially when I’ve already subscribed and it keeps popping up no matter. It doesn’t care if you’ve already subscribed. Apparently you should do so every time you visit…ya see? I vote to get rid of it. I use the Hello bar on my site which is not intrusive at all. Just my personal opinion though. Or try the boobie pics. 😉
Thank you! A lot of the times they make me laugh too…sometimes, they make me want to set him on fire. HAHHA
Ha, I almost posted my anonymous blog on my very public one once. That would have been seriously unfortunate, so I’m glad I spotted I hadn’t switched over to the other one just in time!
Yep, juggling between places you can say certain things and others you can’t, or shouldn’t, can be dangerous if you’re tired or there’s alcohol involved 🙂
I do find pop up boxes annoying but I have one on my website too, not that it does me any good!
Oh man…I’m glad you caught that!
Pop up boxes, ANY pop up box, is annoying. Especially ads and subscriber boxes when a page loads (there’s a site my friend group uses regularly to reference game rules while playing Pathfinder, and it will “load” and then load for real a moment later, when you’ve already started typing your search. It’s teeeeerrrrrible.) I’d really rather visit a page daily than receive an email about it. In fact, if I receive an email about it, I almost certainly won’t visit the page, since it’s there in my email. I don’t know if that’s normal. I tend not to assume that I’m normal.
I think that is a good assumption to not make. I also do not make this assumption
ARRRRGGGHHHHH! For the love of mary, stop all this technical talk right now or you’ll lose me. Blue pen. Jeez, Randy.
Hahaha…I know…thankfully, I have Randy here to handle my technical stuff. I do NONE of it…and I’m a computer programmer. Hahaha. The code I write is old though…like me.
no pop ups please…but I do have you on my blog roll so that anyone who visits my blog (dont hold your breath for the vast numbers…) will get to see who I read…
THANK YOU for adding me to your blog roll!! I am honored!
Hi M-
I find them annoying bc I have subscribed. But everything annoys me so don’t even try to personalize my comment.
Love,
Jill
Sigh…everything annoys me, too.
You hate the pop-up box. You get the blue pen for that.
Admittedly that’s easy for me to say because I have a small collection of fountain pens I wouldn’t dream of letting anyone else use. Except the dildo-heads who make those cheap black and white journals I like to write in have recently decided to use even cheaper paper that doesn’t absorb ink very well so I’m pretty much forced to use roller balls which is annoying but I guess what matters is I’m still writing.
They’ve also reduced the pages from 100 to 80 so it takes me less time to fill a journal which allows me to feel like I’m accomplishing more.
The point is the pop-up box is annoying but it does a wonderful thing: it reminds people to subscribe. It’s the cheap-paper-fewer-pages-journal of your blog.
It was kind of fun to hand write much of this post. Slower, more deliberate. Frustrating though, because I have a hard time reading my own writing. haha.
Good for you in keeping it all straight, posts to which site, until now! I couldn’t do it, that’s for sure. Everyone has the box except me so I am used to it. Let me know if you find it works or other secrets to increase your subscribes.
I will let you know…as soon as I figure out the secret. haha.
oh dear…..that darn subscriber box – I never tick them because they annoy me. I don’t have one and if only two women and a dog read my post……well I have to live with that.
You know what? You’re writing and that is awesome. That is 100% better than people who want to write and then don’t.
I don’t subscribe because you already come up in my Blogger feed, and I have enough stuff coming into my inbox without daily reminders that a blogger I love has posted again (’cause I KNOW, OK?). Your pop-up box is way less annoying than the pop-ups on other sites I frequent. At least it goes away when I click on it and doesn’t reappear all over my screen like some freaking pixelated ghost.
Hahha..Yeah…
Randy says it HAS been effective..but I don’t know about keeping it. I find them annoying. I’m such a hypocrite.
I am so annoyed at the constant beeping of the trucks next door building and building that nothing else even comes close. Pop up boxes go away easily, unlike trucks with content beeping sounds. I am annoyed, menopausal and on the edge….Pop up boxes probably won’t even come near
I am annoyed, menopausal and on the edge as well. We could rule the world, couldn’t we?
This is hilarious! And I have to say – I HATE popups with a passion. They’re probably effective but I’m always like “get outta my face.”
Hahaha…thank you! I don’t hate them that much…but I am not a fan.
Any time one pops up, it is a temporary annoyance. But, I’m ADD, and so I quickly forget about it because I’m distracted by the next thing…By the way, I understand wanting a certain color of ink – depends on how I’m feeling, whether it’s black or blue. Or, there’s times when it ends up being pencil (and a mechanical one at that!) because there’s none to be found in the house…even though I’ve bought 13,753 of them so far…
HAHAHAHAHA…you sound JUST like Randy when it comes to pens.
I was a subscriber before subscribing was cool.
You hipster, you.
I already subscribe so it is kinda annoying but I figure it really doesn’t cost me anything to close it down – it’s HEAPS better than Captcha that people have on their blogs which would make me NOT comment – just so I don’t have to deal with it !!!!
I always hated the cold before I hit menopause – now I love it !!! Even sleep on summer sheets through winter to lie in a nice cool bed at night – before we had flannelette sheets and an electric blanket which was on every night !!!!!! Cold feet are da bomb now – LOL !!
Right? My feet are almost ALWAYS hot….I don’t mind when they are a little cold. haha.
I already subscribed. I never subscribe to pop up windows. If I want to subscribe I search the page for the place to do so. Never ever use the annoying popups. If anything they would put me off subscribing. #justsaying 🙂
I’m about 50/50 on whether it is effective for me. Depends on my mood.
I love your blog.
I hate the popup box. I especially hate it when I’m on phone data, and it loads, but then my flaky phone data connection disappears before the blog post proper loads completely. I have “unlimited” data (assuming I can get any data at all), but if I had a data cap I’d be much more annoyed.
I agree that posting on your blog is different from posting on Facebook. It’s just a different atmosphere.
ooh…I didn’t think about phones. That would be a pain in the ass.
I totally subscribed way back in the day, because I’m awesome like that. 😀
I’d say the popup box is like you said–annoying but not enough to make me click the red X. I missed it on FB, because I gave up the internet entirely after the Oregon college shooting and haven’t turned it back on (except for blogs and email and my French lessons) ever since, and it’s been AWESOME. Something in me just snapped after that.
Followers, ahhhh…I don’t even bother wondering about followers, because my stats show that I’ve had eleventy million views per day (ok, it’s more like 20-99. “OMIGAWD 97 VIEWS?!?”), but I think I have like 12 followers (or 15, or 3. I’m not even sure). But then I think if I had eleventy million followers I’d have to focus on having something interesting or funny to say like every day or every week, and that’d just be too much commitment. I envy you that.
PS– I love your conversations! 😀
Disconnecting is something I need to do. I can take the news anymore.
And thank you, sister. 🙂
I’ve been wondering about that as well. I am thinking of getting rid of the pop up and just going with the one I made myself in my sidebar. Who knows!
yeah..the consensus seems to be overwhelmingly against.
I don’t mind the pop-up boxes if they are not in my direct line of site. When they pop up right in the middle of the screen, they drive me batty. This is mostly because I’m on a laptop and I then have to try to maneuver the cursor over so I can close out the pop-up box – but because I’m technologically challenged (I still text with one finger), it takes me a couple of tries and by that time, I’m frustrated and feeling like an idiot. Some blogs I visit have the pop-up box come up near the bottom right of the screen – which I can tolerate (but perhaps that defeats the purpose??)