Category: Uncategorized

So Where’s the Comments?

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

356 Quokka Stock Photos, Images | Download Quokka Pictures on Depositphotos®

You’d think a birthday party would be a great place to collect comments, even if it is only an imaginary birthday party. And don’t give me imaginary comments!

G’day, Byron the Quokka here at the Leester’s birthday party; and I never get a day off from being in charge of comment contests. This party’s off to a slow start, and we have only four comments so far. I told him we should’ve made the prize a bicycle, but did he listen? Not him!

Instead, you can win an autographed book or this cool T-shirt:

shirt

Yeah, I know that picture is just awful. What it says on the shirt is, “If they have to kill us, they’ve lost  –Lee Duigon”. You can count on it to start a conversation anywhere.

But first things first! Nobody wins anything until we get to 75,000 comments! We have passed 73,000, so we have less than 2,000 left to go. Will some of you please stop playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey and post some comments? Anyone would think I couldn’t do this job!

 

My Day So Far

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

may 31 2019 001

After a night of torrential rains, it’s a cool and sunny day. But I’m indoors because I have to write my weekly Newswithviews column–not as easy as it looks.

I was reluctant to come inside. Not just because the weather’s so nice today, but also because I was out there re-reading Behold!–and if I do say so myself, it’s a very cool book and I wanted to just go on reading it. I should point out that authors don’t always feel that way about their own books, especially when they’re still scrawled over a stack of legal pads.

Maybe I can finish the column in time to get back outside.

Meanwhile, I haven’t yet found a way to bring the blog’s view numbers back up to where they were. More quokkas, anyone? Would that do it?

Sanity Break: Dog Finds New Dad

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Portrait of black labrador resting head on man's leg, cropped black Stock Photo - Alamy

This is a true story my wife heard yesterday from her friend, Carol.

An elderly couple died, and were survived by two daughters and a dog. The daughters decided to put their parents’ house up for sale, and they sold it quickly, to an older couple. The husband reminded them of their father.

The buyers came by to see the house again, and meet the sellers, and this time the dog was there, too. Everybody sat down.

And the dog walked up and rested his head on the man’s leg. Spontaneously. As if the man reminded him, too, of the daddy who’d passed on. Really, why else?

“Has this dog got a home?” the man asked.

“Well, he was our parents’ dog and we don’t really know what we’re going to do with him.”

“I’ll take him! Yes, I’d be glad to take him!” said the man.

So the dog not only got to keep living in the home he knew, but got a new daddy and mommy in the bargain.

Dogs know things, you know: things about people. As this story goes to show.

Prayer Request: Phyl

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

My friend Susan asks for our prayers for her friend, Phyl, out in California, who’s afflicted with some serious medical woes–and her daughter is going to drive all the way there to see her: two stints of 15 hours each, driving alone. I’m told they haven’t seen each other in ten years.

Phyl has had some very rough times, these past few years, and she needs our prayers.

O Lord Our God, have mercy on your servant, Phyl Stover, whose health is frail; and please protect her daughter, and bring her safely to her mother’s bedside. In Jesus’ name and by the power of Jesus’ name, Amen.

Dating Tips for Awful People

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Eastern Collared Lizard | Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation

This male collared lizard is ready to rock and roll! Those are his mating colors. But wait! He has an awful personality, no one would be caught dead with him–

Enough of this. I’ve been dialoguing with WordPress for an hour, trying to find out why no Newswithviews referrals show up on my stats page, and why my viewer numbers are so bad.

If I understand what he told me–and it’s a big if, I might not have understood it at all–my promble is with the search engines. Somehow my ranking in the search engine world has bottomed out. For instance, I had 2,242 search engine referrals in December, but only 1,703 in April. That only accounts for part of the drop-off, though.

I’m told it would help if I got more action on the social media. Well, I don’t know–how do I get anyone to share my posts on his or her social media page? I put all my posts on Patty’s Facebook page. Where they go from there, I know not.

So, just for the halibut, I have resorted to a mostly dishonest headline for this post to see if “dating tips” will tempt some search engines. Probably it’ll just make awful people mad at me when they realize they won’t be getting any sure-fire dating tips, after all.

Wait, here’s one: don’t have an awful personality. Just don’t. How’s that for advice?

Anyway, let’s see what happens next. I have no idea how to pump up my search engine ranking. Maybe if I could get my Twitter page going again, along with Instagram or whatever, I might do better. Let me see what Jill says.

Please Help Me Check This Out

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Lizard Symbolism, Dreams, Meaning, and Messages | Spirit Animal Totems

I’d be much obliged if a few of you would go to Newswithviews.com, open it to my column, and go down to the bottom and click the link that’s supposed to take you directly to my blog. I want to see if that link works–because it’s been about two months since I got a single referral from there. It works when I do it, but the site doesn’t bother to track anything I do myself.

The picture of the collared lizard is provided as a bonus. Pretty little beggars, aren’t they? Known as “the mountain boomer” in some parts of its range, this lizard actually has no voice. It doesn’t really boom.

Maybe we ought to check that, too. This is, after all, the Age of Nothing Works.

OK, I Think I’ve Got It

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Detailed Gas Tank, Half Full Or Half Empty Stock Illustration - Illustration of icon, environment: 29903473

One of the things a lot of people don’t understand about writers is that sometimes we have to just sit there and think. To them it looks like we’re doing nothing. But it’s absolutely indispensable.

So I lit up a cigar and sat outside and thought it over; and now I’ve got a Newswithviews to write. The topic will be “The Far Left Tool Kit,” featuring six of the bad guys’ favorite tools. See how many you can guess before you read it on Thursday.

Now to write it. And then I’ll have to come up with a couple more blog posts.

It’s not as easy as it looks!

And thanks to those of you who cheered me on this morning. Makes me feel I’m part of a team. Not just out there all alone.

Running Out of Gas

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

6 Things to Do if Your Vehicle Runs Out of Gas - Jan's Towing

I’m supposed to write a Newswithviews column today; and April has been a brutal month for this blog–viewer numbers have crashed down to 2016-type levels. And I have no idea why, and don’t know what to do about it.

And soon the weather will allow me to start writing my next book, but I don’t have a title for it yet, although I do have two important plot lines for the story. Still, where you gonna go without a title?

Well, you can’t be a writer if you can’t keep plodding on through hard times. My father used to call writing books that no one would publish and collecting rejection slips “livin’ the life of Reilly.” I got really rather sick of Mr. Reilly.

There’s really only one choice: give up or keep going. I’ve always chosen to keep going.

Which doesn’t give me a Newswithviews topic or a book title… but I’ll think of something. If I rely on the Lord to bless my work, He’ll give me maybe not what I want, but surely what I need.

Is Facebook Working?

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Question mark PNG

What happens if you share one of my posts on Facebook? Do they keep you out? Does anybody read it?

If a few of you would kindly experiment with that, I’d love to know what happens.

I strongly suspect there’s something interfering with this blog. But there’s been no help for it so far.

Trying to Fix This

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

2,928 Confused Cat Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free Images - iStock

I’ve been a long time on the phone with Jill today, trying to figure out what’s gone wrong with this blog and how to fix it. She thinks she has a way to solve the problem of readers not getting their notifications, and she’ll post it when she’s sure.

But she also suspects Facebook is shadow-banning me for certain content, and I think she may be right. Gonna have to go back to illustrating those posts with pictures of happy puppies. That might fool the algorithm into thinking the post is harmless.

Because we don’t need no stinkin’ free speech in America! How dare I suggest that the last election wasn’t kosher? How dare I snipe at The Regime’s COVID policies?

So it’s back to the happy puppies, and we’ll see if it works. I haven’t had to use them in several months–which may indicate that FB has been shadow-banning some of my posts.

We shall see–I hope.