When Is a Rabbit Not a Rabbit?

While hanging the In-Charge's shirts on the line this morning (naturally I am the Boss, but husband makes a far more reliable In-Charge), I was pondering this week's 100 WC, and lamenting that I had, unwittingly, read Isobel's entry before putting finger to keypad on my own account.

I bemoaned this lapse to my four able assistants - the cats Hobbes, Henri and Popsicle, and the speckled hen.
'And Isobel's is - as always - so good!' I said.
Henri and Hobbes stared at me unblinkingly, offering no comfort. Popsicle was busy chasing a small pebble.
The speckled hen was just busy.
'Now I can't think of anything original,' I complained.


The cats shrugged with what I can only call Gallic indifference and the speckled hen begged to be excused.

But later, in the woods, the dogs sensibly suggested that this wasn't necessarily a problem.
'Rabbits,' they said, 'can pop up anywhere. But when you're looking for one, they don't. Better the rabbit already in the hat than not having one at all. And by the way, any chance of borrowing it?'

So I hope Isobel won't mind me continuing where her Philosophical Rabbit left off.
You may already have read Isobel's excellent entry this week, but if not - please do. You can find it here.
Mine will certainly make more sense if you have read hers first!



'What was the rabbit late for?' echoed dreamily through Alice's head and she awoke with a start, picturing jam tarts and flamingo mallets.
'So,' the lecturer was saying. 'The rabbit's anxiety is predilection not propensity, but was he late?'
His eyes rested on Alice and she flushed self-consciously. 'Alice - any thoughts?' he asked sardonically.
'Um...' Alice began blankly. Then: 'It depends,' she said with sudden inspiration. 'If you subscribe to Newton's timeline theory, yes. If you side with Kant and Leibniz, time isn't measurable, so he couldn't have been.'
‘Good answer!’ The lecturer grinned. ‘You'll become a philosopher yet.’
Everybody laughed.
Slowly Alice smiled.

Needless to say, I didn't actually read Julia's page - I only looked at the prompt words.
Now I see that the last ten words have to be used to start off next week's...
Looks like I've blown that one.
Sorry!


I see that Julia has published an appeal on her page this week, namely and to wit:

I don’t know if there’s any way to post a message that everyone can see but for all the blogspot people, it’s very hard for those of us who aren’t members of blogspot to ever get to post a comment. If the word matching is turned on, it never thinks you’ve matched and sometimes when it’s not the comment just hangs up while it blinks back and forth to the word matching but never posts… I note from comments that I’m not alone. Definitely helps when people turn off the word match but maybe blogspot needs a heads up?

I am going to ask Julia to post this too:

COMMENTS

As a blogspotter I am sorry to hear of your problems and  hope that your appeal will help.  However, you are not alone!

The problems of commenting are universal it seems! I find it almost impossible to comment on WordPress blogs. Time and time again when I press 'publish'  my comment disappears without trace. In some cases I have come to understand that my comments have been instantly binned as spam.  SO frustrating do I find this, that I have almost given up either commenting or trying to enter WordPress based challenges - ie the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge, on which I am UNABLE to leave my link. This is a shame.  It has also posed a problem on the school 100WC. My comments are only recognised if a comment I have left is fished out of the spam bin and 'instated' in the comments column. Thereafter, generally, I have been 'recognised' on that particular blog and my comments 'allowed' to appear.

I don't know how to overcome this problem - as often people don't look in their spam bins and are unaware that someone has tried to leave a comment.. Sometimes I leave comments via Facebook, but it's annoying that leaving a comment isn't a simple business.

I wish Blogspot and WordPress would talk to each other and sort this out. I have left comments on the Blogspot forum, and beg WordPress users to do likewise (you are missing out on lots of comments at the moment!), or send an email to WordPress if they are lucky enough to have that facility.

There seem to have been a lot of additional problems commenting recently. WHAT IS GOING ON?!

In the meantime, I would recommend all bloggers read this post about word verification and her original post which recommends how to deal with it, paying particular attention to point 5.