The Angry Exile: I'm warning you, Blogger...

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Tuesday, 23 August 2011

I'm warning you, Blogger...

... you asked me for my phone number when I logged in just now. Again. Look, if I wanted you to have it I'd have given it to you the first time you asked. I see no reason why you need to know it. I know why you say you do but I've managed perfectly well without it for three years.

Look, my personal privacy will not be enhanced by adding to my email address, which is meaningless and disposable, a number which appears on my business cards, which relates to a phone which is almost always on my person and, thanks to modern paranoia, is recorded somewhere in the Australian government.* I know you think it will but no, really, it won't. Instead it'll mean one of my contact numbers, which is in the public domain but which as far as I know has never been put on the internet (not by me, anyway), will be 'out there' and connected with my blog for no real reason other than that some clown at Google thinks it's a good idea for everyone.

Some people, yes, perhaps, but not everyone. Number of times I've failed to sign in, not counting times when the whole service is down - one, when you suspended me for three days over someone complaining about the free publicity I'd given their TV show by putting 80 seconds of it, with no attempt made to disguise the TV channel's DOG, on YouTube. Effect of this - nothing at all since I have backup accounts to access my blog. Number of times I've been unable to sign in because I couldn't remember the passwords for any of the accounts - zero. Number of times someone has signed in pretending to be me having guessed one of those passwords - zero. My inclination to give you my phone number - rather less than zero unless Larry Page gives me his first.

So pack it in or I'm off.

* It is not possible to buy a SIM card or something with a SIM in it here without showing identity. This is because the government, in a peculiarly British way of thinking, noticed that criminals and terrorists use mobile phones and similar devices and decided that therefore all users would be treated as potential criminals and terrorists and all sales would have to be registered, and then later realised that the criminals and terrorists would probably use fake names and decided that therefore it needed identity to be shown when registering. That nearly everyone is not a criminal or terrorist and that therefore these checks are almost always an intrusive and meaningless waste of time appears not to have been considered.

Comments (10)

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Longrider · 709 weeks ago

I haven't been nagged for a few days since the last time I mentioned it over at Snow Wolf's. If they insist, they can fuck right off. They ain't getting it because I have decided that they don't need it.
My recent post Anonymous: Criminal Scumbags

2 replies · active 709 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 709 weeks ago

I think it must be on some rolling schedule because I hadn't been asked for a couple of months. Mrs Exile was asked when she signed into her gmail via a browser earlier as well. I wouldn't mind if there was a permanent 'okay, we know, now stop bloody asking' option, but this persistent nagging is starting to annoy me enough that I might clear off even before they insist on it. The trouble is I do prefer Blogger as a platform to WP, it's just that there are deal breakers that would stop me using it and that would be one.

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Longrider · 709 weeks ago

WP is fine if you self host. I wouldn't use wordpress.com as they have too many restrictions.
My recent post Banksy “Art” Should be Listed

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jameshigham · 709 weeks ago

AE, I had this in 2009 and that's why I'm now at WordPress. It's good but it costs [the free one is not quite as good as Blogger]. One of my enemies decided to flag my blog and what did Blogger do? Removed my blog pending investigation. You know how long that takes. F*** em, I said.

Yet I still keep the old site. Don't be too hasty. Go to WP for your main site perhaps but keep Blogger in the background and just feed em details you've made up.

3 replies · active 708 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 709 weeks ago

The Orphanage is self-hosted though, isn't it? And to be honest what I'm not bowled over with about the free WP applies there too. It's no big deal (and certainly no criticism of the Orphanage) but just little things like having to use the unnecessarily cumbersome span tags instead of < big > and tags, which as far as I can see are the same whether you pay or not. That being so I may as well stick with the freebie since all paying to self-host gets me is the ability to customise the look more and use plug-ins, and that's not important enough to me to pay for.

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Longrider · 709 weeks ago

We use Gmail for our email account.

As for the HTML, so far as I am aware, WP uses standard tags. Certainly, I always use standard ones.
My recent post Banksy “Art” Should be Listed

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Angry_Exile 90p · 708 weeks ago

and work, though I can't remember if I've tried , and obviously the standard link tags work. But < big > and do not do anything at all in WP. If you want to increase text size for emphasis or decrease it for a footnote, and I do fairly often, then it's span tags in WP or nothing happens. I think I found one or two others by accident though I can't recall for sure, but I reckon I use at least a couple of times a week and I like it. It's simple, intuitive and preferable to typing out every time. This would be less of a pain if WP provided a Blogger style tool to easily change sizes in the View editor, adding code automatically in the HTML editor at the same time, but if they do I've not spotted it either at the WP hosted version of The Angry Exile or at the Orphanage. It's not a big deal but it just makes WP a little less user friendly than Blogger and, if Blogger do annoy me enough over privacy that I do finally give them the flick (and they're not far off at the moment), it's not worth me paying for the self hosted version of WP.

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Longrider · 709 weeks ago

It's just done it to me when I logged into check the OoL Gmail account. I logged out and in again to bypass it. I will be damned if I'll give them a phone number. James - we might have to make one up for the OoL one.
My recent post Banksy “Art” Should be Listed

1 reply · active 709 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 709 weeks ago

I think I might contact the help desk and ask if there's a fuck off switch. If I find one I'll post about it.

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microdave · 709 weeks ago

I noticed this for the first time a few days back. WTF? And just supposing someone doesn't have a phone? If it happens again I'm tempted to register a similar one to my own, which just happens to be a Pizza shop....

Cunts...

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