Marcia was an expert at wild berries. Not just blackberries, and strawberries and raspberries, but berries with a difference; elderberries and huckleberries and chokeberries and saskatoon berries and muscadine berries. The list was endless. There were all sorts of wild berries that people ignored that were edible. Not all were harmless of course. Some were rather deadly, such as holly berries and pokeweed and ivy and yew tree berries.
Gathering wild blackberries was how Marcia met her husband, Michael. A group of youths had gone out blackberrying one summer, and Marcia and Michael got lost. They eventually found their way back, but it was the beginning of a romance. Two years later they married.
Michael loved the way that Marcia knew all the wild things to eat (and not to eat) and the recipes to use.
“If a famine strikes the land,” he used to say, “we’ll be the only couple to survive.”
But as the marriage wore on Michael became domineering and abusive. Marcia was at the end of her tether.
“Why don’t you make one of those wild berry pies you used to make?” said Michael. “Instead of moping around doing sweet nothing, you lazy cow.”
That gave Marcia an idea.
A holly berry pie spiced with the condiment of revenge. Or is it survival?
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Survival in all probability. Am still having problems with comment notification. It might not be WordPress at all – but it might be Google improving their system. Clearly they need to store more information about me.
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I thought survival too. I think it might be WP because I use the app on my phone, but then again google said it was updating its privacy policies. I don’t think my comments reach people, and what’s crazy is that I have to hunt for their replies on their blogs. I wonder how google stores information. I’m on Instagram, FB and Twitter too (though not very active on Insta and Twitter). I heard everything is fed into some AI (according to Elon Musk when he was high). Picture that – Bruce Goodman, male, NZ, goat, farm, Darth Vader of flash fiction, musician, poet, Bubbles…yikes! Nitin – depressed man, loner, writer of bleak fiction and confessions, layabout, impulsive, odd eccentric with religious ideation, Rambo… good grief! Okay I’m off to chew nicotine gum and to ponder on how to beat the damn system!! It’s all so frightening.
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Hunting for replies to comments is the biggest f**king pain in the a***. The Rambo description of yourself was pretty good, None of this shit would’ve happened if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t attended the theatre that evening.
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Oh Rambo was the name of the pet dog I had. He lived up to his name until cancer got the better of him. I’m no Rambo lol. I wish I would was. It would save me the trouble of hoping to seduce women using my awkwardness! It’s like someone is selecting which replies to give me. I get a few and have to hunt for the rest. I feel bad for the people who comment on a lot of blogs. It’s bloody taxing.
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I’m the same here, Nitin. I get a couple of comments willy-nilly, but they rest disappears down the plug hole. I would complain officially, but WP has now got so complicated that I can’t find any of the right buttons to push.
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Best stay quiet and endure. Is it just me or are we being watched? There’s a way to message them though. I forgot how. You could chat with them. It’s a ? Button on the right hand corner of the screen. Or it used to be.
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Yes – silence is the best policy. And yes – I feel I am being watched. Followers seem to disappear every time I say something complain-ative about WP.
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My stats decrease and my poems get very few likes when I do the same. The system doesn’t like to be bashed. It does the bashing and we must endure with clenched fists, squeezed in farts and suppressed burps!
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Let’s see if you get notified of this one.
Did she serve her revenge pie cold, by any chance?
Why did you mention Saskatoon berries? They are so delicious in a pie, with a blob of creamy vanilla icecream. Oh, nostalgia.
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I got Saskatoon berries off Wikipedia – I’d never heard of them. I take it they are nice. Mind you – I hadn’t heard of half the berries I mentioned.
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No – I didn’t get notified!
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Truly not good, BA. As you said, getting help from the site is not easy .
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I hope Michael was happy.
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He was just dying to have a piece of that wild berry pie she used to make. (Well, someone had to say it.)
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Michael was happiest (I believe) when he had rowed his boat ashore.
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Alleluia!
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Calling your wife a “lazy cow” before she feeds you is beyond stupid…famous last words. Thinning the herd.
So I see everyone else is having problems about replies…I got your reply today but not anymore.
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I agree with the ordering of your priorities Max.! The comments are certainly becoming a pain.
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First belly laugh of the day. Thanks.
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You are most welcomed. The truth is the truth.
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That’s so insensitive, Lisa.
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Second…
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I have trouble with comments being lost between the WP Reader and my site and vice-versa. I also have to watch my spam folder in case comments wind up in there, too. There doesn’t seem to be a method to the madness, either. Commentators who have left several comments wind up there. I try to rescue every one but it’s a nuisance.
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It’s WP’s way of keeping us occupied while in isloation. Aren’t they thoughtful!?
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That’s very insightful of you Yvonne.
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If things don’t need fixing they invariably are.
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Yes sir.
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Well, I see this comment thing is a general Problem. Yes, capitalizing it is okay. I’m getting some comments but my comments back don’t show up as replies. I guess they’re aware of it. Also, she could just have fed him some undercooked poke salad…
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The story was trying to give you some idea for your garden – to get rid of… the rabbits.
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Heh, heh. Nasty little beasts. But I’ve never seen one nibble a poke weed.
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Michael surely had a death wish. As for Marcia, she may have procrastinated much too longer. To Berry, or not to berry, that is the question.
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After the poisonous pie it would be To bury or not to bury. Yes, she possibly procrastinated too long.
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Ay, my lord.
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I see a lot of contemplation on comments and WP’s handling of those bits of wisdom. Of late, certain readers –not that I have many– have complained of summary truncation of their comments, due to which they have taken to appending to my facebook feed. I have tried checking the Spam bin which withholds none other than the usual trolls. I feel sorry for my patrons and myself.
I have no reasons to doubt either the commenters or WP. Perhaps, the readers experience a sensation of having spoken, or it could be the WordPress servers who experience a deja vu and hence silence a comment. There could be a glitch on either end of the Matrix. Whatever the dark matter of this universe, I am inclined to believe that a comment exists if it appears in the thread and not otherwise, in the manner premised by Descartes, although the temptation to apply the theorum of Donald Rumsfeld is immense but for the inability of my brain to wrap around the deductions.
In any case, Big Data seems to have moved to the artificially intelligent clouds.
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More and more – it appears to me – people want your “information”. This morning I wanted to find the recipe that Canadians use to make “poutine” – don’t ask me why! The first nine recipe links demanded in order that I might see the recipe, that I first must log in to my facebook page. This was on Google. I don’t have a Facebook account. Instead for dinner tonight we had fish and chips.I could go on, but I won’t.
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It was only a matter of time before the rapacious marketeers unfolded their entire span of wings on the internet. What you have at hand is a heady cocktail of Big Brother and Milo Minderbinder.
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