A Nightmare of Modern Life

I just woke up from a dream in which I opened the Crime Writers' blog to see a long post from some guy I never heard of. It was written in strange fonts, all red and blue. Bad grammar, many misspellings, hardly any punctuation. What did it say? A lot of rambling chatter about how grammar, spelling, and punctuation were no longer needed in the modern day, and how great that was.

There are two other writers on this blog besides me who know how to post here, so I assumed he must be a friend of one of them, strange as it seemed. But then I paged down further and found that the blog was covered all over with click bait ads, maybe fifty of them in little red and blue squares. It was then I understood that we had been hacked.

I picked up the telephone to call the people at Blogspot and warn them that gross hacking was taking place. But, wait! I didn't know their number. Luckily, I didn't even have to dial before a smooth talking support person came on the line and asked how he could help me.

"Is this Blogspot? My account has been hacked."

"Yes, we've had a severe attack today," he said. "Donkey wars."

Donkey wars? Is that a thing? Yes. Donkey wars, where the young and illiterate take over our culture and try to get our attention and our money.

"I can help you," the man on the telephone said. "Is your computer on? I want you to enter the following commands."

"That's okay," I said to him. "I know how to take care of it myself. Have a nice day." I hung up. Clearly the hackers had seized control of my telephone as well as my blog; one of those vultures was on the other end ready to give me instructions that would expensively screw up my computer. But I was too smart for them.

Next thing I knew I was lying in bed and it was morning. Only a dream, after all. I think.

© 2015 Kate Gallison