Flattery. It Does An Ego Good!

About 10 years, twenty pounds, and a truckload of hair dye ago, I made plans with my then -husband and his friend to meet up at the local saloon. (Imagine that! A saloon---Bet you Never saw that coming!)
The ex and his buddy were helping fix the ovens for our upcoming church bazaar (bizarre? You could say that if you knew them!) , and we agreed to meet at a prearranged time. In. The. Saloon.
Now, if there's one thing I'm NOT a fan of, it's me being in a bar alone. (I didn't say I wouldn't do it. Just that it doesn't thrill me. It reeks of desperation. Or worse. Thirsty and friendless.

Anyway, so I show up at the predetermined time. All by myself. On time. I'm big on punctuality. I know. I have issues. On with the story.

At this particular saloon, we have a friend who bar tends (let's call him , oh, I don't know, how about Mike?). Anyhow, Mike is behind the bar, and there are maybe five guys spread out along the bar. I am the only female in the place. Great.

I sit in a corner at the end, and Mike serves me a drink, and I'm waiting for the ex and friend to show up. For over an hour. I'm even doing a cross word in the goddamn paper already!

And then it dawns on me. In the hour I've been sitting there, the only female in the place, not one guy has talked to me, offered to buy me a drink, nothing! (Not that I wanted someone to buy me a drink, but, you know, it's always nice to be asked!)

Another half hour goes by and the ex and his friend show up from a different bar (misunderstanding---yeah, right!). And I am recounting my last hour and a half to them. And as Mike the bartender listens, I tell them that, geez, I'm the only girl in the place and not one guy said so much as hello.
At which point Mike says, "Oh, no, mysuestories (Of course, this was before I was mysuestories-but you get the picture). A couple of guys asked me to send you over cocktails, but I told them to stay away from you because you are my friend's wife."

Well, Geez, Mike, At least ya coulda told me that as I was sitting there thinking I need a whole makeover or something!!!!!!
Anyway, moral of the story? It's always flattering to be flattered.

Which brings me to my real story today. All over the blogosphere today there is talk of a certain blog person (OK. It's Miss Musings - I can't keep a secret...keep that in mind, constant reader!), anyway, this blog person takes material from lots of other blogs (like cjane enjoy it and Velveteen Mind and The Jet Set, and apparently some others as well) and then she copies them nearly word for word and claims them as her own stories. Yep. This person plagiarizes these silly little blog posts where people are not graded, but rather just sharing a little piece of yourself. Go figure.
Not only that, dear reader. There's more. MissMusings? Had like 500 followers AND tons of comments telling her how wonderful she writes (Right about now, dear lurking readers, you should begin to feel guilty about not leaving me enough comments.....Comments are to bloggers as orgasms are to sex. Just trust me on that one!)
And so, back to my dismaying dilemma. I scanned quickly through all the stories of all the posts on the Internet today of all the bloggers that MissMusings was stealing from. And there were plenty. And boy, were they pissed!
And guess what? Not one of the hijacked stories were mine. Sigh. I felt like I was back in that saloon all those years ago.

Maybe it's Mike, again. Keeping all those blog pirates away from my posts here. No? He's still bar tending? Dangit!

Rejection. Sigh.