I’d hate for this column to bring about the end of life on Earth

I’ve finally made the big time. Yup. My column is so famous that someone is stealing from me. Or trying to.

They’re not plagiarizing me, nothing like that. They (and I have no idea who “they” are at this point) have high jacked my website.

I found out about it yesterday when a reader alerted me to the problem. The website is a blog containing several year’s worth of this “Reality Check” column.

The site was slow to grow when I first set it up way back when. Actually, my daughter, Aubreii, who is far more computer literate than am I, set it up. All I’ve had to do for the past half-dozen years is plug my column into it each week. So easy even a geezer can handle it (which may be my motto for an invention to be named later; maybe an electric back hair shaver or advanced Life Alert pendant).

Online traffic picked up, though, despite the fact the blog contains nothing but this column. Apparently, that increased traffic is what attracted the hackers, who turned my site into an advertisement for some sort of phone app, one that makes memes, I think.

This is sort of ironic, because as a rule, I hate memes. I swear, if I see one more unicorn in a foggy field trying to give me personal relationship advice, I’m going to go out with  my shotgun and return home with a nice, one-horn trophy. But that’s a gripe for another time.

Point is, the meme app people have taken over my blog. It loads up alright, but as soon as the page is complete, it disappears and the meme app ad pops up in its place. I’ve emailed the Blogspot people to alert them to the problem and I’m hoping they fix it quick, before readers  start thinking I’m trying to sell them something (which I’m not, not since I unloaded the last copy of my book).

I may never know who is behind this nefarious high jacking scheme, but I’m gonna go ahead and blame it on the Russians. They seem to be doing this sort of thing a lot lately.

Also, my column still runs in several English-speaking Russian newspapers. I agreed to that years ago, when I was also writing a horoscope column for those same newspapers. The publisher, Vladimir (not Putin, at least I don’t think it’s Putin) liked my work and asked if he could run “Reality Check” as well as the horoscope.

Since I’m an incredibly savvy businessman I said “Sure!” without ever discussing remuneration. Since then, Vlad has been snagging the column from my blog every week and printing it in his Moscow-area publications. I’ve never received a dime (or a ruble) for this. Frankly, I was just so jazzed to think of my humble little scribblings going out to thousands of Russian readers that the cash seemed unimportant.

There’s a reason I’m perpetually broke.

The downside, obviously, is that all that attention attracted the (allegedly) Russian hackers. And I think we all know what sort of damage they can do when they set down their vodka and really start coding.

I was mildly upset earlier this year when I, along with the rest of the country, learned the Rooskies had messed with the presidential election. That was bad enough, but  now they’re really starting to tick me off. This is my column, man! Keep your borscht-smelling fingers off it!

Still, maybe it’s not the Russians. I hope it’s not. I’ve always liked Russians, at least the few I’ve met. Every now and then I get an email from a Russian reader, generally complimentary and filled with Glasnost era sentiments.

Even if those emails  weren’t complimentary, it would seem a good idea to me to stay as chummy as possible with a country that has a gazillion nuclear warheads, some of which are probably still pointed in our general direction.

I’d hate for the hacking of my blog to be the cause of  all-out nuclear Armageddon.

So maybe I shouldn’t be too quick to accuse the Russians. Maybe it was the French.

Do the French have nukes?

Mtaylor325@gmail.com

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