I love this.

I spent absolute HOURS creating guides and reviews providing information free of charge, some complete with photos.  I ask nothing in return.

Some pathetic piece of humanity has given me "unhelpfulness" votes on each one.

This strikes me as the worse type of cowardice.  I hope his/her mother is proud.

People never stop surprising me.  You'd think at my age, I'd know better.

This could be someone who has disagreed with opinions that I posted on a doll group, a bulletin board or here on this blog.  Instead of debating with me on an intellectual level, this yellow-bellied gutless wonder made a sneak attack.

Karma.  I wish it didn't act so slowly.  In my experience, it does catch up with people. 

I'm sure that the person responsible is probably believes him/herself to be a "good," Bible-believing Christian who attends services regularly and tithes, but turns off his/her ears when the bit about the "Golden Rule" is discussed.

Ahhhhh...keywords.  I'm currently having to manipulate my search string to eliminate certain things from my results.

My normal search USED to be:  Diana, princess, doll.  You'd think with three simple words, I'd get what I want.

I'm now adding to this:

• -wonder (to get rid of Diana Prince AKA Wonder Woman items
• -jackie (because some sellers are also selling Franklin Mint Jackie Kennedy things)
• -tyler (because obviously anything made for Tyler should be put on Diana!)
• -civil (because of someone who sells Barbie-sized Civil War/Gene patterns)
• -XXX (to eliminate a seller who bored me with too many non-Diana replica "One of a Kind" outfits--if there's only 1, why do I see so many?  BTW, I put her initials in, not xxx's.)
• -his*doll (to eliminate yet more search spamming auctions)
• -grandma (because someone who is selling some Ashton Drake dolls by Titus Tomescu keeps mentioning in the auction that he sculpted their Princess Diana dolls...big whoopee freaking do--he made her face look like a chipmunk's, his Diana dolls are nothing about which I would brag.)
• -native (another seller whose cute little Indian princess dolls are clogging up my search string.)
• -paradise (sick of the crochet pattern books.)

Once in awhile, I have to include various secret words which I won't share in order to filter out certain books, videos, CDs that aren't DOLLS.  If I want books & all the rest, I'll put those words in my search.

*English as a Second Language

Ah...relief.  Just posted a new Guide and finally managed to convince eBay's robot that I wasn't trying to post forbidden HTML links or exceed 20,000 characters.  Heaven knows the world will come to an end if I exceed 20,000 letters, symbols and spaces.  Oh, for the days in 5th Grade when Mrs. Spencer could barely coax 20 characters out of me for an assignment.  The problem was that I wasn't allowed to type. 

This week I have been told off by a foreign seller because I posted on a doll group that I dislike looking at poorly written descriptions and photos that have been doctored by PhotoShop.  I'm sorry, I speak English.  eBay.com is an English speaking site.  If an ESL European seller expects to sell on American eBay,  he or she should do some homework before creating an auction description.  I get tired of trying to decipher the gobblydegook code that passes for written English by some sellers. Who invited this person to sell on an English speaking web site, post messages on an English speaking doll club, SELL TO ENGLISH SPEAKING CUSTOMERS *without* bothering to speak their language?  Am I just being pedantic here?

Now before you tell me off for jingoistic rhetoric, please be aware that I am a certificated teacher of French, Spanish and English as a Second Language, as well as holding Computer Science credentials.  I grew up in an ethnic neighborhood and started learning Spanish at about age 2.  I lived in France for an academic year and I'm married to a non-US national.  I *LIKE* foreigners.  I just don't appreciate poor use of my language when I've worked hard to learn two others and make sure that when I'm writing them, I am following spelling and grammar rules.  For crying out loud, people BUY A DICTIONARY already.

The funny part was that the seller who wrote me wasn't even ONE of the three sellers that I had in mind while I was writing the message I sent to the doll club.  Go figure.