In browsing the Blogosphere lately, I’ve run into some really obnoxious crap, and wonder if I’m just crabby beyong belief, or if this stuff is as annoying as I think it is.  I wasn’t going to write about this at first, for fear of alienating all those people out there who are visiting my blog for the first time, but then I decided that I can live with it.

Blogs I won’t go back to:

1.  Mommy goes on and on about trivial crap their kid does that annoys them.  Yeah, I have a kid too.  They all do it.  It isn’t interesting.

2.  Person whines about …. well…. anything.  No whining!

3.  Person advertises humor blog, but then lapses into blah blah blah about how their life sucks.  (See #2). 

4.  Details about surgery / medical procedures / bowel movements / you get the picture.  We.  Don’t.  Want.  To.  Know.  If you write about crap like that, please don’t advertise your blog on one of the big blog networks as “funny stories about life”.  Your ass isn’t as funny as you think it is.

5.  Blog posts are 30 paragraphs long.  This isn’t literature, and it isn’t ace reporting… it’s you talking about yourself.  It’s like having an annoying aquaintence that talks incessantly and doesn’t even pause for breaths to let you get a word in edgewise.

So is it just me?  Or do these things annoy you too?

Don’t worry.. I’ll go back to being funny tomorrow. 

Like This? Then Show Some Love:

When visiting MAD KANE recently, I read this article about how Brits smell WORSE when they aren’t smoking.  Seriously.  She wrote a limerick about it that shouldn’t be missed.

Artificial scents are set to be pumped into British pubs to mask the smell of stale beer, sweat and other odours previously camouflaged by cigarette smoke, a newspaper reports.

Mitchells and Butlers, which runs about 2,000 pubs across Britain, is testing leather, freshly cut grass, and ocean breeze fragrances in its premises since a ban on smoking in enclosed public space began in England on July 1, The Sunday Times reports.

From: ABC

Am I the only one that finds this utterly repulsive?  Folks, go home and take a bath.  Bar owners, invest in some Domestos.  Or just some bleach for christ’s sake.

So the big plan is to cover up the smell.  Isn’t this just indicitive of everything that’s wrong with us?  When we have a blemish, we buy concealer, when we get a wrinkle, we buy some deminishing cream, when we get sweaty, we wear deoderant…. and on goes the list.

What is it about us that prevents us from tackling the SOURCE of all this, rather than just trying to pretend it isn’t happening (or at the very least preventing other people from knowing it’s happening)?  Oh yeah.. we’re freaking lazy.

Leather and mown grass indeed.

Like This? Then Show Some Love:

You know spending any amount of time with ‘Internet People’ will soon erode your perspective on the human race until you think everyone is a complete whack job.  I’m not saying everyone ISN’T a whack job, but the internet brings it out in people in the most unexpected ways.

However, I’ve come to the conclusion that Internet People aren’t any crazier than regular people.  For example:

This from:  http://www.msnbc.com/comics/nw.asp

Tyler Ing, 20, told the London (Ontario) Free Press in October that his parents “looked at me real weird for a few minutes” but that now “they’re proud. My mom shows the (Guinness Book of World Records) to all her friends.” The entry that she shows is her son’s honor, recently achieved, for having the world’s longest nipple hair, certified at 8.89 cm (3.5 inches). [London Free Press, 10-13-05]

Okay.  See?  Don’t you feel better?  Yep, even if you are one of the nutsos that gets so wrapped up in imaginary life that you lose all perspective, neglect your family, your cat, your laundry and eventually end up living alone in a hole in the ground mainlining your broadband connection and trolling for drama queen arguments to start … yes.. there are people who have sadder lives than you. 

Actually, I’m sure we all hold some bizarre record for some strange thing that no one before thought to measure.  But like most half-way-sane people.. if we see a big ol’ long, nipple hair, we just yank it out and hope nobody saw us.

Like This? Then Show Some Love:

In purusing the internet, which I do from time to time, I came across this website: http://www.amifatornot.com/index.php

So… being morbidly curious about all things weird on the internet, I clicked.  Now everyone and their ginger cat has heard of ‘Hot or Not’… but ‘Am I Fat?’  Are we really all so insecure that we need strangers to tell us whether or not we’re fat?

So… guess what.  Most of the people on that site (I got bored after 6 clicks so bear with me if I’m making sweeping statements here) are just NORMAL looking people.

It’s a sad testament to the insecurity of 95% of the population.  What’s even sadder is a couple of those people I saw on that site were downright SKINNY.

But then there’s the other side.. the part of US that judges other people based on how fat or skinny they are, whether or not they have nice hair, or their clothes are just right, etc etc etc.  We spend endless amounts of time primping ourselves up, but make sure to point out everyone else’s flaws, just in case someone didn’t notice that we are oh so much more stylish, sophisticated and svelt.

You know when we’re born, and should we be lucky enough to live a long time, when we die, we all sorta look like some variation of an elder winston churchill.  Whoever tells you babies are cute has some hormonal thing going on.  They’re tubby and squashed and flubby… and they scream.  But we like them for what they represent, so we call it cute.  Anyway, birth, death, we all look like varying shades of raisins and for somewhere between 20 minutes to 20 years in the middle we’re really quite appealing. 

Considering what a fractional moment it is in the lifetime of a human being, you’d think we’d have better questions to ask than: ‘Am I Fat Or Not’  How about: ‘Am I Judgemental.com’ or ‘Have I wasted my life and emotions on a corporation that can’t love me back.net’ or ‘Do I have to call other people fat/dumb/losers just to feel okay about myself.org’.

Like This? Then Show Some Love:

In August, zookeepers at Apenheul ape park in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, said they had arranged with counterparts at a park in Borneo to establish a live Internet video connection to provide companionship to their respective rare orangutans, treating the connection as sort of a visual dating site. An Apenheul spokeswoman suggested the apes might learn to push buttons to transfer food to each other, creating a mutual fondness that might lead (if transportation can be arranged) to mating. [Toronto Star, 8-15-06]

Heh.  It sounds not too unlike my last online dating experience, some time ago.

I wonder, though, if the orangutans will start miscommunicating, making online cliques, flaming and ranting and indulging in the d-word.  Then maybe Chinese government officials will have to create programs for apes who are additicted to this online interaction and therefore shun the contact of orangutans in the flesh.   Will they begin to lie about their height and weight?  Their prowess in the trees?  Or even create alternate ape personalities that they don when they speak to each other.

(more…)

Like This? Then Show Some Love: