Producing this blog is not the easiest of work, especially for an editor who was recently medically diagnosed as “a lazy git “. However, the presses must roll tonight, for there are literally thousands four readers hanging on our every word. And it’s not as though your editor doesn’t have years of rubbish in him, just waiting to be written down. No, it’s the constant and up-hill battle against the forces of — well, everything, really.
On boot-up, there are various balloons which pop-up (thingies , as they are known in the trade), which warn of imminent destruction from viruses, worms, dandruff, etc. These need to be batted away in a cloud of rising irritation.
Next there are up-date reminders which pounce from nowhere, clamouring to be clicked upon, complaining that their software hasn’t been updated in days. Well neither have we, sunshine, neither have we. Hard cheese. These reminders from Hell give us no method of telling the originators to f*ck off and shrivel. Worst among these are from Apple. They believe that, though we cancelled them a million times, today they are going to get lucky. They have as much chance as your editor has of a date with Jennifer Aniston… sigh ….
On Windows Task Manager, there is a process listed as “Apple Mobile Device Service “. No matter how many times this process is deleted, it just cannot be killed. Like Dracula, it rises from the dead to live again. If your editor ever visits the Apple Building, he will take a wooden stake with him.
Worst of all our troubles is the advertising we meet on other web-sites. We shall not name the worst offenders — THIS time! But you know who you are, and we know where you live. Some sites are so loaded with ads which soak up time and bandwidth, that in the end the user just says to himself “Oh, bugger it!” and goes elsewhere.
Almost Dead
There are pop-up ads and pop-under ads, and flashing ads and jump-up-and-down ads, and ads which appear suddenly to obscure the article being viewed, and which need to be clicked before they will go away. There are those really annoying ones which at first are at the top of the page, but which then follow you as you page-down. There are ads that pretend you are visitor Number 9,999,999 and you have Won! There is NO ESCAPE!
There are those ads which carry an audio or video track which begin to play immediately the page loads, without being asked to. Very soon there will be “smellyvision“ ads which will waft cooking smells or perfumes into your front room.
And then there is Goooooogle. Are you listening, Google? With your so-called content-related ads. So write a piece about a lady at her toilette and they dish up pictures of Shitto-Kleen, the New Wonder Lavatory Brush!
PLEASE — make it stop! Our blood pressures are zooming upwards, we are shouting and screaming and throwing the cat at the screen and the neighbours are thinking of having us sectioned.
Advertising on the net is the ivy which strangles its host tree. One day the burden of carrying the parasite will kill the tree, bandwidth will dry up, and then the internet will be gone, killed because the only thing the user will see on screen will be an advert for f*cking tooth-whiteners.
Grizelda tunes in to Station 2LO
But by then, maybe TV will be dead and gone too, and maybe newspapers and magazines with them, and we can all go back to the peace and quiet of the 1920’s. Which is where your editor and Grizelda both live anyway, after hours, listening to the wind-up gramaphone or to 2LO on the cats-whisker. Or being taken for a drive by the butler, in our car which has a running-board.
This rant was brought to you by ZONKO — makers of Zonka-Bonka Tooth Enamel for Dogs and Cats.
