A Bit About Me

My photo
Along with my daily duties as founder and head writer of HumorMeOnline.com, in 2003, I took the Grand Prize in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (also known as the "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" competition). I've also been a contributor to "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" and the web's "The Late Show with David Letterman". I also occupy my time writing three blogs, "Blogged Down at the Moment", "Brit Word of the Day" and "Production Numbers"...and my off-time is spent contemplating in an "on again/off again" fashion...my feable attempts at writing any one of a dozen books. I would love to write professionally one day...and by that I mean "actually get a paycheck".

26 July 2009

Oh, the Irony (Part III)

When I was a child I used to read those Aesop's Fables - they tried to let you know life's lessons and personality faults - usually portrayed through the eyes of animals. And then along came Captain Edward A. Murphy working at Edwards Air Force base in 1949...some 2549 years later...supposedly coining the infamous "Murphy's Law"...which basically states "If anything can go wrong...it will".

So, I figure - if you combine the two and add some irony - you get my dilemma: each time I post a blog...even if no one has added one in a whole entire day...there will be an onslaught of people rushing to post their blogs directly after.

Now...you might say to yourself..."Um...who cares, Mariann - deal with it". And you might also be saying, "...and how does this relate to me?" Well, it doesn't...unless you are those people who post blogs directly after mine, thereby bumping me out of the primo first slot...down to one of the sub-primo three slots visible on the home page of the Montgomery Advertiser's online site...then relegated to the "click here if you even want to bother waiting for the page to load" slot on the "other" page...culminating in the "totally bumped off the side of the virtual flat Earth which blogland is here".

For those who don't know - a maximum amount of ten blogs get to remain on the newspaper's site at any one time...when a new blog is posted...the one that's been there the longest - gets bumped off to fall into "Internet oblivion"...never to be seen again.

Sure, you can wait until such time you post another blog and hope that someone will happen upon it and read...but typically the home page is key...because people are creatures of habit and usually they are habitually lazy. Clicking to another page is one more step they don't have the patience for...and I say this, because I've heard it said many times: "Ugh...the page takes too long to load - I have to keep clicking on 'refresh' and it STILL doesn't load".

So, while you can sometimes teach an old dog new tricks - it doesn't take too long for that dog to give up if he never gets a bone.

And somewhere in that above statement is possibly a moral to a fable which is probably vaguely similar to one of Aesop's...but for now I'll just be content to play the fox to the Internet's sour grapes.


5 comments:

  1. Jast read all three parts it was a very interesting read and a lot of the stuff relate to me lol

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you so much for taking the time to read it - and especially for taking the time to reply. I always welcome replies...good or bad.

    I'm also glad you could relate to something I said. My worst fear is writing one of these things and no one can relate to anything. I've read blogs before and it was more like "Came home - my cat was on my car again...I'm going to heat up a burrito. It was tasty." It always makes me wonder why anyone would read anything like that - it's sort of reading someone's diary. Sometimes you'd get a good one and most times you wouldn't. I always hope something I say makes a reader go "oh yeah...I did that once" or "Geez...I can't believe it - my dad always says that..." Doesn't have to be a groundbreaking event of gargantuan proportions...just anything, even if it's silly. :

    BTW...the much earlier blogs are better in my opinion. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lady, you write so well I even have fun reading your comments!

    I loved the "habitually lazy" because I'm unfortunately in that category too ;) I completely understand where you're coming from though and yes, it's tough being a blogger sometimes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lady - well, the newspaper's site is set up so wrong. And then you get bloggers who double and triple post, one right after the other(I've suggested they COMBINE them)...and some who just copy/paste a news story from another source (I'm sorry - that's NOT a blog), and some who only put one sentence (again...sorry - that's NOT a blog). But once they are posted, the others "slip off" never to be seen again. It used to be only "chosen" individuals could blog - but now they allow anyone...and we've had a lot of spammers show up recently and do the "I found a great place to get an ipod, DVDs, blah blah" - and, of course, they also bump the blogs off the list. I was hoping someone at the paper would realize - but that would mean someone at the paper would have to read my blogs. Just WHAT was I thinking?? ;)

    I am growing so habitually lazy wouldn't wouldn't believe! I'm just going to blame it on "old age". :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Love the 3parter of ironies....and especially love your fox on the computer

    ReplyDelete