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.

Get Me Rich Quick, Please...Schemes

I've been mulling it over in my head for the past few days and there's a couple ways I could make millions if I found either major backing/venture capital or a lawyer willing to take on a really far-fetched case...you know, like that McD's "drove off with hot coffee between my legs" one. Seems being incredibly stupid with connections or incredibly lucky with connections, like inventing the Topsy Tail ponytail doodle or Barney and selling gazillions of them is the way to go. So here are some plans I've come up with which follow that line of reasoning...

Plan A: J. K. Rowling (of 'Harry Potter' fame) is now writing a detective novel, which isn't really fair as she's already the richest woman in Britain and she could write about a peanut vendor who secretly desires to become a perfumier and moonlights as a human replacement for drug sniffing dogs that call in sick at Heathrow...and she'd still be able to sell it. While I, on the other hand, have no such luck, talent, or connections. BUT...I figure if I could get a willing lawyer, I could sue Ms Rowling on the grounds that I would have come up with whichever plot she's going to...only she'll get it published before I can because she already has all that "best-selling author clout" BS in her favour. Well, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't have come up with it...eventually...and just because she has connections, her version will get to press before mine ever would...and that's just not fair, and basically I think she owes me big time. Heck, I'd probably even be willing to make a nice hefty settlement out of court just to spare her the embarrassment over the fact she stole my idea I haven't even had yet.

Plan B: Now for my invention, which I'm sure will be heralded as the next best thing to unsliced bread: The news ticker/news crawl/info scrolly television set cover-upper (okay, the name still needs some work). Are you as annoyed as I am by that black bar they put at the bottom of your TV alerting you to other news that must be so important that they feel compelled to scroll it across the bottom of the screen - but it undoubtedly isn't important enough to warrant a full-blown interruption of what they're reporting on at the moment. Not only do they expect you to concentrate on the top portion of the story, but you also have to simultaneously read about whole other unrelated events as they ticker tape on past. Notice how they don't keep them going during commercials...when apparently they want your whole undivided attention on the product: "HeadOn...apply directly to forehead. HeadOn...apply directly to forehead. HeadOn..." Yes, heaven forbid I miss a single word of that. Oh, let's get back to my "hide the bar" invention, shall we? I figure I could either go directly to the television manufacturers and have them incorporate a "drop down" feature whereas you hit a button on your remote and the picture drops down a tad to cut it off...or easier still, a nice black cloth band, conveniently fastened with two Velcro tab sets for a secure fit to your set. We'll even send you the "adjustable model", sure to fit any sized set: Comes complete with length of black cloth, two sticky Velcro tab sets and a cheapie pair of scissors. See? Once size fits all. Convenient, no? Plans in the future include bands with ads written right on them...or for an extra few dollars, a saying of your choice. I'm sure we'd even find a way to throw in that 2nd Sharpie pen for free (well, for those first 100 callers that is).

And if that doesn't work, I could always go to Plan C and find that lawyer from Plan A and take on CNN, FOX News, and others (if there are others) who do the news crawl scrolly bar and slap a lawsuit on them for inflicting upon me some "as of yet undiscovered" eye dysfunction/mental confusion/brainwave alteration distress. Any of these afflictions, alone, would be clear-cut justification enough to sue, but having the whole EDMCBAD shebang...well, that's definitely cause to employ a crack legal team for representation as surely no amount of "HeadOn" is going to cure those kind of ills.