Black Friday Deals Week
Businesses are out promoting and conducting “Black Friday” sales more than a week before Thanksgiving?
Inconceivable!
Black Friday is, by simple definition, the day after Thanksgiving. It is decidedly not the day before. It is not an entire weekend. And, in the name of Zeus’ butthole, it is not the entire third week of November.
Your attempts to redefine the day to satisfy your own insatiable greed is crass and immoral. You know, contrary to that whole Christmas spirit thing which is, if you think about it, the real reason for the season.
I’ve often thought about taking a crack at the retail game myself. My spin would be to insult the fuckshit out of my customer. Yeah, I think that is the approach that would work for me. My style would be loosely based on Dick’s Last Resort Restaurant only on steroids and much more likely to cause my clientele to break out the nunchakus.
Instead of a button on my website called “Place Your Order” my checkout would say something different. “Idiot Want Stuff?” is a top contender. Or, perhaps, “Monkey want banana? Monkey see button. Monkey push button! Monkey get banana.”
Mmm, mmm! Banana!
My store would have a “no bullshit” policy. For example, “If we say it’s in stock, go ahead and push button, monkey. We have it. If not, we’ll give you the motherfucker for free. That’s our no bullshit guarantee.”
The point is, at least I’d be insulting you to your face with dignity, honor, style and grace. I wouldn’t do it like all sneaky subversive like the rest of those namby pamby “Black Friday” giants like Walmart, Best Buy, Kmart, JC Penney, Old Navy, etc. Big box? That’s what we’ll need to bury them in, yo.
Just remember that from the moment they’ve attempted the Black Friday gambit they’ve already insulted you right to you face. And you lap it up like Babe being led to the bacon farm.
I decided to run some more of their bullshit through the universal translator to find out what these stores really think about the marks, fish and dupes who decide to go shopping in the hollow halls. This is all part of my commitment to edification of you, the lowly loyal reader.
Continue reading →
ABC News can eat my ass
The internet is not just a series of tubes. My God! It’s full of links!
Today, while my mind was contentedly numb and was clicking things on the internet like a monkey pushing a button for a reward (mmm, banana!) I happened to click a link that led to ABC News.
What can one say about the ABC News internet experience?
First, before you even get to the page, you are subjected to a full page advertisement and the option to “skip this ad.”
Here’s the link that aroused my ire and prompted this post: ABC News
The next thing you notice is that your browser says, “Hey. Psst! I have prevented a popup window.”
At the top of the page is a giant banner ad. It’s moving, of course. It’s flashing and trying to get your attention.
Near the top right of the screen is a rectangular ad area that flashes every five seconds or so, encouraging you to click “Play” to watch more about some ABC television show.
And then, without your prior consent, on the left side of the page and embedded in the article, is a video window. It automatically starts to play, sucking up your internet connection and most annoying of all, it begins to pump out sound from your speakers!
That’s just damn rude.
What’s the etiquette of stealing bandwidth from people who decidedly did NOT click “Play” on your video? And then surprising them with sound?
Is your baby laying in your arms asleep? Too fucking bad, says ABC News. We’ll wake that son of a bitch up. We have gots to get paid, yo.
Angry, I immediately located and clicked the MUTE button on the fucking thing. I was almost shocked when it actually worked. Alas, I was not that shocked when the click also brought up a popup window with yet another advertisement. Shit, I thought my browser was blocking those? Apparently not this one.
In the time I’ve been composing this post, that embedded video has been happily playing. Each time I go back and glance at that tab, the video is still playing, thankfully still without sound.
In a smaller box, still within the article, is embedded more advertising. This time a small box labeled “sponsored links.” Scroll down a bit to the bottom of the article and you’ll find two more boxes of sponsored links.
All told I found no less than five items on the web page labeled as “advertisement” or “sponsored links.” This does not include the ad I was forced to skip to land on the page. Nor does it include the two popup windows (one blocked, one that got through.) And, lastly, it does not include the commercial video that started playing with sound when I first loaded the page.
Hey, ABC News. I got a question, and then I have a follow-up. Greed much? And why are you such a bunch of motherfuckers?
I can’t help but wonder what percentage of internet traffic is bandwidth consumed by video and sound that no one ever requested? I bet it’s a lot. It probably ranks right up there with spam and porn thanks to the greed of organizations like ABC News.
This doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Television networks are the same people who decided to stick their logo on the corner of the screen when watching their programs. God forbid we forget what channel we’re watching. Except during commercials, of course. And then they decided to build in commercials during the programming in the form of moving images advertising the next show you should be watching. And then, naturally completing the progression, they added sound to those moving promos in the bottom left corner of the screen.
Fuck the viewer. The viewing experience be damned!
Never again will you be able to watch a show without being bombarded at the same time with commercials for the next show.
How much is enough? When will they say when? How many times do they need to get paid?
I’ve got an idea. How about making a web page that is informative with actual content and making the advertising proportional to the rest of the page? And how about keeping video and sound from coming on unless we ask for it?
Is that too much to ask? You betcha!
Is the audience the customer? No. The advertiser is the customer. And they’ll never ever let you forget that.
Moderation is not a word in the Advertiser’s Dictionary. Just how many boats can you water ski behind?
Hey, ABC News. Can I please read a news story without you spamming the fuck out of all five senses? That would be great.
Something new on the WordPress bar
So there I was this morning, surfing the Living Dilbert blog and minding my own business. I swear.
Suddenly a star and the word “Like” leaped out at me from the WordPress bar at the top of my browser page. (This feature seems to be context sensitive and only shows up when viewing a specific post.)
Like a monkey wanting his banana I pounded that button as fast as I could. Mmmm, banana!
Well, long story short, I didn’t get a banana. But the button did change to say, “You like this” and drops down to a menu that includes the choices “Reblog this post” and “View all posts I like.”
Looks like we have a new WordPress feature to start the month of June. Woot!
Internet clogged by blogs of monkey exuberance
Umm, did I blog today? I forgot.
Hello my fellow blog monkeys!
I recently heard about a book entitled “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture” by Andrew Keen. This isn’t any breaking or exciting news. The book has been out since 2007. But it is news to me. So I thought I’d monkey on about it.
The premise of the book is basically that “amateur” content, like our humble little blogs, threatens to clog vital information on the internet. Keen’s book also claims that blogs do very little to further knowledge and understanding since they basically represent the limited world views of their amateur authors.
I went to his official web site looking for a little bit more information about him and his book. I clicked the link for his book and it took me to a page that said, “The item does not exist.” That outcome amused me greatly. Amateur indeed. Well played, Mr. Keen! 🙂
In addition to his book, Keen is also famous for this quote:
…instead of creating masterpieces, these millions and millions of exuberant monkeys –many with no more talent in the creative arts than our primate cousins – are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity.
Don’t hold back, Andrew. Tell us how you really feel. I can only assume, after reviewing his web site, that his feelings on the matter haven’t changed.
Can I write as well as Keen? Hells no. I’m sure that compared to him I suck. I can barely understand the grammars and all the other things. I’m probably one whisker’s breadth removed from a LOL cat.
Something tells me, however, that there is more to it than Keen is willing to admit. Does a blogger, even an “amateur” one, have to have the writing skills of Mr. Keen in order to be entertaining? Interesting? Factual? I say, “Nay!” I bet they hardly don’t and stuff.
You don’t have to have perfect grammar and wonderful writing skills to make valid points. Even someone peeing their pants while standing in the batter’s box at home plate can get an accidental “bloop” base hit while flinching in uncontrollable fear. 🙂
Keen’s comment about “exuberant monkeys” is a reference to what Wikipedia calls the “infinite monkey theorem” which states:
A monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.
I think most of us have heard about that theorem at some point. Did you also know that you can actually calculate the odds? 🙂 You can find out a lot more than you ever dreamed of about this on the Wikipedia page, including mathematical formulas and such.
I have a passing fancy with probability and statistics. Anyone who has played Monopoly knows that a dice has a one in six chance of showing any given number. Most who have played the casino game of craps know that the odds of a certain outcome with two dice is one in 36. In short, that’s because casino dice have six sides and six multiplied by six equals 36.
The same concept can be extended to the infinite monkey theorem. By setting some conditions, like a keyboard with only 26 characters, one for each letter of the alphabet, you know the odds of each letter will be one in 26. (We’ll use a keyboard with only 26 keys since we’re not going to worry about things like punctuation, capitalization and grammar.) With those parameters defined, the odds for randomly typing sequences of letters can now be calculated.
Let’s say you want a one-letter word. The odds are 1 in 26.
For a two-letter word the odds are 1 in 676.
For a three-letter word the odds jump to 17,575. If a monkey had “eternity” I’m sure he could pump out three-letter words all the time.
What about a word like “Hamlet,” however? That’s a pretty necessary word to the complete works of Shakespeare. It turns out that a six-letter word like that on our special keyboard, the odds are a whopping 1 in 308,915,776. And that’s only a six-letter word! This result also assumes that the monkey is remarkably consistent and hits all keys on an equal basis. We all know he wouldn’t really do that. 🙂
Let’s forget about the “complete works” of Shakespeare and only worry about one play, like Hamlet. According to Wikipedia there are about 130,000 characters in Hamlet.
In the case of the entire text of Hamlet, the probabilities are so vanishingly small they can barely be conceived in human terms.
Interesting, eh? Oh shit, what am I talking about? You’re all long gone by now. 🙂
Even though the task seems daunting, this particular monkey is going to keep up the good fight and keep pounding this keyboard as much as I can. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll get lucky.
Hey, what’s that button there? PUSH! “Mmmmmm! Banana!”
Shouts from the Abyss 
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