Hovering Blog Subscription Ads' Inevitable Result

I've noticed a disturbing trend in blogging lately, and that is a roving, hovering "ad" of sorts that is timed to enter the screen and cover, yes, COVER the words you are currently reading. Sometimes the ad is for some product or website, but more recently I have noticed that it is usually an ad for the blog itself.

Let's breakdown the scenario here. While surfing the net, you happen upon a webpage, often a blog, that contains content that you find yourself interested in. You stop to read or browse to see if you are interested further. Just as you get to the fourth or fifth sentence - which is usually still the introduction stage of most writing, before the true meat of the article, before you even know if you might want to keep reading this particular article or not - an ad intrudes your view and forces you to click it away to continue reading the article. Minor annoyance it may seem, but I say hardly.

Let's explore the logic here. You visit a website. You observe the page for, say, twenty seconds. You have stayed long enough to pass the ADD test - you MUST be dying to join the RSS feed and I mean right away! I mean, you want to join up SO FAST that you don't even want to FINISH reading this article!! You just want to join now and forget about us giving you time to decide on your own. Forget about a little TACT, say, perhaps using a more subtle technique. Something fucking polite like having your last paragraph casually mention, "Did you enjoy this article? Join our RSS feed!" But I guess genius ideas like this are too much for a blogger to manage. Instead they want to find the world's most annoying plug-in and turn their blog into a goddamn menace.

Note to bloggers: I inevitably navigate away from your website when you force feed ads of any kind, especially a subscription invite. I don't care if what I was reading was a recipe or a plan to end world hunger. I don't care if it was the cutest fucking lolcat meme the world has ever known. I don't care if you want to give me a free Wal Mart giftcard or a laptop or even a fucking million dollars. All I want to do is get away from your website as fast as possible. Forget what you had to say, FUCK YOU and go to hell.

Here's why: If you are so eager for a fan base to subscribe to your blog that you can't even give someone the courtesy of being able to READ YOUR WORK before you shove an ad in their face, then I can only respond by being MORE EAGER to get the fuck away. Sometimes I have even blocked your domain so I am never bothered by your pesky, clingy, starving for attention, loser-ass, self-worthless pathetic bloggers life again.

Fucking douchebags. Get a clue!

Landlords Display Oblivious Inconsideration

An hour and a half ago I was woken up by an argument outside my door. It was my landlords. They were arguing about whether I would be bothered by a dumpster parked in the driveway. Seriously. A dumpster. Parked. In. The. Fucking. Driveway. At 11:30 on a work night. At this moment, hypothetically, which am I more likely to be bothered by? Which is more inconsiderate: waking someone up out of a beautiful sleep, or parking a nice quiet dumpster sometime in the near future - most likely when I am not asleep?

Apparently, this one is too much for my landlords to figure out on their own.

Not wanting to get dressed just to point out the obvious to people who are at least ten years older than me - and should certainly known better - I turned on my front porch light instead. You know, in that laid-back country way, sort of to silently say, "WHAT IN THE FUCK-ALL IS THAT RACKET OUTSIDE MY DOOR AT GODDAMN MIDNIGHT!?"

To give them a moment to contemplate the effect their argument was having on their good-money-paying tenant, I left the light on and went to take a piss.

Upon return from the bathroom I realized that they were still arguing.

It is now 1 am, and I can't get back to sleep. Instead of laying in bed thinking about how much of assholes my landlords are and how I didn't sleep for shit last night and - good God - I don' t need two fucking insomniac nights in a row, I'm looking for a new place on craigslist instead.

Self Check Out: A Word to The Wise

Many grocery stores have self-serve checkout lanes designed primarily for decreasing payroll, with an assumed positive side-effect of having faster check outs for those in a rush. That is if some stupid fucking idiot doesn't get in line with a cart full of produce. Earth to dick head: LEAVE IT TO THE PROS! If you don't know the code for those vegetables, don't get in the self serve line. If you have more than a few things, DON'T GET IN THE SELF SERVE LINE.

Let's go over that for the mentally challenged dip shits I see fouling this up every day. The rules for self-service grocery store check-out lanes are as follows. DO NOT USE IF:
- you have more than a few items
- you have non-scanable items (produce, etc.)
- you have KIDS!
- you have alcohol
- you have no fucking idea what to do

Seems simple enough yet always there's some pond scum piece of shit that doesn't get it.