07-22-03 @ 11:38 am EDT

Seven hits to the last entry yesterday. I thought for sure the dread words "Manitou Island" would have scared everybody off. Yah, I know, probably only one or two of you actually read the Manitou Island part...but it's surprising that the other five or six of you still clicked. ;P

Anyway, I haven't a topic for today, so I'm going to bitch. Cue warning violet.

Today's bitches are about nothing major so don't worry, I'll commence getting over it as soon as I'm done. Number one in fact is not something that's actually rude but is just more along the lines of annoying. As you probably already know Skew is backed up on several diary/journal sites and on a few of those, there are people (nobody in particular--it's large groups of random people--in fact, they are usually random, one-time visitors) who, when they see a long entry, leave a note along the lines of

"Wow, that's a long entry! I can't read it all. Sorry. Bye!"

Well...okay. Forgive me if I start to sound snotty here because the tone of these notes leads me to believe said people are not trying to be annoying. So, I will try not to be rude to them. I'm just wondering what the POINT of leaving such notes is. So, all right, you couldn't read the entry because it's too long...I understand that. In fact, I expect most people to take a look at the length of my entries, either freak out, get bored, or think I'm insane, and wander off before their brains can glaze over. Skew entries have a tendency to glaze unwitting brains. I'm even willing to bet that most people who DO click and browse my entries do not read the entire things; take the last one for example. I genuinely do feel that most of the people who clicked on it may have read the first and/or last few paragraphs, but not the huge middle rambling section. And that's fine because that's how it is on journal sites; I expect such things to interest only me, and maybe a few people who read my stories. (Maybe not even them!) I type all that stuff up just because, hey, it's my journal, what did you expect me to do with it...

And so, if you tried but absolutely can't read an entire entry, or even if you clicked and didn't bother trying, it's fine with me. Not everybody will like this journal, it's true. And even those who do like it won't like every entry.

But...why this necessity of leaving a note TELLING me so? I really will not get mad if you tried to read an entry and were too bored to finish it. (I actually have no way of telling, aside from on the Writing.com version of Skew, which counts hits, that anybody has clicked on the entries at all! So I won't even know you've been there!) If you stop by and don't want to read my journal, or are not interested, you don't have to let me know; I'm okay with that. The great majority of entries and journals I visit, if I'm not interested or if my brain wanders in the middle of an entry (usually because of a lack of paragraph breaks...those quickly kill my reading mood), I just...leave. I don't leave a note saying, "Wow, you should use more paragraph breaks. I couldn't follow this. Sorry." Or even, "What a long entry! I'm actually not much interested in this subject. I tried. Sorry. :) " I dunno, maybe it's just me, but...I don't feel it's necessary to leave a note, if you don't want to read what you're leaving the note on (unless you're replying to another note or something...bla bla...that's not the point).

And so the long story short is...if you clicked and found you didn't want to read, all right. No harm done, no hard feelings. Just please, don't feel obligated to leave me a note telling me so. I don't feel you're TRYING to be rude, but...well, when I check for new notes and find something that pretty much tells me you did not read my journal at all, it's kind of annoying. It's not as annoying as those people who leave notes saying "Vote for me in Some-Contest-You've-Never-Even-Heard-Of-And-Don't-Even-Care-About-Anyway!" or "Stop by my diary for a makeover because your HTML skills are like so BASIC because you don't even have music or a comet cursor, what are you, living in a CAVE?!????" (THOSE notes I find INCREDIBLY bothersome...I DON'T WANT A FRIGGIN' MAKEOVER! AND I DON'T WANT TO ENTER YOUR CONTEST OR TO VOTE FOR YOU! IT'S MY JOURNAL, NOT A COMPETITION, LEAVE ME ALONE!!...*cough*...sorry...got off topic there. O_o; ) But yes, such notes are annoying. I'm certain most people wouldn't like going to their journal, seeing a note, and reading it only to find out it basically says, "I didn't read your journal. Bye!"

I don't expect everybody to read every entry in here, or even the entire text of every entry...even though it would be nice...in a creepy stalker way...so it's perfectly okay if you don't. Especially if you are a first-time or one-time visitor and I'll never hear from you again. Though I do check out every diary/journal of everybody who notes me, I'm usually not interested in them, so if gaining a new reader was what such noters have in mind, I'm sorry but it doesn't work that way...you'd have to be blithering about Egyptian mythology or something to win me as a fan. So...

If you didn't read my journal, it's fine. You don't have to tell me so; I'll figure it out on my own. o_O


BITCH NUMBER TWO! This is the one that's bugging me a bit more, but again, I'll get over it. On another site people have been raising a fuss for literally weeks because the webmasters are finally cracking down on people covering up the banner ads on the site. (The reason they're finally cracking down? Somebody who was deleted for covering up ads in the first place e-mailed the website behind the banner ads and told how people such as themselves (they conveniently didn't mention THAT part) were breaking the agreement to display the ads...so of course the webmasters had to crack down THEN. Sheesh, utter stupidity sometimes...) People are bitching that "they were never informed" (duh, hello, it's been on the FRONT PAGE OF THE SITE numerous times--if people don't want to read news sections, they shouldn't bother joining), and even once they're informed, a select handful still bitch because it's so incredibly unreasonable to have to carry a simple banner ad on your journal. (You'd think Martha Stewart or the Queen of England was going to show up to take a tour of their journals with how they freak out about the ad being there, OHMYGOD!! IT'S SO HIDEOUS!!) People have even asked if they can change the color of the ad...I mean...WTF?? Why does the ad have to match the journal?? Do these people complain about the ads on My Yahoo! or their AOL and MSN homepages too if they "don't match" the color scheme?? It looks like my theory has been proven right, if there's nothing to bitch about, people will always manage to invent something to bitch about.

Well, that was weeks upon weeks ago, and the bitching continues...said site has a limit on how many journals there are but there are always some being purged so if you wait you can usually snatch a space on time. I stop by the news journal occasionally to see what new bitching has been going on and yep, they're still at it. There are of course the requisite anonymous comments from the little chicken turds who won't leave their names because that would show what hypocrites they are--bitching about a site they love to be on so much. (People like that make me laugh, really they do. Remember one of the VERY FIRST entries here in Skew where I talked about somebody whose every item on Writing.com was about how much they HATED Writing.com? Yeh, uh-huh...'scuse me while I bite this hand, right after it's done feeding me, of course...) Well anyway, one of those people bitched and moaned about how Teen Open Diary and Free Open Diary ALLOWED the blocking of banner ads, so why couldn't it be allowed here, waaaaaahhhhpoopoowahh...shortly after was a note from somebody asking how they could have a journal seeing as the limit had been met. Two different noters, I assumed. Maybe it was my mistake replying to both in one note, or maybe it was my fault for being so naive as to think people really need help when they just want to be pissants; who knows.

Whatever the case was, I replied to both notes in one note of my own...told off the little chicken turd by stating the facts about banner ads. NO SITE "allows" the blocking of ads unless you PAY for that privilege. The only reasons some sites aren't so gung ho about deleting offenders of said rule is because they don't have the administration or manpower needed to monitor all journals--take a look at Free Open Diary, I haven't been able to get even an automated response from support for over a YEAR. An old diary was giving me too much trouble so I deleted it and tried to start a new one and I couldn't even do THAT! And they even disallowed image linking long ago because, according to their OWN words, they "no longer had the manpower" needed to monitor for improper content. If that doesn't make it clear why the rules aren't being enforced there, then what would? If said chicken turd loves the site so much for how they "allow" you to break their rules, then why don't they just go back there and deal with the popups upon popups upon popups and the banner ads and side ads and malfunctioning diaries and lack of support and juvenile harassing noters and yadda yadda yadda. Funny how these anonymous chicken turds mention FOD so damn much but hang out on this other site all the time. Hmmmm.

Well, once I was done with that bit I responded to the user asking about new journals and let them know that all they had to do was wait a bit, keep checking back, and soon they could sign up for a journal because every so often the site is purged to allow for "fresh users." I added that the main page even SAYS this if they'd read it, but I wasn't snarky about it; I was polite to THAT noter. Like I said maybe it was my mistake including both responses in one note because not long after was left a note apparently to me, along the lines of

"I am a fresh user, what does that make you, a stale user? Do u smell like shit now?"

*cue Beavis & Butt-Head snickering* "Huh-huh, I said 'shit'...huh-huh...that was cool...I am so wise...huh-huh...I should write for comedians...huh-huh-huh..."

(Oops...sorry...I was just psychically channeling what the note leaver was thinking shortly after they typed that up. My apologies! You weren't meant to read that...)

Well, the juvenile nature of the note (they said shit!--oh wow, so CLEVER!), plus the spelling ("u"?--wow, let me dig out my dictionary, they completely lost me), lets me know I can just snort at it and move on. (I let them know my response to such chicken turd people: "Bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk." Longtime readers of Skew should know what I'm talking about.) The comment itself, really, does not bother me; I know I've touched a nerve with this person, because they would not have even left the comment had I not pissed them off. Aw widdle baby. Ookie wookie woo.

What DOES bug me is it coming so close on the heels of me trying yet AGAIN to help somebody out, in good faith. Namely the unsigned leaver of the "How can I get a journal here?" note. I'm still assuming they were two different people, and that this so-called "fresh user" is in fact a longtime user who was probably deleted for breaking the banner rule in the first place and is "getting back" (in their own pathetic way). Still, it pisses me off. It seems like EVERY DAMN TIME I try to help somebody in good faith, somebody--either that person or somebody else--turns around and uses my own hand to slap me. "Thanks for nothing, bitch!" It's happened here on Writing.com several times over, it's happened on this other journal site, it's happened elsewhere. It's even happened in real life. Every time I try to be a stand-up person and to help out, it backfires, misfires, whatever. I always end up regretting it.

This means I am either A. a piss-poor helper, or B. a piss-poor judge of character. Either way, I'm piss-poor, and now I'm just plain pissed OFF. If a slap to the face is what helping out will always get me, I honestly have to ask myself, why bother anymore? People don't need my help, and those people who do need help, even if I am the only one who can give it to them, they'll just tell me to f**k off, or they'll turn their noses up once they've gotten it and forget I even exist. That's the way it always is. (I even remember an incident from junior high school--I bothered to help out one of the girls who was always being snobby toward me, thinking that maybe she'd turned over a new leaf because she had asked ME for help!, and I felt so proud of myself...shortly after helping her, I heard her over with her friends, laughing at me behind my back...) Oh, there are the few longtime people who know me and we help each other out from time to time and that's okay; I'm cool with them. They know who they are, so they don't have to worry about this entry. Rather it's the people I don't really know, people who don't even know ME, who bite off my hand whenever I extend it. WHAT THE F**K IS WITH THESE PEOPLE?

There's the little niggling voice in my head saying, "What if that second noter WAS a different person from the first, and WAS a new user?" Then I must think, what the hell did I do to make them hate me? For God's sake, I don't even have to do ANYTHING but try to be helpful nowadays, and people still come to hate me, right off the bat. There just must be something toxic in my personality or in the way I type things on the screen, because I really thought I had been polite to that second person. (I was not polite to the first, and with good reason.)

I'm ALWAYS polite to people until they give me reason to not be. As I've said before, benefit of the doubt. I really am starting to think that nobody deserves benefit of the doubt anymore because for the most part, total strangers turn out to be total pissants. With rude mouths and crappy personalities to match. I used to welcome newbies to websites but God, no more. Not with the way a lot of them act when you bother to say "Welcome." "Buzz off bitch!"

I'm sure most newbies are decent people, but for some reason those aren't the ones I have run-ins with! Every time I open my mouth to help somebody it turns out they're some kind of little psychopath chicken turd who was apparently just waiting for a schmuck like me to show up. I don't know why I keep falling for it but I do.

At this rate if I'm ever on the road for some reason and see somebody broken down and stop to help them out, they'll pull out an ax and dismember me or something. Keep your eyes on the newspapers; "Twentysomething Woman Found Butchered. 'She Was Always So Nice, Except For When She Was Bitching In Her Journal,' Says Online Acquaintance. 'She Was Overly Fond Of Mythology,' Says Longtime Reader; 'We'll Miss Her Insane Blathering.'" If you ever read that, that'll be me. And thanks for missing my blathering, whoever you are.

Well like I said somewhere up there, I'll get over it. Chances are great that the noters were two different people, and even if they weren't, I'm still just dealing with one little chicken turd who after this entry is not worth another thought. *burp* But my help still proved to be useless and unwanted, and that, in the end, is what bothers me about today. I would love to be able to offer some help to a stranger sometime and to know that at least it was appreciated and WANTED. It's not often that I step forward to help anymore, because of all the times I've been bitten; but to find out that what I did was useful and liked, that would be such a good feeling.

I doubt it ever happening though, because I'm going to be keeping my mouth even TIGHTER shut when it comes to helping others from now on...they can just find somebody ELSE to help them. Somebody with a thicker skin, because I'm tired of it. You'll have to REALLY know me before I'll offer you my help. >:/

I think I'm done now...as you were. Have to go take some sleeping pills and type up something that's not so violetly inclined. Tar.