Just A Thing or Four That Should Tip Your Dory

But I'm such an easy-going guy. Everyone else seems to have a rant. Not me. (Except for the mini-rant at the top of the humor page, but that's more of an editorial really.) Me, I can't get worked up that much; I don't hate things that strongly, I suppose.

Yet I do have some pet peeves.

Peeve #1: Smileys

This is not an original observation (for example, see John Hargrave's Emotigone), but smileys are a pox. I dislike them because they strike me as overly cutesy and faddish. They club me over the head with the fact that you're smiling; usually I know when you're kidding, or I should. They're as bad as exclamation points. They destroy your credibility.

Maybe I should mention that I'm just kidding! :)
I love these things! ;-)

See what I mean.

Sam deserves credit for being the first person I know to publicly announce his Non-Smiley Manifesto.

Won't you join me in proudly displaying John Hargrave's badge of non-smileydom?

Peeve #2: Acronyms

Much of my time is spent explaining TLAs ^[1] to people. Best to just avoid them in the first place. Do the extra few bytes really amount to anything? Do your fingers really object that much to the extra typing? If so, you need to stop complaining about the little stuff and open your window to smell the flowers and inhale the pollen.

My contention is that more time and bandwidth is destroyed explaining the damn stupid things than is ever saved by employing them in the first place.

Fortunately there is an acronym server that defines them for us.

Well, those are the peeves I can think of. Aside from bad drivers, and worthless discussions on music mailing lists.

God forbid that I should take it upon myself to complain about the things that are really wrong or evil in the world, such as starvation, homelessness, war, racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, lookism, homophobia, violence, the North-South conflict, Stone Temple Pilots.

Other People's Rants

There are several rants by other people I want you to read. I'll add more as I stumble across them.

Web Rants

These rants are about the problems with the Web. I think these rants are very important.

We Have Chosen Shame and Will Get War (By Philip Greenspun)
Rant of the Week/Month/Something (By Miles O'Neal, who should sign it)
Why the Web sucks (By C J Silverio)
What's the Point? What Am I trying to say? (By Malcolm Humes, my net-neighbor)
The Web: Superhighway or Supermarket? (By Ranjit Bhatnagar)
Stev0's Rant of the Week (By Stev0 Berlin; he does have a Web-specific rant or two in there somewhere)

Collections of Rants

Lark's Palace O'Peeves (by Lark Wadsworth)
Pet Peeves, Rants and Complaints (By Carolyn Gargaro; you can add your own peeves to her list)
Tom's Pet Peeve Page (by Tom Fishwick)

That's it, for now.

[1] Three-letter acronym.

E. Stephen Mack -- estephen@emf.net
Zeigen's Dilemma