So what’s the best way to do it? Replying to comments I mean, for those in the gutter. How you like to get your rocks off is a whole new post. And probably a more interesting one, but still, I digress….

I do it (reply to comments) in the persons comment on my blog. But do they ever come back and read their old comment to see if I could be assed even reading it, let alone replying? Do you come back and read what awesome reply I gave you?

Kelley and Evyl and Anonymum do it that way - and as they’re all disgustingly awesome, perhaps it’s the way to go?

Or should I email my replies like the equally awesome Veronica and Jen?

How do you do it? How do you prefer it to be done to you? What’s the best way to get some interaction going?

I was thinking last night about what a bitch my dog is. We took pity on her for having to stay on the soft, warm mat by the sliding door, inside with the heater on, and let her have a wander through the house. Which was extremely exciting. For her. Me? I was watching House, and therefore not so interested in what was going on IN my house. Until the aftermath…

What did we get for our niceness besides a lot of Labrador smiling, tail wagging and excitement? Hair. Everywhere. Labrador snow. Hence why we keep her on the mat by the sliding door. Duh.

The whole dog and pet thing is a little odd. Some people do more for their dogs than their kids. Australians spend more than 4.5 billion on pet care a year. 4.5 BILLION for fucks sake!
We feed them, we love them, we play ball with them and we hug them.

Some people even provide their pets with acupuncture, physiotherapy, counselling and homeopathy. Wtf is with THAT?? We spend (some of us) inordinate amounts of money on them, in attempts to make their short lives more comfortable. And then, because they have the shorter lifespan, they leave us bereft and heartbroken.

But, it seems after all the heartbreak, we still need a companion whether it be canine or feline, and often march back out there and get ourselves another one and so on ad infinitum. Until we get old and have the shorter lifespan, in which case (some of us) leave all our money and worldly possessions to the one member of our family least likely to give a shit. Or in the case of Piper our lab, lots of shits, but not of the caring kind, more your steaming piles in the backyard kind.

Piper is pretty. She’s a Labrador, and seems to vacillate between being incredibly stupid, and then conversely, smarter than us. Still, she is a blonde I suppose and possibly the canine equivalent of Jessica Simpson. She loves us all to pieces and wants nothing more than to be patted and loved 24 hours a day. And fed. She quite possibly loves food more than us and would eat herself stupid given half a chance, making her a rather typical Labrador.

She leaves hair everywhere, has nibbled our external laundry door so that it needs sanding and repainting, she digs holes in one particular garden bed, and pretends she didn’t, she sometimes barks at nothing - or seems to, and has occasionally toxic breath.

But we love her anyway. Even though she is a crazy bitch, because that makes two of us.

Never, ever send me an email chain letter.

Like, N-E-V-E-R! My MIL sends me heaps. I let her. I’m not rude. To her.

But I hate those fucking, inane things. With a passion. And I don’t pass them on to anyone - except the recycle bin.

Am I wracked with guilt because I didn’t forward 36 thousand damn chain letters claiming to save a pygmy woman in Botswana from certain death from a large mole strangling her nose and mouth? Nope.

How the hell, is this condition going to be fixed if I, yes I, forward a pissy little email consisting of a wee bit of text, to 50 unsuspecting friends of mine, who trusted me innocently enough, with their email addresses? Does email have some surgical powers so that a piece of the pygmy womans mole disappears every time someone hits the send button? Oh Puh-lease!

And, do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give $1000 to you, and everyone you send ‘his’ email? Good god - have people no fucking brains what-so-ever?

I guess not.

Email me with something amusing, by all means. But don’t email this pathetic begging crap that just royally pisses me off because you’re believing in the pygmy and her mole and that makes you stupid, and I don’t care about the pygmy, let alone believe in her, and that makes me a ….. bad person…, and you make my inbox overflow, and I have better things to do than trawl through all the emails containing information about every afflicted person real or not on the bloody planet, just to find the ones that are actually entertaining or amusing.

I don’t want to know about the ‘nice’ ones either. The “Send this to 5 important women in your life” garbage. Newsflash! A stupid email with a picture of a rose in it, does NOT make me feel important. I don’t see how it makes anyone feel important. Real friends, important people, make you feel important because they talk to you in person (OMG what the hell is that - in person?), they take your kids for a couple of hours when you are ill, they sit and listen when you need to vent, they don’t bombard you with worthless emails that have been through 45 million other in boxes before yours.

Why do people forward that crap? To show off how many other people they have as contacts? See, my email is busy, I am not only l33t, but popular as well! See, just like I have 263,543,578,209,57 friends on Facebook. I am da bomb! Do I know them in real life? Well no, but they are my FRIENDS!!!!!

Give me a fucking break.

Think about what you’re actually doing by sending out this inane crap. Chances are, you drive other people nuts. Or maybe just me. Because I hate you for being annoying. And stupid. And filling my inbox with crap. Because that’s all these emails are. Go here and you’ll find none of them are new, they’ve all been circulating around on the net for years in one form or another.

And for god’s sake. Learn what BCC is. Stop throwing everyone else’s email addresses around to eleventy hundred other people like it doesn’t matter.

I dump all chain letters in my bin, and pat myself on the back, puff out my chest secure in the knowledge I have kept the information superhighway free of a few more bytes of worthless crap.

Now forward this post to everyone you know. If you don’t?

You will surely die and have no friends or sex or the rest of your life. Also, if you do forward it. Then you will have good fortune forever.

Yeah right.

Do you like them, or hate them?

Well, I’ve been working on this theme for a couple of days now…and after burying myself in CSS and losing myself in PHP, here it is.

I wanted to keep it a little clean ‘cos I don’t like clutter, so the blogroll, contact and about sections are all on their own pages - links can be found at the top of the header.

And if you want to be on the blogroll like the cool kids and I haven’t put you on it - tell me and I might think about it after you shower me with large sums of money.

If anything around here is broken let me know, and so tell me? What do you think? I mean, it’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s MINE! So there.

So what’s your opinion?

I’m trying to be polite, and always reply to your much appreciated comments…but I”m getting a little behind in that. I try hard at most things and have the best of intentions, but usually fail dismally.

So forgive me. I read all the comments, truly, and if I am a little late in answering them, just call me an asshat, and check again another day.

Last night was a good example - I had planned some catching up.

My mission (and why the bloody hell did I choose to accept it?):
5:00pm leave work
5:10pm Get home from work and get changed
5:15pm Let dog in, put heater on, put washing on.
5.45pm Take boys to soccer training, go home, cook dinner, hang washing out, pick boys up from soccer training and eat dinner (somewhere in there, I was going to reply to comments, and cruise some blogs).

It all went well until 5:45pm. We’re heading to soccer training, so I locked the rear sliding door, leaving the pampered Labrador inside to defrost. Grabbed the car keys, shoved kids out the front door. Locked the front door and clambered into the heap of shit we have as a loan vehicle while our beloved wee Toyota Echo is being repaired after the accident. Then I realised. My house keys are….In. The. House.

Fuck

FUCK

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There was also very little fuel in the car as the heap of shits fuel decided to plummet from 1/4 tank to Empty, and my mobile phone was almost out of battery.

TRIPLE FUCK!

Amended mission: Spend 2 hours and 10 minutes sitting in the dark in the cold heap of shit until kids are finished soccer training. Drive home, and hope the MOTH is home soon. He arrives just as we do, and prises my frozen fingers from the steering wheel.

We go inside and start toasted cheese sandwiches for dinner. One small thing is said - and I totally lose the plot, crying hysterically, and generally just losing it. Why? No idea really. Something to do with being totally fraught, wound tighter than a spring, upset, cold and miserable. A massive over reaction, nonetheless. I’m still pretty much the same today.

Obviously, the drugs haven’t kicked in yet. Do they always take this long?