Blah blah blah (i.e. I wholeheartedly agree with you), blah blah blah blah (i.e. some seriously smart and witty comments), blah blah blah…I already know this comment will be approved.

No dare necessary.

Isn’t it true, though, that the ones who leave nasty comments can NEVER spell?? I’ve yet to get a well-worded, correctly spelled stupid comment. LOL

@Angi: You’re lucky I like you. Otherwise, DELETE!

@Corrina: Ugh. Tell me about it. The stupider and more hateful the comment, the worse the spelling and grammar. It’s amazing.

Corrina is so right. Illiterate people tend to have anger and jealousy issues. People who can — and do — write well, push all their sad little buttons at once.

However, happily I have received only a few negative comments. I refuse to publish any kind of profanity (and I’ll be the judge of what’s profane), so sometimes I have to tweak comments a bit before approving them.

One lady wrote me an email back in the summer and called me all kinds of names and asked if I thought I was funny or if I thought everyone in the world cared about every little thing I think, say, and do.

Apparently she hasn’t seen my statistics because believe me, the whole world ain’t reading my blog.

The way I handled it was, I told her I hoped she could get help for her anger problem … if she’d put her thoughts in a comment rather than an email, she would’ve been deleted in toto.

It’s MY blog! She who pays is she who says.

Jenny’s last blog post: Post Time

@Jenny: I’ve never understood the notion that someone is “vain” if they choose to talk about THEMSELVES on THEIR OWN blog. Do these people write letters to Presidents or famous people asking how they have the audacity to write autobiographies??

As for your emailer, I can’t imagine the mental state it would take to feel the urge to email a perfectly normal blogger and cuss them out for no good reason. I’m afraid I would have responded:

“Actually, everyone else in the world DOES care about every little thing I think. They told me so. You’re the only one who doesn’t care. But you know what, that’s okay. The world and I are forgiving. However, one more mean email like this one and we might be tempted to vote your off the island.”

Well, you know Kev, I thought about pointing her to blogs I’ve read where literally EVERY bite of food the blogger ate that day, and where they bought it and whether they liked it, and what else they bought while shopping (including underwear), and what each item cost, and whether it was on sale, and information about their latest therapy session, and every minute detail of their vacation, down to photographs of the book they read as they sat on the beach, and crumbs from their morning donut, and their just-painted toenails, is laboriously set forth each and every day.

Others think nothing of giving you “One Hundred Things About Me I Bet You Didn’t Know” or other such meme-like blog posts. Which is fine! Knock your lights out on your own blog! This is America!

So I said to this woman (who had found my card at a nail salon and “was intrigued enough to check out” my blog), you must not be overly familiar with the concept of blogging, because a blog is by definition an online journal.

And in conclusion I pointed out, MINE IS THE LIFE I AM LIVING, ERGO MINE IS THE LIFE I KNOW ABOUT. Who else’s life am I qualified to write about?

Unless I become a biographer, that is. Not likely.

Jenny’s last blog post: Post Time

Darn…I was going to post some photos of my freshly painted toenails.

Oh well.

I think my comment sounded snarky, and I didn’t mean that … I was just trying to illustrate that, if it’s your blog, you can put anything on it you want.

Including pictures of your just-painted toenails, or your dog’s just-painted toenails.

If a person enjoys doing that, and others enjoy reading it, then who’s to argue?

But my one-time reader’s put-down of me was along the lines of, who do you think you are, writing about your anniversary dinner like anyone gives a rodent’s fanny, and do you think you’re a comedian or something?

Uh … yes.

I spared her the details of how, whenever TG and I are anywhere in a large group, like standing around after church, or at a party, and he loses sight of me and wonders where I am, he just listens for folks laughing and he knows I’ll be right in the middle of them. Usually I am telling talking-dog jokes, or other dog jokes like this one:

Q: What does an agnostic dyslexic insomniac do?

A: He stays up all night wondering if there really is a Dog.

This blog is all about me too, right? Right, Kev? Kev?

Where did everybody go?

Jenny’s last blog post: Post Time

Kev, you blankety blank,

The only really negative comment I’ve ever gotten wasn’t really in the same vein as what you’re describing here. But I once wrote a post about how some preachers and Bible teachers misunderstand the Book of Revelation. It was obvious I was a Christian and was just espousing what I consider to be proper Biblical interpretation. Anyone is free to disagree.

Well this commentor, it was someone I didn’t know, simply commented something to the effect of “the book of revelation was pretty much the ravings of a lunatic.”

So much for intelligent discourse.

Josh H.’s last blog post: Music You Haven’t Heard of But Need To Check Out

Josh … I wouldn’t want to be that guy on Judgment Day.

Jenny’s last blog post: Post Time

Jenny…I don’t think you sounded snarky. I was just kidding about the toenails!

……………..Or was I? Muahaha.

(On a serious note, I fully agree with you guys – your blog, your prerogative to write whatever you want!)

Whichever, I’m comin’ over to WSFD to see what color them pedal digits are, girl.

Jenny’s last blog post: Post Time

@Jenny: I didn’t think you sounded snarky either. Seriously, a blog is an online journal, for all practical purposes. Who are you SUPPOSED to write about? Some people just don’t get it.

And by “it” I mean all rational thought.

@Angi: I vote for you still posting pictures of your freshly-painted toenails. There are a lot of podiatrists in the world — you could gain a whole new group of readers!

@Josh: I think I know who left you that comment. Was his name Denis, by chance?

It would be hard for me not to get pretty mad at people like that. I agree with Jenny–it’s your blog, do what you want. I might not like some blogs but if that’s the case then I don’t need to read them. When you typed DELETE! I thought of Strongbad. If you know Strongbad, you scored 500 cool points. No, 1000.

I got a snarky comment one time. It was not long after I started and I was linking to other sites randomly and leaving occasional comments. Someone came back to my site and was all, “Do I know you?” Well, no. I was just hitting links, which I told her and said I wouldn’t comment anymore. Also on her site was a comment from one of her friends that was like, “Yay for having random people reading your blog”, (or something sarcastic). And there I was thinking that if you didn’t want random people reading your blog you would set it to private.

So, Kev, DO you know who Strongbad is???

Erin, that’s ridiculous. Who on earth gets upset when “random people” read their blog when they have it posted online for the world to see?? Isn’t that part of the point of having a public blog….feedback and comments? Sigh. Is it just me, or is the world getting dumber by the day?

Exactly … that’s the whole idea! I haven’t had the experience Erin has with regard to being “called out” on the subject of randomly commenting, but I HAVE been heartily ignored by bloggers whose blogs I’ve enjoyed and semi-consistently commented upon. I don’t get the whole cold-shoulder routine. If someone visits my blog and comments on what I write, you’d better believe I will return the compliment. If I went to their site but found that I couldn’t in good conscience leave a positive comment, I’d think of what to do next … but that hasn’t happened yet and isn’t likely to.

The blogosphere is big enough for everyone, and there’s no need for anyone to be a snob about it. Mercy, I hate it when folks act like snobs. Life is way too short for that, y’all.

I’ve been ignored too, many a time. And, I have made return visits to people’s blogs where I couldn’t leave a positive comment – but it’s not that hard to FIND something positive, even if it’s as baseline as “Hey thanks for visiting my site, I really like your layout!” Not hard. Not deep and intellectual, but how often ARE we very deep and intellectual, anyway?

@Erin: Strongbad is a character on Homestar Runner. A friend introduced me to them a few weeks back. So, where are my cool points?

@Jenny: I agree. The cold-shoulder routine is just dumb. How hard is it to be courteous? It’s not as though you have to buy someone who leaves you a comment dinner. Just visit their site and leave a comment!

@Angi: Well, personally, I am always deep and intellectual.

That makes one of us!

Nice job. 1000 cool points for you. Cool points are invisible, by the way. Sooo…what’s your favorite Strongbad e-mail? Mine are Trogdor, Englilsh Paper, and Japanese Cartoon. I haven’t watched any in a year or so, though.

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