Whinging Wednesday

Welcome to my 'Whinging Wednesday' posts. The first one is the original whinge post appearing in its entirety. The subsequent (weekly-ish) whinges are linked below with short descriptions of each one. Just click on the heading of the one you wish to read and it will take you to the individual post.

Whinge Wednesday - Making it Difficult to Leave Comments

Many of my good friends and blogging colleagues dutifully display a fantastic weekly entry on their blogs called, ‘Wordless Wednesday.’ They showcase exquisite designs and photography. These items evoke such profound emotions, words themselves would cheapen them.


Me on the other hand, with no particular flair for photography, and not the slightest inclination to exhume my glory days of knitting and cross-stitching, have decided to host a ‘Whinging Wednesday instead.’


Wednesday, personified is a wrinkled, wrathful, wretched wife uncomfortably sandwiched between workaholic husbands and wayward, children. It’s the perfect day for a whinge!


So what am I cross about today? You must have encountered blogs that do the following:

• You leave a comment and the page refreshes. You think your comment has been saved so you get ready to move on your jolly way.
• However, because you’re careful, you check just to make sure.
• Nothing happens for a second, then this message pops onto your screen, ‘Your request could not be processed. Please try again.’
• You click ‘post your comment’ again. Surely this time it’s going to take (how difficult can it be, right?).
• The page takes a bit longer to refresh the second time but then comes up with your comment still not posted, asking you for a word verification. What?
• You type that in, trying not to bang too hard on your already worn computer keys. You ‘post comment’ for a third time before it finally takes. Am I the only person who this gets to?

What is your whinge this Wednesday? Let it all out so we could fume together.

And here are the other whinge posts:

Hard Copy Only 

I often wonder how it benefits writers for Literary Agents to request hard-copy manuscripts only. We toil at the computer from morning until night time. We neglect our families and hair appointments so that we could finish that all-important chapter (all the chapters are important, right?). We stalk Agents’ sites and listings so that we could pick the perfect one for our genre. We find one after hours of searching, only to read, ‘Sorry e-mail submissions not accepted.’


Your And You're

We all have our nemesis where the English language is concerned. For me, it’s words that end in ‘tor’ or ‘ter.’ I know, I know, for you it’s easy and you can't understand why I can’t spell. Well, on the flip side, many people (and writers) don’t know the difference between your and you’re, while I think it’s a piece of bake (or is that cake?). As we all know, ‘your’ is a possessive pronoun which denotes ownership.


Shopping Trolleys in Supermarkets

They park their trolleys in the middle of the aisle, oblivious to the rest of all the other shoppers in the store. You stand behind them, really close, so that you’re almost breathing down their necks, hoping that by some miracle, they’ll notice that you want to go by.



Joining Blogs To Leave Comments
 
More and more I’m encountering blogs that ask you to join or sign in before you’re allowed to make a comment on their post. Now, I’m not the most learned blogger out there, but surely this does more harm than good.
 
Swearing On The Internet 
 
I’ve been thinking about this for a while because I know this particular whinge will upset some people. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that if I can’t share my strong feelings on my own blog, where else can I do so?


Reality TV; And The Winner Is... 

I’m not a fan of reality TV, but I do watch the X-Factor and I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. For my American friends, American Idol is the American version of the X-Factor. I’m a Celebrity... sees forgotten (in most cases) celebrities who’re staging a come-back of sorts, dumped into the Australian jungle. They’re required to complete stomach churning tasks like chewing on kangaroo testicles to ‘win’ food for the group. They get whittled down one by one until the last man/woman left standing is crowned king or queen of the jungle.


Mobile Phone Nuisance



My husband often travels to work by train because his office is in a city which is two and a half hours away. His favourite complaint is about noisy people in 'quiet' carriages. They actively ignore carriages where everyone is chatting and playing with their phones, to sit in  the designated 'quiet' carriages to indulge in loud activities. One would think that if you plan on being noisy, the last place you'll choose to sit is in an area other than the quiet zone.


OMG, LOL, ROTFLMAO


I've reached a point in my social networking life where my brain involuntarily sets fire to my eyes when I see OMG and LOL. 
Does anyone write messages these days without including one or the other? At first when they arrived on the web scene (when I still had to figure out what they meant) they were sort of cute and entertaining. Months later I was still ignorantly, blissfully convinced LOL meant 'lots of love.' After all, nothing about what was said preceding the LOLs was remotely funny. It's no wonder I didn't catch on. 


Shoes That Tone Your Bottom



Don't know if you've been given the news yet, but the market is awash with shoes that plump your bottom. Yay! No need for that planned surgery any more. I know this sounds a bit crazy, but you've got to hear me out.



What's Up With That Horatio Caine



In case you don't know who he is, (lucky you!) he's the head of the CSI Miami team, played by David Caruso. His series of actions in each painful episode is extensively and redundantly choreographed: a foolish pose, a sideways glance for no particular reason (but to show what he must think is his 'good' side), and then a deliberate slow removal of those daft dark glasses he puts on just to take off.