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I, Too, Certainly Get Irked

Posted by :James Howden On : July 6, 2016
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Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , , , , , ,

(2.78-minute read)

Get your IRK on, people!

And no, this is not a deeply serious plea, but I will clarify anyway: I don’t mean bombastic, cowardly and bullying bleats that do nothing except divide people. (Buy a bigger truck. Get bigger or more self-righteous hair. Shout louder. Use more invective. AR15 the messenger. Show your Inner Dick is bigger and dickier. More implants. More vitriol. Um, Fox News. None of that junk. Irkery is smarter than that, and has a better sense of humour.)

We need IRK. When we are irked, we hang on to some sense of propriety; we know that what irks us might not actually be All That Serious In Heads Other Than Ours, and that the next person in line might just get twirked¹ by what irks us.

¹ Not a real word, but you know what I mean. (Right? No? Well then: amused, modestly titillated, sparkled up just a little…)

I got more than a little irked by basketball player Kevin Durant’s Independence Day DUREXIT™ from Oklahoma City, so if you’re not afraid of basketball references – and hey, my bride read the whole durned thing! – you might want to nip over to the It’s All About Sports! section of this humble electronic mutter. (SELF-DEFENSIVE YEAH-BUT: I know that an athlete switching teams is no more than a tidal wave in a two-litre pail, but I was irked and consternated: whither loyalty? why does everybody want the EASY way? (DUH!!) why would I or a saner dude or SO MANY PEOPLE care so deeply about a job relocation by a stranger?) So as always, irked as you might be by Another Howdy Ramble About Sports As If They Mattered, remember that there’s always more to basketball than just basketball! (End of plug for yesterday’s post, which I really liked writing, which is storming the outer fringes of the Galactic Comms, which you haven’t read yet and what’s up with that.)

“I certainly get irked.” My comment section irks me. It’s not used very much, for one fairly major Thing, which means I’m messing up in several somehows. (Posting droughts might have something to do with that, though I’d rather blame YOU guys.)

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Friends, Readers, Spambots!

Posted by :James Howden On : October 13, 2012
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Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , , ,

‘course I have lots of friends.

If you are new to this collection of my writing, you might not remember the previous electronic incarnation: my floating ahead against a Pacific expanse of blue, a quirkily non-standard setup and, on my end, a more painstaking and often unreliable process of getting posts out into space. An occasional complaint, too, was that there was no mechanism on the old site for readers to offer comments.

Now, this one – and thanks again, Dan’l Jones! – is a more industrially standardized vehicle for wordiness, and has what people seem to expect: a ready option for feedback (though still, I hear, lamentably short on photos and winkin’n’blinkin do-dads). The only thing is, nobody comments. Not that I have many readers, but still the score is Spambots 78 106, Human Beings 0. Yes, I do have the doubtful comfort that a small battalion of automated, cyberspace “first responders” are clamouring for my attention. In the absence of sentient response, I will share with you some of the delightfully arcane comments that my robot friends offer.

Insanity Workout Review! had this to say: This is reportedly a few tips that you do month two before you throw yourself into this category of body shapes hourglass, pear, apple, h-shape, v-shape, and Oval shape. And don’t think I’m not grateful! Many are clumsily earnest in their praise of my superb writing, so they can’t be all bad. For example, Ferragamo Handbags said (and wouldn’t that be a great name for a character in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?),  Great piece of information! May I reference part of this on my blog if I post a backlink to this webpage? Thanks. It was so kind of Ms. Handbags to ask.

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