Friday, November 11, 2005

Literally Hotlinking The Wrong Side OF My Self Destruction

So Frank likes today's funny cartoon, even though he wasn't sure it'd work. It was something we debated because I loved the idea from the get go but Frank just didn't get it. It happens that way sometimes. It probably means that no one will get it and I should have listened to Frank in the first place. But I didn't and I'm happy I didn't because I love it. I love it for a few reasons actually. One, I think Frank's done a really good job on it. Two, I like Clive as a character (I'm very seriously considering doing something more with him). Three, it's got a big red self-destruct button with a 'Do Not Press' warning and who doesn't like them. And finally, four, it has the word 'literally' in it. Which gives me the chance to bitch about one of my pet gripes. 'Literally' is one of the most misused terms doing the rounds at the moment. Nobody seems to know what it means. I've watched numerous News reporters, people who you'd assume have some level of higher education related to the English language, use the term to describe things that are anything but literally. Just one example that springs to mind was a reporter doing a piece about the launch of the last Harry Potter book. At the end of the piece the lass closed off by saying that the books were 'literally flying off the shelves'. Now had they been 'lterally flying off the shelves', I would have expected that to be a much bigger news item. Flying books, that's got to be big. Books thrusting themselves through the air under their own volition. That would be big. But they weren't. The books were 'literally' being picked up off the shelves by customers. That's what literally means. To take something by it's literal meaning, without exaggeration and not open for interpretation. I won't get into an extended English lesson but the word is pretty self-explanatory and there is, literally, no good reason to get it wrong.

We, despite giving away two cartoon feeds, still get a few hotlinkers. However, normally and for the time being, we don't particularly mind because it's mostly people who like our stuff and we don't want to be hostile to that. However, I noticed in our stats today that we're being hotlinked by someone who is a)slagging us off b)calling us English c)suggesting that we desperately want to be like Americans and d)(though this isn't really my problem)suggesting that English people in general yearn to be like Americans. Now, I'm not about to slag off Americans because I just wouldn't generalise based on one ignorant arsehole but I will say this, I'm Irish and I'm very happy about it; I do not have any desire to be American or be like an American. Which brings me to the second point, I'm not English. No offence to English people but I'm not one. There's a big difference. Do Americans like being called Canadian or the other way around? I doubt it. Though I will clarify here, because I'm Irish and this could be misconstrued, I have nothing against the English. I have plenty of very good friends from England. I have family in England (as I do in the US) and it's by no means out of hatred that I reiterate my Irishness. I'm not going to the first point because the guy has every right to slag us off if he doesn't like us. He's not the first and he won't be the last, that's fine, I'm not that thin-skinned and his contention wasn't particularly original anyway. Still, he should have linked back. At least that would show he has some courage to back up his conviction. Anyway, it just annoyed me and I thought I'd mention it. It's also quite possible that I'm only getting riled because the example he's showing is, possibly, the only one of our funny cartoons that I really just don't like. And no I'm not going to link to him, he didn't to us.

I think I must have gotten out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.