29 May 2007

Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride... Nobody's gonna slow me down, Woah no I got to keep on moving...

Am I getting dumber or just more neurotic as I get older?

Have you ever sat down to watch a nice, brainless entertaining movie and as soon as you get settled with your popcorn and chocolate milk, a big block of text comes up on the screen; its telling you some important shit about the plot of the movie so you have to read it? Ugh. I thought this was a movie, not summer reading!

So you start reading the screen as a silent panic washes over you; will I finish reading this before it vanishes off the screen? I don't think I've ever not finished what was on the screen yet still I sometimes panic.

I'm thinking to myself "Well, they must allot a standard amount of time; surely they must know how long the lowest level average reader will take to read these words on the screen. It's all been tried and tested and studied. So what if I don't finish? Am I dumb? Am I too slow?!" I'll sort of get started reading the actual words with one eye and then start scanning the length and size of the entire paragraph to see if I even stand a chance with the other eye. It's all quite unsettling.

A similar wave of panic rushes over me when I'm prompted with these anti-spam word puzzle things.

I was sending a bunch of emails over the weekend and suddenly I'm on some game show being asked to decipher these curved letters or else they won't let me send my mail. What the fuck? If you have ever fallen to the depths of sending that many emails in one day I'm certain you know what I'm talking about.

So I sit there squinting at this box of warped and disfigured letters in a big disarray trying to dissuade ME, the "spammer" from sending my emails.

So, ok, that first letter kinda looks like a "K"...but...hmm, it has some kind of horizontal line above it. This obviously isn't a "K" that I've seen before. Ok, I'll take a chance and put "K"... but I definitely don't feel confident about it, perhaps its a backwards "G"? Moving on. Ok, the next two are obviously a lower-case "c" and capital "A" or is that an "H" with a pinched roof? They tried to trick me with the diagonal line in between, but I once took that psychological exam where you look at the picture and you either see the young woman or older woman. Well, I saw both. So my eyes are not easily tricked. Nice try, MySpace! Moving along...what the shit is that? A European "7" ?! This is mind bending. It could also be a Polish "Z". Hmmm... I knew it wouldn't be this easy.

The best part is, if you fail, they'll give you a fresh, new puzzle to solve.

Usually by the third or fourth attempt, they'll give you one that says "DOG" in big bold arial type. As if the computer is totally laughing at you now. "Ok, you fucking moron, you're obviously not some genius computer hacker or spammer, you just wanna send your friend a stupid photo of you mooning an old lady, so, here, solve this one..." and that's when they'll roll out the "D-O-G" puzzle.

Dumbass.

No comments: