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The Lite Side

Writer Boycotts Own Work

- 2003.05.20

I was reading the Lite Side archive the other day - mainly because at my age you tend to forget the stuff you've written more than a week ago, so it's all fresh and brand new again - and I noticed that there is a bunch of stuff that is irrelevant to the Mac, and to low-end Macs in particular. For example, there's that ongoing thread about picking on Gateway's ugly Profile computer, the myriad innovations of Michael Dell and Bill Gates, stupid fake letters from readers (or fake letters from stupid readers? stupid letters from fake readers? I forget), and don't forget the Bumper Snickers and rejected Switcher ads, too.

Now, we're not going to link all of these things for you - just go visit the archive and click on everything you see until you've read it all, then come back. No rush, we'll still be here when you get back.

Now that you're back, you can see my point. About 90% of the crap I write isn't even about Macs, and the stuff that is isn't about low-end ones. So why is it here?

Obviously the author (and that would be me) is under some sort of delusion that he's funny. Or there's some sort of nearly total blood clot in some important area of his brain.

My wife says the fundamental problem is that I write most of this stuff at 1 AM, and most folks read it at 1 PM. It's a lot funnier when you brain is filled with fatigue toxins, believe me. And guess what? It's even funnier at 3 AM. Studies show around 8 AM is the worst time to read the Lite Side. I get the worst mail from people time stamped from 8 AM to 11 AM. Really nasty stuff, too.

Nevertheless, the inevitable conclusion you have to reach is that the stuff is inappropriate, so I've decided to boycott my own writing and never again read anything I've ever written or am going to write in the future.

As to why someone with Dan Knight's reputation would allow such a travesty to occur, that has to do with the fact that I pay him $20 a week to let me publish my articles, but through a clever ruse and some slight of hand, he keeps sending me checks to pay off the debt that I convince him he still owes me. It's pretty clever, sort of like when you ask someone for two tens in exchange for a five. Do it fast enough, and they won't notice they're actually given you more money than you gave them. But don't tell Dan. He'll probably be ticked off when he figures it out. I know I would be.

You know, if you get one of those corpus callosum operations that splits your brain in half, it is possible to write something without being able to read it, particularly if you wear an eye patch on your left eye while you write with your right hand.

Drugs might work, too.

Don't try to talk me out of it now; I'm determined. It's not some juvenile power play or some ancient genetic tendency to wee-wee on the other monkey's turf, after all. I mean, how much power is there in taking away the only reader willing to admit that he reads this stuff? If I don't read my own stuff, then the hits on the site will drop by at least 60%, and that's a good thing, right?

With so few readers involved, it's hardly something to brag about. Imagine what it looks like on my resume:

2003: Initiated boycott to stop me from reading my own past articles. Generated hundreds of hits in support of the boycott. Prevented me from reading my own past articles for several days.

Maybe it'll be picked up by one of those humor column summaries such as Jim Romenesko's Reading Room.

Mac Website Humor Columnist Urges Readers to Support Boycott of His Own Articles

Citing a thorough lack of humor and pointless tripe unrelated to the site's mission, web author Jeff Adkins today urged his readers to support him in his tireless quest to boycott his own column. "You can read it if you want," he says, "In fact, come back every week to see whether or not I've read one of my own columns or not." According to Adkins, "There's a risk that I'll read one of my own articles on any given day of the week. So come back regularly, several times a day to check and see if I've resisted temptation and fallen into a never-ending pit of humorless despair."

If you want to express your support for this important boycott, click here.

That doesn't actually do anything. I just like the idea of having hundreds (ahem, sorry, tens of thousands) of people click on a spot on a screen for no apparent reason. Little power trip there. Sorry. Can't help myself.

There was something else I wanted to say, but I can't go back up to the top and read what I wrote to help me remember, because that would be hypocritical. And goodness knows, we can't have that on an Unofficial Mac Website.

That'd violate some sort of a rule, wouldn't it?

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