Ryan McCue’s Blog

What follows is a night well spent on #brisbanecreative. Each person wrote up to a sentance each and we continued each others stories. Hover over a line to see who wrote it. Enough talking, let’s begin:

“Fuck you”,
Sally muttered
while she
sat down
on the
quite peculiar
floor. She
was not
impressed with
SHRIKEE’s lack
of intelligence.
She could
not take
any more
of it.
“Not again”,
said SHRIKEE,
while unwrapping
the dog.
He only
had himself
to blame
for the
large hole
in his
anus.
Sally quit
her job
because she
had a huge
pile of
magazines under
her pillow
. The pile
contained such
filth that
her boss
wanted to
let her
bend over
and let him
touch her
under her
belt. So
she decided
that she
would not
allow him
to grope
her udder.
She couldn’t decide
who would be allowed
to touch the
udder. Which is
her favourite body part so she had to be careful about
letting anyone rub their
greasy paws on
her. So she quit.
It was a new beginning for Sandy, no longer did she want to think about her udder, a body part that no human should have.
Sally just wanted to be like all the other girls at school, with their
udderless bellies.
She decided to look up udderless in the
urban dictionary, what she found was
that normal
girls refer to them as bewbs
and that they are normally placed
higher on the chest but an udder did have its benefits such as,
giving milk, and stimulate the
navel more directly
now that she had four
teats.
Sally was soon known as the super-navel-stimulator.
which scared the boys at first…
until they too tried the
naval stimulation that Sally could provide them.
Sally wasn’t happy yet, she still
could only pleasure 4 guys at once.
She contacted a VET to see if they had more
transplant udders lying about unused, she was surprised to find
that they didn’t keep them in storage
but that they were infact looking for udder-donors.
and especially udders that could be mounted on her back, which is a special treat for men.
Sally died on operating table trying to get a 10th udder attached. The End.

This is the start of a ten things series. One new post in the series will arrive on Friday every week.
I’m starting off with ten Dos and Don’ts for IM conversations. Some of the things will be specific to the MSN client, like nudges, but the general idea of this will apply to all networks and clients.

1. Don’t say DW (Don’t worry)
   If you say something to me, don’t tell me to “DW” about it. You’ve got my interest, tell me what you want. If you used the wrong window, tell me that. Don’t ask me a question, then when I ask what you meant tell me to DW.
2. Don’t have a custom smiley (or emoticon) for every word
   The last thing I want to see is a bouncing exclamation mark every time you tell me something interesting. Or if you put an animated person jumping around instead of a word. If the smiley doesn’t contain the word, I don’t want to see it. If you really like it, put it in brackets instead of it replacing all text.
3. Don’t use foreign characters in your name
   Sure, it looks cool if you have Greek characters instead of letters, but consider screen readers. They’ll either read each character as the name of the character (consider hearing “Greek letter alpha”) or they’ll read each in it’s own language (consider hearing Greek and Hebrew when reading your buddy list). Consider that your buddies might not have the font, so it will display as a series of boxes, which doesn’t look cool.
4. Don’t have group conversations when I don’t want to join
   If you are going to invite me to a group conversation, ask me first. Anything such as “Group convo?” will do, just don’t invite me if I don’t want to. And if I do decide to join and then I leave, don’t repeatedly add me. Worst crime: adding me to the conversation then when I leave (and I will) adding me again. And then again. And then again. Quickest path to getting blocked.
5. Don’t bug me
   This is really just a general thing, but if I tell you to drop a subject, do it (except where this conflicts with thing #1). For all you know, the FBI just started watching our conversation about what we did on the weekend. Although it’s more likely my parents/room-mate/girlfriend/best-friend, you never know.
6. Do talk to me
   There’s nothing I hate as much as when someone logs on and I say “Hey” but there’s no response. Almost all networks, if not everyone, offers an “Away” status for a reason. Use it. You aren’t a black hole.
7. Do use (sensible) smileys (emoticons)
   I enjoy a laugh as much as you do, so send me funny smileys, like a guy exploding in a microwave. But don’t do thing #2 and have it 8 times in a sentence. That’s when it’s not funny. Also, use static smileys where you have the word “like” in pink and bold as a picture. I can understand that. Your normal smileys are good too, like and and other default (read: included with MSN) smileys.
8. Do wait until I finish typing
   If you see I’m typing (all good clients should support this), don’t ask me the same question. If I’m typing, it means I’m responding. Typing = responding, just like 2+2 = 4
9. Do use nudges
   Though I despise nudges and the slowing effect they have on my computer, they are incredibly useful. I might be busy reading something and miss that you said something, so if you’re looking for a response and I’m not typing (see thing #8), nudge me (assuming the MSN client here).
10. Finally, Do have fun
    Joke around, use sensible smileys (see thing #7) and liven up the atmosphere. We all like to have fun, so keep it fun. I hate boring conversations full of text. Stick a smiley face here and there and you’ll keep my interest in the conversation. Don’t use smileys and you’ll see me leave.