The other day I was surfing the WinAmp site looking for some decent skins to give a more interesting look to the rather plain and boring looking programme. It's quite amazing to see the collection of skins that are displayed on that site.
For those that don't know, WinAmp is one of the programmes that can be used to listen to Mp3s and related. By skins I mean the ability to alter the look of a programme and make it look prettier and what not. I am not referring to "nekkid" women, albeit from the type of Google searches I see that land people on our site, I am seriously beginning to wonder who reads this magazine.
Anyway, after about half an hour of browsing I decided to stop as I reached the following conclusions:
1 skin artists aren't;
2 other skin artists judging someone's skin can't write for shit; and lastly
3 I've shit better skins.
Take for example, oh, say the WinAmp StarGate Skin. While this will ensure I will never get any respect, I really liked the StarGate film and when I can, I try to catch the episodes on the telly. Check out this 'awesome' description on the page: "download !!!!! the SG-1 series on you pc??? NO but you can relieve it with this skin"
This gets to me. First of all, and not because the skin is utter shite, just making something grey and writing on it 'StarGate Command' doesn't make it cool in my books. For those geeks out there that have seen the movie or the television series, I'm sure you could come up to a million alternatives than grey. I have, but I'll spare them to avoid further insults.
Maybe by `relieve' he meant that I'd piss all over it as soon as I saw it. I don't know, but I was tempted.
Which brings to a second interesting point, the spelling, or rather, the writing like a retard. I find it incredibly difficult to write in the so-called AOL-style. No concept of capitalisation; the use of 'n' instead of 'and' or 'u' instead of 'you'; and as far as a concept of grammar, spelling and paragraphs, forget it. Perhaps it's habit, but I have to actually stop and think to write like a cretin.
Lastly, the abominable collection of exclamation marks. Let me tell you how much I hate exclamation marks. Actually, I can't tell you, because right now I can't think of a half-assed metaphor to give you as a decent example, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Let's just say I am not trying to prove I've got balls of steel as I don't `exclamate', but it's just one of those things that makes me grimace.
I should, perhaps, specify that I don't completely dislike them. I feel they bring out the proper emphasis in the words one is expressing if used properly. But a row of them is unnecessary and as disrupting as a smiley in e-mail.
Unfortunately these stunned fuck-heads is what's being passed for Internet users these days. And while the English language will slowly deteriorate into something illegible, you can rest assured there will be shining icons of defence, such as CoN, that will try to keep your fascistic literary tendencies at bay.
Metadata: