Danielle's Rant of the Week

With Special Recipe to follow!

This Week's Rant: Danielle Vs. Tripod (again)
{Note 10/10/02: It seems that there's an age as well as gender requirement on this rant, as I signed up as a 22 year old woman for yet another site (a multiperson project with my husband and his brother) and it gives me different ads. Most of the below still applies, and it's still pathetic. And no, I can't just change my age and it'll be all better, they won't let me.}

They're doing it again!! Those morons are doing it to me AGAIN!
I hate them, oh how I hate them...
Ok, ya see, I was all set to rant about my job, or how hard it is to find a store-brand strawberry JAM (not jelly, not preserves JAM) or something nice and wholesome like that. But darn it if I don't have to speak out against my free web service provider and their blantant sexism and insulting behavior again.

Thanks a lot tripod, ruin my rant why don't you. Just throw off my groove...see if I care.

Well you know what, I care. I care a whole darn lot.

I suppose you might want to know by now just WHY pre-cise-ly tripod is a company made of sexist pigs who enjoy insulting the intelligence of their female users. Well, as I said before they seem to be under the mistaken impression that girls like to read YM. Apparently any age female, whether Miss Ms. or Mrs. wants nothing more than to ... oh let's see what is it this time ... get "12 issues at $1 an issue plus word play magnets" Oh joy! Word play magnets! Undoubtably it's some cheap pink knock-off of magnetic poetry with words the editors think girls use a lot. Probably mostly "like" and "cool". Who knows. WHO CARES!!

Well I sure don't.

Which means that tripod is doing a really suck job of advertising. I have refreshed the page several dozen times and have not yet got a different ad.

Well, you say, doesn't this just mean that your browser is caching the ad?

No, I'm afraid it means tripod is full of sexist dolts.

I have a second ID in my husband's name that I use for a shrine I'm working on. Upon each refresh I get a new ad. Let me log them for you here for 10 refreshes. (Refreshes are actually Re-Login's because of how tripod keeps track, this should actually be BETTER for the girl's odds but....we shall see...) At 5 I do a cache dump.

Refresh number Ad Male top Ad Male Side Ad Female Top Ad Female Side Comment
One Career Builder Lycos "Watch the Championship with a Champion" Contest YM YM Guys want careers and girl's want...Stereotype enforcing Teen Magazines!
Two Lycos "Watch the Championship with a Champion" Contest Lycos "Watch the Championship with a Champion" Contest Ym Ym Boys like sports is just about as bad a stereotype I guess but...at least you have a chance of winning something without buying something...
Three Lycos Music ad featuring Rod Stewart CD Now ym ym Guys like Music, Girls like....magazines about guys.
Four Travel Worm Lycos "Watch the Championship with a Champion" Contest Surprise...Young and Modern Magazine Yep, here too You know, I at one time had Travel checked as my only interest...and I see YM ads
Five Barnes and Noble Free Shipping ad Lycos "Watch the Championship with a Champion" Contest Oh just take a guess... If you didn't guess YM, you're a moron too. Guys read books, girls read cheap vacous magazines. (Cache Dump)
Six Lycos Music ad featuring Rod Stewart "then the man with no shoes on he says I don't know how to play/he says I fumble all the time he thinks that I am JOHN ELWAY" uhm...championship ad again. There there dear...go read your little girl magazine... Isn't she just the cutest? Interestingly enough the first section to have all repeat ads, although not in the exact same order...except for the girls of course.
Seven Lycos Music ad featuring Rod Stewart Random House Ebook ad featuring Ethan Hawke's Ash Wednesday Why do I bother? Why...why...why... Interestingly enough the ebook ad has a mildly attractive windblown young man in a suit on it, but tripod only shows it to me if I'm a guy...
Eighto Lycos Music ad featuring Rod Stewart Random House Ebook ad featuring Ethan Hawke's Ash Wednesday Ym...encouraging self doubt... ...and promoting shallowness through marginal literacy... The first double repeat for the male tripod member...shocking.
Nine Lycos "Watch the Championship with a Champion" Contest Random House Ebook ad featuring Ethan Hawke's Ash Wednesday Ooh...Let's say it all together this time... YM MAGAZINE You remember the cartoon dangermouse...they had this german guy who'd say "Nein nein!" and the little mole would multiply the nines...it was funny...uhm...kinda...
Ten Lycos Music ad featuring Rod Stewart Lycos "Watch the Championship with a Champion" Contest It's an ad for...COLLEGE! Just kidding, they're both YM Well, that's ten for ten, let's see totals
Total Combinations Eight One Pretty pathetic, pret-ty pathetic.

So what's the big deal? So a site has stupid advertising so what?
Well I'll tell you so what!

The dotcom industry crashed right? Not as profitable as everyone thought right? No more getting paid to surf the web, no more unlimited free webspace. Even tripod cut back their freespace from 50 to 25 MB. Know what, they're NOT GOING TO MAKE ANY MONEY IF THEY SCREW UP THEIR ADS SO ROYALLY!!! Got that? By misadvertising so pathetically they are hurting their advertisers who miss out on a target audience of oh...women who buy stuff. Lots of women buy stuff online, and probably more women even like sports (the most frequent male ad) than would buy YM. By hurting their advertisers they're not going to make the money they want. And if they need to save money guess what, they're going to slam on the free spacers some more. And there is no way on this green earth that I'm going to pay for a free service that has such moronic business sense.

I mean I'm not a psycho Femi-Nazi or something, but I'd appreciate equality. They give the men Barnes and Noble for crying out loud! I WAS going to click-thru that one but I was busy ranting about tripod. So...because tripod screwed up (again by the way...) they already lost one click.

So who's problem is this really? Mine? As soon as my comic comes out I'm SO getting Speakeasy DSL. Looks like tripod is the one who'll ultimately suffer for this.

Too bad I can't help them...suffer that is. : )

For the uberconfused who didn't get the rant anyway, I was talking about advertisements on tripod's builder page which I use to check site stats among other things. So, it's not popups that you'd see once, it's stuff you see every time you do page building. Just in case you didn't click any of the links to the previous time this happened and I reamed on tripod for it.

Link of the Week: Engrish.com
Newly rennovated with oodles of new content, engrish.com supplies us with weekly doses of horrifically mutilated english from our good friends overseas. Check it!
Danielle's Modified Recipe of the Week!

Beef Stew:
Ingredients:
1 large chunk beef steak cut into cubes.
2 Potatoes cut up
3 Carrots cut up
3 Celery Stalks cut up
1 Onion chopped
3 Beef Bullion Cubes or Equivalent Powder/Broth
1 Can Cream of Celery Soup + 1.5 cans water
1 tsp each pepper, garlic powder, paprika...whatever else sounds good.

Combine all ingredients in crock pot. Turn on until vegetables are soft.
Serve with french bread. Really bad for you, full of salt but tastes good.
For alternate freakishness serve over rice. Can also be cooked in large
pan on stovetop. Slightly faster that way, but you have to pay closer attention.
Serves 4-6

Oh yeah, stir occasionally....yeah...that's good.