irony?

This morning I parked in the paid lot for the first time since I returned to work. The entrance has one of those arms that forces you to swipe your security badge before it lifts to allow you in. This morning, the arm was permanently up. So all this time there was another avenue to avoid the reams of parking tickets sitting on our passenger seat...

google ads

I've been thinking about taking down the google ad up there. I read on some blog that having google ads is a sure sign of a blog that doesn't get many readers and that you should wait until you have traffic to put ads up. Whatever. I did have a pipe dream when I started this blog that maybe somehow I could find a way to just blog and not go back to work in January. But that was before I read any blogs and discovered that there a lot of really good blogs out there and that my pipe dream is really just a pipe dream.

But now I don't think I'm going to get rid of the ad. I've realized that, really, it's advertising just for me. When I wrote about kettles and our bad luck (or Dave's idiocy, depending on how you read it), the ad was for "Just Kettles." When I rant about native plants, native plant nurseries get advertised. These are things I'm interested in. It makes me laugh when I write about our decision not to sleep train Ezra and someone's sleep training method gets advertised up there, and when I write about a scary spider in our yard an ad comes up to "Kill Spiders." I'm starting to think God doesn't live in the radio; clearly, God lives in google ads.

The ad has even made me a few cents -- but that was when I clicked on the ad for South African property and it set off two weeks of obsessing how we could buy property in South Africa (we can't); I even chose the cutest fixer-upper in the colourful Bo Kaap neighbourhood of Cape Town. But we already have one unfixed-up fixer-upper and we live in it. The last thing we need is another one on the other side of the world.

There have been many ads that I've wanted to click on but I worry google will have me up for fraud. Is it really fraud if I'm genuinely interested in the ads?

I've just discovered some of the Canadian mommy bloggers and there's been some controversy about advertising and its effect on blogs, and popularity, and readership and stuff like that. But I think I'm missing a big chunk of the discussion and I haven't found whatever started it all off. I think it's fine to have ads. The only way that ad influences me is that it tells me when I may be going on just a bit too long about something, especially things like kettles and spiders.

P.S. When I went to my archive to get the spider link, the ad was "Armpit rash yeast?" Armpit rash yeast?!? I'm racking my brain trying to figure out when I wrote about armpit rash yeast or even when I had it but I haven't done either of those. Oh. It must be the wasp sting thing. Ok, maybe I will take the ad down. That's just nasty.

Ironic continued

Aha! His name is Ed Byrne.

Wow, I've never really used Wikipedia before but I've heard of it and it rocks. It has a great discussion of Alanis Morrisette's song, pointing out that the song itself is ironic because it doesn't actually contain irony.

Grammar Fiend

I've just finished reading a cheesy British novel (my favourite kind of novel for the last few years) with the following on its cover:

'Irresistible
romantic
seriously
funny'

First off, it annoyed me for its lack of punctuation (I loved Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss) but then I realized that seriously funny is a funny phrase. Kind of like pretty ugly. I think it might be ironic but even though I have an English degree, I find the concept of irony hard to pin down and I usually just avoid ever using the word for fear of misusing it. It's one of my pet peeves actually, other people misusing and overusing ironic. Though Alannis Morrisette provided great fodder for an Irish standup comic I once saw making up similar scenarios that would actually be ironic. (Wish I could remember his name because it was really funny... maybe I'll try to google him.)

Anyways, I'm a grammar fiend. And I have some pet peeves. Like when people misuse literally (As in: I literally laughed my guts out... if they weren't misusing the word that would be really messy). And this doesn't really count as a pet peeve because it makes me giggle so much and isn't nearly as widespread as the literally and ironic pet peeves but I worked with a woman who always said pacific instead of specific. Like "Let's be pacific" (why not be Atlantic?) and "Pacifically, we need to..." I had a really really hard time keeping a straight face in meetings with her.

So now I've identified myself as a grammar fiend but I'm also contradicting this announcement with all the grammar rules I've just broken in this post. And I'm completely unapologetic.

postscript: when I googled Irish stand up comic ironic, I found this blog, which included these gems in the comments from someone called Stef the engineer:

"Ironic" analysis. Yay! Mind you, there was an Irish comedian who did a great standup piece on this. Shame I can't remember his name.

and

I love Canadians, and Canada - it's like America with a healthcare system and better spelling. They do have a bit of a production line in angst ridden female singer-songwriters 'though (Sarah, Alanis, that 12 year old in the baggy trousers). Love 'em all. (Saw Alanis in concert once; like paying money to watch a nervous breakdown live on stage. I gather she's mellowed since then. Shame.)

I think I will need to explore that blog, Urban Chick, further because I just love British slang and humour - that's why I love British chicklit so much. I guess that's another contradiction in me: I have an English degree and can't stomach litrachuh anymore... Anyways, I'll keep looking the the Irish comic.