Thursday, June 15, 2006

Why people have clocks/watches on their blogs?

1) Because you want to know what time it is before you answer nature's call in the middle of the night. So holding your bladder, you boot your PC, wait for the damn dial-up to connect meanwhile debating between using Firefox or IE, use Firefox anyway because Bill is such a sissy, visit your blog, look at the time, and then scurry into the bathroom where you go, "Sigh...!" in accompaniment to the sound of running water.

2) You fritter away your youth looking at your site stats all day, counting each hit as it trickles in, and you need to know if it's time to eat or shower or ca-ca (not necessarily in that order) or whatever it is that you do in between. Of course, you're too preoccupied to notice the task bar.

3) Digression. Ever noticed how bloggers have two clocks on their blogs? Chances are one shows the time of an American city/town with a university, and the other, of some place in (Replace with third world country). Have you wondered why? It's because the aforesaid blogger (again too preoccupied to look at the task bar) can then time his call to his girlfriend (third world country = India) when she's in the middle of a meal to have the following conversation:

"What you upto yaa?" - blogger.
"Eating." - bored girlfriend.
"What you eating?" - blogger.
"Onion Oothaappam" - bored girlfriend, feeling slightly disgusted.
"Onion Oothaapam?? Sigh! I so miss home food yaa" - blogger.
"Hmmm" - bored girlfriend wary of oncoming mush attack.
"And I miss you too yaa" - blogger.
"Hmmm" - bored girlfriend with appropriate measure of love.
"Do you miss me?" - blogger, slightly desperate.
"Hmmm" - bored girlfriend who can't say anything in front of handsome male colleague accompanying her.

4) Transcript of a chat between Blogger and his Bluggle* friend.

Blogger - Dude! Got myself a new watch yesterday...
Bluggle - Kewl.
Blogger - It's got this ultra cool electric blue dial, with sexy white hands man.
Bluggle - Kewl.
Blogger - You can even see the time in three countries at the same time!! Awesome naa?
Bluggle - Kewl.
Bluggle - Is it water proof?
Blogger - $%#@&*

*Bluggle - A person who doesn't blog and knows nothing about blogs. In other words, someone with a life.

Feel free to add more rational explanations of this ubiquitous phenomenon.

UPDATE (June 18): "Bluggle" is something I coined perchance. Remember, you read it first here :)

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

You gotta patent "bluggle" unless its not your invention...

Anonymous said...

ROFL!!

Man those clocks - hahahaha - this was a good read! I am often amused to as to why bloggers have clocks on their blogs.... umm some kind of impending doom perhaps?

Suyog

Anonymous said...

heehehe!!
absolutely hilariuz!!

Anonymous said...

He he, Lol :)

Anonymous said...

Well I dont know...I always thought it was to tell me people how much time they spent wasting their life reading the blog post about how nothing basically even remotely interesting to the reader is happening to the blogger's life....
All the time ofcourse the reader himself/herslef being not exactly self-aware....

Anonymous said...

Hmm !! Wonder what motivated u to write such a post !!! I dont have a clock on my blog .. Neither do i wear my watch when am at office ?? Why - God knows ??

musafir said...

ashishg

The thought never occurred. Will do it right away :)

supremus

Impending doom? Now that's something! What with WMDs and all that? :)

Thanks for the comment - appreciate it.

stuffedgoofie! and catch22

:)

girish...!

A point for you, although slanderign bloggers for being un-self-aware means I minus two.

karthik Wonderign what motivated me? Didn't you hear? Everythig is futile :) ... and maybe you don't like time driving you around!

Anonymous said...

The clock thing was "Oh lol"

Thanks for the comments....link me up too...
u have a yahoo id...?

Anonymous said...

no no no you don't understand.

It is because they can.

Once upon a time, there was a programmer who wrote a program to put clocks on pages.

Some time later, a blogger found that program and thought, "Holy shit that's a great idea! Now I can have a clock on my webpage along with a StatCounter and a People Tracker Map thingy and AdSense and Links to other blogs and Archives and Profile and Photographs and Banners and RSS feeds and email ids and a list of my other web sites and a picture of my dog! That is so awesome! That is why I have a blog! So that I can clutter up my left side and my right side so much so that nobody looks at the middle, where the actual blog is supposed to be! I bet I thought of it first. Let me cut and paste that html in my template! there. Done. Now I am ready to be in the Hall of Cool!"

And other people saw and the same process followed. THAT is how there are so many clocks.

musafir said...

the mocking spirit

Oh, yes, the blogroll. It's been on my task list since last year, and I guess updating it would mean shrugging off my laziness, which is highly unlikelu. Until then the browser bookmarks will do :) ... and sorry, I don't do the yahoo thing! Side-effect of working in a place where they block everything that is os some social use :)

consumer demon

Ah, now I understand, O wise one! Much grateful for the wisdom :)

Anonymous said...

I added the clocks to my blog so that it 'd fill up some place!!!

good reading anyway!!

Anonymous said...

design, space-fillers, blah, perhaps? you make it sound like most, if not all, bloggers are fucking losers. just so happen that we can write nonsense and still manage to attend the best parties.
entertaining read, nonetheless