collisionbend.com

Just about anyone who works on the Web has heard, at one time or another, Microsoft Internet Explorer referred to as “Internet Exploiter,” or “Internet Exploder.”

I, myself, am quite fond of the latter term — especially at work, where Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7 take up about half of my coding time — doing exactly as I call it: it explodes the Internet on-screen.

It drives me nuts.

Every once in a while, however, Firefox will chuck a wobbly, too — as it did for us this afternoon: we ran into an issue on a site with a special CSS print style sheet, and if you printed from Firefox with the option selected to print background images, Firefox would promptly crash every time.

Not good, Maynard.

(A minor change in the print style sheet corrected the issue, thank you very much.)

The funny part of the story happened while three of us were in a brief, impromptu conference about this bug: one of them inadvertently referred to Firefox as “Fire Escape.”

It’s the new joke in the office.

It happened again tonight. Some idiot wearing at least a bottle and a half of cologne simply *had* to stand in my immediate vicinity (shoulder-to-shoulder). I wanted to puke — I almost did.

I couldn’t breathe.

Seriously: my chest started tightening up, painfully, almost cramping; my breathing became labored and short; my stomach turned inside-out; I got real dizzy real fast; I almost passed out.

And I came seriously close to vomiting.

Next time (and this is fair warning to you guys who think that cologne is “cool”), I will puke — all over the guy wearing the cologne. It serves them right: be offensive to people who are allergic to the stuff and get your clothes ruined. And why not? The Old Testament says: “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” right?

Make me sick, cost me my dinner, ruin my night, and I’ll ruin your outfit — regardless of how much it cost.

Now, to make this legal and legit:

Be it hereby publicly known: People (men or women): if you wear an excessive amount of perfume or cologne in my presence (whether you know me or not, or are aware of this statement or not), please be advised that I am allergic to your potions, and they make me gravely ill. Should I become gravely ill in your presence, and end up regurgitating on you and your clothes, I AM NOT LEGALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY AND ALL LOSSES INCURRED BY YOUR STUPIDITY. I will try to give fair warning, but this will not always be possible. If, all of a sudden, I puke on you, and you are wearing cologne, hey: you made me sick, OK, pal? You made me sick — you pay for it.

I didn’t choose this.

You make me sick — you clean up the mess, OK?

Now I will repeat:

The Rule of Thumb for perfume and/or cologne:
wear only enough that your girlfriend (or boyfriend) can smell it only when they hug you.

‘Nuff said.

(Watch for the first “puke post” — coming soon to a theater near you!)