Sometimes people are justifiably disappointed with some sort of retail purchase. Most retailers have a systematic way of dealing with this kind of thing. I have been noticing a shift in the way people react to bad shopping experience in this thing that we call the blogosphere. Bloggers who are trying to build a readership or get lots of links will take the lemons that life has given them and try to make Google Juice out of them. The blogging will often take precedence over any desire for restitution or refund.
Colleen Caldwell bought a pair of pants at a popular clothing outlet and she was shocked to find that they were soiled with bodily fluid. I don’t know her, but after reading some of the fallout I suspect that she was only upset during that split second between her unpleasant discovery and her decision to blog about it.
Expect some further additions to this topic when I figure out what keywords to use in my search.
Sometimes neighbors really suck. Back before blogs, we would generally vent privately to friends and relatives. Blogging in great detail about your awful neighbors seems less than wise.
I once told a very detailed story about a tense altercation with local youths on my personal blog, but only after I had moved to another country. I discovered a post by a young woman who moved to another country and then started slagging the neighbors. She is not very anonymous, and she mentions some street names…
Don’t bother putting up your “Don’t let your dog shit here” signs because frankly, there are dogs FREE TO SHIT WHEREVER THEY WANT, and their “ghost owners” are nowhere to be seen to promptly pick it up. Not to mention, whats going to happen if I don’t pick up my dog shit? Is there some dog shit police thats going to come and enforce your lame ass sign? There is no enforcement of such things as turning left from the far right lane when driving, so why does anyone care about dog shit for gods sake?
If you are having a dispute with your neighbor and you end up writing a blog post entitled I may end up in jail over this, but enough is enough.… consider putting it in draft, going to bed and deciding whether you still want to post it in the morning. There are pictures in that post supporting the blogger’s side of a dispute related to shared parking space.
Part 2 will hopefully feature bloggers admitting to being bad neighbors. It may be harder to find material. I tried to find instances of people talking about not picking up after their dogs and I came up empty-handed 
Tags: cats, dogs, pet food
Everybody pees. We hold this truth to be self-evident to the point that we haven’t used it as the title of a children’s book. This is a bodily function that is carried out in purpose-specific rooms, most of the time.
Urinating in public is a crime. The US government has recently brought in new, broad laws that have the potential to classify public urinators as sex offenders. I think that is insane. There are so many scenarios in which any one of us could be faced with the necessity of relieving ourselves in a public space. The chance of getting charged in relation to more than one unfortunate event is pretty slim, but it should not result in a criminal record much less registered sex offender status.
Looking around the blogosphere, I found a Harvard Graduate that admits on a blog that he pees in the pool. I also found a world traveler who is proud of his experiment in marking his territory (as a warning to stray cats). Neither of these acts are criminal. One does not involve whipping it out and the other was carried out in the privacy of a rented house (from a landlady who doesn’t read blogs?).
Ok, I found a blogger who has written about peeing in public and the icing on the cake is the fact that she was caught, but not apprehended…
I stood up from the ground to find myself staring at a security guard standing with his arms crossed across his chest and a stern look on his face. Again, when one finds oneself in such a situation, my best advice is not to stop and negotiate, but to run. I bolted for the car as fast as I could and leapt inside.
This comes from a blog that I have just discovered…
The more I heard about how easy it was, the more tempted I became to try it myself. So I did and it was fucking awesome. If you ask me, they deserve to be ripped off. Even with millions of dollars worth of lost merchandise each year, Wal-Mart continues to expand, crushing the hopes and dreams of small business owners everywhere.
The author has a veneer of anonymity, calling her blog Politically Blonde and using jdoe as her email identity. She is part of a broader conversation in the blogosphere and I know for a fact that some of her blogging friends have IRL meetups. Confessing to a theft from Wal-Mart is not that incriminating regardless of your level of anonymity and only about 50% of the general public would judge you harshly for this crime. On the other hand, 110% of prospective employers, loan officers, PTA board members, beauty pageant judges and parole officers will judge you harshly.
I am going to flesh out most of these posts using Google’s blog search function. I think it is worth noting that the highest ranking entry for ’shoplifting confession’ is for a blog entry that has since been removed. Unfortunately for the less than anonymous young mother, Google has a cache…
I am going to jail on March 7th for shoplifting. I will be there 3 days. I know I was an idiot to do what I did but I am learning from my mistakes. …
Fortunately, her confession will eventually disappear from Google now that her post for that day has been deleted and replaced with a cute cat anecdote that includes a picture.