Ah, the things I do to bring you Carol’s Little World, let me tell you, the things I do. Just the other day, I had gotten word of this podcast, it was one of those free to download, but only available for a limited time, and you had to sign up, but not too late. You know the drill, right? I had to sign up and give my life away in order to get these wonderful free tips and tricks. Thinking it might be something worthwhile, I signed up and downloaded the free podcast.
In case you didn’t know, I ride my exercise bike almost daily. It’s just something I do. Sometimes, when I ride, I listen to things. Lately, it’s been a lot of Twitter Spaces, although that’s not always the case. Occasionally, I will do a podcast. Sometimes, it’s TV. You get the idea here. So, I decided that, while spinning away on my bike, I would listen to this wonderful free podcast before it expired or wherever it is that old podcasts go once they die. It even had captions and subtitles to make it easier for me to listen while I was riding. What could possibly go wrong with this, right?
Oh, it turned out to be the Podcast from Hell. Let me tell you, it was really something. The woman narrating it just could not stop talking! She went on and on and on. There was almost no point to it. It was supposed to be some kind of marketing help, and she was actually hired by some guru to narrate this hot mess, but wow, could she talk. As my mother sometimes used to say about people like this, she really had diarrhea of the mouth. She just went on and on with no end.
Usually, when I encounter things like this, hate to say it, but I just give up. I listen for a few minutes and then just, “Nope! Not having it!” Be done with it, right? The trouble with this podcast was that it did have a few little tips and tricks sprinkled in-between all of the hot mess of verbal diarrhea. There were just enough tips that it made me want to keep listening but, good gravy, it was painful. Ugh! I should get some kind of medal for sticking with it as long as I did.
The woman narrating, she would also venture off topic too. It was like she started out by saying, “Now, we’re going to talk about…” and then she would go off and start talking about her dog, or the furniture in her office, or the subdivision where her house is. Blah, blah, blah! Sprinkled in the middle of all of this, almost hidden, was a good little gem of a tip.
I found myself riding my bike really hard and screaming at my phone while I was listening. Honestly, I hope the neighbors did not hear me. “Oh, will you shut the #$%^ up already and just tell us whatever the hell it is you were going to tip us off about? Geesh, woman, shut your pie hole or give us something of value already!” That’s where it started, you can imagine what it was like by the end of my bike ride. After a nice long bike ride, I was just about ready to throw something at the wall.
In the end, I did manage to get a few tips, but I let the damn thing expire. I just couldn’t take it anymore. She’s probably still out there talking, yapping away endlessly, droning on and on while sharing one little tip, one morsel of something good.
In the old days of vaudeville, they used to have a hook. When a performer was bad, they would “get the hook” and actually take a shepherd’s hook to pull them offstage, in order to let the next act continue without torturing the audience any longer than was absolutely necessary. All of this makes me wonder what we can do about social media, podcasts, and the like. We need a hook! A hook, I tell you, a hook! (Or, whatever the virtual equivalent of this might be.)
Maybe we should start a getthehook.com website and put up things like pictures of Taylor Swift and anyone else we absolutely can’t stand. Kind of like an Internet warning, “AVOID AT ALL COSTS. VIEW AT YOUR OWN RISK!” Yeah, that might work now, wouldn’t it? Then again, that’s really just the entire Internet, isn’t it? (Well, maybe except for all of the cute cat videos.)
You laugh, but good money is on the fact that the crazy Podcast from Hell women is still out there somewhere talking.
Until next time…
