Internet Comment Perfection Has Been Reached. Now Closed to New Submissions.

Generally speaking, I can't stand people who comment on news articles online. It seems like the same cabal of idiots post their comments on CNN, the Guardian, the Telegraph,...and God help you if you accidentally go to a local news site. In case you are a million times smarter than I am, and have never read such comments, here's how they usually break down:

• 3% Spam telling you how to WIN AN IPAD2 or MARRY A HOT MILLIONAIRE or WORK FROM HOME...
• 30% People blaming Obama for whatever the article was about, including but not limited to: the economy sucking, natural disasters, Lady Gaga, and the high price of beef jerky
• 30% People blaming Bush for whatever the article was about, including but not limited to: the economy sucking, natural disasters, Kate Gosselin, and the high price of tofu
• 7% Bush-blamers calling Obama-blamers "inbred morons" and Obama-blamers calling Bush-blamers "gay"
• 5% People who are either commenting on the wrong article or have gone off their meds
• 5% People who use ANY news article as an excuse to malign their ex-spouse
• 20% Trolls (n): People who say the MOST offensive thing they could POSSIBLY say, then repeat it until a moderator kicks them out, at which point they invent a new screen name and start over. If we could identify the people who think trolling is the best use of their time, we could make a lot of progress toward stemming our national tide of wasteful, vindictive stupidity. I don't know why this is not priority #1 for the Department of Homeland Security.

I usually try to avoid reading the comments at all, but of course I fail miserably. Sometimes I genuinely wonder what other people thought of the article, but that still doesn't explain why I read the comments. If you review the list above, you'll notice there was no category for "People who have a literate, well-formed opinion they wanted to share in the spirit of open discussion". I guess it's just morbid curiosity that drives me to sit there, sometimes for an hour or more, and subject myself to the horrors of the internet comment board.

But one day in January of this year, it paid off. In fact, it was glorious. I will screenshot the comment below, but if you want to see it in its original context, you can go read this very sad CNN article (NOT RECOMMENDED - VERY SAD) and then click through to page 14 of the comments. There, you will find this text:

As you can see, jerry falls into the 5% of commenters who use news articles to malign their ex-spouse. I feel for jerry; it's clear he's going through a lot of pain. I hope he got everything resolved and managed to move on.

Although to be honest, I rather doubt he did manage to get everything resolved. Because, you see, it should not take you 5 lines of text to realize your Caps Lock is on. And even if it does escape your notice for that long, you can re-type your comment with minimal effort, correcting the Caps Lock error. But jerry didn't do that. jerry typed with furious abandon, not even looking up at the screen to see what he had written until he was done. And when he saw his mistake, did he fix it? No! But he did acknowledge it, with the aid of a brilliantly original sentence construction that has made me laugh out loud every time I've thought of it for the past 8 months and counting. God bless you, jerry, and your locked caps.

If anyone was wondering what to get me for Christmas this year, I would pretty much love a decent-quality t-shirt, preferably in an angry shade of red, that simply reads "DANG MY CAPS WAS LOCKED." Size M. Thank you.