Internet Explorer saved my life

There have been times in my past, my darker days, that I thought it might be a good idea to try and learn how to write code. Clearly, this is stupid. There’s an outside chance that if I did that I might one day be called upon to contribute to the Silverlight code base, thus causing me to immediately take no joy from living. I’ve seen it happen. More than once.

That said, I am an insufferable nerd. I like technology, gadgetry, software, design, and good things. So I made a pact with myself; a blood oath, if you will. I would learn to code for the web (in JavaScript, suck it Flash. Silverlight, no one was talking to you, go back to your 4 users), but I would shoot myself in the head if I ever began to understand JavaScript’s “this” keyword.

For this eventuality, I carry on me at all times (even nude, it’s called a “prison pocket”) a small caliber firearm. If, God preserve me, one day I understand the “this” keyword (which I view to be possibly as challenging as learning the rules of Cricket), I’ll shoot myself in the head.

This might seem drastic, but who wants to live in a world where you have that sort of technological ephemera stuffed into your head? It might be displacing something important, like the recipe for flan, the knowledge of how to photoshop a post-it note, or the ability to understand the plot of Inception without exploding your head.

Imagine to my horror that I had accidentally used the “this” keyword correctly in a website I was building. It wasn’t anything large or complicated, but there it was, plain as day. I knew my time was up; I was melancholy but resolved. I slowly drew forth my derringer from its snug resting place, ready for the deed.

But hey, then I noticed that the whole fucking thing didn’t work in IE8 (unlike Firefox, Chrome, and Safari), so I was off the hook.

– yuk