Non-Letter Keyboard Keys, Part 2

SPACEBAR

Poor spacebar. So reliable, yet so often overlooked. She's just sitting there, waiting for you to pay attention to her. And she's totally modest about it. I mean, she's the only key on the entire board that isn't labeled! And yet here you are, spending all your time with backslash like it's some kind of a big deal. Spacebar asks if you want to go out later, but you act like you didn't hear what she said and ask if she's put on weight. You and Alt are gonna go have a few beers, but you decide to ditch Spacebar because there's that one place where her texture has rubbed off and you'd rather your friends didn't see you with her, even though that place is there because you've used her so much. I mean, it's your fault, man. And still, she's so emotionally stunted she still gives you a space whenever you so much as tap her. God, you're such a jerk. Plus 7 bullets.

CAPS LOCK

Seriously, has Caps Lock ever done anyone in the world the slightest bit of good? For the life of me, I still can't see the use for it. What situation calls for the use of such a long string of capital letters that it's too much to bear holding down the Shift key? Are people just that lazy? I know that in these opinions pieces I write out the thing I'm going to talk about in all caps, but honestly the thought of using Caps Lock never even occurs to me. In fact, the only time I ever remember the Caps Lock key's existence is when it's accidentally on and I'm trying to get into my Yahoo account. Wouldn't an italic key be better? I'd actually be pretty cool with writing something in all italics. Check out how sweet this is. COMPARE THAT TO HOW EYE-BLEEDINGLY ANNOYING THIS IS. Need I say more, really? Minus 5 bullets.

ALT

What's so alternative about Alt? Well, you know, it's lived in the shadow of its straight-laced brother, Ctrl, for a long time, and it just needed to separate itself, you know? So back in the early 90s it started wearing a lot of flannel and listening to Nirvana, you know, back before they were popular. And then later on, it got into indie before anybody else and was wearing thrift store way before those fake hipsters with their manufactured vintage. He was the one who introduced me to Radiohead. No, seriously, I'm not kidding. Back when "The Bends" came out, he was all like, "Dude, you totally have got to check out this band," and it just blew my mind, man. What I mean by saying all of this is that I have no idea what Alt actually does, but it has a cool name, and thus gets Plus 1 bullet.

F1-F12

Remember when these keys used to do useful stuff? You know, back when the operating system screen was all blue and there were those tabs at the bottom that told you that F5 was the key you used to run a command or restore a save file or whatever? I seem to remember these also being useful in the old Sierra adventure games, which at least give them some nostalgic value, 'cause, man, these things are just plain useless now. The only one I can remember using in the two years I've had this computer was F7, to project stuff onto a TV. So, basically, I could just get by with F7, although in that case I would probably wonder why it was called F7 and what happened to Fs 1-6. So I guess those others just remain there for my peace of mind, and that's pretty nice of them. Plus 2 bullets.

DEL

Delete's so played out. He's like the kid in school that everybody thought was cool because he wore that one denim jacket with the Sex Pistols patch on it, but then a much cooler kid from another town showed up, with a much better jacket with far more zippers and Minor Threat Misfits patches. He was totally into The Clash, too. And he was like, a year older than all the rest of us, so he could get us into R-rated movies and stuff. That new kid is Backspace, by the way, and he's totally left Delete in the dust, the pathetic loser standing in the parking lot waiting for his mom, clutching his dirtbike Trapper Keeper like it was still even cool. Minus 3 bullets.

END

The key's pretty crappy, as it just takes you to the end of the line of text, but since it's provided me with a convenient way to let me finish this opinions piece and stop talking about non-letter keyboard keys for enternity, I'll cut it some slack. 0 bullets.

"But, you can't end it now," I'm sure you're saying. "What about PrintScreen?" And the only thing I can say in response is that if you need someone to tell you how to feel about PrintScreen, then you, my friend, don't know PrintScreen.