Crazed Messenger Pen on Drugs?

Today's gripe is about a feature used in chat programs like MSN and Skype that annoys me beyond belief. This feature rears its ugly head when you're not using the program for actual talking. It's the messaging part, Skype in particular, that drives me insane. You can see when the other person is typing a message because this little yellow pen starts scribbling down what they're saying. It starts working away as soon as the first letter is typed.

The other night I was chatting to a friend on there and I thought to myself my god she's been writing that message for about half an hour now. I wonder if she's fallen asleep on the keyboard or something. I know I was about falling asleep myself just watching the mesmerizing yellow pen scribble for its life. So I thought she's either fallen asleep or she's frantically writing a novella or something. Finally the pen stops dead. My eyes spring open in anticipation for the message. Nothing appears! 'Are you kidding me?' That pen has been scribbling away for an age and there's no message? Did it get lost in translation or something? So I begin typing a reply to this invisible verse when out of the blue a few words appear as though by magic. There are nowhere near as many words as I'd expected mind you. I'm beginning to think this predictive pen or whatever his job title is, is skimming some off the side because he's not being paid enough for the job. One job it does very well however, is to lure you into a false sense of security, because you expect the person on the other computer to be typing as quickly as the pen. In reality though, the pen has rewritten 'War and Peace' in the time it takes the actual person to type 'hello'. In my opinion they should have a feature that automatically detects the speed at which a person is typing and then changes the icon accordingly. So in this case instead of a pen on acid, maybe a slug on sleeping pills would be more appropriate.

I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the pen writes in a different language and that English is not it's native tongue. Maybe it actually first types the message in Aboriginal Mandarin or something, then has to translate the message into English, that would explain why it seems to be scribbling away so furiously all the time. I find it funny when the pen goes into hyper drive and you're waiting for those wonderful words to appear and nothing shows up. Nothing at all. The pen was clearly writing something so complicated that it couldn't translate it into English. Either that or it couldn't read it's own handwriting so it abandoned the attempt halfway through in a blind panic. Then the pen sits quietly back down and takes a drink of water to settle its nerves in the hope that nobody has noticed the screw up. Once he's composed himself he takes to the screen again and types the three letters that always serve as the default lifesaver, 'lol'. 'Phew', the panic is over for now. Back to work it goes, ready to confuse another fool. Oh how a fool and his anticipation are so easily duped by these evil animated pens. One day they will pay...