Try An Animated Mouse Cursor

by: Morgan Hamilton

Mouse cursors are useful and functional as they help you get an idea about where you are supposed to type. They usually look so unobtrusive, that we hardly notice them. The important thing is that they work great for us, and show where typing should take place. I hardly even noticed my mouse cursor until the day that I had to use another computer. It was my colleague’s and it had a strange animated mouse cursor in the form of an angel. I really looked bewildered and couldn’t start to type at all, as I couldn’t manage to point to tha specific place that I wanted. The case made me think really hard about mouse cursors, and all those sweet “aesthetic” innovations that people use to put on their computers with the single intention to personalize them and mess up everyone who is using them.

Animated mouse cursors have come as an entertainment for children, so that they can make their cursors funny and nice-looking. But gradually those childish animated mouse cursors became a craze. That is what gets me really perplexed. I wonder how a sane individual would like to make her or his mouse cursor in the shape of a dog? Does this show sanity and grown-up thinking in any way? I have always thought that when something is practical and has a functional role, it shouldn’t be made to look like a clownish gadget. Take those stupid desktop animations, for example. They not only take large space from your memory, but they really look preposterous. But many people actually seem to adore them, even grown-up working people!

It’s the same case with the hideous mouse cursors: some infantile people just cannot resist the opportunity to put an animated shit in the place of their mouse cursor. Not to mention the fact that pointing with these animated mouse cursors is really hard, and people lose their time just to fix the problems of irregularities in typing!

Anyway, if they feel like it, why not enjoy themselves for a while. There is a subtle psychological cause for some people downloading animated mouse cursors, and I came to understand it pretty soon. Animated mouse cursors are a stupid invention, but they actually help some people overcome their general disgust towards their work. They can be really supportive if someone hates the things he or she is supposed to type. Animated mouse cursors really make the whole working process more personal, and people may come to even like it at some stage.

But in my opinion this is only a stupid waste of time: if you have to do one thing, you just do it and get over it- not waste your time making your computer settings looks as friendly as they can. No-one says that working with computer is a pleasant thing to do, but you can just get over it. Computers really rule the world, and people should admit it, instead of trying to hide from reality by making buffoons of themselves.

You know the little pointy thing that moves around on your screen whenever you move your mouse? Well, it is usually called a mouse cursor and is meant to indicate where you are supposed to type. Well, for all practical purposes, it is an essential, functional item of computer software. I know people have all kinds of weird fetishes, bit I can’t for the life of me imagine why anyone of them could have come up with an invention as stupid as the animated mouse cursor.

Each time I see an animated mouse cursor, I am reminded of my disgusting nephew. Maybe I should explain myself on that one. You see, my little nephew, who pretends to have been born with radical computer skills visited me once. And in the brief while that he asked for my permission to check his mail on my home computer, he had managed to change the desktop settings, hide all my files and folders and worst of all, managed to replace my beautifully functional cursor with an animated mouse cursor.

Well, after some difficulty, I managed to get everything back to its original shape and intended purpose. But the animated mouse cursor really troubled me. And I couldn’t even use the blasted thing. It was a whirling wheel that didn’t allow me to point at anything at all. I mean, how does one point with an animated mouse cursor in the shape of a circle? And as an animation artist used to drawing complex figures, how was I supposed to draw with an animated mouse cursor?

Ever since, I’ve had a healthy distaste for animated mouse cursors of all kinds. And each time I see someone else with an animated mouse cursor, I’m sorely tempted to rip their computer apart and knock them on the head, all the while saying, ‘how come you manage to point with that animated thing?’ Think about it. An animated mouse cursor comes in all sorts of shapes except one that is conducive to helping it do what it is supposed to! But in general, in order to be animated, these animated mouse cursors take the most confounded shapes. I’ve even seen one shaped like a dog for heaven’s sake.

While I am sure that there are a lot of people who do enjoy these animated mouse cursors, I’m pretty sure that I’ll never learn to love them. Unless it is effective and functional and most certainly not animated.