Interim

Good evening or possibly morning, readers. How long has it been since I've updated? Too long? You're absolutely right. I recently came into unexpected unemployment, so I've been out on the job hunt instead of the laptop! I do come bearing good news, however; the Tall Ships Festival, currently happening on the waterfront of Halifax (that's where we live!), which is a HUGE tourist attraction, has no Crocs booth this year! It's probably the biggest draw of the summer, aside from the Busker festival, and I must say that the threat has lessened slightly since last year. Good work, Halifax! I tip my hat in your general direction.



Look! Look at all that proper footwear! It warms the heart.

Also warming my cold, cold heart is Jessica, who forwarded us the most horrifying Crocs testimonial I've ever seen, read or heard. If you wear Crocs, my good people, this is the type you are associating with:

"I love my crocs !! I have 5 pairs of the original beach style. Recently my employer told me i couldnt wear them anymore because they do not have backs!!I wanted to cry i went online found the islanders bought them and i love them even more if thats possible !! As soon as i can afford to buy the islanders in every color i will !! I cannot take them off my feet they are truly the most comfortable shoe i have ever worn!!!THEY ARE MORE THAN WORTH THE BONE OF CONTENTION WITH MY EMPLOYER. I am a 16 year veteran employee with the home depot and i cant believe my shoes have caused such controversy!!!!THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU"

That was sent into the actual company. This is not a parody.

NOW YOU TRULY KNOW FEAR. Also, the term 'bone of contention,' which I'll admit to never before hearing.

Stay vigilant, my darlings. We might be in the New York Times tomorrow.

Extreme measures

Today, we received this message from the mysteriously named Gem R:

I had a girlfriend, for two years. She was great and funny and cute and yadda yadda... but then one day, about 2 months ago, we walked past a shop window selling crocs.

"Oh, honey, I'd quite like some Crocs. Apparently they're really comfortable."

To which I replied with a long silence.

Needless to say, a month later, I got a new girlfriend. She's into converse, but I think I can deal with that.

We here at I Hate Crocs of course don't advocate the breaking of hearts, but we can't entirely blame you, Gem. You did right. You've prevented yourself from having to endure a lifetime of waking up next to someone who wears Crocs. We all know what happens when Crocs get girls at a young age, Gem. First, she starts buying shirts to match. Then she gets accessories. Then she buys quilted vests, gets a bad haircut and starts wearing Mom Jeans. You don't want that. You got out just in time.

As a side note, we at I Hate Crocs are very fond of our Converse Chuck Taylors! We are college students, after all. However, they're not safe from making your feet look ridiculous...



Or ridiculously AWESOME...? Still, a preferable choice.

I must admit that while keeping the site updated in Vincenzo's absence, I haven't been as thorough as he usually is. I counted on him to keep track of our mentions, links and love letters, but now I'm having to do it myself! What frightens me the most is having to keep track of our mortal foes, the Crocs Fans. I visited their most popular website today and found myself cringing in horror and the Crocs promotional videos they had posted. I wept at their distressing photos of children in rubber death traps. I cried out in horror at their blatant lack of common sense. Why, oh why, does this have to happen?



I was thrilled at first to see it, hoping that someone had relinquished their shameful shoes and decided to set them out to sea, but unfortunately it was just some yahoo floating his shoes in a pool. I died a little inside.

Luckily, some people still have common sense, like this North Andover public school that has banned Crocs for safety (and, assumedly, aesthetic) reasons. Good work!

We also got a little note from Belinda, who says:

Hi, my name is Belinda and I wear Crocs. I even put my childrens' feet in Crocs. After seeing a picture of W in Crocs, I'm re-thinking my position. Especially since he was wearing socks. My older daughter is a fan of "socks 'n Crocs," too, but I certainly don't want her to grow up to be like George Bush!

Whatever reason you can think of, Belinda, we stand behind your decision.

Should anyone object to this union...

Weddings are stressful events. There's so much to do in such a short amount of time - catering, guest lists, reservations, dresses, family crises - that things can occasionally get out of hand. I think that everyone can agree on that. This is why I tried so very hard to try and understand what in the hell was going on with these obviously overwhelmed brides:



And:



I mean, I get that maybe your uncle showed up after fifteen years and got drunk at the open bar, telling everyone about how you used to love to dance naked to Celine Dion when you were six. Maybe your stepmom criticized your dress by saying 'it would have looked so nice if you were just ten pounds thinner.' Maybe your shoes got run over by the limo, or broke on the cobblestone walkway up to the church, but I STILL can't comprehend this:



...And it's not just because of the Mickey Mouse ears, though they do confuse me. Here's one testimonial that is just so awfully misinformed... Well, you read it!

I love Crocs. They are the most comfortable shoes I have ever had. I thank my sister, the nurse, for getting me (and my whole family!) hooked. It has been said that all I ever wear is Crocs. This is pretty close to the truth. On my wedding day, I was wearing a nice pair of ivory Cayman Crocs that nicely matched my dress. People looked at me with envy because they knew just how comfortable I was. Keep the Crocs coming!

It's like my work is done for me.

I think you gives are pretty dumb.

Hello and good day, avengers. As you've read, Vincenzo has left for Italy/Africa for the next many weeks, so I'll be picking up the slack. After all, the war can't be waged by itself, can it? My guess is, no! So, speaking of wars, here are two particularly unfriendly e-mails from (for one reason or another) the same person, who asks us to make fun of her, and I can't help but oblige.

I think you gives are pretty dumb. You are NEVER going to, in a MILLION years, stop the Crocs craze. Sure there ugly. THEY LOOK LIKE CLOWN SHOES!!! But they are comfortable. And they can withstand a good hosedown. AND they are fungus-resistant. And anyone dumb enough to wear them on an escalator will pay the price. THIS SITE IS A WASTE OF TIME, EFFORT, AND INTERNET SPACE!!!! you should be ashamed, sapping people for their money. FOR YOURSELVE!!!!!!Go donate to Greenpeace. In the meantime, I think I will go hug a tree. You probably won't post this, but if you do, I just know you will make fun of me. BAH HUMBUG ON YOU!!!!

And then...

I hear you hate Crocs,huh?
WELL, I HATE YOU WITH A PASSION THAT BURNS THROUGH MY SOUL, WISHING TO KILL YOU ALL!!!! you freaks. You will never stop Crocs. Sure, they can be dangerous. Sure they're ugly. But apparantly 6MILLION+ people don't care. they are comfortable. They are washable. They are fungus resistant. Well, I AM YOU!!! RESISTANT. YOU ARE FIGHTING A LOST CAUSE!!!!
YOU MONEY hogging bimbos!!! GO DONATE TO A REAL CAUSE!!! while you do that, i will go hug a tree.

These lovely words are brought to you by Amber Roberson, who signs herself firstly as a 'tree-hugger' and secondly as a 'registered tree-hugger,' though I'm not sure how that relates to the hatred of plastic shoes. Personally, I'm a fan of 'YOURSELVE!!!!!!' and anyone brave enough to break that many etiquette laws at once.

Luckily, we also have people that are not only like-minded and obviously have hundreds of girlfriends, but type in a manner that doesn't incite rapid vomiting.

I hate crocs and I’ve never seen any footwear that’s uglier. I’d rather walk around with Christmas stockings on my feet. I truly was entertained by your website, even chuckled out loud a few times. I was also absolutely sickened from the depths of my bowels by the people who wrote you nasty emails—what idiots!!! Although it was cool that you posted the negative ones—I wonder if they realize how stupid they are when they read them over again? I bet they don’t. Anyway, I’ll be checking in, keep up the good work.

Thanks for your support, Greg!

Next update... Matrimonial Crocs?

"The time has come," the walrus said.

I'm leaving for Italy, so this will be my last post for about six weeks. Kate will pick up the slack, I'm sure, so worry not. Truly. Don't fret.

First, we've got some emails. Dawn Webb had this to say:

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned the danger of Crocs on your page.

My friend's 2 year old nephew just underwent hours of surgery to repair his foot. He was on an escalator at the airport with his parents and had on Crocs and they got caught on the escalator. Apparently this isn't that uncommon. It almost totally severed 3 of his middle toes.

We here at I Hate Crocs were sorry to hear about that. Though we have mentioned the dangers of Crocs in the past, we tend to steer away from it as severed toes don't tend to be funny and we are in the business of making people laugh. At least, we try. However, we will mention it again. Crocs sometimes sever toes, so watch out for that, those of you who still wear them. Dawn, thank you for writing us.

Julie de Chantal sent us this photograph of the fiends and their cohorts:


Next, we have some hate mail from lINDA SANTAGUIDO, a person whose shift key must be worn down to a nub:

THIS HAS TO BE ONE OF THE MOST RIDICULOUS SITES I HAVE EVER COME ACROSS. SURELY PEOPLE HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO THAN WORRY ABOUT WHAT SHOES PEOPLE ARE WEARING! I'M SURE YOU WON'T POST THIS COMMENT!

Truthfully, I just wanted to prove her wrong by posting the comment. I'm petty like that. And yes, we do have more important things to do than worry about what shoes people are wearing. However, sometimes, we have leisure time and we like to make fun of stupid-looking shoes. Have you looked at them? They're really stupid-looking. It is hard to resist. They're such easy targets.

And now, some more hate mail, from the lovely Sue:

Really this has to be a joke. Was searching the web , looking for crocs and trying to decide if I should buy them. After seeing this site, I will go shopping today. The nerve to ask for donations! What kind of scam are you running? Where is the donated money going ( if people are foolish enough to donate). Wonder what the Attorney General would think of this? Try doing something useful, like collecting donations for children's relief funds or Aids or cancer research. Shame on all of you!!

I don't know which Attorney General you mean, but I doubt any of them would care. The donated money, t-shirt sale money and other such money goes toward our costs for running this site. The purpose of this website is to entertain. If we took in any more money than we spent to keep this site going, we'd consider donating the profits to a worthy charity. Also, good luck with your Crocs shopping. No offence, but you're kind of fickle. All it takes is for someone to hate something before you go out and buy it? You must spend a lot of money on Pussycat Dolls CDs. Thanks for writing.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who wrote us about this, the US President has been photographed in Crocs. If you are up on your current events, you'll know that President Bush is a moron, so this is really all the proof we need against Crocs. Also thank you to the radio DJ who interviewed me for Swiss radio a little while ago, as he mentioned this Bush in Crocs thing, as well.



Anyway, I'm off. If you are interested in where I am and what I'm doing, head over to Vincenzo Ravina Dot Com. There is a new button at the bottom that says, 'Where is Vincenzo?' and it leads you to the exact sort of information you'd expect to find. Where I am and what I'm up to. Maybe some video. So, check it out. There's not much there at the moment, but once I've actually started travelling, there'll be things to see, I promise.

Play nice, everyone.

Cloggens and Dopies

Good day to you, Croc-blockers.

We've got some things to show you that you might not be prepared for. As you may have noticed, we're not just opposed to Crocs. We're opposed to all of the knock-offs and look-alikes. They're all as hideous as the original and we are all for equal opportunity hatred. Also, I have mentioned that I am not a fan of Heelys, which are those shoes with the wheels in them.

However, two new shoes have been brought to our attention and boy howdy are they awful ugly. The first comes to us via our MySpace comments. Check out "Cloggens", or if you are squeamish, shield your eyes in abject horror:

And from our friends over at FreshTrend.com, the Dopie:


Draw your own conclusions.

Also, we've been mentioned in a national Italian newspaper, we're going to be in the Seattle Times at some point and I'm currently hammering out an appearance on Swiss radio.

I'll be in Italy, England and Africa between June 21 and July 28, so I'll either be posting my findings from there or just letting Kate take care of things.

ALSO: If you've been waiting to order something from the store, wait no more, because between June 1st and June 17th, Spreadshirt is offering free shipping (on orders over $15) when you use the coupon code FATHERSDAY07.

I Hate Crocs mentioned in Maclean's magazine

Very few things cause my eyes to widen and subsequently my monocle to drop and subsequently my brandy to be expelled from my mouth violently, but these three things happened in quick succession very recently. But what could elicit these alarming responses?

In the library, yesterday, Kate was reading through issues of all of the latest major newsmagazines, whilst I sat amidst the books with authors whose surnames began with M and flipped through a copy of Life of Pi, which is quite a nice little book and the best Canadian novel I've read. Kate, truly out of character, broke the silence and solitude of the library with the great bellow, "HEY HEY HEY OUR SITE IS IN MACLEAN'S!" Naturally my monocle fell to the ground and was followed by showers of brandy.

I started and stumbled and scampered toward Kate and she pointed to a paragraph on page 42 that said:

In addition to the hospital bans, there are other signs of a Crocs backlash. Ihatecrocsblog.blogspot.com has made its mission "eliminating Crocs and those who think that their excuses for wearing them are viable." A recent post stresses the impending resurgence of summertime Crocs: "Like cockroaches crawling out from beneath the ruin of the apocalypse, Crocs are back." Videos on YouTube demonstrate similar disdain for the shoes.

We here at I HATE CROCS DOT COM are very pleased to have been mentioned in such a lovely publication. Maclean's is like Canada's equivalent of Time magazine, for those of you not in the know. Readers of Maclean's, thank you for visiting us. Please email us with your crepe recipes! In Canada, crepes are the new ice cream. You can't get ice cream anymore. It is all about crepes, now. Our three children, Violet, Xerxes and Zooey cry and cry for the crepes long into the night, their shrieking reverberating through the halls. Sleep does not come easy. The crepes are so delicious.

We apologize in advance to the legitimately unstable.

Hello again, vigilantes. I'd like to (or rather, feel that I must) share with you a recent horrifying experience. Vincenzo and I, on our way home from the Groceries Shoppe, sat to wait for the bus (our horse-drawn carriage was in the Mechanic's Shoppe). It was a fine day and the sun was shining as we sat with bags of nourishment, until she came along.

A woman, altogether frightening and loud, came to us and decided that we wanted to talk to her. She wandered about feverishly. She babbled incoherently. In short, she was at least somewhat unstable. We couldn't figure out what to do until we saw her feet:



It was true. It was awful. It was real. It was trapped next to us in a four-foot glass cube. This foam-footed crazy was upon us and we were blinded with fear and rage for at least seven minutes. Luckily, the bus came and, upon realizing that she did not want to take the bus, she wandered away. Did she know? Was she sent?

All we know is... It's getting to their minds. We can only hope that in removing her shoes, she can some day regain her sanity.

Time to clear out the old email box

Well, the emails have been piling up. Ticker tapes spills out all over the floor, snaking this way and that. We can scarcely find the beginning of the tape in the confusion. Thus, I think it is a good idea for me to post some emails.

Firstly, our good friend Kai sent us a link to article about Crocs being banned in Sweden. HERE it is.

Secondly, we got an email from our other close, personal friend, McKinley Gillespie:

Hi, I'm a student from Auburn University and I've recently adopted our chapter of the Facebook group, "Just Say No To Crocs." I've put a link to your website in the "Homepage" section, because I think that what you're doing is wonderful. A dangerous notion seems to be spreading; people are beginning to think that Crocs are fading away. What they don't realize is that summer is just around the corner, marking the one-year anniversary of the Croc Regime's dramatic and unexpected rise -- who's to say that in one month's time they won't be recklessly roaming the streets of our nation once more? Those hideous things blew up (though unfortunately not literally) last summer, and my keen instincts tell me that they're going to do it again. Revolutionaries like us need to work together to keep the word spreading. Che Guevara; Nelson Mandela; the Dalai Lama; Rosa Parks; the Google Guys; none of them were afraid to be remarkable or to instill a profound change upon the face of the world. One day, we'll go down in history with them. In the great words of that wise Ancient Grecian, Aesop, "United we stand; divided we fall. Oh, and fuck Crocs."

Thirdly, from my best friend, Megan Ashcraft:

Y'all do realize you're just giving Crocs free word-of-mouth advertising right? Anything that creates a buzz about their product will eventually end up benefiting them. From what I have read on your blog, I have seen no convincing reasons not to purchase a pair of Crocs. In fact, knowing that somewhere out there, my purchase is irking the hell out of some uptight person who thinks they have a right to dictate what I wear, actually makes me want to buy them more. You know, the whole foods store around the corner from me sells these things. I think I'll go buy a pair right now.

Fourthly, from my four wives and brother, Alex, Ana, Elana, Lindsay and Robert:

I recently discovered your site and I must say what you do is a veritable social service. You should recieve federal funding for educating the public. Anyway, Oberlin College is located in Oberlin Ohio, just outside of Cleveland. It is a hotbed for radical leftist politics, gender neutral bathrooms, streaking, veganism...and crocs. Now that the sun is out, so are the crocs. So some of my friends and I went crocs hunting this weekend! I have attached a sampling of the Oberlin crocs.
And lastly, our adopted child, Jesse Tarlton made us this picture in Illustrator:

I Hate Crocs Dot Com in the news

I was recently interviewed for an article on Crocs and it ran in the St. Petersburg Times today. It has a strong anti-Crocs slant!

Crocs.

You know them. You love them. Or, you hate them with a passion that burns from the darkest corner of your soul.

"They offend our eyes and bamboozle our friends," said Vincenzo Ravina, a 19-year-old from Nova Scotia who started the Web site ihatecrocs.com with his girlfriend. "Croc-wearers are kind of like cultists."

...

Ravina, whose Web site includes footage of a solemn Croc burning in a field, doesn't buy the comfort line.

"Bathrobes are comfortable. I don't wear my bathrobe to the grocery store. And on a really hot day, you don't see me running around with no clothes on at all, though I'm sure that would be comfortable. Crocs are the same thing."

CLICK HERE for the full article!

Crocs are dangerous

Kate and I, we try to stay on the lighter side of things. We hate Crocs, as you may know, and cutting them up and blowing them up with fireworks are things that we find funny. The hatemail we get is funny. But you know what is not funny? People getting their feet chewed up by escalators as a result of Crocs.

I've recently come across this blog that was tracking media mention of Croc accidents and it is truly horrifying! There are some not so pleasant pictures at the following link, so don't click if you want to avoid such photographs. HERE is the link.

***

In other news, we've been mentioned all over the place. Here, here, here, here, here, here and here. All over town.

Cuttin' Crocs

Well, we told you we'd be doing plenty of work once summer began and we've already got a new video for you. Yes, we shot it just yesterday, when we found our camera hidden behind some books in our library. It is so big, we frequently lose things in it. Anyway, the video consists of Kate doing some arts and crafts featuring scissors and a pair of yellow Crocs. We hope you like it and we also hope you will like the next few videos we have planned.



Get the word out, Croc-Blockers. Our time is nigh!

A plague of biblical proportions.

With the warmer weather becoming more and more apparent in our corner of the globe, Vincenzo has been urging me out of the dark, cavernous recesses of the manor. Summer is upon us at last, and he can no longer do it alone. The menace is back, with a vengeance.



Just when we had begun to hope that the ravages of cold and time would put to rest this ungodly fad, they get corporate sponsorship. I was absolutely horrified today, upon visiting the local Shoppe-Mall to pick up some food for the horses, to find Crocs with Mickey-Mouse stamped holes in them. You, too, can have a conglomerate icon sunburnt onto your feet. The horror!

Not only that, but I saw them in nearly every store. I saw imitations in stores catered to children too young to fight back. I saw knock-offs in shoe stores, racks upon racks towering over unsuspecting customers. Like cockroaches crawling out from beneath the ruin of the apocalypse, Crocs are back, and the slaughter of acceptable footwear must be stemmed.

It's time to step up and fight. Summer is here.

Peter Barlow from Coronation Street says no to Crocs - so can you!

The weather is getting warmer and warmer. Yesterday, I didn't wear my jacket and instead of taking our heated, chauffeured car to town, Kate and I walked. It was very pleasant, though we both know that with the new warmth, Crocs have returned.

Emails frequently bring us hope, however, as the following did, from our friend Andy:

Hello I hate Crocs,

A friend of mine recently visited my house.

We were mid chat when i was distracted by his stupid fucking footwear. Having never seen a pair of 'Crocs' before i enquired as to whether or not he had a foot problem and these were some form of orthapedic shoe, either that or he was into some bizarre foot fetish. This person is a British celebrity, known for his role as Peter Barlow in Britains longest running soap opera, 'Coronation Street'

Chris Gascoyne (AKA Peter Barlow) has now admitted that they do indeed look fucking ridiculous, are uncomfortable and to his credit he has now said he wont be wearing them again as they are rubbing the skin off of his feet. He has just left my house, bright red and promised to put the crocs in the bin, (i for one would never be seen in public with him wearing these awful monstrosities)

april is the cruelest month

April is the cruelest month, bringing Crocs back into the daylight from their winter storage places. Yes, with the weather warming up (at least, it is here) Crocs will be back out offending our eyes in no time. We've had it easy over the winter, but now it's time to get your game face on. They're back and they must be stopped.

Kate and I have plans for the summer. First of all, we're going to be making a few more videos of Crocs destruction (finally!). Secondly, we'll have one or two more Crocs-related t-shirt designs in the shoppe. Thirdly, we're going to expand the East wing of the manor.

So, keep your eyes peeled.

In Crocs news, Holed Crocs have been banned from hospital in Rapid City, South Dakota because of health risks.

Also, hide your children because Crocs have come up with a brand new hideous shoe called 'Croclings'. Yeah. Don't vomit too much.




Here is some email from our friend Dorrie Hall, who felt the need to email us three times:

Bah . . . fools that you are. It is said that you can tell a lot about a person by the footwear they choose. My crusty old granny likes the cloth wedge type shoe with her gnarly toes poking out the front confronting the world in a most unattractive way. My uptight Auntie digs the animal skin shoe that has, over the decades, molded her feet to look like Polish sausages. My husband chooses his footwear from the latest SuperStarBasketballHero commercials . . . O' don't worry, the blisters always heal. On the other hand, I enjoy being barefoot and free - hence my affection for the CROC. The assorted colors are a plus, allowing me to chose the color that most agrees with my mood. Today I am Cotton Candy Pink. What color are you? O' sorry they don't make CROCS in . . . Puce.

Puce

English usage dates from 1787. [from the French puce, literally "flea". It is speculated that it refers to the colour of a squashed flea or the colour of a flea full of blood. Another theory is that the colour name comes from the flea's droppings of digested blood, which spread out in deep red stain when water contacts them.

Prunes, which are dried plums, can also be said to be puce coloured.

Thanks for the tip, Dorrie. She went on to say:

don't you have anything better to occupy your time?

This is stupid.

Please bear in mind that we had not responded to her email. Apparently she has nothing better to occupy her time. She wrote a third email:

I get it now . . .

You must be part of that groovy crew that is casting their vote for Sanjaya on American Idol.

Very hip. NOT

Don't worry, everyone. Kate and I get a lot of email from crazy people. At this point, we are mostly used to it.

Lastly, our good friend Courtney has sent us some pictures of Crocs in their natural habitat. Look at them and learn. These are the things we are trying to rid ourselves of.

croc blocking

Good news, everyone. When you Google the word 'Crocs', I HATE CROCS DOT COM comes up as the seventh result. That's fantastic! We're really getting the word out! Kate and I had no idea that we had risen so far until I cruised on over to our Evil Twin site, CROC FANS DOT COM. They are the antagonist and we are the protagonist. Remember that.

Anyway, the following is what they posted over on their site:

Do you love your Crocs? Do you wish others can share in your joy of the comfort Crocs bring? If so, we need your help.

Did you know when you Google “Crocs” Croc Fans . com comes up #9? This is great, but what you may not know is that IHateCrocs.com comes up #7.

This site is devoted eliminating Crocs and have gone as far as recording themselves setting a pair of Crocs on fire. They are even selling t-shirts to try and get their Croc hater message out.

I am doing what I can to promote Crocs and spread the message about these shoes that we love, but I need your help. We need to get CrocFans.com ranking higher than IHateCrocs.com so we can show people there are more Fans than Haters.

What can you do?

Link to Croc Fans . com from your Blogs, MySpace, FaceBook, Blogger Blog, hi5, Xanga, Digg, Technorati and any other website or account you may have.

...

With your help we will burry IHateCrocs.com and rule the world. Ok maybe ruling the world is going a little far, but it will be fun to see what you guys are able to do with a little challenge.

Thanks and we look forward to gaining more Croc Fans with your help! Email us at Crocs@CrocFans.com if you post a link on your site so we can thank you.

As you can see, they are getting more desperate and less competent with the English language as time goes on. We will not let them "burry" us. Whatever the hell that means. We, on the other hand, will take the high road and not encourage you to spam the internet because that would be kind of pathetic of us and also anger Google. They totally hate it when you try and exploit their PageRank system.

heelys, solution and norway

I don't know about you guys, but in addition to hating Crocs, I also hate those shoes that have wheels in them. They're called Heelys and I am always seeing children rolling around in them. I, of course, turn to my children (Xerxes, Zooey and Violet) and tell them firmly that just as they will never wear a pair of Crocs, their feet shall never been tainted by the horrors of a Heely, either. Each of them nod in turn and then I buy them each a small toy of their choosing from the local toy shoppe.

Anyway, back on topic, Kate pulled the following off the ticker tape machine:

Hey fellow croc-haters.

This is Andrew from Cape Town, South Africa. Sadly the terrible demise of brain capacity is beginning here as well. Alas the dreaded crocs have begun the infestation of my beautiful country, all is lost. The once beautiful vistas of Cape Town are now ruined by hundreds of revolting, coloured and nauseating excuses for footwear. The rot must be stopped, if the crocs have reached even here then there is, I guess, not much hope left for humanity. I always thought that Africa would be spared this plague, however it seems there is now one more addition to this continent’s long list of problems: war, death, famine, pestilence and the croc.

Let us not despair too much; the anti-croc resistance has started here now too. I have come up with the final solution. We must be strong and merciless, none can stand in the way of this blessed crusade. All of us haters of the croc must cleanse the streets of this multi-coloured plague. All wearers of the croc must be rounded up, forced to hand over their footwear and sent to remote reeducation camps where their degenerate attitudes can be changed to more normal and socially responsible ones. The offensive footwear must be treated in a similar manner of nuclear waste (they probably have a longer effective half life than plutonium anyway) that is, they should be encased in concrete and either recycled to more useful applications like pencil erasers or buried underground so that no one can look upon their kind again. The inventors of the croc must be sent to the world court to stand for crimes against humanity. We must protect future generations from this scourge. Tomorrow will thank us.

Thanks for all the hard work and long hours spend creating this much needed forum against crocs in all their bestial and hideous forms.

Remember, we here at IHATECROCS don't condone or endorse any final solutions. We believe in peaceful negotiations and protest.

We also have gotten word that Crocs have been banned from a hospital in Norway. Or, rather, that is what the person who emailed us the link said. We can't actually read the article, as we do not speak Norwegian. However, many of you who visit our site are from Norway, so chances are that you will be able to enjoy this article as we cannot.

It is HERE.

Email us tips on hunting wild game at IHATECROCS [at] GMAIL [dot] COM.

cite it

Well, here we go again with a new product in the shoppe that is entirely unrelated to Crocs. Sorry. Maybe you'll like it, anyway, though. It is something that Kate said, which caused me to say, "THAT HAS TO BE ON A SHIRT." And Kate told me to stop yelling, because we were in our private library and I'm supposed to use my library voice in there.

Anyway, we have man and lady shirts with words on the chest. The words are 'Stick that up your essay and cite it.'

Here is a helpful link to the store.

Email us your thoughts HERE.

hate mail contest

The following bit of hate mail honestly filled me with utter joy. It follows the hate mail submission guidelines TO THE LETTER. Enjoy! I proclaim this the best hate mail of all time unless one you can top it. Yes, that is a challenge.

I am officially announcing the first hate mail contest! Send in the very finest hate mail you can muster, with the subject line 'hate mail contest submission' and you could win your very own TOP SECRET prize, mailed to you directly from IHATECROCS headquarters and made with love by yours truly and also Kate, the other half of this site.

Hating crocs is just like hating anything else, un-American! Mater of
fact, it might even make you racist. You should love your shoes of any
color if you were a real American. I am sure you really don't mean
that and this hatred is masking something far deeper.
You are probably just suffering from hillbillyosis. In your heart of
hearts, you despise when anyone makes you or your children wear shoes
of any sort. You feel anger when you see those signs "no shirt, no
shoes, no service". You wish that your grimy white trash children
could roam the trailer court in there bare feet as young ones were
meant to. You know that the health department is a partner in the plot
to force you to ignore your inner desires to playfully cavort sans
shoes with some silly rumor of spreading disease. Wearing shoes also
forces you to clip their toenails on at least an annual basis. Without
shoes, they would wear down naturally.
You are probably also suffering from a side psychosis resulting from
negative peer pressure in your brief education. Dropping out in the
third grade was no doubt the result of the constant heckling by the
cool kids in your school. You thought it was caused by your calloused
bare feet on your eight little sisters, but it probably was the
combination of bringing the pig to school and later Jimmy revealing
that it was your uncle's new girlfriend. His in class demonstration of
man / pig loving was probably too much for that citified teacher.
So in summary, as I know your attention span has been shortened by
severe malnutrition, get some therapy. Use a real therapist this time,
not stupid Bobby, as he will agree to anything and declare you healed
by snakes. With enough therapy, you too can wear crocs like the cool
kids.

Will

1. We're Canadian.

2. You're right about everything else.