Start the Bonfire Without Us

Meanwhile, back on the homefront I was weeding whilst listening to a recent This American Life set in a rest-stop on the NYS Thruway about 35 miles from here and which I pass and stop in often. The gang of recent grads from Sarah Lawrence Creative Writing were astounded to find so many like people there with all their stories of life and stuff! And like Chrissy talked to this really cool guy who was like telling her like all about the awesome rock-climbing near New Paltz and how people come from like all over just to climb there. And like the Mohonk House and the vienyards and orchards and museums and stuff and she was all like WTF? And the grads even talked to people there who live on the UWS and they stop there just like all the other people who come from like all over and stuff and the New Yorkers are so cool and don’t like ask for any special treatment at the Roy Rogers or the Nathan’s and it’s like this whole nother world going on!!! Life is so awesome in all its unpredictable variety and stuff it really makes you want to leave Manhattan more often (not really)!

I kept expecting Harry Shearer to show up.

But srsly. WTF is up with Ira Glass and why is he so fuquing annoying?

So … many … typos. When is Google going to invent an external edit function for the gramer notsis out there?

@Benedick: WTF is up with Ira Glass and why is he so fuquing annoying?

Harry fully agrees with you on that one.

Wow, *capitalism* was invented in the Bible? Some evil commie atheist must have snuck in the verses about not charging interest…

And those sneaky liberals must have some bad-ass mind-control powers to get every RW flack to spout Islamophobic nonsense all at once. Is Pam Geller a robot built by the gay Martians? ;)

@Benedick: @nojo: I’m one of the few fans of “This American Life”; I listened to some of that on podcast while I was mowing my gorgeous mottled suburban lawn. I particularly liked the doofus who was all frat boyish and like meeting the furriners who work summers at the rest stop and gets the Ukranian girls drunk but even when the landlord gets pissed and threatens to deport the girls he’s all like “hey, dood, I don’t like fuckin care, I’m 19.

ADD: I listen to Shearer while doing the back lawn, and most of TAL when I move on to the front.

@JNOVjr: Just wait until you begin to crack open the textbooks in a few weeks and find out they are filled with tiepoes too.

@Nabisco: Speaking of affectation…

Ira claims that his radio style is more “natural,” and against his formal training. (Remember, kids, the ends of sentences go down.) But it’s just an act, even more annoying for the pretense that it isn’t.

It’s entirely possible to be “conversational” on the radio — bearing in mind that you’re funneling your entire personality through the microphone. Whatever you do, it’s an artifice, but some artifices are more pleasant to listen to than others.

Unrelated, except by equally extreme levels of assholishness…

http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/camping-list/2010-August/thread.html

This is an archive from a programming list I’m on; the point to be made is not technical, however. Scroll down about halfway, to the thread entitled “What is the process for publishing to campingrb.tumblr.com?” and check out some of the posts by Mr. Marquez. Starts off just being offtopic, and then goes teabagger-crazy. He pops up in another thread “Philosophy” having given up even the *pretense* of relevant conversation (and is apparently harassing people off-list), and then gets the almighty banhammer.

My question: is it just me, or is this something of a new thing? Sure, people
would flame each other even on USENET, rapid heated exchanges are nothing new and trolls are forever, but I’ve never seen somebody go from off-topic but reasonably polite n00b to outright nuts in 3 hours like that before, and then come *back* and shit on the floor moar the next day…

@al2o3cr: Everyone on the Internet is a complete fucking asshole until proven otherwise.

@FlyingChainSaw: When my kids were learning to drive, I told them to assume that every other driver was a drunken homocidal maniac until demonstrated otherwise. This is also my bicycle-riding philosophy.

@Nabisco: The music drives me wild. It’s so distracting and unnecessary. I can sometimes really enjoy the stories but today’s left me speechless because I know the place so well. He introduced it as if it’s in the middle of some uncharted hinterland and it’s about 5 miles from fucking New Paltz. Woodstock is 25 mins away. So it struck me as being funny because of that. And no one is cut off living near there. There’s a bus to NYC about every thirteen minutes. Perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but it is not hard to get to the city. But there’s so much to do all around you I’m not sure why you’d want to go. Plus, New Paltz really does have some of the best rock climbing in the US. People come from all over to train for the high peaks by climbing the Shawangunks.

@Benedick: The music drives me wild. Ubiquitous, twee toy piano!

@flippin eck: I love the word “twee” – we should all try to use it more often in daily conversation.