In no particular order. The point being, I’ll be gone most of the day, so post anything of interest here, or just use the thread to gab, if you’re so inclined.
Meanwhile — and I posted this on Twitter last evening, but may as well repeat it here — my state of the nation report for this, Saturday, January 5, 2013: I now own both concealable body armor and a Willie Robertson “Duck Dynasty” Chia beard. Which may or may not be code.
Make of that what you will.
It’s come to this …
If the US government was trying to date, it would be destined to be a spinster.
Stone is right but prescient as Obama just needs four more years to make us equal to Venezuela.
I began to study and mimic Jeff’s writing style years ago for two reasons: 1. His method packs a heck of a lot of meat on the bones of the standard sentence structure, and 2. He is the first published writer I have encountered who unselfconsciously employs every punctuation type conceivable (parentheses within parentheses, even) in a single sentence, and still successfully winds-up every point of every clause immaculately before the period falls.
And it always falls…
In answer to those who recoiled at my attempted mimicry of Jeff this week, if I had posted the next paragraph in mimicry of Jeff’s writing style, would you have mocked my modest attempts at simulation?
I study Jeff’s writing style, his subtle word-play; I organize his syntax in order according to his own sketches (sentence deconstruction), and sift them for key-words or repeating themes / set-phrases; I attempt – and tend to obtain, to my pleasure – phraseology that recurs within Jeff’s essays, but which to my eyes represents an example of understated significance, revealed by its recurrence (syntactic continuity); I ponder the authorial bias in the writing of the screed and its importance to both our national discourse and the smaller sphere of either blogging or a distinct level of publishing, referring often back to Jeff’s own postulating about the medium (subjective analysis, statistical literary analysis, hypo-literacy, etc.)
If so, you’re the sucker!
I took an hour this morning to fabricate a “typical” Jeff mind-bender of a complex sentence, using a paragraph stripped from his October 18th post Immersion Criticism, Intentionalism and Textualism as my template. Of course, all credits for any tinkering I do with his original post go to him, the original author. As usual I am just playing the butler to Jeff’s manor in this exercise.
To compare, here’s his original ‘graph, unadulterated and guaranteed to be 100% pure, with no additives:
They look at the filmmaker’s life, his biographical circumstances; they place his work in the context of his other works (intertextuality), and look for patterns or recurring themes / motifs; they seek — and seem to find, to their own satisfaction — symbology that repeats within the film’s surface depictions, but which to their minds is a point of hidden emphasis, proven by its repetition (intratextuality); they consider the historical context of the making of the film and its place in both the wider culture and the smaller world of either filmmaking or a certain type of filmmaking, relating again back to the filmmaker’s own theorizing about the medium (historicism, cultural dialogics, heteroglossia, etc.)
And for those needing a coded template of Jeffs syntactic habit, derived exactly form the paragraph above, look no further than here:
Subject1 (pl) verb (tense: present) preposition definite-article possessive noun object (comma), prossessive –pronoun adjective object (semi-colon) subject1 (pl) verb(tense: present) possessive pronoun object preposition, def.-article noun preposition possessive-pronoun adjective noun (pl) (parent. Open) referent (parent. Close) (comma) conjunction verb preposition object(pl) conjunction adjective object(pl)(back-slash) object(pl) (semi-colon) subject1(pl) verb (hyphen) conjunction intr.-verb (comma) preposition possessive pronoun (pl) possessive pr. noun (hyphen) object verb preposition def.-article noun (possessive) adjective noun (pl) (comma) contrad.-conjunction (“Jeff Which”) preposition possessive pronoun noun (pl) verb indef.-Article noun preposition adjective noun (comma) verb (tense: past-perfect) preposition possessive pronoun noun (parent. Open) referent (parent. close) (semi-colon) subject1 verb def.-article adjective object preposition def.-article verb-gerund preposition def.-article object conjunction possessive pronoun noun preposition pronoun(pl)def.-article modifier noun conjunction def.-article comparative-adjective noun preposition verb-gerund conjunction indef.-article adjective noun preposition verb-gerund (comma) verb-gerund “again” preposition def.-article possessive-noun possessive-pronoun verb-gerund preposition def.-article noun (parent. Open) list: three referents (comma) “etc.” (parent. Close) period
In high-school we were tasked with simulating Earnest Hemingway’s writing style, and I failed at it miserably. I find Jeff’s style to be much more accessible than Hemingway’s. If folks are intrigued by this exercise in comparative Literature, take a guernsy at your own simulation. His archives are expansive, and almost every page from every day that he has blogged contains an example of Jeff’s windy and bulky style. Give it a go!
Cheers
-S
And in other mierda.
– Well, well Jeff. Looks like you’ve got yourself a literary stalker.
– Possibly the latest incarnation of the form commonly known as a comcern troll.
– Maybe it could quiet the shrill voices in its head by writing get well cards to Chevez.
steveaz, this blog is not about your attempts be Jeff, the lesser.
____________________________________________
Happy Birthday, Satch! Good luck at the meet!
Guys, most of what I posted above IS Jeff’s.
Lesser, here’s a go: Ugh! Me Steve! Eat meat! Have Gun! Go Bang! [pause]…Honey! when are going to sizzler?
“….I decided to check in his gym locker….cracking it open slowly, the stench hit me like a high pressure fire hose….His skull was split like a fresh cantilope under the wheel of a city bus….. Rothman wouldn’t be making anymore appointments at the tanning salon….
….One thing was clear, whoever snuffed the pinhead wasn’t taking any chances of being id’ed….. the other clear thing was that, judging from the condition of his tennis racket, someone was going to have one hell of a mess to clean up…..” – Mike Hammer, PI
Lesser, here’s a go . . . .
You don’t know much about art or art history, do you? I’ll leave it at that.
Is it just me, or did steveaz start going active around the time Jeff firsted started talking about banning slipperyslope, before becoming fully active after slipperyslope was banned?
Maybe it’s coincidence.
It’s not just you.
Saw that on instapundit last night, and it confirmed two things. First, Mayor Dummburg doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And Larry Correia does.
That woman’s lucky the guy didn’t bring any friends.
If you are serious, steveaz, then there is something wrong with you.
Is anyone else somewhat creeped by this poorly-fashioned golem-homunculus thinger ?
There’s definitely a shifty quality to his stated
goalpostsobjectives that’s reminiscent of the jaded 2%er, leigh. Hard to say.“Is it just me, or did steveaz start going active around the time Jeff firsted started . . . ”
Without doing a thorough search, I think it was the Alinsky thread that spurred his interest Ernst.
If the Mayors are against illegal guns, why are they trying to take away legal ones?
I think I’m just going to assume anybody without a gravatar is either a troll or a sleeper-troll.
*** Breaking ***
– 4 dead in Aurora Colorado hostage standoff, including shooter.
Also from Glenn Reynolds, this Sam Harris (whoever he is) piece, previously linked by Palaeomarus, is interesting, if mixed. I agree with it in part, and disagree with other parts.
For example, what are these “most sensible restrictions on the sale of weapons to the public” that “gun-rights advocates reject”?
Also, I understand Mr. Harris has “serious concerns” about concealed carry, but are these concerns reasonable, in light of the evidence? Because it seems to me that there aren’t a lot of “ordinary altercations becom[ing] needlessly deadly in the presence of a weapon.” At least not where law-abiding concealed-carriers are concerned.
I have a theory that Steve isn’t a Steve at all, but an Eve.
Hunch is all.
I saw a movie once where the only people with guns were the police and the military.
It was called Schindler’s List.
“I have a theory that Steve isn’t a Steve at all, but an Eve.”
All I can tell you is that when I read posts from steveaz I imagine an Emo Phllips sort of voice.
Oh, come on, leigh. We KNOW that cannot happen here.
I’m getting a thunder-boi vibe.
Yeah, cranky. What am I thinking?
Went to Hobby Lobby today and bought enough yarn for a baby blanket, hat & booties
Got it in pale pink as #1 found out yesterday It’s A Girl. :-)
Congrats, Granny! Please make sure this one gets a normal name. *ducking*
That’s kinda my thought too, Ernst. Too poorly written to be coming from an honest person. My personal guess: A 14 year old on his first “exciting” web assignment.
Anyway, was anyone else thoroughly frustrated/disgusted with the Biden sign in? The complete lack of respect or decorum, days after the fiscal drama that wouldn’t even make it into a CW show because it was too hammy really hammered home again how unserious and stupid we’ve become on the whole.
Congrats, Darleen!
Leigh … HA! :-)
; -)
There was a “steveaz” commenting on occasion back as far as July 2007. Whether this is the same one? I don’t know as there is a “steveaz” at Patterico who this one claims is not he.
I don’t remember steveaz being this odd. I do remember hammerboi using other people’s handles.
I think this is a different steveaz, cranky. The other one is just a regular guy. This one? Not so much.
Reality is just a photoshop away.
Fake but accurate.
Anyone notice the “serial” nature of the trolls here? Seems like we only get one at a time. Highly suspicious.
I’ve noticed that they all have the same profile, too Red. It’s almost like it’s the same person. One with a limited imagination. The big tell is the condescention that just about drips off of them/him.
“Anyone notice the “serial” nature of the trolls here? Seems like we only get one at a time. Highly suspicious.”
Sometimes a dick likes to wear a glove so it appears to be a clique of dicks.
The above assertion is speculative. Its author is not really much of an authority on dicks though it has rented a modest one bedroom crotch to one for forty-one years and two months.
The author has seen a few dicks in his life though, apart from his renter. Mostly this has been at a distance in public showers, occasionally momentarily, while camping or hunting, and this really unfortunate bus ride. Additionally there were two occasions where someone wanted a quasi-medical non-medical opinion. I told them that yes, they ought to have a doctor look at it because ‘if you’ll show it to a friend, then your worries need to end’.
Adding to the pictures doesn’t bother me so much.
It’s when they start deleting folks you need to start fishing weapons out of the pond.
This moby blog-espionage infiltrator stuff is really weird. Mission Impossible becomes Mission Insignificant. Who the hell wants to spend their time continuously irritating people why don’t like on a message board? Once for a lark I could kind of see. But it’s not really going to result in a hobby or a career.
Wait, why isn’t Obama in the picture? His administration has always worked to further the goal of women gaining electoral power in the US, carrying on the struggle started by Susan B Anthony and her women’s suffrage movement. He sticks his mug into every other bio or event or photograph that he can. Heck he even put himself in a 50’s Montgomery bus for the Rosa Park’s anniversary.
The democratic women of congress didn’t build that photo!
Somebody who’s getting paid for it is who.
Probably by associates of a certain indictee
at the behest of a certain good man who didn’t want to be bothered with the details.
One day Pam, Dennis the Peasant, and Jeff are suddenly ‘persona non grata’, PJ Media has a content purge, Andrew Sullivan and Charles Johnson flip a cognitive inverter and becomes what they’ve spent the last 8+ years railing against. Steve Green and Michelle Malkin take it all down a notch on the Jihaid news, Hot Air starts blogging in pure gawker-esque snark mode. Ace the mad pirate turns out to be a Karl Rove repeater…
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE WOLRD OF BLOGGING.
Was it all business and hollywood and nobody believed what they were selling? Did people get intimidated into their new states? How did this wild noisy open market turn into a system with guarded portals in the space of two years ?
What the fuck?
Partly spontaneous order, partly corporate money.
Is my wild guess.
I wonder if this a plum assignment, Leigh. High card gets to troll at PW. Or maybe it’s, “Shit, I have to go there again?”
It could be as simple as steveaz cornered a good deal on mushrooms…
Ace the mad pirate turns out to be a Karl Rove repeater…
Yeah, the whole “Mike Castle is a staunch conservative” circa 2008 was an eye opener. Before that I was willing to believe in editorial independence for most of these independent blogs. Probably why Protein Wisdom is still a regular read for me, while the rest have fallen by the wayside. Of course, that means Jeff blogs pretty much for diddly and squat with regards to remuneration.
Do Tea Party Landowners Need to Fear Armed Urban Conservatives’ Migration to their Counties?
‘Was tatting with a Colorado kayaking-instructor buddy yesterday over beers and he leveled me with a powerful question that dovetails perfectly with discussions on Jeff’s blog of late. He asked, am I confident that the Libertarian-Right faction of
American politics, lodged in the ethically-challenged cities, bristling with new weapons, endowed with deep, generational reserves of wealth, and competent in at least pretending to embrace Founding Fathers’ principles, market economies and the Bill of Rights, will not substitute its own, heavily armed, individualized distributionist menace for today’s Progressives’ collectivist one?
I started to reply, and then stuttered to a stunned silence, dumbfounded. My GED-recipient, pot-head, rapids-rider buddy’s wits had discovered the one question that no one at any of my lib/right blogs ever thought to ask, despite the voluminous chords of questions that blogs like Jeff’s have fielded for us ever since Obama took office.
Which is significant, because the question is one that seriously needed to be asked. In fact, less urgent inquiries like how do we mitigate the effects of inner-city black migration to rural, law-‘spectin’ parts of the West? and How should we reprimand Derbyshire for his faux pas “The Talk” article? which he wrote late last year for publication in the National Review, have crowded-out the less obvious but more important questions in national blogs and ‘zines, questions whose answers have terrific implications both for the rapidly arming factions in urban/suburban America, and for those of us who are fully prepared, and so will be called upon to house, clothe and feed these factions when they inevitably flee. Certain questions, I guess, are more equal than others.
And it’s unlikely this will change soon. Current thinking at blogs like Jeff’s after Newtown offer thin gruel to the urban resident. They only proffer the saccharin advice of “buy guns, stock foods, but don’t move” as counsel to the urban dweller, which sounds good at first, but is really hollow advice. If you cannot leave your home anyway because you are bound to a mortgage that requires that you maintain resident’s insurance on the place, or to an HeLoc that demands you exhibit the occupancy patterns that indicate the home is your principal residence, or else, then you couldn’t have relocated anyway if you’d wanted to. And, it is triply-lousy advice when addressed to the citizen property-owner in the styx with zero debt and a paid-off, working car. The first has no option but to stay in place, scared and anxious, eating dry Top Ramen in a hide-away behind his cabinets of holstered guns in the seething cities, waiting for advice. The second has already exercised his Free-born urge to migrate away from unwholesome settings, and because he acted early, he’ll have his full digs up and running before the disaster hits – and just in time to offer his shelter graciously to the pilgrims to-come.
But, what happens when certain of Jeff’s devoted commenters like a Serr8ted or a GeoffB or an Ernst Schreiber, (just to pick randomly from a long roster of the eligible) whom just months ago we Freemen would have embraced uncritically as “Gone Galt-ian” brothers-at-arms suddenly realize that the hour is late, there’s only a scant two days left to get out of town, and so radiate out of the cities in armed groups in a disorganized, panic’d rush for the safety of open country, only to find that daily life there is a muddled hard-scrabble to secure shelter, food and fuel? Will the trio of refugees join the roving mobs of half-starved, militarily-armed reprobates squatting in private homes and robbing area residents when the kindness and charity that flowed freely when the refugees first arrived inevitable runs out? Or will they ‘keep the fire’ of law and respect for others in their hearts.
Judging just from the array of sentiments that they and others express toward their fellow men in just one day at Jeff’s blog, it’s anyone’s guess.
What fresh new ass-hatery is this?
what kind of mortgage does that?
You only have that if you buy mortgage insurance. Something that is usually reserved for deadbeats and bad credit risks.
Ung! Pizza Good! Cheesey mess Mama spank! Halloween Scare meeeee. Go home! Safe! Sketti good!
Poopy NO!
-Composite poster, 1/5/13
Note: This is the first in what is promising to be a regular series of poems devoted to the commentator on Jeff’s comments board who demonstrates the stongest devotion to dumb brevity. Please submit nominations for next weeks award to Duh@ummm.com.
What fresh new ass-hatery is this?
No shit, Ernst. I’m going to save myself the trouble of reading anymore of these screeds.
“Tatting’? Tatting is something my grandmother used to do to make lace with fine thread and a shuttle.
As a chronic practioner of misspelling, comma abuse and word/usage confusion, I can’t fault Tatting for Chatting.
Well, that’s some boring shit.
You’re not as enthralled with steveaz’s mindthoughts as steveaz is?
Quelle suprise!
As a chronic practioner of misspelling, comma abuse and word/usage confusion…
I do that as well. The thing is, dude is holding himself up as an exemplar. I don’t believe it is accidental anymore than the inclusion of you and several others as “examples”.
Anyway, if I want to read bullshit essays, I can go back to teaching community college.
Maybe that essay is like a magic eye hologram picture. If I stare at it long enough my focus will go nuts, and maybe there’ll be a pony and a cowboy with a lariat shape that suddenly pops out at me.
I’m probably too old for those to work on anyway. At least I still have my hearing.
It’s awkward when you want to go someplace, but, because you took out a loan to finance this or that, you can’t! Even to save your life.
It happened to me.
When I took out a construction loan to build my house the lender mandated that I buy a “Course of Construction” insurance policy. This policy contained clauses forbidding me from leaving the job-site unattended for discreet maximum periods (IIRC it was ninety days)
Later, when I rolled the construction loan over into a standard home mortgage, the mortgage company demanded I buy home-owners insurance to protect their investment. The policy I bought demanded that I maintain the home as my Principal Residence. The subclauses defining what “Principal Residence” meant listed several things among them the intimidating sounding “maximum allowable vacancy durations” (IIRC it was sixty days). And if I violated these clauses, I was in default on the loan…penalties or outright property seizure sure to follow.
I took out an HeLoc on another home and the credit union lendor demanded that I insure the securitizing property. The policy I bought had nearly identical clauses demanding I maintain the home as my Principal Residence. Same limits on vacancy durations applied.
It’s crazy how the contracts freemen enter into can severely constrain their exercise of their entire 360 degree field of options.
-S
most folks don’t do that. so you’re bs is stupid
freeman also can not enter into contracts
Mortgage insurance is only required if you have a less than 20% down payment on a conventional home loan.
Construction materials aren’t insured until they are attached to a structure.
This whole story sounds like nonsense.
Hey, Pedants!
I’ve been absent from Jeff’s and other’s comments threads for about two and three-quarter years. During that time, I still commented but did so only sparingly and exclusively at Wretchard’s Belmont Club.
And I found my writing skills staled as a result. My typing got lazy, my lexicon stagnated, and my enthusiasm to respond to, say, one of Jeff’s inciteful posts found it harder and harder to ignite a published comment as the years progressed.
But, I’ve been back it for about three months now, and as I exercise my brain, ligaments and vocabulary, I feel the firey drives returning to my muses.
I won’t apologize for exercising (sometimes clumsily) my atrophied faculties of written expression, not to the gaggle of crowing pedants presuming to lord over the comments threads today.
But I will promise that every aspect of my composition is improving daily with our regular fluffings, and that, by Summer I will return to feed you your heads on a paper plate, AGAIN!
My God! what fiend held a gun to you head and made you sign such contracts?! The villainous scum!
get yourself a blogspot site and quit annoying peeps
Oh, that’s both silly and not representative. Also? You’re not Jeff. Aspire to something else.
If these trolls really are paid professionals I need to send somebody a fucking resume.
Aha! Here.
Asses are made to bear, and so is steveaz.
This Steveaz stuff is like something Dudley Moore and Peter Cook would have come up with while really really really extra drunk in their later Derek and Clive routines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DkuXBsHytE
And when did Wretchard stop blogging in English?
Leigh, your slip of stupidity is showing. ‘Might want to look to that.
Ever build a home from scratch under contract using lender funds in the boonies, far far away from da safety banki of “First Responders?” No, I didn’t think so, or you’d have heard of course-of-construction liability insurance, have been taught that its main purpose is to guarantee both lender and builder against materials theft, materials damage, fire damage to the developing building and materials stored within, whether accidental or deliberately set, and that it protects the builder (that’d have to be me, not you, softy) from stupid people accidently (or claim-seeking people deliberately) falling into open septic holes and open utility trenches, breaking their legs and then suing you for it.
Beyond that, a smarter, more-experienced man wouldn’t have en-stupid-ed himself by signing his name to that ten-pound turd of aggressive DUMB.
Remember: (CIP = case in point). You don’t have to play to the form I tagged your cohort with in my inaugural screed three nights ago every time we meet at Jeff’s, but you do appear to enjoy the feel of the pink lycra on your shaved legs, and, so long as noone gets hurt…and if Jeff’s OK with it, then, carry on!
Shoot! What can I do to stop ya?
Hey, how’s that city livin’ treating you, leigh?
I’ve suddenly had a notion that SEK is back and trying to fit in.
That should go to Koch Industries, IIRC.
your life story is like talking about little debbies
I think it’s thorazine. It’s certainly someone as pretentious as he.
That’s the result of giving trophies for participation.
another proggtard with a fetish
It’s ‘cuz you are dumb that you didn’t just answer “yes”.
The people described in the question are of a character that pride themselves on their honor and self reliance, and so are no threat to me.
You, a progg, are in deep shit though. Run little bunny, run like the wind…
What is happening here?
New troll, same as the old troll.
I think it’s thorazine.
Seconded.
steveaz, unlike you, Iknow what I am talking about.
Pablo, “city-living”. Heh.
I think it is SteveAZ, btw. He’s maybe had a stroke or something like that though.
To be perfectly honest, we should maybe be a bit concerned about him. Not joking.
I am actually not joking. Took a quick peek at the login email address and I doubt a random troll would know such a thing.
Maybe Steve has just been having a bad run lately or something. Who knows.
Dial it down a bit, buddy. You’re acting goofy.
Probably mixing contraindicated meds with alcohol, bh.
You can die that way.
No idea, leigh. If it’s that sorta thing I’d also recommend his taking it easy on that stuff.
Don’t really remember steveaz but if he was a reasonably normal guy before like people are saying and he’s acting like this now maybe there are some problems.
Same as the 2007 one bh?
More of this
and less that or the other thing would be helpful, I think.
That is if your really interested in communicating as opposed to table-pounding
–with a slipper.
Different email address, Geoff, but the same identifier in both that makes Steve and Arizona make sense in a way that even a long-time troll would never know.
Seems our latest ‘steveaz’ hasn’t changed so very much, lucidity-wise, since 2007. Unreadable then, unreadable now.
Ok. thanks.
Toot sweet?!
So, not a troll, more of a blog gnome, is that it?
I’ve been working some extra hours lately so I’ve been out of the loop on this. When I was looking around I thought I saw in another thread that people remembered this steveaz guy and that he wasn’t like this back then.
Maybe he’s always been this way, I have no recollections at all. Some of those 2007 comments seem to be fairly, uhhh, weird.
As far as I can tell (or care to examine) he lost his shit here.
But I do seem to remember one of our trolls bragging that we didn’t have the first clue about him because he had a regular commenter persona as well as his troll persona.
Think maybe it was elfboi, but I’m going wholly on memory.
(I do remember Jeff tracked down a gravatar of the idiot looking into a webcam with his best hey babe, buy ya a drink? come hither look –whatever that’s worth).
Heh, I remember that.
Good times.
Hi, all. Been a really busy day and I haven’t been following what’s going on.
For what it’s worth, I think SteveAZ has been around here for quite awhile, and I don’t think him a troll. I think he tried to ignite a conversation using a performative and it kinda backfired, and now he’s left defending himself, as we’re all wont to do in comments from time to time.
I can tell you this: he’s supported me in the past. I think we’re just caught in a mistrust loop — understandably so — but MY gut tells me he’s just a guy who wanted to make a statement about commitment and what all that entails, and many of you (thanks, by the way, honestly) were quick to come to my aid, the aid of other regular commentators, and the site in general.
A big misunderstanding is my take. Shake and make up.
Oh. And Satch lost his first match today to a stud, 4-2, after which the ref, not knowing I was his dad (I was coaching) came up to me and said, “I could have watched those two wrestle all day.” Biggest compliment there is, IMHO. After that, Satch scored a tech fall (19-4 in two periods) and then wrestled a kid at 54 (he’s 46.6) and pinned him inside 30 seconds.
After which he had a great birthday party. All in all, a good day, and a day for forgiving and forgetting. Just my two cents.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been up since 5:45 am and it’s time to call it a day. I appreciate each and every one of you, though, just so we’re clear. I don’t say it enough, but it’s the truth.
Winning at nine! Wishing my best belated bday wishes!
Oh, and steveaz, exactly where in az is it from whence you spawned? Usually a great State, az, but so damned close to ca that you must ever be on your guard. Teh crazee emanates from ca. Perhaps your shielding is frayed?
Madness?
Way to go, Satch!
Pablo, Jeff et al,
Gotta run to town soon, so I’ll keep this as brief as possible.
Many of us have literary influences. Some claim Hawthorne as theirs, others Tolstoy. One of mine (and I have several) is Jeff Goldstein. Folks interested in improving their skills model their influences’ performances in exercises. This is commonly understood as a basic educating technique when the exercises are prescribed by “teachers” to “students” on a “campus.”
What stumps the commentators (and, I think even Jeff’s fallen into this hole now) is, the conventional trappings of modern education like the “teacher,” “student,” and “campus” are absent at Jeff’s site. And so, when a visiting writer starts assigning himself exercises, completing the assignments, then publishing his compositions before a table of critics, what would usually be ascribed to a desire to better one’s writing skills were the writer a registered “student” in a Comp/Lit class at a certified institution of Higher Ed, gets ascribed here as “trolling,” “stalking,” and (per Pablo) some sci-fi-inspired sort of Body-Snatching.
So, for the record, and enumerated in list-form for guaranteed comprehension, is THE last word on this point:
1. My name is Steve.
2. I am not Jeff.
3. Jeff is not me.
4. If you confuse me with Jeff, you are the one confused.
5. I mimic Jeff’s style to improve my writing skills.
6. Mimicking Jeff’s style does make me Jeff.
7. Being mimicked by me does not make Jeff me.
Even though the truths in the seven-sentences enumerated above are obvious to all practicing artists, tradesmen and the people who instruct them, it is equally obvious that they needed iteration here at Jeff’s blog. And, if it is my calling to fulfill that need here, and to take the spit-wads, pedants’ plaints, and accusations of insanity as penance for my good deed, then so be it.
Suffice it say, with every whinge, curse and slander leveled my way in the comments over the past three days, my hypothesis has gained the proofs it needed to graduate to Theory. And that Theory, lacking only in its reliance on an overly small sampling size (what is it, a whole 7-8 people who voluntarily interviewed themselves for my study?), has graduated to Fact.
That Fact being, this blog’s reflexive commentators – as distinguished from its more thoughtful, patient ones, cannot be relied on to guide Free Men in navigating the world we live in. I took a stab at why this is a couple nights ago: “[…]under the age of [4]5 […],” “[…] lodged burr-like in the wool of some campus[…],” “[…]addicted to the same vices the Left baits their electoral traps with [etc.]” And I take no pleasure in saying that every retort logged in the comments opposed to my autodidactic
Body-Snatchingexercising at Jeff’s blog has proven me right.OK, I fibbed – I took an itsy-bitsy bit of pleasure from it!
I”ll end with a grateful bow to Jeff and his cohort. I own you a huge debt, as in just 36 hours my punctuation, spelling, and syntactic flow have all improve dramatically. Serr8ted, Ernst, Leigh and BBH and others (I simply cannot mention everyone who deserves a nod), I could not have made such strides without you. You’ve schooled me in ways you’ll never know.
Thanks for that! See you tomorrow.
I believe that’s called “doubling down.”
Cranky – Denial is, too, a river in Egypt!
Jeff asked us to leave you alone. I shall.
Hey steveaz, following your suggestion a few days back that we should turn to look at ancient myth (let us leave aside for the moment modern movie’s interpretation of ancient myth, or even maybe modern interpretation of ancient anything as untrustworthy in the extreme), where would you look if you were to seek to find an analog in ancient thought (expanding only a little beyond myth as such) for the proposition you’ve captured for yourself above concerning guidance for navigating the world we live in? I mean, it isn’t as though the proposition itself is making an unheralded perfectly fresh appearance in the world, is it?
Last time I saw anyone so proud of so little was in 1982 and my little boy made poopy in the big boys toilet.
And in case my garbled English isn’t intelligible (yes, that garbled English, which I own, is a garbled English which is mine, it belongs to me, and is mine), let me put this another way: what makes a reputation for wisdom?
Honestly, steve, find your own voice. The last explanation you wrote was easily readable and understood.
When you try to write like someone else it isn’t, and it sounds fake. Like you are trying to bs us. The commentariat here is a little tired of bs.
I’ll leave this clown alone. For now.
While we wrestle with steveaz’s vision of things under a wrestling title, I’m just now reminded of a couple of ancient examples of wrestling metapors, one, in Genesis, where Jacob gets his name Israel, and the other in the Theaetetus where Socrates attempts to wrestle with Theodorus, and Theodorus’ teacher Protagoras’ theories, to get a hold on the nature of knowledge. Possibly both, or neither, would be useful here. Dollars to doughnuts there are others though (in the Odyssey for one place): those ancients were damned fond of their wrestling.
Because I’m a giver who gives and gives.
You sorry little ingrates!
Guys, you’re creeping me out!
If the world really is going to Hell-in-a-Handbasket, I’d like to know in advance which direction the urban refugees who flock to my warm-winter climes are going to point their guns in. Party labels are of no use in this diligence. Anonymous comments at public blogs reveal nothing except that masked people talk a lot. And simply restating and broadcasting in public your opposition to Feinsteinian gun-control proposals doesn’t pass muster , either. Under the duress of armed conflict, it’s just as likely a convenient pose, like belief in Global Warming at Seattle house parties used to be.
Great! You know how to shoot a hunting rifle. Awesome! You can dress a bobcat and cook it. Hooray! You enthusiastically oppose bans on hi-capacity clips. Bravo! You have acquired an arsenal equal to that of a large Swiss Canton. But none of it answers the question: In a shooting war to preserve liberty, can I trust you to share a fox-hole with me?
Far better signifiers are available. And the questions listed below are engineered to suss those out in an informal, 2-party interview.
1. Do you mow your own lawn? So long as the interviewee is not disabled, aged or a toddler, the answer tells you the level of self-reliance of the subject. The similar “Do you change your car’s oil yourself?” works just as well. If the interviewee is a family man and he assigns chores like those to his kids, alter the question to “When did you stop mowing your own lawn?”
2. How big is your house? The answer to this one will allow you to quantify the interviewees’ degree of vanity. The maintenance of spacious homes, especially in cold climates, is very expensive. And if despite all the signs of impending social strife and personal bankruptcy you continued to maintain yourself in it, it goes directly to your character.
3. What do you read? The answer will tell you a couple of things. First, whether the refugee is literate or not. Second, the first few texts he lists are the ones that stick most deeply in his subconscious. These are his literary influences, and they tell the interviewer a lot.
4. Where did you work before you came here? This one sounds like a job-interview question, and for good reason: the answer to it will determine the person’s level of industriousness, that he has the basic social skills to cooperate in larger battalions, and that he was not an Obama-ite dependent prior to hostilities breaking out. His resume also relays his retinue of skill-sets, which cities he has lived in, and what he subjectively
5. Have you ever belonged to a labor union? While not dispositive, the answer to this question will indicate the refugee’s susceptibility to being “organized” by his wants to act in concert with others against his employer. This vulnerability to group suasion is dangerous to covert operations, and displays of it indicate he’ll sell his com-Patriot militia members out for cheap.
It’s great to be well-armed during times of upheaval and social unrest. Everybody should be, and as things are going, they soon will be. But, his being well-armed does not guarantee that the ex-urban refugee will shoot in the right direction, nor that he won’t bring down-stream harm to my family and property. That surety comes from looking past militaristic emblems like fire-power, musculature, boisterousness and military awards to the quality of the person behind the gun. John Kerry didn’t garner my vote in 2004 (and I doubt anyone else voted for him either) no matter the number of awards he perches on his chest.
Character matters most!
-S
Ooops!
Redo:
John Kerry didn’t garner my vote in 2004 (and I doubt anyone else commenting at this blog voted for him either) no matter the number of awards he perches on his chest.
-S
You might want to find out about civic associations and level of religious commitment as well.
Because I think what’s really going to matter is sociablity and civic mindedness.
Thank you for speaking plainly too, by the way.
Ernst,
I had a little talk with myself at lunch.
One of my other literary influences is Daniel Greenfield. I spent some time there this afternoon, and I think the crisp tempo and trim paragraphing of his writing rubbed off a bit.
God ain’t done with me yet!
Fixed
-My wife mows the little weed lawn we have and she runs the snowblower – tasks she took to while I was going through chemo/radiation six years ago. I do the carpentry, electrical, and masonry work around the house. I am also a woodworker and have made furniture for our home.
-1,600 square feet on less than an acre in the cold of New England
-Current reading: Matthew Spauding’s We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future and Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind [a re-read] and Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered
I prefer works of philosophy, biography, and history, but I do indulge in fiction now and again [Bernard Cornwall is a current favorite / Solzhenitsyn and Dostoyevsky are the fiction writers I most admire].
-Currently, I am in charge of a government IT Department; before that I worked in a boiler room and as an energy auditor; before that for my father as accountant and bartender. All throughout this, until about ten years ago, I was an active musician, as well. BTW: This accounts for my using a nom de plume, as I would be fired if my views were known to my bosses because I work for a government up in New England where they are nearly all Leftists [I, however, never comment on the goings-on in my branch of government, as that would be unfair to do from an anonymous position].
-During my time as a Second Class Fireman/Auditor, I was for two years a Recording Secretary for a union. You had no choice but to either join said union or pay the dues. I paid the dues and would not join until two other men asked me join with them and takeover the local so we could get rid of the union hacks who did nothing but antagonize the bosses.
10:21 AM:
6:14 PM
*
I hope you’re better at marshalling facts to support your argument [et. seq.] than he is.
No ex-urbans will come here. And thank God for that.
I hope you’re better at marshalling facts to support your argument [et. seq.] than he.
I tried to tell you. ; )
I’m criticizing Greenfield, not steveaz.
What I remember you telling me was he wrote for David Horowitz’s outfit, so that made him okay. I don’t think he is.
No, I told you that I don’t read Greenfield’s stuff often because he is fast and loose with the facts. I knew who you were talking about.
Thanks for citing The Elements of Style above. I was trying to think of its title yesterday and kept coming up empty.
Gee Bob, your reply really warmed my heart.
And it’s good to meet you!
Me?
No lawn, currently single but looking, and so no choice but to do everything myself . Luckily I enjoy good health and I have reliable friends to help me out with the big stuff.
Home: downsized recently – whew, big relief, just sold my old, bigger home in this market, to finance the construction of the new one: 960 sq.ft – under construction (dried-in, stick-built 2X6 studs to-code, ext. finish competed, just finished wiring and rough plumbing, and buddy arrives from San Juan Island to help with the insulation on Wednesday). Should have permits finaled-out by June.
Current reading: I’m a science and history geek so don’t laugh: just finished John McFee’s Basin and Range, halfway thru Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – the movie made me do it. Enjoying on and off, too, Lynn Bailey’s Mines, Camps, Ranchers and Characters of the Dragoon Mountains.
Work: Lots of customer service work in my twenties and thirties (once took over 200 calls at Kinko’s Corporate Center in Seattle in one day), and I’m a gardening wonk so horticultural work: labored in coastal California’s retail nurseries for 5 years, learned the trade and the latin and have a design flare, so am now trying to spin that into dollars as a small businessman.
Labor Union: Never fell for it! Almost took a hotel job in my twenties that would have signed me up, but I spooked when I learned about the dues withdrawals.
G’Night, and thanks for playing! :-)
Ernst, a quickie about Dan:
I think some writers trade on life experience, instinct and feelings, while others rely on empirical devices like links and footnoted references and appendices. We need both kinds in this world.
I think Dan falls into the first category.
hit the freakin’ tip jar
ok, my mistake
It’s okay. I know you’re a sauer kraut sometimes.
Victoria de los Angeles sang for your delectation, so delectate already.
Trading on the one doesn’t give you the leeway to abuse the other.
References aren’t there solely for the convenience of your reader. They’re there to keep you honest.
Facts are stubborn things.
When I read a news story, I want the facts not the writer’s feelings and instinct and I couldn’t care less about his life experience either, unless it is germane to the story and not emotional chest-thumping. Even if it is germane: keep it short. The story is not about the author.
it may have been an “old” story but it doesn’t take away the fact that newer stories make the nhs a an
a total clusterfarkenvy of the world6. Do you talk too much?
Yeah, keep it moving pilgrim…
I think some writers trade on life experience, instinct and feelings
Beware! Here there be proggtards!
damn html tags
how often does greenfield screw up? if, considering output, not too often: why make it a big deal?
language thought event: go up to wassermanshultz, grayson, markey, white proggtard et al and ask if they are “white niggers as defined by the late democrat senator byrd” go for the giggles
I don’t know how often he scews up. I’ve read exactly two Greenfield pieces. I might have let the Justice Stevens thing go as excessive rhetorical enthusiasm, had I not read the they’re coming for your chef’s knives next boys! (and do note that Greenfield presents it in the current tense, as in this is happening now), and then saw (after I repeated his original allegation on this website, and thus got his egg on my face) that his contention was based on an almost 8 year old story.
Frankly, I’m not inclined to read any more of his writing. And if I have to, it’s going to be with a jaundiced eye.
Now,why am I making a big deal out of it? There are multiple things going on here.
First of all, I initially took him at face value and repeated his hyberbole, and thus embarrassed myself –which I resent because I don’t need his help doing that, thankyou very much.
Second, as I said, what he’s trading on is his reputation, and his reputation is for shit (with me, at any rate) because people who are sloppy and careless about little things tend to, sooner or later, be sloppy and careless about big things. So how can I trust his opinion? Note: he’s in the opinion business! Subpoint: how can I trust the opinions of his colleagues or the reputation of his employer when he’s one them?
Third, unless David Horowitz has out-Huffington’d Arianna, there’s money attached to the Journalism Fellowship he claims, and there’s too many good conservative writers, and too few paying gigs for conservative writers, for one of the few to go to a hack. A servant is only worth his wages if he serves.
Fourth, and to me most important, as I already said, the footnotes and the weblinks are there for the author’s benefit as much as the readers’. They serve to keep the writer on the straight and narrow. They’re a warrant of the writer’s integrity, and an invitation to the reader to not only investigate the subject further, but to check up on the author’s integrity. When a writer misrepresents his source material in his text he’s tellling you he doesn’t respect you (because he doesn’t think you’ll follow-up), he doesn’t respect his sources (the act of misrepresentation), he doesn’t respect his profession (because he makes a mock of the canon of ethics by the act of misrepresenting the source, compounded by defying the reader to catch him in the act) and ultimately he doesn’t respect himself, because he doesn’t care enough about who he is or what he does to bother with due diligence.
I’ll close by trying to tie this in to one of Jeff’s recurring themes: a right-wing consensus based reality might be preferable to a left-wing one, but a reality-based reality is preferable to both. That they lie and cheat, distort and exagerate, and special plead there way into an irrational abyss, isn’t an excuse for those who would be our spokespersons to do the same. Not when the end result is the same irrational abyss.
i’m not that cynical. he made a “mistake”{ linking to to an old story about nhs}{no new stories about nhs appearing, true}. you be like JohnPod going after “rethuglicans”. today. eff that. our “side” ain’t the problem. proggtards are.
you do know “our side” keep blaming the “tea party” for senate losses. hello fiorina, conn babe, murdoch et al. these gop idiots sux
akin was a gop tool between 2 tea party cands.
Karl’s Super Pac was 2/10 going mostly against leaning or in danger opponents. That is not especially competitive.
Ted Cruz made it in. Now whether he is tea party or merely road the teas party to glory remains to be seen. But I am kind of tired of being constantly reminded that he is hispanic, in fact I am starting to think of it as a bad omen.
I would agree with you about the mistake, had he corrected it. That he hasn’t tells me he doesn’t think he made a mistake, or he’s too proud to admit it, which is worse, frankly.
When I was young and naive, and the future belonged to young conservatives like me. I loved to read The American Spectator’s young turks, Byron York and David Brock. –Brock’s pieces were read first, then York’s. Over the intervening decades (God!), I’ve learned that York was the better reporter/writer and better voice for the conservative P.O.V.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m telling you anyways, there’s more Brock than York in Greenfield.
Akin got the nomination in part because of Democrat mischief in the Missouri primary. That said, he was perfectly acceptable to the GOP as a GOP vote in the House. He may not have been the strongest candidate, but that was a winnable election until the GOP did what the GOP does.
Which is why it’s guaranteed to happen again, for as long as the GOP is the GOP.
(Hopefully that wasn’t too obscure [smirk])
paleo, living in Texas myself, Ted Cruz is the real deal. His “great Hispanic hope” aura seems to mostly come from MSM types who want to portray him as either “white Hispanic” or as a token or both.
Thanks for your 9:49, Ernst. I agree completely — there’s nothing more embarassing than getting burned because someone on our side was playing fast and loose with the facts.
We have to be correct 100% of the time. While that should be a goal for every thinking man, we of the Right don’t have the luxury of being provably wrong, ever. Any mistake will be excuse to discount everything we have to say in the War of Ideas.
Hell, we’re “wrong” all the time even when we’re not. I’m thinking of the Breitbart/Sherrod thing, which the Left’s minions still take as proof that AB was a lying racist trying to destroy a black woman with deceptive video editing. That none of that has any relationship to what actually happened is irrelevant.
why?
Because they’re going to hold us to our standards.
why is that? do effin’ alinsky on these lying sacks of sh$t. like wassermanshultz, grayson, rangel et al
and we are going to hold them to their standards fight or get off the pot
And we should hold them to our standards too, instead of embracing theirs.
And that’s because I don’t have enough bullets to make it down the path their standard would have us go.
yo alfuckin’gore
wimp
do you want to fight the proggtards? like zombies no?
You’re welcome John. And I’m grateful for your appreciation.
Which you can better express by donating to our host, who’s gracious enough to let me comment on his dime.
and the tr stuff shove it proggtards. tr was a creature of the good “times nyc elite” circa 1890
Not if I don’t have to, no.
Zombie is a metaphor.
We had a better class of elite back then.
Marginally,
Bob,
I’d like to discuss our nation’s civil service union problem in a public forum like Jeff’s sometime, and your resume suggests you’d be a good person to enjoin it.
Maybe our host will broach the topic, or something tangential enough to it, to get the juices flowing.
Modeled in front of the public and conducted civilly, it’s likely to break the logjam, and maybe public policy will follow.
no they suck then and now.
fire the bastards. go away “commie scum”
yo stupidinaz:
unions be commie shakedowns. fu
In TR’s day, they were somewhat more likely to lead from the front.
Remember when being hilariously tone-deaf to their own hate and bias was BAD for the democrats?
http://moelane.com/2013/01/06/qotd-shooting-irony-for-the-sake-of-chuck-hagel-edition/
Good times. Good times. Now ignorance is strength.
“Ernst Schreiber says January 6, 2013 at 11:36 pm
In TR’s day, they were somewhat more likely to lead from the front.”
Maxims and breach loader cannon were still expensive and not fully trusted back then I guess.
http://www.surreyleader.com/news/185707541.html
Canada seems less creepy politically than US now. Are we entering an age of political madness or only a bad long weekend of political madness (a decade of shit) ?
hahahaha
link
touché
John, here’s a radical thought: sometime mistakes are golden opportunities.
Making mistakes humanizes you to an audience, and if forging personal emotional connections with your target audience assists your larger game, a screw-up or two might actually save your campaign.
And they are survivable. One tactic is, make a big show of being self-aware so that everyone knows you are self-aware, then when you make a mistake in public, a quick mea culpa followed by a credible correction (it doesn’t need to be accurate mind you, just earnestly given) will make the mistake “go away.”
Note: If the audience is not convinced of your self-awareness, they will not trust your correction even if it is accurate, anyway. So the advertisement of your concern for your audience’s favorable opinion of you is essential.
The cascade goes: Your advertised self-awareness lends credence to your expressed embarrassment, the proffer of a correction (or a “let me check my notes and get back to you”) reinforces your desire to make amends, and the Volks watching forget the mistake ever happened.
That’s not to say we should encourage mistake-making, just to say they are not as fatal to a campaign as people vested in it think they are at the moment. And they offer up oppurtunities to shift tactics, distract from other problems or mistakes, change topics, and replace personnel.
Yawwwn. Go seepy now!
So I guess Greenfield isn’t human, doesn’t want to connect with his audience, and doesn’t care about surviving?
I must not be his intended audience.
too funny
wiki
effin’ dolts
I’ll take Andrew Carnegie over Kennedy –the lot of ’em.
mr. ernst give it up. “our” side has funny things to do.
What Carnegie did, he did with his own money, as far as I know. He didn’t use his money to seed a foundation dedicated to getting the government to give it other people’s money to pursue its goals.
same peeps see heinz/ kerry/heinz/kennedy /warren;
proggtard elites.
asks the ford foundation ernst? proggtard kookary starts there!
breach-loader -> breech loader
Sdferr,
I’m on a pre-pay wireless service with a set bandwidth allowance, so no compulsive video downloads allowed for me!
We’re in a recession, remember! Gotta tighten those belts!
Yeah. Penniless little immigrant child Andy Carnegie. Just like Teresa Heinz-Kerry, John Kerry, Elizabeth Warren, the Kennedys and all the rest of the proggtard elites.
Just. Exactly.
Carnegie isn’t the Ford Foundation newrouter.
For that matter the Ford wasn’t the Ford Foundation.
I believe there’s been at least one documentary on what happens to foundations after the professional foundation managers get ahold of them –because the original benefactor is no longer in the picture.
But go on hating a guy who built libraries if that makes you feel better.
made the money bought the pose
wiki
mr. ernst
i don’t do
nah that works. it is all the proggtard stuff that follows!
after morgan bought carnegie out he became an idiot of the (wilson/roosevelt wing). there is a reason for the amendment about the fed? and senators?
Ernst,
I cannot go off to bed now that you’re gathering steam. You’re on Fire!
My affection for Dan’s efforts and my enjoyment of their products compel me to step in to defend him. But I’d be useless to him: grogginess has set in, and I don’t know the facts like you do.
That said, I think a criticism of Dan’s posts based on an empirical flaw in one of them is a bit harsh. You wouldn’t use a slide rule to “measure” a Monet, would you?
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….
8 years is a really long fucking time to wait to break important news. If that’s not a problem for you as far as Mr. Greenfield’s judgement and credibility goes then there’s probably not much for us to discuss. I’m guess I’m just too dumb to hop on Saruman’s wagon and gaze into his palintir like all the hip cool kids.
Meanwhile, in HopeN’CHangeistan :
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/business/despite-new-health-law-some-see-sharp-rise-in-premiums.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0
Two Week Old News:
Post Benghazi State Dept. resignations appear be effective only for the mean estimated length of the American attention span:
http://michellemalkin.com/2012/12/26/resignation-benghazi/
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/benghazi_penalties_are_bogus_ncP7RZx5uTIgDPbTp5WtoN
Also, Guess who’s back? Back again? Barney’s Back. Tell a friend!
http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/04/retired-beltway-barnacle-barney-frank-now-wants-interim-u-s-senate-appointment/
Ernst, your first comment was deleted, but the second survived; an answer to a commenter referencing the deleted remark.
My take is, @Sultanknish had a writing deadline, grabbed an old, stale article and ran with it to generate much hoopla amongst his readership. A hot topic, a quick post, and any criticism or questioning of his methodology was unhelpful.
The bigger sin was the deleting of your original comment; the author’s failure to follow up to valid criticism. How often does he wallow amongst the unwashed commentariat?
I asked him politely to try again. If he fails to respond, then he will remain unreadable AFAIC.
Oh, and before I begin yet another day enslaved to teh grind, here’s some enlightened reading, far above the level of ‘Front Page Magazine’.
Thanks, serr8d. Much food for thought.
the proggtards are into statism. that defies the 2nd law of thermodynamics
link
Jeff,
If you noticed that one of your friend’s blogs had developed a case of fleas*, and you wanted to A. devise an assay to test your diagnosis, and B. apply pyrethrums to reduce the infestation, it’d look a lot like my campaign of posts over the last five days.
The assay relied on an Alinskyite irritant to agitate the colony into showing itself. The irritant essay had to contain three factors to work. It had to contain an oil-based sticker to make it adhere to the blog (if you’d deleted it and banned me, it wouldn’t have worked). It needed to present several protruding, offensive spikes – these are to irritate arthropod exoskeletons and trachea, and to defend against attempts to neutralize the irritant’s vulnerable**, protein-based core. And it had to be non-toxic to the patient and desireable “normal flora” on the blog’s healthy skin: Alinskyite probes are tactically neutral and nontoxic in small doses, and the assay’s design omitted your desireable flora from its effects (by telling them they had “no need to read-on”).
I’ve tallied the results, and the assay revealed the most extensive infestation in the ears of the blog. Other areas, the crotch, belly, anus and under the chin showed signs, too. These colonies ran to the ear-area during the assay, so they largely corrected themselves while focusing the colony for easier treatment. As of now a whole-body dip in pyrethrums won’t be needed (some blogs aren’t so lucky). Irritation of the areas from scratching and secondary infection were evident, but these will clear up on their own.
As to treatment, I prescribe a one-shot Pyrethrum application to the head and neck area, and that the blog wear a flea-collar from now on. Both are available over-the-counter at most libraries. Brands like Orwell’s and Wretchard’s have worked well for me in the past. And many of your own posts contain home-grown Pyrethrums that may work just as well. Reapply if the infestation persists and call me if it reinfests the belly and rear of the blog again.
I’ll continue to
lurkcheck-in on your recovery as Summer rolls around. I have a soft spot for your blog, Jeff, and I’m committed to its health, so there’ll be no charge for the service. Just keep posting!* Blog fleas are posts, not posters, that call for imposing speech-codes and banning uncomfortable ideas. They also respond to challenges with anti-intellectual posturing like pedantry, mental diagnoses, and archival dossiers (a favorite of Stalinist fleas). Last, as they feed from the safety and comfort of a pore, they secrete bravado and deposit feces that compost on the skin causing secondary rashes and infection.
* * The irritant’s protein-based core is easily denatured: I have never read Alinsky, and if any of the fleas had deconstructed the assay’s core agent with his book in hand, it’d have rendered it useless. What fleas consider the irritant’s primary flaws, like spelling mistakes and long-windedness, are actually mucous-like traps that bind them up, and prevent them from focusing their enzymatic defenses on the proteins at its core.
I don’t know steveaz, seems to me you may just be peddling a bottle of snake-oil there, or more particularly, reaching a misdiagnosis of the current political exigencies. For instance, you won’t find you’ll need any specially broad bandwidth to respond to simple questions, yet respond you haven’t. How is that?
I was kind of hoping he’d found that copy of “How to Write in Plain English” lying around the house, sdferr.
A remedial reading comprehension and composition class may do the trick.
Yeah, but I don’t think that way about steveaz’s production leigh. It’s windy, but then he knows it’s windy. Furthermore, for my part, length isn’t a difficulty in and of itself. The question for me is this: what’s the underlying substance? Is the underlying substance good in itself, or good for some subordinate utility, or not good for much at all? And there’s the question: which of these is it? And so far as I can see, that’s still a question.
Yes, Beckett he isn’t. So we are back to what BMoe was saying to him some days ago: Find your own voice.
As to dense prose and length of postings, I don’t have a problem with either of those if there is a point. Most especially one leading to a more fruitful discussion of the topic at hand. I am reading a lot of preening and strutting and not seeing what he is driving at.
So you and I are both asking the same question of him.
Heh. Methinks the bug-man needs spray himself.
Wait, so steve is showing Jeff the path to fixing his busted blog? Now that’s funny.
I have to admit, that one was lost on me.