Lots of my favorite blogs have been dropping off of the radar screen lately. Wuzzadem has been, as I’m sure has been clear from my links, one of my favorite sites for a long, long time. Lately, though, John’s output has drooped (though Mrs. R has done some excellent work), and he hasn’t added a single post to his faves in the sidebar since the classic Greenwald(s) He Said/He Said post. I pestered him daily for awhile, then stopped, but I got tired of dropping in as often as only an obsessive/compulsive could, and I sent him an earnest email (which is a rarity for me) asking what’s going on. Here’s his reply:
Dear Dan,
Thanks for pestering me, but I think I might be done, at least for now. The fact is, I’m tired of fun. I probably had more than my share of fun in my youth, and from time to time I’ve continued to have fun as an adult. The thing is, fun isn’t everything. I have a serious side, and when I’m serious, I’m seriously very serious. Seriously.
I know you mean well when you write and suggest things that I might do, but I feel that I need to subside into lassitude and torpor, at least for a little while, like the field that is fallow after years of harrowing. I’m not saying that in the future I won’t have anything to post about, but for the moment about all I’m up for is Starbucks posts, and there’s only so many of them that I feel like maybe, possibly doing.
I think that it’s likely that when this endless campaigning gets down to the nitty gritty I’ll find that I have something to say, but for now it seems that the absurdity of the media outstrips my ability to out-absurd it. So, I hope you’ll excuse my absence while I recharge my batteries.
In other words, stop bugging me, you asshole.
Best regards,
JohnP.S. I’m not some kind of laugh monkey or humor automaton, you know. I am a human being.
Well, in other words, nothing to mock. Lazy ass; givin’ this election cycle the big ho-hum it deserves.
I kind of know how he feels. Sometimes it seems like everywhere you look is just fun, fun, fun. I get a little sick of it. I just wanna be serious and earnest sometimes.
This is the problem with your human beings, no staying power-
Oh, I don’t know, I see plenty of material everyday. How about this from the official party of the First Amendment.
After all the howling about the separation of church and state the last few years, that transcript is priceless.
Actually, what I was getting was that there’s too much to mock, and by the time he finishes coming up with a title for a post mocking something, a new development ratchets up the mockability about eleven points higher, and he has to rethink his premise.
Consider, for example, the implosion of the CBS Evening News with Perky Katie Couric Pretending to Be a Serious Journalist®. Just when you think it’s reached the height of silliness, Dan Rather chimes in, complaining that Couric’s rise to the anchor desk has made it impossible to take the news seriously anymore.
I mean, irony meters that haven’t even been manufactured yet exploded on that one.
Yeah, when it gets to the point that you can’t tell a straight article from its Iowahawk counterpart, you known you’ve reached the Edge of the Universe.
Or at least come within spittin’ distance.
Thus ruining what had been a thriving industry.
Many of the folks commenting here have a blog. Is this “dancing monkey” concept in a packet that comes when you first sign up?
Our gracious host here at PW likes to run the “laugh monkey” thing around when criticized. I live in a world where I wish people cared about what I thought. Alas, I’m married, so the wife doesn’t care, the infant listens, but his commentary is filled with burps and gurgles (makes more sense some of the critiques I’ve read online, I suppose) and you guys and gals (for some reason) don’t seem to care either (the preceding paragraph may or may not be true).
It makes me wonder what kind of person offers opinions, receives traffic, and then gets pissed when people ask him/her to comment on things?
It’s not just John or Jeff and it is across the political spectrum, but it is interesting to me. like a circus gawker begging people to “step right up” and, when they do, he says “what the f*ck do you want from me?”
He’s not pissed. He’s being deliberately lazy.
But as for why Jeff does it, he never found a food he liked.
not even pie?
Most people like to fuck, timmy. Not many like being a whore.
What a concidence!
I’ve been working on a new generation of Irony Meter technology. I can only discuss the patented parts of the design, but it will withstand the kinds of shocks pampered limousine liberals and talking heads seem to be delivering with gross rapidity these days.
The R&D was tough, but I succeeded in developing a 12 KW optoisolator to keep back EMF away from the three-foot vane’s d’Arsonval movement out of the Irony Detector op amps (they were necessary to suppress common mode noise radiated by KOS and St. Amanda, and timmyb). That was expensive to develop, but I’ve been able to keep costs down by using inexpensive devices in other parts of the system. The only problem I have to lick right now is the heat sink for the 2,500 2N3055’s in the switching power supply. It’s kind of heavy.
Look, I know I could have used a digital display, but watching that analog meter’s vane move is really dramatic. Once the damping mechanism was perfected (I used garage-door springs), I was able to repair the holes in the concrete basement floor that thrashing during the recent debates caused.
My research in the local neighborhood tavern revealed a unit of irony to be equivalent to the liberal diatribe bushwah that moves 6.023 x 10²³ electrons across a neural junction in the irony area of the brain. I’ve called it the Goldstein (can I suck up, or what?). One remark from Ted Kennedy about the tragedy of DUIs in Massachusetts moved the meter to about one-third scale, which I marked as ‘100’. What might I use to experiment with greater ironies? The meter, unfortunately, was turned off, shielded, and short-circuited during the recent Dan Rather-Katie Couric scuffle.
Any help y’all might give to advance irony metering technology would be deeply appreciated.
But all the money will be mine.
B Moe, that was ribald and insightful! Just when i think you have permanently crossed the line into ass biter, you redeem yourself (in my eyes).
Dan, I never said Jeff was angry; I inquired why ALL bloggers bust out the “monkey” line, when they all beg us to visit their site and hit the tip bar and monitor the traffic. If you want people to watch the show, then put on the show.
Still, I like B Moe’s explanation
ha ha told you so
sorry, I could see things sliding down into adult dialogue there and had to move fast
timmyb,
I’ve sent tips and story suggestions to various bloggers. Usually I get no response, sometimes I get a quick “thanks”. When people bring out the “dancing monkey” thing, I think it has to do more with a couple of things:
1) “Hey, what do you have to say about THIS, you neocon fascist?” where someone writes in or leaves a comment with a link to some some story that points up a liberal meme or something, and implies that it’s the hosts solemn duty to comment on it, and
2) “You’re not posting enough, dammit!” where the blogger is made to feel that he must constantly crank out material for the entertainment of anonymous people on the Internet.
While it’s not blogging per se, I do a series of music theory posts on a web forum. I get really riled when people say, “When’s the next one coming?” When I’m feeling like it, and when I have the time and inclination to put that much work into giving away something for free, dammit.
Where’s a world of difference between “What do you think about this?” and “Why haven’t you posted about this? Huh? Huh?”
Have you ever gone to the opera and shouted out requests?
Yes, but the fat bastards wouldn’t shut up.
They didn’t know Louie, Louie.
I dream of Laugh Monkeys…….Truth is I am humorless, other wise I would have a blog, I originally came for the Pie…….
So, was he singing “Get In My Belly”?
In Italian?
Bwahahahahahahaha!!
This makes me wonder what will happen when JC Christian and his little fascists and the morons over at SadlyNo! reach adulthood, heterosexually speaking of course.
Timmy —
I am not doing this to please your or anyone else, necessarily, so you—and others who don’t like my output or what I write about—are free to leave anytime.
The “show” I’m putting on started with me talking to myself into a little white box.
I’m appreciative that others have come along to read it—that they are genuinely interested either in what I have to say, how I say it, or how a community of readers responds to it—but that doesn’t mean I am obligated to any of them.
In some businesses, the customer is always right. In the “Jeff’s Opinions” business, that ain’t the case.
Besides: unlike some sites, I have open comments. So you are free to entertain yourself (though were it me, I would be less inclined than you seem to be to tug myself in public).
Thanks Jeff
What you said is why I keep coming back.
Time for PIE……
Wuz showed you Collins. That’ll teach your ass.
It’s the smartest part of me.
Sorry Jeff, but even here I’m always right and I’m a customer.
So make with the laughs.
Geezer,
Don’t forget to put in ESD protection for when the sparks fly.
tw old99, I think that 99 is beyond geezer.
Well, I avoided MOS devices as much as possible, put reverse-biased diodes across all inputs to reduce ESD danger somewhat, and threw out all my nylon socks. I also ripped up all carpets in the house.
What do you think? Should I use static bags to encase the whole thing? I had a number of fires when I tried that originally.
>I am not doing this to please your or anyone >else, necessarily, so youâ€â€and others who don’t >like my output or what I write aboutâ€â€are free to >leave anytime.
Great! Looking forward to your next post whining about declining traffic. (Which post, of course, will be buried in a sea of cobloggers’ incoherence.) Because I love it, that’s why I keep comin’ around.