oh, fine. BE that way.

apathy

Someone, it appears, is going around reddit and digg and downvoting my beloved lolgoths.

Goths have no sensa huma.

But do I care? Fuck yes I care; these damn things are teh ossum d00dz! You think I’m doing this for money? You think it’s not more interesting than “dis site need tu emprov commentin it sux”? Or, god forbid, “latest partisan spokesperson slandered by opposing partisan spokesperson”? Puh-leez! Let’s just all agree Falwell was a self-righteous, shrill windbag who’s better off in God’s hands (take that any way you prefer) or feeding the worms, Obama isn’t black (whatever), and InsertNameHere is the next great hope of America and move the fuck on. And yes, I’ve read this article.

Someone at reddit actually said he downvotes stories just because it’s easier to click on than the Next button; you would think this would get a person banned, but no.

I have a suspicion that some people downvote things that are posted by their authors, official site policy notwithstanding, but that’s just a hunch. Could be that horrible woman from the political thread comments is stalking me.

Overall, I have to say that Stumble is best for hits, reddit second, and digg is pretty much hopeless unless you’re a tech blogger; it’s rapidly becoming irrelevant to the rest of the blogosphere by natural selection and reinforcement. Since non-techie stories don’t do well there, it attracts fewer non-techies, reducing the mental gene pool (memepool {making one word from two is very Web 2.0}).

I’d like to know how an rtr story that was posted to Press This got six positive votes, yet only two reads. Maybe they’re voting on the snippet? Who knows as long as it brings me some hits…waiting…waiting.

Slate did a lovely slideshow of lolcats and lolmemes and utterly left LolGoths out. WAAAAAH. I’m gonna play NIN and think about how to chop up other people while still spinning it as self-cutting!

And both today and yesterday my personal journal got zero hits. That’s rather surprising, given that flamewars and drama are hit magnets in my experience, but ah well.

I’ve still got my poetry.

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Hey, you got your thetan in my cult! Well you got your cult all up in my thetan!

Xenu is my homeboyHow to drive Scientologists crazy for fun and profit. And that’s AFTER L.Ron and his minions have already warmed them up for you; they’re halfway there already!

“Your problem is that you are easily led.”

I thought about this for a moment. I didn’t actually feel particularly easy to lead, I decided, but perhaps she would have something to tell me I didn’t know.

Having allowed her point to sink in, she continued, “Do you want to be activator or activated?”

This was a bit cryptic, and I quite honestly didn’t get her drift, so I asked her politely to explain exactly what she meant.

“Do you want people to activate you, or do you want to activate them?”

“Well.” I hesitated, considering this rather either-or view of things. “Does one have to go around activating people to avoid being activated by them?”

“Yes.” She was very decisive about this. I had to admit that she had in fact just told me something I had never known before.

“I’m not certain that I agree. As far as I know I activate myself and other people do the same for themselves.”

“It isn’t that simple!” Again she was extremely decisive. This was interesting since it had always seemed that way to me.

“Do I have the right to activate people? Isn’t it their job and their right to activate themselves? You’d be taking a hell of a responsibility if you went around activating people, wouldn’t you?”

“Only for their own good!”

Now she was really beginning to interest me. Her logic was fascinating: To avoid being activated by people, which would be bad for me, I had to activate them, which would be good for them. (Quite apart from the fact that statements like “for their own good” have a tendency to stimulate my anti-authority neurosis and trigger off the little alarm bells.) This was becoming interestinger and interestinger, and I was becoming curiouser and curiouser about exactly who these people were. I was just about to find out.

“Now.” She fixed me with her gaze. “What you need is this book!” She held it up.

I leant forward and examined it. Large, cheerfully coloured letters on the front identified it: DIANETICS, by L. RON HUBBARD…

This continues for some time, escalating entertainingly, after which…

I leant back and waited expectantly.

She blinked, looked at me somewhat blankly, then blinked again. I waited expectantly.

She looked at her desktop and blinked at that. This didn’t look partcularly encouraging, but I waited expectantly.

Her next move was to place her elbows on the desktop, fold her hands together and start rocking her body backwards and forwards. She finally stopped rocking and started staring at me intensely. What she hoped to achieve by this was unclear.

I felt it was time to give her som encouragement and guidance.

“Dear Lady.” My tone was extremely patient and sympathetic. “You have to give me a sales pitch, you know. You aren’t going to sell me anything by just looking at me and clamming up.”

She frowned, and kept frowning for a while. Then, to my astonishment, she blew herself up like a frog, pointed at the door and screamed hysterically, “UD FOR FAEN!!! UD!!!” (This translates roughly as “Get the fuck out of here! Get out!”)

I rose politely while she glared at me balefully, quivering and looking very apoplectic. Having opened the door preparatory to leaving, I addressed her again.

“But Dear Lady.” My tone was full of fatherly concern. “You aren’t going to activate me into buying anything by throwing me out of your office. Have you paid money for these courses? Are you sure you haven’t been ripped off?”

That really did it! She shot to her feet like a champagne cork, hunched her shoulders, withdrew her head like a turtle, stamped on the floor and, gesticulating hysterically in the direction of the door with her index finger, her whole arm and her whole body, emitted an even more ear-splitting “UD FOR FAEN!!! UD!!! U-U-U-D!!!”

Out of concern for her observably imminent heart attack I withdrew.

Don’t miss the scientific conclusions and wrap-up on the site.

war of the sexes: in undergotchies

Is it a war of the sexes, a war on language, or should we all just go commando?

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today in Histrionic Overreaction News…

The Church Lady... IMPERSONATOR! 

Paging all colonic therapists, we have an emergency.

Woman expresses indignation at quote on Starbucks cup

Printed on the cup was: “Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.”

It is attributed to Bill Schell, a Starbucks customer from London, Ontario, and was included on the cup as part of an effort by the company to collect different viewpoints and spur discussion

Starbucks spokeswoman Sanja Gould said the collection of thoughts and opinions is a “way to promote open, respectful conversation among a wide variety of individuals. ”

But Incanno said her Starbucks days are over.

“I wouldn’t feel right going back,” she said.

Door, ass, you know how it goes. This is the kind of thing that makes me glad I don’t work at Starbucks anymore. Not that I don’t enjoy interacting with the stupid and hysterical; in fact, I adore it. It’s just that … hmmm, how shall I put this???

Once, during my days as an assistant manager, I happened to have a performance review, and the manager of the time happened to be supportive of me and not particularly supportive of the way the company had decided to look for ways to divest itself of employee #202615, and he knew as well as I did that if I didn’t score “Outstanding” on the interpersonal part of the review, regional office would turf me. So he looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t think we need to discuss this part of the review. Given the difference between what you could say and what you do say, I’m giving you ‘Outstanding,’ on interpersonal skills,” and that, as they say, was that.

See, I actually slightly know the woman who had to play “evenhanded company spokesperson” here, and she’s always been very gracious no matter what the circumstances. That crazed, outraged, apparently-constipated-on-at-least-the-spiritual-level customer had better pray to her God that she encounter only such kind and mannerly spokespeople in the future, because if she ever crosses my path I’ll be bringing out the nukes.

Then again, there’s a reason companies don’t make me their spokesperson, the fucktards.

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words

from the Archive.
  Wednesday, September 04, 2002

I was in a writing course once and the instructor asked people for their favorite word. Felt like a freak once the others opened their mouths, but that’s okay, because everybody there, from the buzzcut lesbian to the grannies with their eyeglasses on decorator chains claimed that their favorite words were “love” “hope” “peace” etcetera. Ad nauseum. Mine was “wallapalooza” which is as far as I’m concerned as fine a word as you will find anywhere, although nauseum gives it a run for its money. I got it from Oprah, which is indeed a fine lineage for a word.

To his credit, the instructor’s face fell. Oh dear, you could see him think, one of THOSE groups. The cat ladies. He immediately dropped his usual references to Greek tragedy and substituted what he could remember of Agatha Christie, James Herriot, and, stretching a bit intellectually, Jane Austen. This was before Chick Lit, you understand.

I still like WALLAPALOOZA better than “hope!”

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