Monday, May 29, 2006
Mailbag roundup
Running a comedic weblog is not without its hazardous side. I’ve received a few letters in the last week which border on the nasty. This one, for instance:
Dear F Eater
Your lack of a cohesive identity would be hilarious were it not so tragic. Like so many blogs spawned by that of the inimitable Harry Hutton, you started out no doubt intending to post pithy contributions every few days, incorporating humorous and occasionally surreal observations on life and in the process amassing a fanatical fan base of witty, erudite followers who lap up your every ejaculation. Again like so many others, you appear to have run out of steam once your initial creativity burned itself out, and now resort to disparate postings of wildly uneven quality with no trace of a unifying theme. Those comments which are appended to your posts are by people who feel sorry for you and who feel obliged to reciprocate as you continue desperately to comment on their own sites, toadying lickspittle that you are.
Yours sincerely
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[I’ve censored the name on legal advice but a quick click on each of the links on my list will make it obvious who sent this]
To which I can only reply: ‘Initial creativity’? I started this blog in the middle of a creative slump, you hound, so you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Somebody calling itself Lord Byron’s Crapper writes:
Dear Mr Food Eater
Why do you persist with posting those stories of yours? A few people skim through them out of a sense of duty but really, they’re just a waste of valuable bandwidth, aren’t they? Do you know how many starving children in the Third World could be fed in the time it takes to read your tortuously-constructed prose?
While this one, written in green ink, arrived yesterday:
Dear Eater
Your pedantry marks you out as somebody with very little ultimately to say, but quite ready to criticise others who take the time and trouble to offer their thoughts (ha! I spelled ‘their’ correctly, as ‘their’ and not ‘there’ or ‘they’re’, so don’t even go there) for the web community to read. Having said that, anyone would be mad if they [sic] were bothered by your opinion anyway. I’m not.
Regards,
The Anti-Pedant
My reply, could I be I bothered to send one, would point out the dangling participle in the penultimate sentence.
Finally, in what’s been a grim week, Fish Food opined:
dear foot eater
next youll be making a really self pitying navel gazing post about the trials of being a blogger in order to build up a critical mass of comments like you did when you disappeared for a couple of weeks. you attention seeking fraud you.
Fish Food, you’re hired. Can you start today?
Dear F Eater
Your lack of a cohesive identity would be hilarious were it not so tragic. Like so many blogs spawned by that of the inimitable Harry Hutton, you started out no doubt intending to post pithy contributions every few days, incorporating humorous and occasionally surreal observations on life and in the process amassing a fanatical fan base of witty, erudite followers who lap up your every ejaculation. Again like so many others, you appear to have run out of steam once your initial creativity burned itself out, and now resort to disparate postings of wildly uneven quality with no trace of a unifying theme. Those comments which are appended to your posts are by people who feel sorry for you and who feel obliged to reciprocate as you continue desperately to comment on their own sites, toadying lickspittle that you are.
Yours sincerely
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[I’ve censored the name on legal advice but a quick click on each of the links on my list will make it obvious who sent this]
To which I can only reply: ‘Initial creativity’? I started this blog in the middle of a creative slump, you hound, so you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Somebody calling itself Lord Byron’s Crapper writes:
Dear Mr Food Eater
Why do you persist with posting those stories of yours? A few people skim through them out of a sense of duty but really, they’re just a waste of valuable bandwidth, aren’t they? Do you know how many starving children in the Third World could be fed in the time it takes to read your tortuously-constructed prose?
While this one, written in green ink, arrived yesterday:
Dear Eater
Your pedantry marks you out as somebody with very little ultimately to say, but quite ready to criticise others who take the time and trouble to offer their thoughts (ha! I spelled ‘their’ correctly, as ‘their’ and not ‘there’ or ‘they’re’, so don’t even go there) for the web community to read. Having said that, anyone would be mad if they [sic] were bothered by your opinion anyway. I’m not.
Regards,
The Anti-Pedant
My reply, could I be I bothered to send one, would point out the dangling participle in the penultimate sentence.
Finally, in what’s been a grim week, Fish Food opined:
dear foot eater
next youll be making a really self pitying navel gazing post about the trials of being a blogger in order to build up a critical mass of comments like you did when you disappeared for a couple of weeks. you attention seeking fraud you.
Fish Food, you’re hired. Can you start today?
Comments:
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Gosh, you're getting important if you're getting hatemail. You must be very proud!
I've never received any unsolicited email regarding my blog one way or t'other. Other than the regular comments, that is.
What did you do to upset those folk? Even 27Anonymous never generated such vitreol.
I've never received any unsolicited email regarding my blog one way or t'other. Other than the regular comments, that is.
What did you do to upset those folk? Even 27Anonymous never generated such vitreol.
Which link? I can't work out who sent you that first letter. Unless it was HH sending it as a spoof, as he says he does from time to time.
Foot: I don't think any of them seem pedantic enough for them to have originated from your incompetant quill.
So now you write hate mail to yourself, Footsie, eh? Fairly ingenious, I have to say. But there's a certain stylistic uniformity in most of them (except for the half-hearted attempt at sub-literacy in the last one), which prompts me to think you're the source of this bizarre attempt at jocular self-flagellation. Or is it 'jocose'? 'Jocund,' perhaps? What the hell, I'll just go with the Anglo-Saxon 'playful.'
But I am no less puzzled, I must say. I know you have a girlfriend (hope she's not the mere progeniture of your feverish imagination); I also suspect you're some sort of doctor, busily healing humankind from its own foolishness and all that. So: can you possibly be that bored out of your skull that you're now concocting vituperative missives to your own ennuyed self?
But I am no less puzzled, I must say. I know you have a girlfriend (hope she's not the mere progeniture of your feverish imagination); I also suspect you're some sort of doctor, busily healing humankind from its own foolishness and all that. So: can you possibly be that bored out of your skull that you're now concocting vituperative missives to your own ennuyed self?
Cor! That Archbishop of Canterbury's got a mouth on him, eh? And him a beardy.
I sent you the last one.
I sent you the last one.
Couple of nice digs there from Philip and SafeT. Well done, lads.
Des, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Doesn't everybody send little letters to him or herself?
Doc, if that's true, why have you adopted the nom de plume Fish Food? Maybe you were once stranded in the middle of the ocean. Marooned, one might say.
Des, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Doesn't everybody send little letters to him or herself?
Doc, if that's true, why have you adopted the nom de plume Fish Food? Maybe you were once stranded in the middle of the ocean. Marooned, one might say.
Footsie, you get letters?! Sheesh, that's more than I can say. Must be doing something right, kid. Or there's something about you the pedantic folks can't handle...
you pedantic fuck how can you think it's ok talk about the penultimate sentence of a letter of only two sentences (and one aside)
Foot, you do realize I'm not entirely sure what a pedant is.
Sounds vaguely like an insect which walks all over the place...
Sounds vaguely like an insect which walks all over the place...
Not wanting to be, er, pedantic or anything, Justin, but that letter has three sentences and not two.
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