compared2what? wrote:I'll tell you what. For everyone's convenience and comfort, I will now write up a full-disclosure list of all RI posters, past and present, with whom I am now or ever have been personally pissed off, along with their current status as objects of my not very deeply felt wrath.
Now we're talkin'! Scratch that itch.
It's not actually very itchy. Also, sorry for the delay. Yesterday....Well I'll explain later.
Back in a second.
I'd also totally like to reiterate my totally sincere invitation to all posters who feel I've done wrong and bad things to come call me to account for them.
I have erred. I ain't going to fucking volunteer to repent in public if no one's asking me to, because that's as likely to make shit worse as it is to make it better.
But if there are any people whose peace of mind would be improved by my copping to something that I actually did wrongly, or badly, or sinfully, or inconsiderately, or however-you-understand-it-ly, I will not attack them for asking me to do so. Under any circumstances. If it's a question I can't or am not willing to answer, I'll politely decline to answer it, at no penalty express or implied to the questioner. All right?
Because I totally hate it that people think I have problems with them that I don't have. It's pretty much the last thing in the world that I'd want to leave anybody here feeling, and it's almost certainly totally unnecessary. So I'd rather err on the side of inclusion.
Anyone who wants to speak up, read me out, or throw a knife at me or whatever should therefore do so, free of all fear of reprisal from me. If I can honestly cop to any or all of the badness or wrongness that took place at or near the scene of the crime, I absolutely will do so.
And that's that. I'm not saying it again, though. Because I'm not that crazy.
Past and Present RI Posters With Whom I Am Now or Have Ever Been Well and Truly Pissed Off
(Complete and Unabridged, for Reasons That Are No Doubt Both Right and Wrong)
Uncle $cam -- Wasn't really around enough to make much of an impression on me until three or so months ago, but has barely done anything that didn't piss me off since then. I take full responsibility for the one hundred percent of the fifty percent of what I've done and not done to perpetuate that situation, and am as sorry for it as I'm able to be without the assist from him that I'd need in order to be consciously remorseful in detail.
Sepka -- Made a remark about Gary McKinnon months and months ago that led me to believe that she was not merely aligning herself with a heavily fortified, rigidly doctinaire, and harshly punitive ideology that barely pretends to have any logical justification as way of overcompensating for weaknesses and fears that were too overwhelming to be consciously admissible as such by her, but also that she enjoyed pulling the wings off flies just for the sheer hell of it. Which pissed me the fuck off.
Prior and subsequent to which, I returned to my natural baseline state of having no personal feelings about Sepka as an individual, in particular, although I do generally wish her well, right along with the rest of the greater class of all living beings on earth.
So. That was a very transient thing and not, objectively speaking, any very big deal. The sole reason that it stands out in my mind still is that it was the only time I was ever so pissed off at another poster that I responded to him or her purely out of mean-spirited and ill-intentioned personal spite, rather than out of the wish to express substantive disagreement on the issues.
Although I also do disagree with her on substance on virtually every topic I've ever noticed that she had an opinion on, apart from our shared enthusiasm for the Jersey shore.
marmot -- I'm not now and never have been exactly pissed off with him, really. It's more like I was first furiously angry at him, and then, having cooled off, strongly committed to holding him culpable for bad acts that he actually committed.
But beyond that, I don't think or feel much of anything about him. That's not really a matter of personal animosity, or of anything personal and/or emotional in nature, though, it's strictly pragmatic. Because in practical terms, there's not really anything you can do about people who either can't perceive that they've violently transgressed on the rights of others or aren't willing to admit that they have other than forget about them. Unless you're in a position to help them, of course. But obviously, moot point, as far as marmot and I are concerned.
Anyway. Not mad at him at all in the present, would accept an apology from him in a heartbeat if he offered it sincerely, after which I might not trust him all that much. Or I might. I don't really know. But I'd keep it to myself, either way, so who really fucking cares?
I know I don't.
* * * * * * * * * *
And....I'm pretty sure that's the full extent of it. There are also number of other posters whose obdurately unyielding attachment to this or that doctrinaire worldview I find very, very frustrating. And with whom I've had numerous protracted set-tos that were not what you could really call mutual love-fests.
But I'm not now and never have been pissed off at them. They just cause me to despair for the world and for myself. I'm pretty sure that's not a phenomenon that's unique either to me or to the RI board, however. Nor is it anything new. Which is a drag, no doubt. And I do wish that I had the first clue as to what to do about it. But I don't. In fact, whatever approach I've tried has always been an epic fail each and every time.
Some day, I damn well plan to sit down and figure out why. And from there on in, we will all live in a state of uninterrupted utopian bliss. Yay. But until I get around to or someone beats me to doing that, people will continue to strongly disagree with one another much to their mutual frustration, I'm pretty sure. That being life, at which there's no point in getting pissed off. Because it's not like it's going to change itself to accommodate you or anything.
On the upside, complaining a lot is pretty durably effective interim measure, however. And it's totally free and equally available to all, too. So things could be worse. I do have to admit. ________________________
PS -- I really gave the above as much serious thought as I could, btw. So if I forgot anybody, I apologize to them in advance. I'd also like to thank my higher power and the Academy for this honor and...(Orchestra swells, throw to commercial)
c2w?, during the last few days, I’ve had documentations to read and edit, other work that required suggestions, so I didn’t return devotedly to RI until maybe an hour ago. Now I’m writing like a bat outta hell, trying to catch your eye before you depart.
You know what, c2w? Honestly, I was disappointed to see your stats page gone missing. Instead, that page read something like ‘the username requested does not exist.’ I cried. When I am sad, or too upset, or both, sometimes I weep, and I did. Not because I presumed you couldn’t take care of yourself following the January 17 episode on RI. No, no, rather something else. Maybe RI had been some sort of project. Well, mind reading has not been a forte.
I must remember to tell you though (like other RIers have inferred about themselves in other threads), I have friends around me who remind me that I ponder much, feel deeply, and that I actually am able to talk and laugh, both of which are in the range of your average lyric baritone.
What was I experiencing, thinking, considering, so that I assumed I couldn’t one day be impacted by an apparent and quiet farewell from a prolific writer, a knowledgeable thinker, a debater, a woman who knows and speaks her feelings—an entity born in worlds of the virtual? Alas, I’m a human being. How could I not immensely enjoy, and at once consider loving even the imagined sensibilities of another as I already feel and know those sensibilities in myself?
Anyway, I’m reminded frequently that this world we share is virtual. I keep telling myself: I’ve not shared meals or drinks with you or seen you respond while viewing movies or observed you talk with family members. Or looked at your smile. Not gone to a museum or to a concert with you or watched you open a kitchen cabinet door or helped you mop the floors or walked with you to the market or had a smoke or two and kava with you.
You know what, c2w? With the cards I’m holding these days, it’s unlikely we’ll get so far as to greet each other, face to face. And to that I say Phooey, disappointedly so. And, so it goes for just one man’s response, fwiw.
If you’re like the numerous sopranos I’ve accompanied in recital and concert halls, perhaps you’ll change your mind from time to time; return to RI, then depart, then return and depart again, and repeated as many times as you wish. All the best to you in the best of all possible worlds mused and talked and written about.
You can't leave forever, c2w! For who else will post clips of The Ruling Class just when they're most needed? (Peter Barnes, Peter Medak, Peter O'Toole: three further proofs that God is [always] a team.)
Enjoy your sabbatical. As a parting gift, I give you another collective divinity: FC Barcelona, led by the Holy Ghost Lionel Messi, whose artistry is so inspiring that even the Arsenal fans chanted his name and gave him a standing ovation at the end of last night's amazing Champions League semi-final. In other words, pigs flew, and lions lay down with lambs, thereby demonstrating that another world is not only possible but actual, here and now, at least for 90 minutes. I watched it in a crowded pub, and I can tell you it's not often that a game of football (yes, football) is punctuated by gales of laughter and spontaneous rounds of applause.
(Now, I know that not many ladies would appreciate such a gift, c2w. Especially American ladies. But even if you too are among the unappreciative, or the just plain baffled, I can assure you it's a thing of beauty.
Plus: unlike flowers, those goals won't wither. Ars longa, vita breva.)
EDIT: whoops, quarter-final, of course, quarter-final.
Last edited by MacCruiskeen on Wed Apr 07, 2010 7:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966
MacCruiskeen wrote:You can't leave forever, c2w! For who else will post clips of The Ruling Class just when they're most needed? (Peter Barnes, Peter Medak, Peter O'Toole: three further proofs that God is [always] a team.)
The Holy Trinity! And I have been hearing a lot about that film recently, by coincidence, on IMDB. Will have to see it. Sounds like my kind of thing.
MacCruiskeen wrote:FC Barcelona, led by the Holy Ghost Lionel Messi, whose artistry is so inspiring that even the Arsenal fans chanted his name and gave him a standing ovation at the end of last night's amazing Champions League semi-final.
Christ is Risen! He is Risen!
And Mapplethorpe's great, too. I even like his pictures of huge bound knobs.
Anyways, all the best to you, C2W. Return to us when you can.
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."
Ah, you have to see The Ruling Class, Ahab. It's one of the most under-recognised films ever made, and a very faithful adaptation of Peter Barnes' great play. The scene where Jack meets the other God, McKyle*, is one of the strangest and most powerful things ever written for the English theatre. Heartbreaking. O'Toole's performance is just phenomenal. Alastair Sim conducting the wedding ceremony is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Arthur Lowe, James Villiers, Coral Browne, Harry Andrews... "the scream"... I saw it on TV when I was but a wean and I've never forgotten it. I could go on about it forever. In fact, I already have.
*A right bad bastard, a twisted and traumatised Calvinist, so you can probably guess his nationality: "I'm the high-voltage Messiah, the electric Christ, the AC/DC god ... Away ye go, ya windy wa's McNaughton, afore ah burn ye tae a crispy noodle." (And if you think that sounds strange, you should hear Jack's English.)
PS Messi, eh? I think my favourite moment in the whole game was that quick free-kick he took without a run-up. Genius.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966
compared2what? wrote:I love and envy your range as a writer
Yes. I can write both drunk and sober.
MacCruiskeen wrote:Ah, you have to see The Ruling Class, Ahab. It's one of the most under-recognised films ever made, and a very faithful adaptation of Peter Barnes' great play. The scene where Jack meets the other God, McKyle*, is one of the strangest and most powerful things ever written for the English theatre. Heartbreaking. O'Toole's performance is just phenomenal. Alastair Sim conducting the wedding ceremony is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Arthur Lowe, James Villiers, Coral Browne, Harry Andrews... "the scream"... I saw it on TV when I was but a wean and I've never forgotten it. I could go on about it forever. In fact, I already have.
Best cast ever! How the hell have I only begun to hear about it recently? I should've been notified of it as a wean as well, or even later, as a bairn. Why wasn't I told? I blame the parents.
Alastair Sim is the weirdest and funniest fellow that has ever existed on the face of the earth. There is no disputing it.
MacCruiskeen wrote:A right bad bastard, a twisted and traumatised Calvinist
Hehe. Just saying Calvinist would've been enough, from my point of view. We all have our prejudices - and I have no truck whatsoever with the doctrine of predestination, or it's adherents. It encourages selfishness, and promotes evil. Have you read James Hogg's "Confessions of a Justified Sinner"? It's great. A foreseeing of modern American Chistianity, in a way. If you like Lanark, you'll definitely like James Hogg, even though he's from a couple of centuries earlier, and it's a very different style.
MacCruiskeen wrote:PS Messi, eh? I think my favourite moment in the whole game was that quick free-kick he took without a run-up. Genius.
I would've seen the whole game the other night if I'd been in the pub, but I missed it. I don't really follow football, to be honest - support the Celtic, of course, but tend to hear about the results later. Nevertheless, that video was amazing! I can appreciate artistry - and that was an example of it in it's purest form.
He doesn't look like much, does he, that Messi? But there's no arguing against talent! .
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."
Ahab wrote:Have you read James Hogg's "Confessions of a Justified Sinner"?
Oh yeah, when I was 17, and again about ten years ago. A great book and a very disturbing one, much scarier than Jekyll and Hyde. Maybe you know these two other brilliant novels on that timeless caledonian theme (monstrous father, frantic son): Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston and George Douglas Brown's The House with the Green Shutters
But this is c2w's thread! So here, from the opening scene of The Ruling Class, are the closing lines from the last monologue of Jack's father, an elderly hanging judge and Peer of the Realm. (He had wanted to be a painter but was forced by his father to follow the Law.) Bearing a sword and dressed in long underpants, a tricorn hat and a tutu, he is standing on a short stepladder at the foot of his four-poster bed. A rope hangs from the crossbar; the noose is pulled taut around his neck. He is indulging in his routine bedtime self-asphyxiation ritual:
Sir Ralph Gurney, the 13th Earl of Gurney wrote:[...] [Loosens knot, gasping.] Touched him, saw her, towers of death and silence, angels of fire and ice. Saw Alexander covered with honey and beeswax in his tomb and felt the flowers growing over me. A man must have his visions. How else could an English judge and peer of the realm take moonlight trips to Marrakesh and Ponders End? See six vestal virgins smoking cigars? Moses in bedroom slippers? Naked bosoms floating past Formosa? Desperate diseases need desperate remedies. [Glancing towards the door.] Just time for a quick one. [Places noose over his head again.] Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man. There's plenty of time to win this game, and thrash the Spaniards too. [Draws his sword.] Form squares, men! Smash the Mahdi, and Binnie Barnes!
[With a lustful gurgle he steps off. But this time he knocks over the steps. Dangling helpless for a second he draws the sword and tries to tear the noose free, gesturing frantically....]
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966
Ahab wrote:Have you read James Hogg's "Confessions of a Justified Sinner"?
Oh yeah, when I was 17, and again about ten years ago.
Aye, well, I first read it when I was 12. That'll learn ye! Ah suppose you hink your awfie clever tae.
Nah, not really. I read it when I was about 20. It did the job. I still haven't read Lanark, though - but I will.
MacCruiskeen wrote:Maybe you know these two other brilliant novels on that timeless caledonian theme (monstrous father, frantic son): Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston and George Douglas Brown's The House with the Green Shutters
To my shame (and happiness) I haven't read, and didn't even know of, those two books - though of course I know Stevenson. It is time I put some orders in at the library! The House With Green Shutters sounds excellent. In fact, I would go so far as to say it sounds braw.
Sir Ralph Gurney, the 13th Earl of Gurney wrote:.
I am going to have to think about that excerpt from The Ruling Class. It ties in with things I've been thinking about, with aspects of Masonry, the ritualistic side of the Scottish judiciary, and the many odd cases of auto-erotic asphyxiation over the years. And much else besides. Thanks for that.
Smash the Mahdi
Ahmajinedad won't be happy! He's been waiting on him for ages.
.
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."
norton ash wrote:You'll be missed. I wasn't expecting to watch a Passion Play this Easter, but I suppose it all ends and begins with resurrection.
I'm sure if you go to the desert, you'll be more than able to negotiate.
n.ash
Oh, norton ash, you are such a star. I didn't even notice that timing. It may be a little selfish of me, but I do think it's kind of great that I won't have to miss reading you, since I totally intend to continue reading you.
You're the author of so many of my all-time favorite posts that I couldn't decide which one was my favoritest and took the easy way out by just grabbing one at random from the top of the pile, to wit:
Is that them IUD's what's killin our boys in Iraqistan?
Amazing. There's your whole lovely soul, illuminating every single one of those ten words, each of which is quietly doing the job of thousands.
How do you do that?***
You are, it cannot be said too many times, adorable. I want to give you something. Would you rather have a song, or a picture, or....I don't know....I'll try sending you a great big psychic hug and kiss, but I don't know if it'll get there at all, let alone intact enough for you to feel it. Still, can't hurt.
.....
.....
Well. That was good for me, at least. So. Song or picture? Please advise.
(a) It was actually the other way around, for which I'm terribly, terribly sorry; and
(b) Did you see your name on that list? Well, then. Case closed.
I was in a bad place a few weeks ago.
Probably I should restrict internet usage when feeling that way.
May I say with all the love in my heart that unless using the internet makes the bad place worse than not using the internet would, I think you should banish that and every equivalent thought from your mind immediately and permanently?
There's nothing wrong with being in a bad place. Except that it feels bad, obviously. But you know what I mean. It's not unlovable, it doesn't make you bad, no blame attaches to it, you're no less beautiful there than you are anywhere else.
And besides that, probably au contraire, I'd say. I mean, when you're already not feeling well, surely you should probably be as tender and lovingly indulgent with yourself as you possibly can be, not as harshly punitive and self-denying. Res ipsa loquitur, QED, etcetera.
Honestly, I'm sorry to hear that you were having a hard time. I think that may have happened to me once for, oh, I don't know, a decade here, a decade there, who can really keep track?
Further, I'm even sorrier (in a different sense of the word) for my insensitivity to you.
If you're up to it, I propose that we now return to our regularly scheduled program of you being glorious and a joy to others and yourself. No pressures, though. So if you still are pissed off with me, act pissy. I'll still know it's you.
Anyway, of course, and forever, please stay.
Mmm. You just accidentally pressed whatever button on the jukebox of my mind makes it play:
So beautiful, and yet so nakedly and brutally emotional in lyrical terms. I mean, "If I call out your name like a prayer in the night, will you leave me alone with these tears?," for example. And if only it hadn't in fact been written by Bacharach/Hilliard, I would now go on to say that it wasn't the only Bacharach/David song that prompted me to wonder what kind of desolate and nightmarish inner world Hal David was living in, and why. However, perhaps Burt Bacharach just had that effect on all lyricists. He is said to have been very demanding, after all.
I'm sure I'll come back eventually. But I must go. And really, that's a happy thing. Because....I was so much more of a fucking wreck when I first started posting here than I knew. By a factor of about one thousand. And it's not like I was even a little bit in denial about being one. There was pretty much no overlooking it.
And for reals, the only reason that I know it now is basically that the combined loving-hating-uncaring-sympathetic energies and efforts of every single member of the RI board forced me to come back to life more or less behind my back. And I very much doubt that I ever would have made it beyond "somewhat more animated walking dead person" via any other process. I mean, if I'd known that it was helping me, I would have fought it off with every ounce of strength I had, as if it were a toxic and alien assault on my identity, just reflexively, out of basic survival instinct. Because when you're that far down, help is a toxic and alien assault on your identity. That's just one of those little paradoxes that therapists haven't quite figured out how to address yet.
I'm so grateful for that, it's just beyond my powers to express. Not to mention so happy to be alive in springtime with, you know, energy and stuff upon which I actively want to enjoy productively and creatively expending it, and what-have-you.
In short, I got a window of opportunity that I think I'd probably regret not jumping through with everything I got while it's still open. I could not love this board more. And I missed it like crazy during the one-week training-wheels departure just passed, it was quite horrible.
Nevertheless. I got to go and I want to go, and surely whoever didn't already want me to for reasons of their own would want me to in light of the above, right?
I'll come back. Bearing gifts. But I have to leave first. And that's good. Not bad.
I am so sick of talking about myself, I can barely stand the sound of my voice for one further second, btw. Like fingernails on a blackboard. Yeesh.
So let's review: I am not pissed off at you. I am enduringly fond of you. There is no shame in being in a bad place. However, I very much hope you found your way out of it.
I am a sentimental fool. But I am not very good at being one.
Additionally, RI does have miraculous healing powers, or at least it did for me. It might have been on one-time-only type of thing.
And there will be an open-book quiz tomorrow. Okay?
n.ash