Accept no substitutes

Snark-Infested Waters with MSM

So I made a little joke without naming the victim recently when a local TV station sent ill-advised spammish invites to bloggers asking them to join in an “ascertainment.”

This somehow bruised the sensitive male feelings of David Kirk over at Tech-Recipes who has as near as I can tell no dog in this fight or more accurately no humor in his reading of my post.

I feel so bad that he calls me snarky; he does notice that I was having lighthearted fun.

I do feel bad that he picks on Bora and Brian who have worked as hard as anyone in this area to make blogging known and respected by local MSM.

Oh Lord, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (as Eric Burton sang in 1965).

9 Comments

  1. davak

    Yeah, I’m totally guilty of all charges…

    Actually I’m not sure I was picking on anybody. Just in my little old opinion, slamming the invitation may not be the best way to get “blogging known and respected by local MSM.”

    As my company makes 100% of its income from blogging, I would take acception that I do not have a dog in the fight. Didn’t Shakespeare say… Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it. Kinda cruel if you think about it. We put dogs in fights and Shakespeare wants to throw good medicine at them.

    If a door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of, then this argument appears to be my door. I’ll try to exit now.

    (I have lost what little slack I had?)

  2. Paul

    Block that metaphor; check that spelling! Looking for the word “acception” in the OED! Err. Not what you mean ;->

    On Slack: Bob giveth Slack and He taketh Slack away (and after missing X-Day, Bob needs all that Slack back).

  3. davak

    Thanks Dr. Jones. I was too busy trying to be clever to check my typical “exceptional” spelling. The pinks have obviously been affecting me…

    (5 months from this very day, Bob once again welcomes the Sex-Goddesses…)

  4. Fred

    No invite for me! Weh! I’m a WRAL person anyway…even with the Jesse Helms thing. It must be Greg Fischel and his Doppler 7000.

  5. Paul

    Fred,
    Jason says you can come. See my reposting of the invite with eVite link above.

    Davak,
    As far as I’m concerned, the Subgenii are a failed cult. No sexgoddess on X-Day (as promised to me for hosting their site originally in the early 90s. SubSITE is a play on SunSITE). And no mass suicide. What kind of end of the world cult is that. And Rev. Stang even moved to Cleveland a sure sign of failure.

  6. davak

    Alas, I was afraid it had failed.

    First pee-wee was brought down, and now even the trolls on slashdot know not about it.

    But whatever will I do with my bob tattoo?

  7. Paul

    Move to Cleveland and join Stang?

  8. Davak

    Wow. You win. I actually had to hit wikipedia to remember who Stang is:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Stang

  9. Paul

    And so much left unsaid there. Here’s an excerpt from a rant by Stang almost exactly 12 years ago:

    Date: 16 FEB 1995 06:33:14 GMT
    From: Rev. Ivan Stang [i.stang@metronet.com]
    Newgroups: alt.slack
    Subject: SubGenius HQ Web & Net-Radio Breakthrough

    THERE IS JUSTICE, AFTER ALL

    Just as I was sitting here feeling sorry for myself — well, running around FRANTICALLY, feeling sorry for myself — because I need to print a Stark Fist, produce 5 Hour of Slack shows, write 4 articles and book intros for RENT MONEY, write the SubG CD Rom game proposal, learn more Web lore, answer the 5 foot deep box of personal snail mail, track down the latest lost mail orders, return the phone calls, put more stuff in alt.slack, PACK, and do the dishes, ALL AT ONCE, RIGHT NOW, preferably before leaving for Pittsburgh Thursday — just when I was trying to figure out WHICH to work on FIRST, and despairing, I got the MOST WONDERFUL OFFER, and it cheered me right up.

    The folks at SunSITE (sunsite.unc.edu) called up and offered The SubGenius Foundation not only a FREE Web site and expert help, but a slot for THE HOUR OF SLACK on THE WORLD’S FIRST INTERNET RADIO STATION!!

    In the course of the conversation, it finally sunk in that I was talking to legendary Internet Gods! SunSITE at U.N.C. was the FIRST WEB SITE IN NORTH AMERICA. It was set up partly by the European guy who INVENTED the Web. When the WHITE HOUSE wanted to get Internet connection, THESE are the guys the FEDS came to. (The White House archives were first set up there.) SunSITE is also the main distribution point for the Linux operating system (the freeware Unix thing also called Slackware, with little Dobbshead graphics in it). I asked my new buddy at SunSITE, David McConville, if he could put me in touch with the guys who were developing Linux , so I could ask them to add our trademark info to their use of the Dobbshead… he leaned away from the phone and said, “Hey guys, he wants to know if I can ‘put him in touch with the people creating Linux!’ HAR HAR HAR!” This was them.

    Anyway, it turns out that, now that they’ve bought themselves some Slack, clout and leeway with their previous work, and have all this equipment and expertise at their disposal, they’re rounding up people they figure are new to the Net and might do some interesting work there. They “recruited” and are doing Web sites with Negativland ((http://sunsite.unc.edu/negativland)), Craig Baldwin (who made the film Tribulation 99), even Bob Moog (yes, THAT Bob Moog, as in the synthesizer). The way David put it, he and his coworkers helped create this technology. They know its every limitation inside and out… so they were looking for people who didn’t know JACK-HOOEY about the limitations, who were in other words ignorant enough to be TOTALLY CREATIVE, who would thus think up stuff to do with the Web that no expert would be DUMB ENOUGH to attempt, but perhaps SHOULD ANYWAY… well, they certainly had me pegged. I’ve got lots of time to kill while on the road next week so I plan to finally hide out from my email and alt.slack, and devise elaborate plans for both a SubGenius CD Rom “VR-game-environment-encyclopedia” and the most multimedia, interactive Web site imaginable, BEFORE I LEARN ANOTHER THING ABOUT WHAT’S POSSIBLE AND WHAT’S NOT.

    [he goes on and on and on as Stang is want to do ….]

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