Yeah! Neatly done, Zen Samurai!
[salute to Tom]
Oh, come on!
I should point out that I disagree with a point that Phaedrus kept harping on. This is a message board, not real life. That is not to say that we aren’t real people who can make genuine friends and genuine enemies, here. However, taking injury from someone else’s opinion on this relatively anonymous forum just seems like a waste of personal energy.
There are people, here, whom I like and people whom I respect and people whom I dislike and people whom I do not respect. And you would probably have to set up a Venn graph to describe all the permutations that different people fall into. (Like/respect, like/disrespect, dislike/respect, dislike/disrespect, all of the above, none of the above.) I watch people get on each others nerves on one subject and watch that irritation spill into other threads on different subjects and think “What a waste of energy.” I do enjoy watching some of the feuds. I would enjoy them more if, once a feud was ended, the participants would treat their next encounter as a fresh start. Unfortunately, I see posters still being mad at each other months after some fairly innocuous incident.
Sorry, that is just too much emotional baggage for me to carry around.
So when I disagree with a specific post, I try to limit myself to responding to that post without dragging in all the emotional history that I may have with that poster.
This is not the only way to behave. This is how I behave to maintain my enjoyment, here.
I’m not going to hash over my exchange with mipsman on the “Why are Jews persecuted?” thread. I said what I wanted to say, there, and the link is up above for anyone who thinks they will find it interesting. (They won’t.) I can easily see where my post could be considered an attack on mipsman (although I would not have characterized it as such). I have no problem with mipsman wanting to dump back on me. I’m sure that a lot of people on this MB would agree with him that I come off as some sort of PC attitude cop. I would not agree with that assessment, but I see no reason to deny anyone an opinion.
I do not feel that I have vanquished mipsman on this thread. He vented on me at my suggestion, and I’m cool with that. (In the Olympic flaming category, I’m afraid that I’d only give him a 5.7. His prose didn’t build in power, using either cadence or imagery (preferrably both) to culminate in a total destruction of my psyche. Good effort, but you can’t dance to it. OTOH, reviewed as an essay, I would give it a solid B+. It set forth his opinions with clarity and imagination, leaving no question as to the context in which he wrote or the areas in which he felt I had transgressed from the propriety of responsible posting. (A bit more work on the rhythm and cadence, and I’d give him an A–style does count.)) That final parting shot, aside, I’m simply not about to engage in some sort of personality warfare that attempts to crush the opposition. mipsman does not fall into any “dislike” or “don’t respect” category that I maintain and I see no reason to continue this as a feud.
Tom~
MRE= Three lies for the price of one.
Back to GD with you, Tom! You’re just too damned reasonable for the Pit! 
tomndeb, you are certainly a very calm, reasonable person(s). On reflection, I realize that I had no cause to think that you own an Explorer. Yue Han, what do you have in mind that might cause me regret?
Uh; mipsman; look around. You’ve just about apologized to Tom and everything has settled down.
See, you backed down. So it’s over. My point was, if you didn’t, you would end up looking foolish and be considered pathetic by the assembled here.
If you’d carried on your ranting, if you’d refused to let this go, you would regret that action by making yourself look whiny and pathetic in public.
As I said, this thread isn’t about me. I wasn’t considering doing anything to make you regret this-- I was just pointing on that you might end up doing so if you pursued it.
–John
John, I thought mipsman was pretty damn funny and I think tom did too. I think you missed his humor.
mips, I see tom in a 72 dark blue Pinto.
The truth is generally seen, rarely heard. Gracian.
Why do so many of the people who post on here insist on forming little high school like bands who insist on forming a protection posse around other people? Why did you people feel the need to tell the flamer off for Tom? Did you think Tom wasn’t man enough to do it himself? If someone has a problem with another poster let that person take it up with the person and keep your scrawny butts out of it. (However I did laugh wholeheartedly at the crowd setting up for the show down, I wouldn’t have wished away those posts for the life of me!)
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” --Whitman
–Throwing my beer down in disgust–
And I paid a five dollar cover for this???!
So, PunditLisa, who was collecting? I think mipsman and I deserve a cut and I sure haven’t seen any cash.
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If it matters: 72 green Pinto in 73-75, 75 yellow Rabbit in 75-83 (179,000), 83 red Rabbit in 83-92 (182,000), 8? gray Aries in 92, 88 black cherry Caravan in 93-99 (189,000), 95 white Caravan 99-present. (My cars are as dull and practical as I am.)
Tom~
well you didn’t really get that many posts on the thread. You kinda let it fizzle out before you even started. Maybe you should start earlier in the day. At any rate we gotta use the $5 cover charge to pay for all the beer, wine, and milk duds left over cause you didn’t even keep it going long enough to finish any of the refreshments off. And here we have all these lawn chairs and not many people showed up because the entertainment was below standard. You really gotta do better next time guys or they won’t let you back in the pit.
“Do or do not, there is no try” - Yoda
Now this is called Alcohol Abuse, kids.
UncleBeer, it looks like li’l Lisa needs a good spanking!
Coldfire
"You know how complex women are"
- Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
tom
Sheeeeeeeeet! Can I call it or what.
The truth is generally seen, rarely heard. Gracian.
Of course, you’re only 25 years and six cars off.
A spankin’? Promises, promises.
Actually watching UncleBeer throw himself on the floor to lap up my tossed beer was worth the admission price!
And another perfectly good potential shitstorm, straight down the crapper.
Does this disprove the old saw, “Where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire”?
Why the hell is this carpet fuzz stuck to my tongue?
It’s the thought that counts.
The truth is generally seen, rarely heard. Gracian.
Yue Han, I am not apologizing. People who are liberal consciences irritate me. I have no fear of “looking foolish or be(ing) considered pathetic”. I said what I wanted to say. However, you did threaten me. Tomndeb is/are someone(s) who, on occasion, write things I disagree with. I took a shot on one such occasion. You, however, have a subsidiary, one might even say hopelessly insignificant role here. Your two posts show the sort of low level unpleasantness which tarnishes the soul of all who come in contact with it. However, you are not one to dwell on, lest I waste a good temper.
mipsman, your characterization of Yue Han is way, way off the mark. And he didn’t threaten you. How do you threaten somebody with pixels? When he said “back off or you’ll regret this” he obviously meant that you’d get your ass flamed but good.
That didn’t happen, and that’s great. But never think that Yue Han’s role is “hopelessly insignificant here.”
Alright… I’ll post here again if you really want me to.
First, I think his characterization of my role being insignificant was within this thread. Maybe I’m wrong, though.
Anyway. Apparently mipsman wants me to come back and argue with him. Otherwise, he would not repeatedly bob this thread back up, calling me out.
Unfortunately, I don’t want to argue with mipsman. I’ve tried to extricate myself from what should be a dead thread (after all, the flamer and flamed have come to peaceable terms) and this is teh last I’ll say anything here. If it wasn’t the first thread on the list, I wouldn’t drive it up by posting in it all.
Mipsman, if you want to start another flame topic this week, about me this time, you’re welcome to. I won’t show up, but you can, as always, do whatever you want.
–John