See, andros, the difference is that your sig is a memorial. It will never go out of style. The sigs I’ve complained about can only be viewed so many times before they lose their relevance, freshness and power to impress. This happened long ago with the posters in question. They’re all capable of so much more, and I want to see it.
Clearly I’m not explaining myself very well. I can’t say what makes for an acceptable sig, but I know them when I see them. Why don’t you all just pass your sigs through me and let me approve them from now on?
I’m afraid the power might go to your head. Can you find a couple others and form a sig triumverate? Maybe The Loving Deejay to ensure hipness and . . . I dunno, howabout Wildest Bill to make sure it’s godly?
Of course, it’s understood that you’ll be able to bump them off once your power is consolidated, and we’ll name you . . .
Sig Caesar.
Ever hear of newbies? Just because you’ve seen my sig so often that you see it in your sleep doesn’t mean that Joe Blow that just wandered in off the street has. Who am I to deprive all our new members of my sig? That would, in fact, be a crime, since by now my sig is an integral part of the essence of the Straight Dope experience.
Look, I tried to take this seriously, I really did. I appear to have failed.
And now I’m going to violate the “sig only once per thread” rule, which I usually follow. Just because I can. Nyaaah.
It was really BAAAAAAAAAAAD! I am soooooooooo embarrassed.
I gotta tell you though, when I first read your post I first thought that you meant you had to replace your head with smegma. I was thinking to myself, “eeeeeeew”.
Choose whichever you prefer:[list]
[li]misquote[/li][li]riff on a favorite poem[/li][li]recapitulation of an idea[/li][li]aphorism[/li][li]homage[/li][li]self-referential ironic observation[/li][li]picayune test of literary recall[/li][li]variation on a cynical theme[/li][li]mistake that I have never bothered to go back and correct[/li][li]expression of an aesthetic thesis through example[/li]just a damn sig line
Thanks for the note. As I said, no offense intended. In fact, I rather like your posts (not that it matters).
BUT - I like the poem even more. And perhaps others, who don’t know the poem, would enjoy a bit of erudition. Particularly as the poem in question seems eerily apropos the terrible course of events we are experiencing at the moment.
Hmmmmm…well said in your first post. I couldn’t agree with you more. And e.e. cummings is another one of my favorites, though T.S. Eliot is tops for me.
BTW, in case anyone cares, here’s the great poem in question:
The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hours come round at last
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Flirted at in a pit thread!