I guess I never realized.........

Great Debates
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…that I was that indispensable around here. :slight_smile:

Or at least, I never expected to get floods of e-mail from SDMB’ers all begging me not to leave. Holy smokes, guys, I’m not worth the accolades you all gave me, really! I haven’t had so many nice things said about me since my birthday. (I also haven’t gotten that much e-mail, I think, in my life.)

Tom, Dex, Veb, and all the rest of the umpteen or so who wrote me, thank you very much. It means a great deal to me that you think my pitiful opinions are that important; but then, as one of you said, who else is going to debate High Anglican/R.C. doctrine with Polycarp? :slight_smile:

I apologize for last Sunday night. I never should have logged on to begin with, because I was still dealing with the situation from early Saturday with practically no decompression time at all and very little sleep. I don’t know if any of you are or have been involved in police work, but confronting a woman who’s just killed someone, is obviously high on something, and who is waving a pistol around in her front yard, telling her to lay the weapon down and back away from it, without knowing whether she can hear or understand you or whether you’re going to have to exchange fire with her or not can play hob with your mental state for a day or so afterwards. I had just arrived home, and I guess I just took the cyber-mudslinging a little too seriously. I should have realized that, too, because they teach you this stuff in L.E.; it’s a little thing called “projection”. Every cop does it from time to time, to one extent or another. (If you see one of us acting funny or drinking a little too much, that’s probably why. It’s also why the cop who pulls you over for a broken taillight gets all bent out of shape and nasty with you over such a little thing that really isn’t all that important----it’s because twenty minutes ago, he was engaged in a shootout with some nutcases sporting automatic weapons. Remember that the next time you can’t figure out why Patrolman Jones is off the deep end when you run a yellow light! :))

Anyway, I’m fine. I slept in for a couple mornings, and to get my mind off things for a while, I went to college. Or in other words, I went back to my alma mater and spent some time B.S.-ing with some of my old profs, doing lunch with the secretary of the History department (my wife knows her, and she’s married anyway, don’t get excited) and hanging around in the library for a while. Very theraputic.

Well, since so many of you think I should stay, here I am. Thanks again, guys—I promise not to be so touchy in future. And here’s a Great Debate for you:

Which book is the bigger collection of nonsense, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or Roman Catholicism by Loraine Boettner?

You don’t like that one, then how about this one: are the Oviedo Cloth and the Blood of Januarius the genuine articles, or are they complete nonsense?

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Sheeesh! You call that taking time out from the MB? You were only gone for about 45 hours. I’ve been gone longer than that just fixing a program bug at work.

Welcome back.

Tom~

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Code 4, PM… Aloha ! Gotta keep literate flatfeet around, brah.

As to your question (actually knowing only the first book)… define nonsense.

Seems like a choice between a book of substance in an insubstantial, contrived context vrs. a insubstantial work on a subject with some history and substantive influence.

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I don’t know about the nonsense quotient, but the Protocols are the more dangerous book. There are enough RCs around to make Boettner’s effort look stupid (aside from all those folks that just know that there are hundreds of babies buried in the walls of the convents resulting from illicit congress between priests and nuns).

OTOH, there are enough people who really want to harm Jews who keep claiming that the Protocols are real.

Tom~

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Mr. Pickman:

I missed your “Adieu” thread, and went down and read it after seeing/reading this one.

I’m glad to have you back. Your civility, intelligence and eloquence are an asset to this message board.

Your point in the “Adieu” thread is well taken.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

<FONT COLOR=“GREEN”>ExTank</FONT>
<FONT COLOR=“BLUE”>“Out of fuel: become a pillbox.”
“Out of ammo: become a bunker.”
“Out of hope: become a hero.”</FONT>

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So what exactly is Pickman’s model?

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Just to chime in that it’s good to know that we had an impact.

And Pickman, I’ve got some good friends who are cops, and I empathize – it’s tough to face such difficult/dangerous situations, and then just go on with life as though 'twas nothing. We the public, however, do appreciate it.

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I want to second CK’s thoughts. Pickman, I would like to salute you and all our fellow officers both on this board in where ever they may be. You guys do not get enough respect or money. I sleep safe at night knowing that you guys are on the job.

Thanks for all you do. This post is for you.

Jeffery

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sunbear? Do you mean to tell us that you aren’t a Lovecraft fan? Careful, PM and some of his buddies may not let you post on the same threads as they do.

Pickman’s Model was a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. It was later made into a slightly different story on Night Gallery (or one of the Rod Serling or Serling-derived TV series).

A web search will turn up enough info to describe the story. (Or you could find a copy of Lovecraftian short stories.)

Tom~

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Sunbear:

H.P. Lovecraft. There’s this artist, you see, who paints very vivid representations of impossibly icky and creepy THINGS. Well, he has a muse of sorts, you might say…

PS: Welcome back Pick!

Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post

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Thanks again, everyone. If I had you all close at hand, I’d buy you all the drink of your choice! :slight_smile:

Sunbear (like that screen name, by the way):

“Pickman’s Model” is a short story written by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, first published in 1926. It starts out with a man named Thurber sitting in a resturant in Boston, talking to his friend, who is named Eliot. Thurber is telling Eliot this story, of why he suddenly stopped seeing another friend of his, a guy named Richard Upton Pickman. Pickman is an artist, a good one, but his works are so weird and hideous and outre that they’ve gotten him banned from every gallery in Boston. (Maybe he should try the Brooklyn Museum? Well, never mind…) Anyway, on one visit, Pickman asks him if he’d like to see his studio. Thurber says sure, and so off they go. Turns out that the studio is located in an ancient house in one of the worst slums Thurber has ever seen, and it’s down in a sub-cellar of the old house. The place is dark, crawling with vermin, and there is a circular brick-lined tunnel leading off the main room that is well over two hundred years old. Pickman says he prefers scant light to work by.

Pickman tells Thurber to keep his voice low, to avoid stirring up the rats, and then he shows Thurber the paintings he’s been working on, which are mostly scenes of horrible monsters crawling up out of the sewers to eat people on subway platforms, or skulking about in deserted churchyards, or the like. They are so frightening and horrible that at one point Thurber screams as he looks at a canvas of a hideous creature devouring a human being like a sandwich (Lovecraft probably got the idea from Goya’s 1823 painting Saturn Devouring His Children.) Thurber notices a little rolled-up piece of paper tacked to the corner of the canvas, and Pickman tells him it’s a background picture that he’s using for the painting.

Suddenly Pickman cocks an ear and seems to be listening to something, a scraping, squealing noise. Telling Thurber to stay put, he draws a revolver and enters the ancient brick tunnel. A few seconds later, Thurber hears Pickman shouting in a strange foreign language as he fires six shots from the revolver. There is a squealing, a grating, and a thud, and Pickman reappears with the smoking gun in his hand, grumbling about the rats. At this point, the visit is pretty well finished, so the two head back to Pickman’s home, and Thurber takes his leave.

Thurber then tells Eliot why he dropped Pickman, and also why he refuses to go into cellars or subways anymore. It was what he found in the pocket of his coat the next day----which was the rolled-up piece of paper that had been tacked to the canvas. When Pickman drew the gun, Thurber had absentmindedly pulled the paper off the canvas and stuck it in his pocket without even realizing it. It wasn’t a background picture after all…and here I’ll let Lovecraft finish off the tale in his own words: "You know how damned lifelike Pickman’s paintings were—how we all wondered where he got those faces. Well—that paper wasn’t a photograph of any background, after all. What it showed was simply the monstrous being he was painting on that awful canvas. It was the model he was using—and its background was merely the wall of the cellar studio in minute detail. But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life."

(Heh, heh, heh, as the old Crypt-Keeper used to say.) So in other words, Pickman’s model was a real monster, not an imaginary one----and who knows how many of them are crawling around under the streets of Boston in the dark??? “Pickman’s Model” was the very first H.P. Lovecraft story I ever read, when I was about 9 or so, and for some reason it stuck with me. And that’s where the screen name comes from. Aren’t you glad you read all the way through this bilge to discover that? :slight_smile:

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Thurber? Eliot? Both were the names of prominent authors by the time Lovecraft produced the story, and I had never picked up on this item. (The American Literature course never got into the Miskatonic school’s influence a whole lot…)

Anyway, I just wanted to add my small voice to the throng cheering your return! And to note that my priest confirmed some of your arguments, as did her husband. :wink:

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No offense to Pickman, but I had to lock up the “Adieu” thread because it was royally screwed up.

Just wanted to let everybody know.

David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator

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PM, this is proof. Somebody Up There doesn’t want you to leave! :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

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More proof that David is God. Polycarp even refers to Him as “Somebody Up There”!

Glad you’re sticking around, PM.

“Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.”

  • Bertrand Russell
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ROFL!

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I feel educated now. It could have been illustrated by Gahan Wilson.Is he still around? I haven’t been able to leaf through Playboy-they put them in plastic here.

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Gaudere said:

True believers in my powers shouldn’t need proof! Believe, and ye shall be rewarded. Send in your tithe, and I shall be rewarded.

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I dunno about Gahan Wilson, but how about Edward Gorey?

No offense taken, Dave. By the way, is your position as God an elected office? I happen to chair a certain judiciary committee, and we were just throwing around neat-o terms like “impeachment” the other day… :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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Pah! Such slander! Are you looking to be damned to Hell (or the BBQ Pit, anyway) for all eternity?!