Zenster, while I by no means have read every one of your posts, you are A-Number-One with me. When your Zen (wolfhound, for those of you that don’t know) was going through a rough spot, you posted on this board. You (and you alone) took the time to individually thank the people by e-mail that wished you well.
You’re a good man, Zenster.
Ditto…You are a good man Zenster. I like you alot.
Zenster’s just emotional, like all us Greeks. 
Seriously, I’ve always had good experiences with him when there’s been a misunderstanding, just reasoning with him via personal communications. If he’s in error, he always graciously admits it and profusely apologizes. If you are in error, he doesn’t rub it in your face.
A couple people don’t like him IRL. Eh. No one likes me IRL either. And I find it profoundly ironic that some people who are considered to be ever-so-cool at Dopefests are in reality disgusting and evil little criminals, who are nothing more than experts at manipulating people to live off of them and/or use them. Oh well. :rolleyes:
Maybe, if you would make sure that you define who you’re talking about, people would be less weirded out by what you post?
I mean, that could be ANYONE. How do I know you’re not going on and on about Ed Zotti, for instance?
It could be you, Mr. C. When the police gave me a doll, and I showed them what you did to me, they threw me in jail! 
Well, Tony…Zensters one of my favorite people…who are you again?
I am curious to know why my comment is so much more egregious than obfusciatrist’s.
Anyway, yes, there is reason to say this. Actually, I think “fuckwit” is too strong a word; Zenster is not a bad person, and I know he means well. He’s also loud, boorish, monopolizes every conversation and social situation, and a braggart. (I’ve eaten some of his food. It is indeed quite tasty, but after being told that you’re going to be sampling the Best Food Ever for the previous half hour, it’s quite anticlimactic to be served a fairly standard meal.)
I realize that my opinion is based primarily on real life interaction and my experiences may color my readings of his posts. Your mileage may vary.
It’s his tendency to relentlessly try to monopolize the conversation at any gathering he is at that makes him, er, an acquired taste. What’s worse, he assumes that you’re loving every second of his nonstop stream of jokes, comments, stories and lectures and wish him to continue at top speed UNLESS you make a specific point of telling him to shut his yap (which many people are too polite to do, although I am not).
My one and only experience with him was on a recent thread discussing cutting in line. He was boorish, accusatory, and rude. Even when several people called him on it, he refused to acknowledge he had overreacted.
That said, I’m not sure that’s enough to call him a fuckwit. Rude perhaps, but I’ll reserve my judgment on fuckwit. I don’t happen to like him at the moment, but eh, I see no reason for him to care about that.
I think you’re confusing vixenation and voguevixen; this threw me for a second as well.
Regardless, it frankly boggles my mind that some people on this thread are willing to see offers of no-strings-attached help to people Zenster has never met as creepy or stalkerish just because it suits them, or fits some words that they’ve read on what’s a remarkably combative forum. What’s wrong with you people? Isn’t it possible to dislike someone socially, yet acknowledge that they do some incredibly nice things?
I don’t know if it necessarily is, but how does someone else’s venomous comment affect yours? As I said, your post was the one that struck me, and I’ve already hinted that I wasn’t going to spend a great deal of time pondering the subtle reasons for it.
You weren’t commenting on his board behavior, but his vary personality, and had not explained your reasons.
Zenster’s been helpful to me in the past, and had no reason to do it other than he just seems to enjoy doing it. I’m certain that he’s got his faults, but I’ve not seen him do anything on the boards that I’d say had gone above the pale of what many others here have done.
I don’t know how much I feel like chipping in to a pile-on, so I’m really going to try to be fair in my comments.
Kyla is right. Zenster has a heart of gold, but is sometimes very hard to deal with. Now he did me a true solid. He took care of my dog for me for two months while I was living on a couch (another doper helped me out there: zyzzyva) after my wife dumped me.
But he did kind of hold my feet to the fire over it a little bit. I tried to get down to San Jose to visit as often as I could. This entailed borrowing my soon-to-be ex-wife’s car and driving an hour and a half to get there. Invariably I was roped into driving him all over hell and gone and lugging shit around his shop. This was all fine with me. I wasn’t expecting to be put to work, but I was hardly in a position to complain. Tit for tat. It seemed like fair trade to me.
At first I told him I’d pay him something for his trouble and he said, “nonsense, we’ll work it out somehow.” Every time I pressed for what he wanted he never really gave me a solid answer, and I was really in no monetary position to just throw a couple hundred bucks at him or whatever.
(Not to mention that he more or less “blamed” Daisy-Bob of giving Zen fleas when they both spent the entire day outside. When I got Daisy back I had to bathe her three times to get her clean.)
Later, once I finally gave up the ghost on my marriage, packed it all in and moved back to Maine with nothing, I posted something here about “Please tell me there are nice people in the world,” … I needed cheering up. Who pops in but Zenster, playing martyr, to tell me how nice he was to me and how no one appreciates him. I thought that under the circumstances it was extremely ill-timed, and a little insulting.
That’s all whatever it is. I admit, I could have been more magnanimous, but I wasn’t in a very good place when I was still in California, emotionally or financially. Whatever.
It was the little things. I’m pretty much a non-confrontational person. I can put up with most things. But it’s really hard to enjoy yourself in a social situation when one person is holding court on … everything. Everything he does, knows, thinks, cooks, reads, writes, listens to, etc … is the best. No questions will be entertained, because he knows what he’s talking about. Even when he doesn’t. Just for example … Zen, I hate to break it to you but Michael Nesmith is not the musical/entertainment genius you think he is. He was a fucking Monkee, okay?
I’m sorry to sound so critical, but I gotta call 'em like I see 'em. I think one time he said something about “Maybe I’m just loud and boisterous to cover my insecurities.” I can understand that. I’d hope that being able to admit that, and seeing how he’s affected people he’s had direct social contact with, he might be able to tone it down for his own sake.
I really don’t want to make an enemy out of Zenster, but I can’t say that I haven’t been annoyed by him far more than I’ve been amused by him. It’s my own shortcomings that I only ever stood there with a sappy smile on my face and didn’t speak my mind at the time.
We all have our faults.
I was thinking about going to a Doper gathering and meeting some people face-to-face but now I’m really glad I didn’t - otherwise next time someone found me annoying or gasp disagreed w/something I said, they’d have tons of material to work with. And post publicly for 35,000 people to read. Whoo-hooo, character assassination, isn’t this fun.
Somehow instead of being a better conversation than IRL, as I thought threads were supposed to be, it’s twice as bad.
I’m not here to make a judgement on Zenster; I’m not in a position to do that. If he’s reading this, however, I would like to revisit the open-mic thread.
He and I went back and forth for a few posts about what he should/could do for nourishment after one of the open-mic shows. I already understood that he can’t eat until after he performs, because he plays a wind instrument, and one of my suggestions, that he hit a late-night diner with the other performers, was not feasable. The other three: a) make something at home, like a frozen pizza, b) get takeout on the way home, and c) bring his own sandwich, didn’t get a direct response.
Then the war started, and I abandoned the thread without asking the crucial question:
Were there physical reasons why he couldn’t do any of those three things? Or was it purely a matter of principle?
My only suggestion for this thread is that those who have met Zenster in real life and hold negative views about him should probably think twice about posting them, as fessie said, in public view of 35,000 gawkers. (Or, really, however many actually show up to the boards on any type of regularity.)
I see this becoming quite a hurtful train wreck with just the opinions held about Zenster’s history of posts. But once people start contributing negative anecdotes abour real life meetings, this thread stands to become more of a cosmic fuck-up than it does a train wreck.
And yeah, I understand that if some people are allowed to post about the positive meetings with Zenster outside the boards, then others ought to be able to counter with the bad. To give a fair and balanced view an’ all. I definitely understand that, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I mean, with posts, it’s easy enough for others to see what he said and judge for themselves; it even gives Zenster a chance to defend himself with evidence presented. However, anecdotal evidence doesn’t exactly give birth to a level playing field (because, generally speaking, the only two people with any authority of which to speak on the encounter are Zenster and whomever regaled us with the memory–all others expressing opinions about said encounter(s) will just be jumping in on the bandwagon of assumptions, because they weren’t there originally).
I’d just hate for this to be another chance for a lot of hateful comments to be lobbed in by a bunch of drive-by visits.
As always, YMMV.
For the record, I count posting on SDMB as a social situation every bit as much as I consider a BBQ a social situation.
Oddly, I wouldn’t spend any time at a barbecue talking shit about someone else at the same shindig.
YMOV.
I regret posting to this thread.
For some reason, the Doper community seems to be awash in political bullshit at the moment. People are acting like assholes in chat, bitching about other people in locked LiveJournal posts, whining about how this person said this mean thing at ChiDope, etc. I feel that my statements in this thread have only exacerbated this, and I apologize.
In short, everyone, let’s all get a grip. Including me.
Om.
If I understand the arguments of the Zenster-is-a-fckwt crowd: he monopolizes conversations; thinks his favorite food, music, Smurf, etc are the best and that all people should think so; he has a short fuse; he sometimes won’t admit he’s wrong.
Oh, the horror.
Zenster is a human being. He's entitled to his share of human failings.
Again, not only did he offer me help, he offered it privately. If he’s the egomaniac some posters describe, why didn’t he make the offer in a post? That would’ve given him a chance to put on a show of being the powerful selfless man helping a poor unfortunate. Instead, he offered help to me quietly.