My First Rant

[Mandelstam]

If you have been reading the Hillary/Lieberman thread, you know that I have recently been accused of being a socketpuppet with a boner for Major Feelgud.

Ack!

Here is my rant: I hate the way that every few years someone makes a movie like American Beauty, with support from some Hollywood fatcat like Steven Spielberg, and is hailed as a fucking genius. It’s not that AB wasn’t a good movie; it was a good movie. But it was not the greatest movie ever made, nor even the greatest movie of 1999. In fact it wasn’t 3/4 as good as some similar '99 movies that got no attention but took greater risks such as Happiness.

This is the problem with our bland, dumbed-down and imitative culture. There’s so little originality that when something sneaks through it gets hailed as the NEXT GREAT THING and then we are doomed to see it imitated for the next ten years.

Of course, one of the main reasons this is so is that five or six companies control about 98% of everything that we see, read or hear.

Which is also why we’re supposed to believe that Limp Bizkit is “alternative” music.

Alternative to what, for fuck’s sake?

[3waygeek]

Which is also why we’re supposed to believe that Limp Bizkit is “alternative” music.

Alternative to what, for fuck’s sake?

music, of course

[iampunha]

Which is also why we’re supposed to believe that Limp Bizkit is “alternative” music.

Alternative to what, for fuck’s sake?

Backstreet Boys? Charlotte Church? Blue’s Clues? Simon & Garfunkel?

[Lazarus7]

*Originally posted by iampunha *
**
Backstreet Boys? Charlotte Church? Blue’s Clues? Simon & Garfunkel? **

Did I mention that I have been told by a number of people that I look just like Steve from Blue’s Clues? … I have never seen it but that is what I am told!!

[Mandelstam]

*Originally posted by iampunha *
**

Alternative to what, for fuck’s sake?

Backstreet Boys? Charlotte Church? Blue’s Clues? Simon & Garfunkel? **

No–but this won’t do. At bottom this is like saying that Tide is an alternative to Whisk. They’re both fucking laundry detergents and it’s only b/c companies spend millions of dollars “branding” them that we don’t even realize that half of the time they’re the same damn product with a difficult color made by the same company.

But actually, Iampunha, you’ve hit the nail on the head.

Say you’re a white guy somewhere between 16 and 33. You listen to Bizkit by default, b/c know you want to be hipper than the B.Boys, hotter than Blue’s Clues and your mama listens to Art Garfunkel. What you’ve got here, though, is a demographic choice, not a musical choice.

Someone on some other Pit thread about pop music pointed out that it’s always been the case that Top40 music sucked. That is largely true, but right now almost all music that gets played on the radio sucks–not just the Top 40.

What’s called alternative music these days is just the same Top 40 format but with the words “fuck” or “bitch” bleeped out so that twelve-year olds can feel cool for freaking out their grandmas. Or it’s a pale imitation of something that is worth listening (like Rage Against the Machine). Which is why bands like Bizkit might as well be called Rage all the Way to the Cash Register.

Fuck off Bizkit. Eat me Offspring. And, Green Day, up yours with your own press release.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

*Originally posted by Mandelstam *
If you have been reading the Hillary/Lieberman thread, you know that I have recently been accused of being a socketpuppet with a boner for Major Feelgud…

How can I put this without sounding insulting? Hmm…constructive criticism is so difficult without the visual cues of face-to-face contact…

And so I patiently read on, with every expectation that you will deny this, but you don’t, since evidently “trashing Limp Bizkit” stands higher in your priorities than “avenging my SDMB honor”. Interesting. Very interesting. And laudable, let me hasten to add. Very commendable of you. It’s nice to meet someone with such high self-esteem that he doesn’t feel a need to respond to the carping of critics. Seriously. Welcome to the SDMB!

However, I have to say that, as a rant, your OP sucks. Sorry. Not even a minimum score of a 2. You started out well, but took a sudden and, may I say, unrewarding detour away from “avenging my SDMB honor” to “so-called alternative music”. A good rant, to get a decent score from your fellow Pitizens, has to stay on target. Just something to remember for next time. But your heart’s in the right place, obviously.

[Mandelstam]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose *
“Hmm…constructive criticism is so difficult without the visual cues of face-to-face contact…”

Duck Duck–do not overtax yourself. There was nothing in the least constructive about your so-called criticism; and if I could see your face I would doubtless be looking at a cross between a bulldog’s ass and a deer caught in the headlights.

Aside to Other Readers: Duck, Duck Goose cannot rid himself of the bizarre impression that I have morphed into this identity expressly to do battle with Major Feelgud. As though anyone need go to such trouble!

Hear the Duck quacks for himself:

“And so I patiently read on, with every expectation that you will deny this, but you don’t, since evidently “trashing Limp Bizkit” stands higher in your priorities than “avenging my SDMB honor”. Interesting. Very interesting.”

[Groan, Sigh, Gasp]

Duckface, if you’d take a look at the Hillary thread, where my last post remains for all to see, you will see that I have denied this stupid assertion. Elsewhere another poster has pointed out that there is a policy for checking the facts with an administrator: please make my day by doing so.

You are now the third person to note how “interesting” it is that I appear to be a poster who is pretending not to be a poster who has been flaming Major Feelgud for his asinine political opinions. Is this really all that interesting? May I suggest that you might be happier reading the Sun where you can hear all about Jesus’s third coming and Martians landing in Columbus, Ohio?

With apologies to those who have already figured out that there is no evil plot here, let me say it again: I am not concealing some other prior identity just to prove that Major Feelgud is a dunce and clueless Republican. Surely that is something that few of you can doubt! (Let me add, for the record, that I also have never inhaled, didn’t snort coke, have long since gotten over my drinking and driving problem, and never had sex with that woman.)

More Quacks from the Paranoid Duck:

“However, I have to say that, as a rant, your OP sucks. Sorry. Not even a minimum score of a 2.”

And let me add in return that, as a sign of intelligent life, your goose turds simply don’t cut it. : : ( ( Indeed, the last time I was this unimpressed I was looking at pond life under an electron microscope.

“A good rant, to get a decent score from your fellow Pitizens, has to stay on target.”

Thank you so very much Duckshit. I will be certain to consult you should I ever decide to pen a thread entitled “Advice on Logic for Kindergartners.”

“But your heart’s in the right place, obviously.”

Should I take this to mean that you too think that Limp Bizkit is the audible equivalent of hot, stinking piss? Or has it perhaps occured to you that people who rant about politics ought at least to know what they’re talking about?

It is only just possible that you are less of a quack than you at first appear.

[iampunha]

*Originally posted by Mandelstam *
Say you’re a white guy somewhere between 16 and 33. You listen to Bizkit by default, b/c know you want to be hipper than the B.Boys, hotter than Blue’s Clues and your mama listens to Art Garfunkel. What you’ve got here, though, is a demographic choice, not a musical choice.

This is one reason I prefer older music to newer stuff. I just don’t like most of the new stuff. The old stuff . . . it’s just better. I don’t know . . . it’s not mass-produced. You don’t have the same lyrics circulating 80 times a day.

[casdave]

Now that was an improvement indeed but the overuse of name calling did lose it for me a somewhat.

Picking on a name is a bit schoolyard like but the rest of it shows more imagination.Personal appearance flames are a bit of a no-no old bean.

You need to follow up Anthracite a bit (but don’t get into an argument or it’ll be sore)
See if you can look up Lexicon in the pit too and I think some old Coldfire pit blasts will see you in good stead.

Me ? I keep out of it, not enough good words you see.

Toodle pip

ps DDG ain’t a bloke.

[Mandelstam]

*Originally posted by casdave *
**Picking on a name is a bit schoolyard like but the rest of it shows more imagination.Personal appearance flames are a bit of a no-no old bean. [etc., etc.]
**

Well, Casdave, thank you so much for your personal rendition of the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

• “ps DDG ain’t a bloke.” *

Ah–my apologies for suggesting that the Goose was a gander.

[2sense]

Hey Mandelstam, why you are tearing into DDG?
She was being nice by offering you criticism intended as advice. If she had wanted to roast you she certainly could have, though she usually takes the high road. I’m not going to pile on in her defense because she prefers to handle these situations herself but I thought I’d let you know that you may have seriously misgauged her intent.

Also, if you are looking into Pit heavyweights you’ll want to check out Byzantine’s and weirddave’s posts.

Anyways, welcome aBoard.

[AuntiePam]

*Originally posted by Mandelstam *
** You are now the third person to note how “interesting” it is that I appear to be a poster who is pretending not to be a poster who has been flaming Major Feelgud for his asinine political opinions. Is this really all that interesting?
**

No, it’s not interesting. So why lead off your rant with a restatement of this erroneous assertion?

Prick.

[MysterEcks]

Mandelstam said:

If you have been reading the Hillary/Lieberman thread, you know that I have recently been accused of being a socketpuppet with a boner for Major Feelgud.

Gee, and why would anyone think that?

Congrats, though–now you have a whopping 6 posts out of 25 that aren’t sniping at Major Feelgud. Since the ratio was 2/20 this morning, that’s a big difference–24%, as opposed to 20%.

[Mandelstam]

*Originally posted by AuntiePam *
No, it’s not interesting. So why lead off your rant with a restatement of this erroneous assertion?

Actually, b/c I still haven’t been able to shake off that impression. If you look over on the Hillary/Lieberman thread you’ll see that the Major still believes it.

**“Prick.” **

Well, AuntiePam, the pleasure is all mine, I am sure.

But what, I wonder, is the cause of your displeasure?

Are you a friend of Feelgud’s? The producer of American Beauty? A Limp Bizkit groupie? Or just a fan of Dick Cheney like the Major?

This being the Pit, I am happy to exchange sharp words with you any of these subjects. But I prefer to know the charge when I am being flamed.

A word to 2Sense: if what Duck, Duck Goose intended was a skewed welcome of sorts, my intent was to accept it. Like anyone else, I like to give as good as I get. But I think you will find if we get to know each other better, that I am much more interested in what people really think than I am in hostility for hostility’s sake.

[Mandelstam]

*Originally posted by MysterEcks *
Since the ratio was 2/20 this morning, that’s a big difference–24%, as opposed to 20%. **

I’d offer my congratulations to the math teacher at Buttfuck High if only you weren’t completely wrong. My previous posts weren’t “snipes” at Major Feelgud. If you actually read them you would see that, at least on my part, it was serious debate.

[AuntiePam]

The cause of my displeasure?

Your statement about being accused of sock-puppetry had nothing to do with your rant. If you hadn’t mentioned it, I wouldn’t have known. Nor would anyone else who hadn’t read the Hillary-Lieberman thread. The statement was provocative. “Hey look at me, someone thinks I’m a sock puppet. Come and get me.”

Since no one bit, you conveniently misinterpreted Duck’s response. Provocative again.

A pop culture rant? Come on! Too easy.

You’re just looking for negative attention. I bit. My bad.

[MysterEcks]

Mandelstam said

My previous posts weren’t “snipes” at Major Feelgud. If you actually read them you would see that, at least on my part, it was serious debate.

Serious debate, eh? From your very first post, directed at Major Feelgud when neither he nor anyone else had ever heard of you:

Castrate yourself, shit-for-brains, if you can find a precision tool delicate enough for that micro-task.
Obviously you support George W. Bush, which says that you are either 1)a knowing but greedy sonofabitch with no social conscience whatsoever, or 2) a major loser made comfortable by a president who poses no threat to your own limited capabilities. Based on your eminently forgetable posts, I place you in the second category.

As your posts read like the effusions of a deranged retard, I won’t waste bandwidth by rebutting you on a point-by-point basis. I’ll conclude instead by instructing you to change your name ever so slightly: Major Blowhard says it all.

I take it, then, that your idea of “serious debate” is to call people “deranged retard[s]” and suggest they castrate themselves.

Then johnson said to you:

Thank you so much, Mandelstam, for the thoughts and language that will help to heal the country in a time of great division and potential crisis. So eloquent, thoughtful, and, well, just darn outright inspiring. Lord knows, we need more with your ability to see beyond partisan leanings, to realize that, in the end, we’re all just Americans. God bless you, and God bless America.

to which part of your reply was:

W. is a rich man’s candidate with just enough of a good-'ol-boy mentality to appeal to losing average Joes who like the fact that the man can’t speak English and talks in garbled soundbites. Oh, that’s right. He also appeals to studs like you who get wet dreaming of making a killing on the stock market with their payroll taxes.

Don’t make me laugh, fuckwit. A lecture on civics from you is like a advice on dieting from Rush Limbaugh.

So your idea of “serious debate” is to insult whoever disagrees with you–as you already showed in this thread before I got here. You “debate” about as well as Major Feelgud (who is himself no paragon of polite debate) but I haven’t noticed himfollowing people around and almost exclusively posting in their threads to attack them. That’s exactly what I see from you. (I also see that you hurt your own cause by being an asshole, but that’s neither here nor there.)

So, no, I’m not wrong. You’ve dedicated yourself to being the Major’s pet troll–I have no question about that. I have no idea whether you’re also a sock or a reincarnation, since I don’t know where Major Feelgud comes up with that idea.

Incidentally, lest a real person (that wouldn’t be you, Mandelstam) think I’m some sort of habitual defender of Major Feelgud’s, check out his other current Pit thread. I’ll confess that I voted for Bush, though (like anybody who paid attention to such things didn’t already know it)–now Mandy can enlighten us as to whether I’m a loser or a son of a bitch. I know which one I think he or she is.

(See, bunky, there’s actually a recordof what we say in this place–it doesn’t evoporate so you can claim you didn’t say it. Inconvenient for you, huh?)

[Mandelstam]

*Originally posted by AuntiePam *
**
Since no one bit, you conveniently misinterpreted Duck’s response. Provocative again.

A pop culture rant? Come on! Too easy.

You’re just looking for negative attention. I bit.
**

You know, in retrospect I can see that Duck was not a veteran of the Hillary thread trying to out me as a sockpuppet. But please bear in mind that in the other thread I was accused of making up the American Beauty rant just to deflect my “guilt” over my fraudulent identity.

The result was that I genuinely misinterpreted Duck’s response–not conveniently. And I most certainly wasn’t looking for negative attention and, to the contrary, was only too happy to discuss the joys of branded pop culture before Duck’s post put me back on the defensive.

While this means that there was room for misinterpretation on both our sides, I confess that I am still rather perplexed by what’s on your mind. If I really wanted negative attention I’m sure I could manage it more efficiently than by posting a bogus rant on pop culture, all the while crossing my fingers that someone would oblige me by calling me a prick.

The first time I visited here I ended up spending a good deal of my time discussing politics with people who think that that when three people chip in to pick up the dinner tab it’s a form of socialism. Pardon me if the result was to bring out the doberman in me.

At any rate, I would still be curious to know whether anyone agrees (or not) that the American Beauty type of movie is way overrated.

Oh, and in case you have no chance to look at my last post in the Hillary thread, it is technically inappropriate to call me a “prick.” Although, come to think of it, “Bend over Boyfriend” is one of the best how-to videos I’ve ever come across!

[Mandelstam]

*Originally posted by MysterEcks *
So your idea of “serious debate” is to insult whoever disagrees with you…

Sometimes. This is after all a flame pit, not a debutante’s ball. Anyone who’s interested in reading the whole of those posts will see that there is plenty of substance mixed in with the barbs.

The reason you’re so peeved, I more than suspect, is that you’re just the sort of dim-bulb Republican that can’t stand the heat.

“I’ll confess that I voted for Bush, though (like anybody who paid attention to such things didn’t already know it)–now Mandy can enlighten us as to whether I’m a loser or a son of a bitch.”

This is a very tough call on what is getting to be a late night for me. To be honest, Ecks, I can’t really get a handle on you yet. You may well be one of those Boy Scout Republicans who voted for Dubya 'coz he thought a clueless Texan frat boy would unify the country. In which case, please do the world a favor by unifying your head permanently to your ass with a few well-placed dabs of crazy glue. It will improve our nation’s democracy immeasurably.

*"(See, bunky, there’s actually a recordof what we say in this place–it doesn’t evoporate so you can claim you didn’t say it. Inconvenient for you, huh?)" *

Well duh. Gee whiz! Thanks so much for filling me in on the basic features of a message board. Do you think you could come over here and help me plug in my printer cable when you’re done?

What for fuck’s sake is wrong with this picture? Feelgud is convinced that I have been secretly posting here since the early 90s, while this wanker thinks I don’t know how to use e-mail!

[MysterEcks]

Mandelstam said:

Sometimes. This is after all a flame pit, not a debutante’s ball. Anyone who’s interested in reading the whole of those posts will see that there is plenty of substance mixed in with the barbs.

Yeah, you can parrot “I hate Bush” in several different forms–how original. And as far as I can tell, you can only “debate” by insult, which isn’t debate at all. Otherwise, with your professed interest in politics (see, eg., posts in the link I provided in my first post to this thread) you’d be debating the assorted Republicans in Great Debates…but you’ve never posted anything outside the Pit. Are you afraid of real debate in which you can’t throw shit? Or is it just that you’re primarily interested in attacking Major Feelgud?

The reason you’re so peeved, I more than suspect, is that you’re just the sort of dim-bulb Republican that can’t stand the heat.

Uh huh–that would explain why I periodically thrust myself intothe heat and discuss my views. But I suppose a dimbulb Democrat like yourself can’t figure out why your statement is stupid.*

(*Note to any realDemocrats who wander in here: I won’t hold Mandelstam against you if you don’t hold Major Feelgud against me.)

Incidentally, I’m not “peaved” at you–I can see why the Major would be, but I have no reason to be. I just think you’re an asshole, and I enjoy exposing the fact.

You may well be one of those Boy Scout Republicans who voted for Dubya 'coz he thought a clueless Texan frat boy would unify the country.

Now you come out with a third choice? Make up your mind, or whatever passes for one.

Incidentally, I more than once posted why I intended to–and did–vote for Bush. If you look around, maybe you’ll figure it out.

In which case, please do the world a favor by unifying your head permanently to your ass with a few well-placed dabs of crazy glue.

Written from personal experience, no doubt.

Do you think you could come over here and help me plug in my printer cable when you’re done?

Only if I get to insert it where your head currently resides.

Feelgud is convinced that I have been secretly posting here since the early 90s, while this wanker thinks I don’t know how to use e-mail!

The Major is apparently confused about the difference between a sock and a troll. As for whether you can use e-mail, it’s hard to tell–I see you don’t have an e-mail address listed, which fails to surprise me.

And by the way–you’re welcome. (I knew you’d wanna thank me for bumping your thread up so more people can see it.)