Hey now! I was just reading this Pit thread for the entertainment value and now you had to go start something.
Don’t. You. EVER! put us on the same level as those sick ratbastards. There are just some things too sick for society to permit and I won’t be lumped in with them because of what I like to do and what makes me happy.
I mean, c’mon. What sort of sick, twisted, low-life pervert actually laughed at Happy Gilmore??
[sub]OK, raise your hand if you didn’t see that one coming.[/sub]
Thank you, Kamandi and matt_mcl, for getting it. To rest of you, a hearty WHOOSH! Stand up; maybe it’ll come around again.
It was a piece of fiction, people. I have no idea if this guy even had children. The exaggeration was a silly, inconsequential spoof on—simultaneously—the conventional pit rant that’s a transparent attempt just to outdo previous pit rants (I started with death by cancer, then thought, “OK, what’s worse than that? . . . Good! Now, what’s even worse than that? . . . etc., ad [literally] nauseum.); the ravings of one of those people (we all know them) who gets all bent out of shape over the most insignificant things; Stephen King; and a project I’m kind of working on now: a fictional piece that takes the form of a serial killer’s journal.
None of the children in my rant exists, though each of the scenaria I wrote had its beginnings in something I read in some newspaper or other (except the part about being dropped off by your dad a half-mile away from home, at night, because he had a drinking date: that happened to me—when I was 11). As for the guy who blew smoke in my face, I don’t even remember what he looked like: as far as I’m concerned, he’s a fictional construct. As is, to an even greater degree, the psychotic “narrator” of the above little bit of tossed-off fiction.
It is a pit thread, though, in that it started as a pit thread, then I just kept piling ridiculous exaggeration on top of ludicrous raving, until it just became a tangle of silliness.
Another thing: what’s this reaction about the children, who don’t exist, and not about the smoker-blower, who at least is based on a real person (albeit a total stranger whom I wouldn’t recognize in a lineup)? I know that we, as advanced animals, probably have an inborn type of “parental instinct” or something, but why, even today, in the modern world (a world in which we’ve overcome many, many natural impulses in order to live in a civilized society) do we value a child (any child, not just your own, which would at least be more understandable) over an adult? Isn’t a 60-year-old person who’s been educated, and is maybe a scientist or, say, an artist whose art continues to develop after a life of painting, more valuable and irreplaceable than a small child? I’m not suggesting that your child, Dear Doper, is at all replaceable, only that it seems less constructive to the society at large to value an individual newborn over an individual, contributing adult. Just a thought brought about by the above silly and indignant responses, and by things like “CAUTION: Baby on Board!” signs. (Why not “CAUTION: Person on Board!”?) Is it possible (here’s some gasoline on the fire) that this is one tiny step down the slope to valuing the life of a fetus over the life of a woman?
Oh, and by the way, FotD, this was not a rant about smokers (I knew some addle-headed red-ass-monkey would chime in with this. :rolleyes: ), but about:[ul]People.
Who get on a bus I’m already on.
With a last-chance double lungful of cigarette smoke.
And release it.
In a cloud.
That encircles.
My.
Head.*[/ul]I have an occasional cigarette myself when at a bar or a concert or something, Microcephalic Boy. So a crusty (if somewhat pitying) FuckYou to you, Sweetie.
And Dr. Lao, I do not have to save my “rage,” fictional or not, for only those people who match up with your list of acceptalbe victims. Though we agree on the two examples you’ve given, I’m not going to check with you in the future before I express anger about a person. (“Yo, Doc, what level does your chart give for people who bring colicky kids into expensive restaurants?” Not gonna happen.) If you’re a republican and you read my rant about George Dumbya, are gonna tell me to “save my rage” for Jane Fonda or something? Please feel free, and prepare to be, at best, ignored.
Thanks for telling me how you would write it, but that’s not, obviously, how I would. My intention was to add extra horror to the woes that befell the bus smoker by making them seem arbitrary: to make him think that g-d him/herself was personally out to Job him. If I’d made them somehow “poetically” linked to his smoking, I would have lost that touch I was trying for. In addition, I think linking their deaths to his smoking would give the impression that it was his smoking that pissed me off, when it was his inconsiderateness, which I extrapolated to a complete lack of awareness of the needs of others (even, and here was the point, the needs of his own children). It was his presumed (and fictionally exaggerated) utter lack of responsibility that was the link to his children’s deaths, not simply his smoking. Which, again, I don’t see as a lack of responsiblity towards others, whereas mindlessly, blindly exhaling smoke in someone else’s face I do see as such.
(I guess I should have included all this as footnotes to the original post. My fault, I was overestimating most of the Dopers again.)
lissener, you appear to be suffering a whoosh of your own.
It doesn’t matter that you didn’t mean it. Go to Harlem and run around shouting NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER. Who cares if you don’t mean it? You’d find a world of hurt for just saying it.
Grow the fuck up, dirtball.
Usually, in life when I’m not sure how to respond to something because of unstated contexts and history between that person and myself, I find it best to completely ignore them, and just give a straight reply.
So, here it goes, an attempt at constructive communication.
Lissener:
If you post something like that sans disclaimer, how can you expect people not to take it at face value?
If you portray yourself as psychotic without leaving cues that it’s merely a portrayal, then when people react to you as if you were, it’s not them who are being whooshed and not getting it, it’s you.
Claiming to be misinterpreted by fools not clever enough to understand you is getting to be a pretty frequent M.O. for you recently.
Within a work of fiction, something like you wrote might be perfectly acceptable. As a standalone delivered without explanation it’s simply disturbing, and is destined to make people think poorly of you.
I expect that you know that, and that was the reaction you were looking for.
Literary critic hat
As a fictional excerpt, it could use some tightening up IMHO. Your psychotic person as a character who gets unduly pissed off at little unimportant things, needs to have this emphasized. Blowing smoke on a bus is a legitimate gripe, but the fact that your character takes this out of proportion with his wishes doesn’t hit home the nature of his psychosis. In order to do so, I think it should be something truly innocuous that sets him off. A simple mistake, or a misunderstanding. The fact that the guy blowing smoke is an asshole stops the reader from having too much sympathy for him. I’d suggest driving home the psychosis by making the incident a truly blameless one.
Secondly, the insults and the curses are merely wordy and not creative.
I sense almost a biblical, Old Testament type preachy rage in the narrative. The wishes for the offender vaguely remind me of the plague of misfgortunes visited upon Job. The whole visiting the sins of the father upon the next generation thing lends itself to this style as well. I think if you can emphasize that aspect and draw a parallel to Job you can make the rant effective in an almost Joyceian fashion.
Finally, the revenge is scattered rather than focussed. I agree with Fenris that it lacks irony or even a common theme. It comes across as cumbersome without some kind of natural progression. I think it would be more readable, entertaining, and potentially more horrifying if it had those elements.[/Literary critic hat]
Ok, look. Some time ago I posted a similar rant in regard to various annoying individuals I encounter in the course of my daily commute. In it, I expressed requests that various individuals be “trampled by a horde of irate hockey fans,” “strapped into [a chair] until your bladder control gives out,” “fed face-first into the scary looking metal comb-shaped thing at the top of the escalator,” “strapped between platforms at Lionel-Groulx metro and being decorated by a local youth with a spray can,” “forced to rim Fat Bastard [a]nd then dropped in the Saint Lawrence River,” and otherwise encounter “instant death.” I even threatened that
Funny, nobody accused me of being psychotic.
Likewise, someone in the Quebec thread said that protesters such as myself ought to be “clubbed… like baby seals.” I was offended, but because my LITERARY COMPREHENSION SKILLS ARE ABOVE SEVENTH-GRADE LEVEL, I understood this to be an exaggeration for comic effect.
I just think that certain people have a bone to pick with Lissener and are willingly misinterpreting this.
Mattmcl:
Losing bladder control and being stuffed into an escalator are funny. They give the reader the cues that you are engaging in hyperbole or being somewhat toungue and cheek.
Cancer and small children dying horribly provide no such cues, and when I read that, I was only about 60% sure that it wasn’t serious. My first thought was “I hope that’s not serious.” My second was “It’s damn well gonna be taken that way.”
That being said, I’d agree with you that there’s nothing in here to get too excited or pissed about, and I’m certainly not playing for revenge.
The only issue I can see is Lissener’s mistake in thinking that it wouldn’t be taken seriously.
I suspect he probably thought it would be, as there’s no doubt he’s not an unintelligent guy.
So why do it that way? Who knows? Mistakes do happen. Maybe it’s just that.
No big deal. However, having your meaning consistently misunderstood in a given post is usually a cue that the author has made a mistake, not the reader. Usually a gracious explanation clears the air without acrimony, and is the best response.
Finally, I hope you are not including myself in your accusation. I made an effort to reply based on the merits of the posts and not be small-minded or vindictive.
No, indeed, Scylla.
Against my better judgement, I need to reply back to a few things…
Yeah, people, I know he’s just baiting, (in fact, he seems to be a master at it) but just a few words more and then he’s off my radar screen for the future…
It was not presented a such, and obviously was not taken as such by a number of people. From any reasonable point of view, you deliberately set out to mislead people. Or, another possibility, after you saw the response, you changed your position to deflect the criticism. Neither possibility earns you any respect. By the way, since you were the narrator, did you realize that you the “silly and inconsequential” are applying to you? (how fitting)
No. Maybe a person such as yourself, who views people as “advanced animals”, might think so. Read “Animal Farm” sometime.
Maybe you should re-read your original post, too.
So, lets see here. You don’t have the balls to stand behind your original statements. Then you admit to the same type of behavior as you so roundly condemn. That makes you a worthless hypocrite.
And your schoolyard level putdowns further demonstrate the worthlessness of your arguments.
Excellent advice - as applies to you. I’ve even seen it mentioned in other threads. I recognize you for the type of person you are now, and can safely ignore whatever idiocies you spew. You simply are trying to provoke people for your own amusement, and I’m not going to play your little game. I gave up grade school stuff like that when I got past grade school age. Maybe someday you will too.
Well, I did. The first six words were:
He was complaining about people who smoke on the bus, not about people who smoke in other places. Friend of the Devil, stand down.
Whilst I, in my capacity of Rant Reviewer At Large have not made a habit of debating my reviews, since this was my first official review, I shall indulge the author. 
If the intention was to make the smoker Job-like, then for me, you have not succeeded. The repetition of children’s death changed the focus from arbitrary suffering to specific focused suffering (with some extra suffering on top.) By having three children dying, you’ve established a pattern which doesn’t work with the arbitrary theme. You have three children dying, one skinhead beating, one parental snub, one cop head-stomping and assorted bug infestations. If the three children were reduced to one, the randomness would be more evident.
The other issue thematically is that hitting the reader with three child deaths at the beginning sets a pattern and a level of horror. By graphically killing three children, all the subsequent horrors seem lesser by comparison. “The lower half of his body suddenly became an expanding cloud of red vapor as his ears rang from the report of the land-mine. Then he got a splinter in his finger” It doesn’t climax, it…I hesitate to use the phrase because of your evocative use of language, but…it dribbles off. Since for most people the horrible death of one’s children is as bad as it gets, the climax of the rant is at the start of the rant, not the end. Again that may have been your intention, but I didn’t find it satisfying.
**
::nods::
That makes sense, but I still think that all three children overdoes it and changes the focus and pacing. Perhaps only one hypothetical child. But then, how does the skinhead beating or the cop head-stomping fit into the mise-en-scene of irresponsiblity?
**
This shall not endear you to your audience. And a true artist does not blame the audience for his failure to commuicate his vision. It is the artist’s responsibility to make clear his or her vision, not the viewer’s.
Fenris, Rant Reviewer At Large
Here’s about as eloquently I feel like responding:
whatever
But I started this, so I’ll respond in good faith.
First of all, my response to FotD was in exactly the same tone as his initial response to my OP: childishly over the top. I look forward to his continued absence from this thread, unless he was just blustering (how likely is that?)
Scylla: I appreciate the effort you put into making your responses appear to be in good faith, and they are not without value, but you make it not-so-subtly clear (*"Usually, in life when I’m not sure how to respond to something because of unstated contexts and history between that person and myself, I find it best to completely ignore them. . . . *) that you enter this discussion without having left your personal bias against me entirely behind. Well, I understand that, and am a little impressed that the above quote appears to be your only such reference to our “history.”
But to respond to your other points: “If you post something like that sans disclaimer, how can you expect people not to take it at face value?” I honestly believed that its absurd hyperbole would make it abundantly clear that the narrator was fictional. I mean, I know I can get pretty pissy around here (especially lately; I’m posting much less frequently so when I do post it’s usually about something that’s gotten me pissed off enough to do so), but surely I don’t have a reputation as an honest to goodness, clinically speaking, psychotic!?!? Hence, I assumed it would obvious that, primarily, I was lampooning those “I can outflame anyone” kind of pit threads.
“If you portray yourself as psychotic without leaving cues that it’s merely a portrayal, then when people react to you as if you were, it’s not them who are being whooshed and not getting it, it’s you.” Again, I think it’s a bit of both here. But of course I’m megalomaniacal enough to imagine that surely some of the 450+ other people who’ve read this thread—the great silent majority—did get it, and didn’t see anything to whine about.
“As a standalone delivered without explanation it’s simply disturbing, and is destined to make people think poorly of you. I expect that you know that, and that was the reaction you were looking for.” And of course I have to admit that this is sometimes the case. I was a Performance Art major at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, so I think I’ve kind of come to the conclusion, without really having thought much about it, that confusion is often an excellent starting point for a discussion or debate. A response of “Hunh?” is much more conducive of an open exchange than is “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” I really do think that’s probably the most significant thing I learned as a performance artist. It certainly served me well as a dog trainer. When trying to break certain dogs of certain habits, I found it was often useful to get them confused enough so they sat there looking at me, trying to understand what the hell it was I wanted them to do. A quick way to get their receptive attention. Now, someone of course will yip in to protest that I shouldn’t be treating people like dogs, but that’s not the case: this “trick” is something I learned from performing for people, and I adapted it to my work with dogs. So I treat dogs like people rather than vice versa.
Now, none of this part of any conscious plan I had before I wrote the OP; just a bit of insight, if anyone cares, into part of my intellectual history that might be relevant to this debate.
I find I most often use this device in confronting someone about something they probably haven’t give much thought to; a habit of thought. If someone says something casually racist, I might agree with them to an outrageous extreme to get them to realize what they sound like. Or I might pinch a homophobe’s ass to show him how much it surprises him that I would do so, and by extrapolation to show him how absurd his fears of homosexual conversion or predation really are. I think of it as kind of an active sarcasm: a sarcasm of concept more than simply of words. But to be honest, I obviously wasn’t attempting to communicate anything constructive to the actual person I was mad at; ( And this I suppose is unheard of in a pit rant? Oh, wait, no, that’s right: half of all the threads posted here are exactly like that!) it was, ultimately, more about the writing of it than about the anonymous man who made my hair stink.
As far as your litcrit, Scyl, I mostly disagree. I may be wrong sometimes, but I have a great deal of confidence in my critical judgment of my own work. It’s not as good as it might one day be, but I have confidence in my intentions, if not always in their execution. As Flannery O’Connor once wrote in a letter to her editor, “I am amenable to criticism, but only within the sphere of what I am trying to do; I will not be persuaded to do otherwise.” So again, you’d write it differently. Well, go ahead. As far as the Job sense you get, it’s been minimally discussed elsewhere in this thread.
"Cancer and small children dying horribly [are not funny]. . . ." Again, these children do not exist: they are fictional devices in my attempt to see how long I could keep escalating the ill wishes of the OP. I simply refuse to reassure you, or anyone, that I harbor no violent wishes toward any real children. If you still feel I must, after you misinterpreted my OP (albeit apparently with some cause) and, further, after my assuring you at least once that this was not in fact my intention, then that is of course a problem you must work out on your own.
FotD: “Yeah, people, I know he’s just baiting, (in fact, he seems to be a master at it) . . .” Ooh, F, way too old and stinky: that bit of wordplay has been killed to death at the SDMB. But thanks for playing.
“By the way, since you were the narrator, did you realize that you the ‘silly and inconsequential’ are applying to you?” Um, F? I was using the *real * meaning of “narrator,” not the imaginary definition that is yours alone. Sorry; my bad. (There, F, even “my bad” is fresher than “master-baiter.”)
*“No. Maybe a person such as yourself, who views people as ‘advanced animals’, might think so. . . .”*So which is it you’re not, F, animal? or advanced? Fine, from now on I’ll think of you as a primitive rock. (A confession: I was already beginning to think of you in that way.
*". . . Read ‘Animal Farm’ sometime." *I’ve read it several times, F, and I’m in the dark as to what you see as a parallel. I crave your enlightenment.
*". . . You don’t have the balls to stand behind your original statements. Then you admit to the same type of behavior as you so roundly condemn. . . ." *I’m sorry sir, you seem to be lost. Go get help.
Fenris: Some worthwhile nuggets, but see again the Flannery O’Connor quote above.
”. . . I still think that all three children overdoes it . . .” It was four!
”. . . But then, how does the skinhead beating or the cop head-stomping fit into the mise-en-scene of irresponsiblity?” It doesn’t; that would get boring; kind of a one-note thing, don’t you think? Those items are linked to g-d’s doing a Job on him: to fuel his inevitable paranoia that the universe itself wants him dead. Kind of a lame attempt to imply the overseeing presence of an Old-Testamenty g-d.
“. . . [Your pissy suggestion that you were ‘overestimating most of the Dopers’]* shall not endear you to your audience. [Granted.] * And a true artist does not blame the audience for his failure to commuicate his vision. It is the artist’s responsibility to make clear his or her vision, not the viewer’s. ” Of course this is true. And as I continue to work on my fictional serial killers’ journal, many of the points raised above will no doubt serve me well. This little toss off, however, has taken up enough of my time: I see no reason to revise it. To the posters who have made constructive criticisms above, however: I welcome your own rewrites. I’d be curious as to how you’d really do it, as opposed to how you think I* should have done it.
[sub]**This was oddly difficult to code: [I]I[/I*]
Feh, whatever. I didn’t say you should “save your rage” I said you should save this kind of venom for more worthy targets. You have every right to be angry but expressing the way you did is what bothered me. But I was just offering some advice, feel free to ignore it in the future. No loss for me.
Lissener:
Thanks for the gracious tone of your reply. As I mentioned, I attempted to leave any bias behind under the principle that life is too short. Whether or not I succeeded, who knows? I lack the personal insight to be sure. Anyway, recognizing the effort is thoughtful.
Your invitation to rewrite it is intriguing. Let me think about it.
I realize that you weren’t “serious” and the children are “fictional” but the thoughts still came out of your head and that makes you…well, creepy.
Focusing your fictional venom on a person who did you wrong is one thing, but wishing harm even on fictional children is wrong. The level of harm that you wished upon these fictional children is scary and disturbing.
I don’t care how you rationalize it, you’re a freak.
Oh, like that’s the worst thing anybody could be accused of. Look, Sue, deep down in some secret sanctuary of the soul, everybody is nuts. Some of us are just more prepared to deal with it by the harmless methods of talking, writing, and fantasizing about it than others.
So, then, Stephen King is a clinically defined psycho? And Dario Argento? And John Carpenter? And John Saul? And Clive Barker? Thomas Harris, who wrote Silence of the Lambs? All of these people write fiction in which entirely innocent people are tortured and ripped apart. And that’s the milder ones.
You’re telling me that you honestly believe each one these guys is clinically insane?
Now who’s the freak?
(And to preempt the inevitable idjimit who’s bound to chime in with “You’re no Stephen King”: granted, he and I are separated by huge gulves of income and talent. This is of course irrelevant. To say “it’s different when SK writes such stuff” is to say that when he was young, writing his first badly written horror stories, BACK THEN he was clinically insane, but now he makes enough money to be PERFECTLY HEALTHY.)(I hate to write this kind of preemptive strikes; it looks like I’m arguing with myself, agains the wind as it were. But recently every time I’ve though: "watch: some idjimit’s gonna chime in with _____, they end up doing so. So there.)
I wish the guy that pissed on me on the El had pissed on lissener. Imagine the literary carnage!
Dude. That freaked me right the fuck out, even if it was fictional.
Not that nuts. The guy blew one lungful of smoke in his general direction for chrissake! Not quite fodder for the level of rant he produced.
Oh sure. Ted Kaczynski was quite the prolific writer too. :rolleyes:
I’ma take that as a compliment.
Thanks.