How come I’m the only one that noticed the typo in Skip’s *Nod *Warning? If I didn’t know better, I might surmise that he was surreptitiously encouraging that which he is prohibiting.
Just sayin’.
To be fair, he had it on a finger. A finger which was cut from his dead hand after his body was killed by Elendil and Gil-Galad. You don’t really think it’s necessary to wear a ring on a chain if it’s on your finger, yanno?
Enjoy,
Steven
I noticed it, but Right Finger, Wrong Key is a pretty common typographical error, and I wasn’t bothered by it.
Enhoy,
Steven
I’m sorry, but I just can’t let that coffee thing slide and I can’t believe no one’s called you out on it yet! PLEASE tell me what decaf brands come even close to the real thing! I’m no coffee expert, but I’ve heard people get laughed at for suggesting such a thing. Oh, and if it’s a whoosh, pardon me. I can be pretty obtuse about stuff like that sometimes. Oh, and, Thank You! 
Oh SNAP! My shameful secret revealed. I don’t drink coffee. I’m a tea guy, and not just any tea, herbal tea.
flees the thread weeping
Enjoy, you heartless harpy!
Steven
Have you tried the caffeine-free Hairy Nutsack Roast, by Buckeye Brewers? I hear it’s delicious.
Oh yes, you’ll lick the sack it came from.
Enjoy,
Steven
That would be a neat counterbalance to my litotes being taken as encouragement rather than irony.
No, I meant that it wasn’t funny and came across as mocking. Some people (MOST people) believe in apologies.
You forgot the third group: everyone you come into contact with in your daily life. the woman’s foot you accidently step on as you move through a crowd; the man whom you knock into trying to get off the bus. The waiter who bends over your table as you rise to leave the table and you bump your head on her chest. The small child you teased and meant to laugh, but who got upset and cried. Your boss who was counting on you to bring X to the meeting or job site and you forgot. The loved one whose feelings you hurt and calls you on it…
These are just examples that happen every day to most people; they all require an apology. But you don’t have to apologize, even though you know the reasons for doing so and can articulate them clearly.
I am fascinated by group 2–the people who you say know that you think they’re magic words (and so they are, but not in the sense you mean) and that you think the ritual is a game. Does it really make them feel better, knowing your apology is empty? I don’t see you as limited or damaged or suffering some kind of deficit. I see this as arrogance and an excuse to behave badly to others. Your insight belies your limitations.
Well, there is this, at least. The problem comes when people/strangers are inadvertently hurt by your actions or words–that’s what apologies are for. I am not looking for a (useless and meaningless) apology from you for anything. My attention and disapprobation were caught by your calm declaration that since you have personal hangups about saying words that the world recognizes as atonement, you don’t feel it necessary to practice this quaint custom. You’re special. Duly noted. I’m moving on.
This is NOT the advice I wanted.
We’ve already discussed buckeyes and nutsacks. I am a vegan and will not accept any answer that has meat (“eye”, “nutsacks”) in it. I want better caffeine-free options.
You go out and some better research to find more options for me
C’mon…
:: snaps fingers, taps foot impatiently, looks at watch ::
Hop to it.
Now.
Opal may have her dismissive moments, but her behavior pales in comparison to other posters in this thread.
Oh, and buckeyes are delicious but I’ve never put graham crackers in them.
Lick my hairy nutsack you crazy ass bitch. If you’re going to make moral judgments from your ivory cuntrocketship, buck up and say who you’re talking about. Otherwise you sound like some type of Victorian duchess who accidentally walked into a mud-wrestling match and has no eye-deer what she’s talking about.
Oh, look, Lisa, there’s one of them now.
Hey, I like caffeine as much as the next guy, but I *will *say that coffee decaffeinated by way of the Swiss water process tastes remarkably closer to the non-adulterated version than chemically decaffeinated coffee. You might not even notice the difference.
Oh yeah?! Well, the jerk store called…
I had a bit of a run in with Opal once in a thread in which she was asking about fee-free prepaid money cards for children. I, too, thought she was being rude and dismissive to people who were only trying to help, and I made a snide remark at the end of the post I made on the subject.
It turned out that she had specific reasons for responding as she did, though as she acknowledged to me she hadn’t considered some of the ramifications (i.e, she was annoyed that people kept suggesting she send cash instead, when she said several times that she had already ruled out sending cash. She acknowledged that it hadn’t occurred to her that perhaps they hadn’t read the thread but were just popping in to offer advice based on the OP only.)
She also stated that she had just finished four finals plus a lengthy paper she had to turn in and had had only three hours of sleep in the last seventy hours or so.
These comments of hers changed my view of her more than a little. She seems to me to be a woman with a great deal on her plate in the way of life’s difficulties and yet she is working hard to overcome them. She probably feels overwhelmed much of the time and she probably just doesn’t have the time, patience or perspective on these things to respond in the polite way most of us would expect.
And then there is the fact that she is an artist. She truly is. (As the painting of her with the razor blades in her hair illustrates.) This is not a woman who aspires to discover art, or who aspires merely to gain skill in painting. Art truly comes from within. And it is from within that her art flows and she is learning how to paint in order to give that art its expression.
However, we all know that artists can be temperamental. They just don’t see the world in the conventional way that most of us do, and so they can seem scornful or dismissive of what most of the rest of us think because it’s so foreign to their own way of thinking. (Take a look at how most of the posters to this board respond to the thinking of conservatives and you’ll see how easy it is to be scornful and dismissive of thinking you don’t agree with or understand.)
So all in all, I’ve come to admire OpalCat. I’d prefer that she were more polite (and I can see times when she does seem to make the effort, though it’s clear she either doesn’t really understand how or her heart isn’t really in it) but I’m inclined to cut her some slack now when she isn’t.
I hadn’t realized prior to this thread that this type of behavior from her had gone on for so long and that so many people had become so deeply offended by it. It’s apparent that this thread is sort of a gigantic, cumulative payback for her past posting history rather than for what she actually did say in the thread that inspired this one, which I thought was really not all that offensive. A tad unappreciative, perhaps, but still not all that bad.
So in closing, I think that OpalCat is being subjected to a lot of retribution here that in the minds of most seems long overdue, but I did want to point out that things can sometimes be different than they appear, and that perhaps OpalCat isn’t quite the villain that so many people around here think she is.
$20 to anyone who goes to the necklace thread and suggests this. (Just kidding Skippy)
Seriously though, do many people actually hate her? I haven’t been reading this thread very seriously, but the tone I get is of annoyance and mockery, not loathing and bitter judgment. I have seen a post here and there that totally slams her, but most people seem to be just enjoying the fun while simultaneously teasing about her somewhat rude behavior. It’s nice of you to point out what you did SA, but I don’t think things have reached that level of meanness.
Starving Artist, the thing is, artists and busy people don’t get a pass from the mores of nice society. She can have all the reasons she likes for being impolite if she’s willing to deal with the ramifications of that kind of behavior, which includes being ridiculed. If she doesn’t want to be insulted, she should learn to at least fake polite responses when she asks for advice and receives it from well-meaning respondents.
On preview: Autolycus, I think the word you might be looking for to describe the tone here is “exasperation”.
So the fuck what? Being an artist (or even an artiste) does not mean you’re not supposed act like other humans. Having additional talents doesn’t diminish your humaness, it should rather enhance them. So sayeth the daughter of two artists.