Some relevant viewing: start at the bottom and work your way up.
“It’s FINISHED, and that’s all you need to know.”
Well Dio, it looks like you’ve got some ambitious little upstart trying to steal your thunder.
I seriously don’t get what you and Elenfair are trying to accomplish.
Diogenes might be an egotistical dickwad. Fine. But that doesn’t excuse the continual misrepresentations of his (possibly ridiculous) position from you and Elenfair. His original claim was that he could “piss a better script” than the average Til Death episode. As an award-winning writer, you must be at least passingly familiar with hyperbole. So you no doubt realize that he is not, in fact, capable of writing the script with his urine, which naturally limits his claim to being able to write better than the “absolute deck” on teevee, as you so exquisitely phrased it.
But guess what? That “absolute dreck” that you’re mentioning is still professional quality absolute dreck. Somebody got paid for that shit, and all that Dio was originally claiming was that he was capable of putting out a product superior to that dreck. That he was making that claim in one of the most belligerently abrasive ways possible does not change the nature of the claim. He can do better than crap like Til Death. That’s it. That’s all he was saying.
Right. “We all know” that he meant something else. I don’t really care where you got your literary prize(s), but I have to insist that I see your graduation certificate from your local Psychics-R-Us campus. That Dio has managed to convey secret meanings entirely contrary to the words on his screen is truly a miraculous event, and we should document it here and now so that you may win Randi’s prize.
In case you missed it, Thunder, here is Diogenes’s admission that his early complaints about the reasonableness of the writers’ strike were unfounded. I’m tempted to make a crack here about a professional writer’s apparent inability to read, but that was a long thread, and his post would’ve been easy enough to miss.
Now normally, I wouldn’t want to take the side of the egotistical dickwad over the professionals, but in this case, I simply don’t have any choice. Cervaise has already noted that what Dio has set out to accomplish for himself is roughly 20% of a professional TV writer’s job. What he’s about to achieve is, in practical terms, practically nothing.
And yet you are still sniping at him for things he never claimed, or claims that he has already retracted. I just. Do not. Get it.
And Elenfair’s little contributions have been even worse.
As soon as she looks back to his original words and figures out that the claims she attributed to him were not, in fact, the claims that he actually made, she makes no retractions. A sarcastic quip of “nice” is registered, then she blithely forgets that her previous characterizations were completely false. Probably not lies, as Dio claimed. In my opinion, they were more likely the result of lazy misremembering rather than outright malice. But that does not, to my mind, excuse the behavior.
So now I get to the part where I have to ask: What the fuck?
You guys are pros. Real writers doing real work. There are countless talentless wannabes out there who would give at least one good gonad to join your lofty ranks. And one internet asshole makes the claim to be able to write better than the worst of what’s on my fantastic far-seeing screen, and you all are so offended or whatever that you can’t even realize what he’s actually arguing? Why?
You made it. Congratulations. Leave the internet assholes to their empty, vapid dreams and pat yourself on the back once again for having the fortitude, determination, and talent (and maybe luck, too) to have accomplished something that the vast majority of people (the rest of us losers) will never accomplish.
Don’t waste your time on an internet asshole, or if you must, don’t argue so stupidly that the asshole turns out to be right.
I mean, c’mon already! Show some intelligence and some damn spine.
The argument was not over his statement that he could produce a better script than absolute crap. The argument was, initially, over the concept of residuals, what writers are worth to the industry and over what writers are entitled to as far as compensation is concerned.
As for seeing the arguments through… Consider it the foolishness of youth, combined with a tense situation (the strike) and trying to figure out how in hell I’m going to make ends meet if this extends into 2008. But not to worry, I’m not sitting on my ass all day – I actually have other non-writing contracts, and strike-related duties to accomplish…
Lesson learned though. I’ve bowed out. Stuff to do. Things to see.
Well, there you go. With the lack of snow in Minnesota lately and global warming, his timetable is basically…never.
Do you think you could link it? Not that I doubt you, but it would be interesting to see.
Anyway, if the jokes in a comedy show are mostly re-treads, I imagine it would probably be a good deal easier to write.
You act as though being a psychic is the only way that somebody’s meaning can be inferred. That’s pure nonsense, and any rational person knows it.
Which still doesn’t justify this nonsensical claim that he only promised to write something that was better than “absolute dreck.” Did he later change his position? Sure… but if Dio claims that he only promised something that wasn’t complete garbage, then he’s not being honest with himself or with us.
Here’s the first one I found on Google
http://metaversed.com/16-aug-2007/second-rant-4-everyone-second-life-loser
I’m sure going further down a search on “second life losers game” would net a bunch more.
I haven’t been keeping particularly close track of this, but when is Diogenes supposed to actually deliver his script?
I gave myself two weeks. That would make thursday my “deadline,” but sometime over the weekend might be more realistic.
So when writers for SNL aren’t finished by deadline do they get a few more days?
Writers for SNL get paid. I have a lot to do over the next couple of days. Making this stupid point is not more important than Thanksgiving with my family. It’ll be done when I feel like it and not a moment later.
I was just teasing you a little. Looking back, I probably should not have said it. My post looks stupider to me now than it did at first. I have not really been following this whole fiasco and should have stayed out of it. Sorry Dio. 
No problem. Sorry I was so defensive.
I just want a cameo. Give me lupus or give me the clap, just make it somehow involve frottage and chili peppers.
It’s never lupus.
Which, incidentally, is the lesson House learns in the episode.</spoilers>
Death by genital blistering?
Dammit, now I’ll get screwed out of my residuals. What’s worse, my balls feel like a pair of maracas.
We should have known because they never diagnosed it.
Anyway, I think the lupus meme is overplayed on the Internet. It’s “autoimmune” that they diagnose every single episode. I don’t even know if that’s a real thing.