First, I'll show the reason why I blocked your PM's.  This is what you PM'd to me before I blocked you:

I had said: "About your claim that civvie dating is cheaper: does that count the risks? ..[examples of risks given]."

Your answer:

"holy shit!
now i'll never date again!
thanks a whole lot!"

This followed within minutes of a post in which you said:

"If you are mistreated, you should take it up with the person who mistreated you.

"At this point, it is your bitterness poisoning the well.

"And if you were my brother you would have gotten a little more!"

What you have here is a laundry list of insults.  (The curious can refer to the link.) Maybe you were leading up to something intelligent, but I think you were just taking random shots.  I wish you had elaborated on the second point in your post, which was at least promising, but the trend was neither that nor interesting.

No, I wasn't shrinking away from your commanding intelligence. It was more like disappointment and annoyance, because after my criticism, your tone went from intellectual lecturer to schoolyard gangbanger in three seconds flat.  

Now, my criticism was harsh, but it was honest, and with your identity hidden under your handle, I thought you'd keep your composure and say something interesting.  Instead, it seemed to knock you off your hinges.  You looked to be frantically grasping for ammunition, and firing without aiming, looking for anything in my posts you could hurt me with.  

Criticism I can take.  I might mind if you insult me, but I'll only read them if they're interesting and relevant.  Yours were neither.  It was a lot like being called a fag in high school after spending the evening before jacking off to Playboy.  

The difference is I couldn't block their PM's.  



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-- Modified on 7/8/2005 8:53:00 AM

-- Modified on 7/8/2005 8:58:08 AM

Our feelings on each other's writing seem to be mutual, strangely enough.  I am willing to say we have different very different thought processes, because I also have the worst problems understanding your posts sometimes.

Let's take the first paragraph of this post.  The first rule of writing is be clear, not obscure.  How am I supposed to know from your previous posts that you were referring to "Reports from the Field?" I had no reason to see that as an example of what you meant.  I've never seen them as reviews.  However, I have heard that at least one of them was removed for being promotional for a provider.  

Moreover, you end that paragraph with: "It's all about a non-flame being branded a flame, and therefore irrelevant.  Stay in school."  

What??  

Now, turning to my self-criticism about my writing.  I don't edit my own writing well.  Sometimes I leave words in the text from an incomplete edit, and this could destroy whole sentences and even whole posts.  I've become careless about coma splices and some punctiation.  I'll have to clean that all up because I'm turning pro.

BTW, as I am now in school again, my professors have a better regard for my writing, with all its flaws.  My essays, which I work on for all of 25 minutes, are earning A's.

-- Modified on 7/8/2005 12:53:02 PM

I'll presume that you must be honest about the claim, because it fits just too well.  This is unexpected.

Now I know why your sexual experiences are so much different than mine, and how you could talk a woman into trusting you again 45 minutes after humiliating  her.  It all makes sense.  

It also explains the eccentric egotism you've shown, mixed in with some intelligence.  It might even go a long way in explaining why your thought processes and mine are so different.  

It really does explain the basis for much of what you've written, and use of some trendy psychological terms, and how you use them to judge the hobby.  

And I'm wondering whether I owe you an apology now, 40-watt, for my initial insult to you, because really, it changes the picture I had of you and inferences I made.  But right now, I just know the picture is changed, I just don't know how much and whether "poisoning the well" would still apply, because we really are in different niches.  Or whether I could feel that so personally.  I'll sleep on it.

40-Watt, I can find for you posts where I said I was wrong, I admitted I was wrong, and I apologized.  But I don't believe you'll feel any differently about me if I cite these, because I don't think "always being right" accurately describes your criticism of me.  

I think you're talking about the tone I take, and the fact that I frequently don't take anyting unquestioned coming from political, religious, or social authority.  I will frequently even question scientific authorities-- and no, I don't have credentials.  

However, no matter how mistaken I may be, I believe this questioning is what individual and intellectual responsibility entails.  This doesn't imply that I'm always right since no animal can be.  I try to correct mistakes, but I will always make them, and someday I will probably make a catastrophic mistake that will kill me.  (Just as long as my last words aren't: "Watch this!" or "Go ahead and shoot you chicken son of a bitch!") But I run the same risk in trusting questionable authorities, except they don't have as much at stake when their errors harm somebody else.

As for the tone I take: it owes a lot to reading Nietszche, "Will to Power" and his other writings.  Frequently, he says some very absurd, shocking things, but even when he's wrong, by end of proving him wrong, you really know you've thought about it.  Therefore, you're more ready to think the next time.        

Finally, you make the contention that I don't really answer threads but just use them as an excuse to proffer some pre-existing ideas.  My thoughts on subjects are frequently quite different from other people's.  What do you want me to do?  Shut up?  Censor them?  In a discussion group, we should be doing just the opposite.  Why make the exception for me?