Thursday, August 14, 2008

Another County Heard From

Dear Nutty:

Just some observations & points of fact.

The immediate point: There is a difference between your Quaker ancestors & (perhaps) unthinking acceptance of their creed & dogma, & the actual ancestry of Mr. Yglesias. You can always give up on Quakery, but Matt is cursed/stuck w/ his ancestors, & whether or not they "haven't managed to grow out of nap time yet" (And if they're his "ancestors" they probably won't have many more chances to grow out of anything, most of them being dead, & the rise of air conditioning probably making the siesta less common – or is it their fault they weren't the first nation to be able to afford AC?) doesn't really have much to do w/, well, anything, let alone Yglesias's stupid positions.

And while this reporter doesn't keep up w/ the exact ethnic extraction of the entire blog-o-sphere, he's not sure that nachos are from anywhere but Mexico (or Tejas-Mexico) & he doesn't think Matt Y. is of Mexican extraction.

Nutella, you sound awfully angry for a pacifist.

I wish that I weren't a fucking pacifist so I could go knock on your door and do some preemptive warring on the intellectual void that is your little section of the blogosphere.

Isn't the idea not to have thoughts like that in the first case, as opposed to this "Why I oughta – oh wait, I'm a pacifist" approach. Is it cool w/ the Quakers to scream & shout vitriol about people's actual genetic background, as opposed to their stupid beliefs?

Or, give our founder a break & start your own web log where you can let the real (?) NoT out. I was doing that before signing on here, & calling for various rabid weasel's widowed mothers to be assaulted (euphemism) w/ a splintery broomstick, as well as the usual calls for the violent, un-Constitutional overthrow of everything & daring Russia & China to come at me w/ a cyberattack are merely where I get started. It's great therapy, & I must head there now, & not devote further time & effort to this unholy mess.

Yours in the spirit of progressive self-criticism,
I remain, as B/4,

M. "Chas." Bouffant

Elements of Style©: Spell check is your friend. As a person of (only partial, I'm glad to say – self-deprecating humor there, no one else need take umbrage) Italian descent, I am offended to see "wops" all in upper case. And "kikes" w/ a "y?"

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

But M., "WOPS" stands for "With out papers", so isn't capitalizing the letters correct? Or to be pedantic, "WOPs"?

DP said...

I just want to follow up and clarify my recent and previous post on Nut's last post.

First, every single argument you are using against those who are criticizing you is based on the assumption that you know more than them. This is an untenable argument. If you like--although this is an ridiculous offer--I will offer my CV to establish my "credentials" with you, in an effort to find some common ground. And keep in mind, I may indeed be as much of a "Quaker" as you.

Second, taking off from the "angry" observation in the post above, the fundamental problem with your post(s) is a complete lack of compassion. This runs counter to your own claim to be a Quaker, and specifically, to the very foundation of the Quaker stance against war, and for pacifism.

All pacifism--and as you no doubt know, the Quaker religion--is based on compassion.

Your defense that your posts were sarcasm/rhetoric/rants (whatever label you choose to hide behind) betray the fact that, in and of themselves, they lacked any form of compassion.

You don't seem to understand this. How do you reconcile the foundation of compassion in the Quaker stance of pacifism against your posts?

NutellaonToast said...

I'm sorry. This whole drama was funny for a while but it's gotten old.

I will admit now that I only read about two sentences of this post before I stopped. I did that because you immediately started taking my jokes literally.

I DIDN'T FUCKING MEAN IT. If that wasn't clear, well either I am an idiot or you guys are over reacting. I don't fucking care which anymore.

I hate Matt's writing because it's self-absorbed, shallow, and other things. Everything else is just attempts at filling out the paragraphs. aS I've already said, if it sucked, it sucked, but don't start telling me about how I can't relate my and Matt's ancestor's because that wasn't ever my intent.

NutellaonToast said...

oh, checked out the spell check part, cause brad mentioned it in an email. WOP means "without papers" from what I've heard so I assume can be capitalized and I've seen kyke spelled with the y in print I'm almost certain.

I think it's pretty hard to say that there are correct spellings for things that are essentially slang.

Anonymous said...

What you can't seem to realize is that it doesn't matter whether you meant it or not. We don't know whats going on in your head. We only read what you wrote. There wasn't a hint of irony in the whole thing. It read, well, like a typical screed.

DP said...

Further proof of your ignorance:

Wop--is a slur as well as slang--and means:

"Derogatory for "Italian," 1912, Amer.Eng. slang, apparently from southern It. dialect guappo "dandy, dude, stud," a greeting among male Neapolitans, said to be from Sp. guapo "bold, dandy," which is from L. vappa "sour wine," also "worthless fellow;" related to vapidus (see vapid)."

From: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=w&p=10

The OED has a more extensive etymology. The "sour wine" reference seems to derive from an exclusively American usage where it was applied to Italians selling cheap and/or fake wine on the black market during prohibition.

DP said...

And sadly, "Kyke" is a misspelling. Again, reference the OED, or:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kike

and:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=k&p=1

You're still claiming to be "right"--in whatever way you can, now in terms of spelling. And you're still failing. You seem to truly not get this.

Adam Eli Clem said...

Hi Folks,

I'm outta here. If anyone's looking for me, I'll be on Facebook, adding squid species to my killer "Gift Squid" app. Screw you guys.

Clem

NutellaonToast said...

holy shit. fine, I misspelled kike. I'm fairly certain I have seen it in print as "kyke" but I really don't care that much.

Plenty of people have told me that WOP means without papers. Rick says so in the first fucking post. While I agree it seems likely to be apocryphal, it is nonetheless what I base my spelling of the word on. If that's wrong, fine as well.

Rick, I don't buy it. Unless that was the first post you've ever read by me, you'd have to know the racist parts were a joke. The "we" you speak of isn't everyone. Plenty realized that, though it was a shitty post, it wasn't racist.

I get it. It failed. I've admitted that.

Now be a bunch of big boys and admit you over reacted a tiny bit, and were rather foolish to take it at face value, then get on with your lives.

God, I can't believe I'm still posting about this shit.

DP said...

"Now be a bunch of big boys and admit you over reacted a tiny bit, and were rather foolish to take it at face value, then get on with your lives."

Do you really think I give a rat's ass about your uneducated, idiotic screeds? Do you think I care about someone who is incapable of seeing their own mistakes? Someone who fundamentally has no clue?

I'm going to harp on this until you're off this blog--BECAUSE YOU MAKE THIS BLOG WORSE. Don't you get it?

And by the way, Nut, re-read all my posts. That's rhetoric and irony.

DP said...

Just kidding! I'm just not going to bother reading anymore. There's a serious lack of good judgment going on around here.
Good luck in your endeavors, and to Brad--since I feel certain kinship, as a philo prof--I'd love to see you start your own blog, unfettered from this nonsense.