Re: damn...

[Alan McKendree <amck@thenetdr.com>]

At 9:53 -0800 11/15/1998, The Who Mailing List Digest wrote:
>Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 01:33:54 -0500
>From: Brian <bmcgow01@wild.vill.edu>

The hapless McGoo writes:

>I seem to have annoyed several of you to a considerable degree.  I
>assure you that this was unintentional.

But certainly predictable, even to yourself should you have paused to
consider it.  You may recall your earlier response to my question:

>> I DO wonder, though, why you [decided to attempt to dethrone the mighty
>> Townshend] on a Who list.  As
>> opposed to, say, praising Dickinson and smearing Townshend on a Dickinson
>> list.
>>
>Conformity is no fun.

You're welcome to your choice of venues to pursue your projects but I fail
to see how you can honestly be surprised at the result.  If you're really
interested in comparing Dickinson to Townshend you'll do better to seek a
list chartered for general literary and arts discussions.  Picking any
special-interest list and proceeding to denigrate the focus of the list is
certainly non-conformist, but being surprised when you are opposed
vigourously is about the same as being surprised when you stick a fork in
an electric socket and have an unpleasant experience.

>if you are
>one of the people who want to have me burned at the stake (there are at
>last count, six of you),

I concur with the honorable Mr. Bupsingh that you are overreacting a weensy
bit here.

>Sure I have an absurd amount of education,

And now you're insulting all those on the list with as much, or more,
education than you, who may feel that their degrees are NOT absurd.  Are
there no depths to which you will not sink, sir?  HAVE YOU NO SHAME?  AT
LONG LAST, HAVE YOU NO SHAME??  <humor>.  <BTW, 5 points to any historian
in the group who can name the famous person who said those capitalized
words, or the person to whom they were addressed>

>but I don't flaunt
>this.  I mentioned my degrees ONCE.

You may call it mentioning, I'd say you flaunted it once, at me in fact,
and in a pretty snippy manner to boot:

>>I did NOT spend six years in graduate school to have it all dismissed in one
>>sentence by you.  For your information, I EARNED my Ph. D. three years ago,
>>hence the reason I said I HAVE a Ph. D.  Don't forget what those tenses
>>mean.

To paraphrase one of your favorite authors (and mine), it looks to me like
you're getting what you asked for on this point, and getting it good and
hard.

>You are
>the people who refuse to listen to new ideas, to accept that there is
>something greater than The Who

I know a number of people on this list who after YEARS of listening to new
ideas have come to the studied conclusion that The Who produced great
music.  Using myself as an example, I am UNinterested in arguments trying
to prove to me that any artist is better than Pete.  From Jimi Hendrix to
Walt Whitman, there are other artists who are great in their own way, and I
appreciate them on their own merits, but it's a waste of time trying to
prove that any great artist is "better" than any other.  Having an open
mind does not mean that I must credit any proposal that comes along as
vaild until I prove it isn't, nor that I must judge it without reference to
any previous experience or knowledge.

> and you are the ones who viciously
>attacked me because you didn't like what I was saying.

Only because you, in your search for fun through non-conformity, bent over
with a big ol' KICK ME sign taped to your butt.

  It is people
>like you who sent Galileo to prison.  It is people like you who killed
>Socrates, Copernicus and Christ.

No, it's people like me who whap town jesters with pig's bladders.

>I couldn't spell in kindergarten and I still
>can't spell.

I couldn't either when I was in kindergarten, but I got better.  Because I
wanted to.  I find it hard to believe you didn't/don't want to, but de
gustibus non disputandum.

>I don't use my P. hD. as a serious excuse for this ( I was
>being humorous), but rather I use it as a comical reason.

I am sorry if I bore down on this too hard.  I guess your sense of humor
and mine didn't meet on this, imagine that, we're so much alike in other
ways...:-)  (BTW, a :-) would have identified your humorous intent clearly.)

>I figured that you would be mature enough to debate a
>mature topic, but I guess poetry is still to "girlie" for most of you.

Woa, ball coming in from left field...

>when it comes to the arts (literature, music etc.) I seem to
>know far more than most of you.

Maybe that's because most of the listers are keeping their posts ON TOPIC,
rather than posting essays displaying their particular OTHER fields of
knowledge.

I'm probably the only one here who can
>explain to you what the hell "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
>(arguably the greatest American poem) is about.

I think that's great.  I'm probably the only one here who can explain how
to most efficiently arrange the materials on my desktop, but either topic
is irrelevant on this list.

Seriously, given your opinions I can't help but think you'd be a lot
happier discussing ED & PT's virtues on some list chartered for comparative
essays on various artists.

Alan
Be sure to read _McKendree: A Burning Novel of Murder and Revenge_
by Douglas Hirt, ISBN 0-8439-4184-7  (available at www.amazon.com)