Trolling Free Republic with Rational, Reasoned Responses

If you haven’t heard of or visited the Republican circle-jerk that is freerepublic.com, you’re missing out on some of the most entertaining American lunacy you’re likely to ever see. They have it all: from threads praising Glenn Beck as a modern American Hero, to threads bashing the media for accurately portraying things that aren’t even on most people’s radar. When I say “hysteria” I mean exactly that.

Not long ago, a question occurred to me: given the deep-seated lunacy there, what sort of tact would a person have to take to effectively troll their forums? I hypothesized that normal trolling wouldn’t work, since the craziest seeds you could plant would blend in perfectly with the native flora. So, with this in mind, I created an account on the site just to test the waters.

I logged in and posted a couple of brief, rational (if obviously non-crazy) comments on a few different threads. Within the hour, I had been shouted down and banned from posting. Test one: successful.

Sadly, I didn’t think to document my endeavors. So, using a proxy, I created a second account, and that is where we are now in the course of my experiment. Thus far I have made one comment, which I will post here for posterity. To give a little background, the thread is about the man who was recently arrested for making threats against his local (Republican) representative. It should be noted that he was angry at the Democrats in general and the health care bill in particular. Within three replies, the thread turned into a rallying cry against bias in the media. The comment I posted was this:

“The call came amid reports that a number of Congressional Democrats have gotten threats or had bricks thrown through their office windows following a contentious vote on health care legislation Sunday. It was not known Monday afternoon what allegedly caused Pidrman to make the call.”

Now, don’t hold me to this or accuse me of siding with the media, but I think this is just the reporter’s subtle way of making fun of the guy who did this. It’s not actually bias in the sense that they’re trying to make us look bad; it’s more like they’re letting everyone know that this guy was angry at the Dems, and for some reason known only to him, made threats against a Republican. In short, this is their way of calling him an idiot without actually saying so.

Thus far, I have not received any direct responses to my post, but the day is yet young. Check back in later for more updates.

Oh yeah, I have a blog

Huh. How about that.

Anyway, sorry to have neglected you all for so long. I’ve been busy working on stuff and…mostly just working, actually. Working from home, as a matter of fact. If you want to get into specifics, then I work, still doing technical support, except from the comfort of my own underp-ah, living room.

After catching a surprisingly large windfall from the first tax return I’ve filed in probably 5 years, I bought my first-ever brand-new PC. Nothing fancy, you know. It’s an Acer with a pretty large hard drive and enough RAM to handle my day-to-day multi-tasking activities. Also, it plays video games. And runs all my photo-editing programs and Flash games and music players…often at the same time.

I appreciate this computer, is basically what I’m saying. Windows 7 is, in tech support jargon, “teh shiz.”

Just renewed our lease for our third year in this apartment. Kelly should graduate next Winter, after year of student teaching, then it’s on to her Master’s (I threatened her with physical violence) and then her career in… Huh. I’m not sure what she’ll do. I guess it would be kind of silly for a person with a Master’s degree in Education to teach elementary school, but you never know with Kelly.

Back to the computer: I’ve been working on a lot more of my own projects lately, thanks in large part to my wicked-awesome computer. I have a bit of ye olde ADD that makes concentrating on any one thing very difficult, so being able to have Gimp and Wordpad and Armor Games all loaded into separate windows in the same workspace is beyond helpful. Right now I’m writing this post, watching The Office streaming online and playing Prince of Persia 2.

Legal status: questionable. On my birthday, I went down to my folks’ ranch to ahng out and received a very interesting letter. it was from the City of Port Lavaca, TX, the police department, and within it contained a set of three red-light-camera shots of my Caprice blasting through while speeding. The Caprice I sold over a year ago to my stepfather’s coworker.

I should probably mention here that this same car was tangentially involved in a shooting/possible murder about nine months ago. The aforementioned stepdad’s coworker originally bought the car for his college-age daughter. This daughter had a boyfriend who was into some shady extra-curriculars and somehow ended up shooting someone while out on the town in his girlfriend’s old lady car.

My old lady car.

Anyway, I can either pay the $85 and call it a day (and finally renew my driver’s license) or I can try to put the blame on the real culprit and retain my (seriously) squeaky clean driving record. So there’s that.

I’m trying to work up the nerve to discuss the Olympics, but I really can’t come up with anything other than “FUCK YOU CANADA.” We were kicking some serious on-ice ass and then… yeah. Fuck you guys, eh.

My Tribute to Brittany Murphy

As some of of you may know, I’ve been writing fairly regularly for a site called Gunaxin.com. Well, last night, when I heard the news about Brittany Murphy, I simply had to write up a tribute to her. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure:

A Tribute to Brittany Murphy

Man Up

Shortly after the release of his movie Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood said in an interview that the young men of today comprise a generation of pussies. A generation of men who, without any sort of proper guidance, are pushovers and glad-handers and back-peddlers no better suited to calling themselves men than they are gods or rats.

This got me thinking about a lot of different things, not least of which are my relationships with my father and the grandfathers who have already passed on. That, in turn, brought to mind the all too common question of what defines a man in this enlightened age.

What makes a man? Is it the clothes he wears, or the choices he makes? Is it the relationships he forges in calm weather, or the tatters of his pride left after the storm has passed? Whatever it is, Clint Eastwood, at least, thinks we don’t have enough of it.

So here I sit, Pall Mall Red tucked firmly into the corner of my lips, squinting through blue smoke at the monitor screen that seems far too bright on this cold December morning. My right hand rests easy on the keyboard like sentries on post; the fingers of my diminished left twitch restlessly as if awaiting commands from their leader who is too far behind the line to know what the Christ he’s talking about. I rattle the keys and think of what to say next, and wonder just what exactly a man is supposed to think of himself these days.

We can’t all be war heroes like Walt Kowalski. We can’t all be strong men of few pleasures and many regrets. Some of us are ex-cons or drug addicts or thieves; others are cowards and blowhards whose spent wind could power the whole Mid-West if harnessed. I guess that puts me somewhere in the middle.

What makes a man? It’s not how he holds himself or how he relates to people. It’s not what he thinks of himself on those endless nights when he imagines all the things he could have, should have done. It’s not what he does or doesn’t do in his lifetime.

I’m a writer, it’s something I’ve done for as long as I could string sentences together. I’ve also been a machinist, a construction hand, and a drug dealer. I’ve been a carpenter, a clerk, a lover and a fighter. I’m an artist, a poet, and a liar. At various times throughout my life I’ve been a stupid hero and a smart coward.  Am I a man?

It might interest you to know that I value none of the good things I’ve done any more or less than the bad. Then again, it might not, but if that makes a difference to me, I can’t tell. What I can tell, what I know, is that everything has a value. If we all meet up in front of Christ Himself, and he weighs our deeds against each other, I’m not sure how the balance will tip for me. It’s been too long and too wide a road for me to remember all the pot holes and rest stops. But I’m sure I can account for every debt owed and kindness paid, and that’s something.

One of my uncles recently confessed to me that the family always assumed two definite outcomes for my life. I’d either end up a master criminal, or achieve greatness in some unnamed but more virtuous pursuit. Honestly, I don’t know if either of those things are accurate. I’m no master criminal and so help me I can’t think of a single purely virtuous thing I’ve done all goddamn year.

What makes a man? I guess it’s a matter of how the balance tips when you’re done playing. When the full weight of your iniquities and good deeds are brought to bear, when your chips are cashed in and you’re no longer there to claim the winnings yourself, that’s when it’s finally decided. Maybe by God, maybe by your fellow men, but rest assured it will be decided.

I am both alive AND well…also I wrote a thing

Yes, it’s true: I am alive. Also, I wrote this.  Digg that shit if you dig it, you dig?*

 

*It should be noted that I do actually get paid to be funny. This blog doesn’t pay me shit.

A moment’s reflection

There is nothing–in this world or the next–emptier than the air following the final strains of Albinoni’s Adagio In Sol Minore.

These are the things I think about

I’m sitting here by myself debating which is the better version of Ave Maria. I’ve got it narrowed down to 2 contenders, neither of whom are Maria Callas. Apologies to my gay readers.

The first is the modern rendition by Christina England Hale, the one used for the Hitman movie.

The second is this rendition, in German, by Barbara Bonney.

I can’t decide and damn it it is bugging me something awful. These are the things I think about when I’m alone.

Steak and Eggs

If there is any better meal 0n this planet better than steak and eggs, I have yet to taste it. Some men eat ham steaks with their overeasies; some even mix it up with a little sirloin. I don’t mean some IHOP why-yes-it-IS-beef-sir sirloins. I mean the real damn thing where you can feel free to sop up all that delicious yolk without being afraid of the E. Coli trots ruining your slacks later on. That’s a man’s meal. A man eats a meal like that with any regularity and he is ready to lay bricks with his peter.

Being fresh out of steak I opted for just fried eggs, which helped to cut some of the gloom off of this fine September day. September is my least favorite month, so it’s no wonder I get the Funk around this time of year. There aren’t enough fried eggs in the world to fully revive me though, so I’m going to sign off here and go take a damn nap.

3 PM

Okay you jerks this is the day. I don’t know the first thing about casting people other than what I’ve seen on the internet, and that mostly involves tricking Russian girls into blowing you on camera.  There are several reasons why I believe that is not the case for today.

There are really only two roles of importance, and one has been filled by some dude I don’t know. His role is that of the basic American wiener. There is a twist at the end that I don’t much care for, but mostly he’s just a dude who has trouble getting by in life and at one point he falls on a beer bottle with his face.

So in about thirty minutes I’m going to go help decide which bitchy brunette girl fits the other role the best. Sitting in the audience all judging some girl when I can’t even remember most of the dialogue, saying things like “her innate caring nature is too obvious for her to play this role convincingly” and keeping a straight face. Maybe I should go find some Adderall so I can muster some interest. Can’t even sit up straight. Damn man but this is very lame.

Man is it ever time to stop fucking around

Many of you may have noticed this blog has been more or less abandoned in recent months. This is incorrect. I have almost a hundred unposted drafts on this blog that only I can see, and that most anyone couldn’t make any damn sense out of, including myself. One of them just says NET NEUTRALITY FUCKED YOUR AUNT SELMA like fifty times. It doesn’t even have a title other than a bunch of swears hacked up and stuck together end to end to make some sort of unholy portmanteaux that may very well be illegal here in Texas.

There is no viable excuse for me not updating this mother, other than I’ve been in a full-on Bad Funk for going on three straight months. Can’t write, can’t draw, been picking at the guitar like I’ve never seen one and am angry at its appearance. Smoking bad hash like I’m training for a decathlon wherein one of the events is who can cough up the weirdest looking thing.

The girlfriend doesn’t get the whole depression gig, which is probably the best possible way to be. I explained it in my usual scientific way like “it’s when you can’t make yourself do anything and everything sucks”. She seemed satisfied by that answer.

Somehow I managed to write a short screenplay which is being made into a real film to be shown at SXSW, which is like the Warped tour except for people who pay for their own iPhone data plan. 3pm tomorrow I have to go sit in an empty auditorium and watch people try to say lines that I wrote without fucking up too much.

Actually, I didn’t even really write the script. My buddy The Captain showed it to me over the summer while we were watching Watchmen and asked if there was anything I could do to help it. There wasn’t. I ended up rewriting what some college-educated ponce had written down like he had a bet going with a friend about who could make the lamest gay jokes. If he lost that bet, man I don’t ever want to see the winner.

So now I have to go add my .5 cents on the female lead in the picture. All I know is she has to be brunette and a total is-she-gonna-blow-me-or-stab-me-type bitch. If you know anybody like that and can describe that sentence to her without being stabbed, send her our way. Texas State Theatre Auditorium at 3pm. I’ll be the sad dude who smells like bad hash.