Edit: See bottom
The other day I was minding my own business, idly passing through a number of xanga posts looking for an interesting read. Of course, those are tough to come by these days (except for yours. I always enjoy reading yours) so instead I had to settle on And-I-Love's latest diatribe (note: as an exposé, this post is going to be wantonly adversarial, and needlessly critical of this blogger, so I thought I'd make sure to establish an unpleasant tone nice and early.) The author was rambling on about some relatively ridiculous opinion on terrorism. However, being the ever pleasant and always polite xangan that I am, I responded with what I had assumed was a fairly benign and maybe somewhat constructive comment relating to the issues she raised in her post.



Neither harm nor foul there, I thought. Ok, it was bolded, but that was an accident. I wasn't rude, or critical. I simply said that a) terror couldn't possibly "change everything" because it wasn't new, it could only change the way you react/interact with world, and that b) if you let it change you in a negative way, the terrorists are winning. They want America to start acting overtly aggressively. This damages the US economy, destroys international presence and cooperation, and reduces vaunted American ideals to fantasy. These are not particularly controversial thoughts here. I think it's called "taking the high road," and we learned about it in Kindergarten.

Her response was as follows:


Whoa! What the devil, man! I didn't know this blogger well, but I had seen some comments she'd made in the past, and she seemed like a pleasant enough person to me, but now she was "yelling" and swearing at me, and calling me a terrorist sympathizing idiot! At this point I wasn't sure if she was even being serious. So, I responded calmly, and reiterated my main point. I wasn't defending the terrorists. I wasn't saying they were right, or that they should not be punished. Her post outlined a dramatic shift of her own worldview away from pacifism to violent response to terrorism. I was simply suggesting this wasn't the best way to ensure they didn't alter her way of life.



Ok. So at this point she obviously decided that I was the enemy here. I was still a little bemused by the situation, so I assured her I wasn't. I explicitly reassured her of this. Explicitly!

   

However, I'm no coward, and I don't respond well to threats! If she wanted to block me, fine. I was going to point out specifically that I thought that would be silly, and that I wasn't even really disagreeing with her. Basically I repeated to her the points I've made above to you. Think about what the logical goals of the terrorists must be, and how they can achieve them. They want to destroy the American economy. Killing 3,000 civilians doesn't do this. Stopping all economic trading by shutting down the market, stopping international travel by making airplane flights extremely unpleasant, and sinking trillions of American dollars and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers into some morass in the desert with questionable links to the Bin Laden in the first place... that does exactly what they want! By responding to terror by being terrorized, and by completely reversing your position on all the freedoms you are claiming to defend, you've kind of failed to find a legitimate method of combating terrorism in the first place. However, I wasn't supporting terrorists or terrorism. I wasn't claiming Al Qaeda was right, or even suggesting that modern terror is somewhat the fault of American foreign policy that has forced marginalized people to respond to overwhelming force in the only way they can. Those views might be controversial. Those views might cause drama. Which wasn't my goal! Instead, I was simply suggesting what I thought would be the best way to beat those dastardly terrorists! Her response, then, must surely recognize my eminent sensibility?



Ah. Well, apparently no it didn't. By not responding to a rhetorical question in a quagmire of crazy bat guano, I was proving myself a terrorist after all! Holy prattling paranoia, batman! If only I had known. Apparently, I was claiming jihad was a worthy ideal! I wish somebody had told me that sooner. I'd have printed it on a tee-shirt. But no, apparently not telling some random stranger on the internet where I live makes me dodgy. And the enemy of freedom, or something. By this point, I began to suspect that, despite her veneer of respectable mediocrity, And-I-Love was actually crazier than front-wheel-drive  (where's the handling?!) so I thought it was time to end it. Thus, I typed out this response:


...only to find out she had blocked me. Well then.

I suppose there wasn't really much left to say. Therefore, I think I'll now take the opportunity to attack her character for a little while. I know I've used the word a number of times already while describing her, but mediocrity fits her blog to a tee. And-I-Love, or Loonsounds as I believe she was previously called (unless I'm mistaking crazy crap bloggers) seems to have been wildly successful... according to some metric nobody but the xanga team can understand. In the last several months her posts have been featured a dozen times, and met with... resounding silence from the xanga audience, who obviously fail to understand the elusive but powerful allure of lists on cat people. (I'd find you specific numbers and links, but I just can't be arsed to file through crap to find more crap). However, I can tell you that her most recently featured post (on... holding hands...) has received 4957 views, while the featured post directly before her has 11681, and the one after her has 12454.

In fact, the nearly unfathamable qualities of her work have been so difficult to perceive that many have begun to suspect she's sleeping with somebody on the Xanga team. John, perhaps. Which, let's face it, would mean that he's gone both blind and deaf. Either way, this loon clearly needs to be euthanised. And quickly, before she breeds and her mediocrity spreads (there's that word again, but it's the last time, I promise.)

I admit, I had really known next to nothing about this blogger before now. I generally ignored her entries as roundly as anybody else (maybe a bit moreso, for good measure) but from what I've seen in her comments she doesn't appear to be an unpleasant person. Maybe her insanity is the temporary kind. Maybe she just hides it well. Either way, I'd suggest we find somebody with a blind and a call. I'll bring the shotgun, and together we can make sure this fowl writer never hurts anybody. Ever again.

That is all. I await her stinging rebuke, which will no doubt also take the form of a top ten list.

Edit:
I was surprised but happy to see that the two of us remained nestled right next to each other on top blogs for a number of hours. Maybe there's hope for reconciliation after all.

A little while ago a xangan posted something about knowing somebody who lost their battle with cancer. I didn't want to offer anything other than condolences at the time, lest I appear insensitive, but there are issues I want to discuss. Whenever somebody is struck down by an illness, they're always called a fighter. Theirs is a battle, bravely waged, against an almost anthropomorphised disease. I wonder, though, what it means to be a fighter. The term is so prevalent, but I'm not sure why it seems to so positively affect our sensibilities. Does it simply mean to have a positive outlook? Is it just that we see optimism as heroic? Or is it made a virtue out of selfishness by the potentially bereaved? We don't want them to die, so we tell ourselves they are fighting to remain with us. Maybe it's simply part of the human mindset - ours is such a martial existence that claiming to fight something makes us feel less passive, less of a victim. Even if "fighting" doesn't actually do anything to affect the outcome, the perception allows us to pretend we have some control over our own mortality. I'm not sure. The entire thing seems rather disingenuous. What do you think?