Wednesday, February 06, 2008

POISONED PENS

There are three types of internet poison-penmen.

Type one: hamfingers: types fast and furious, simply says what comes into his pretty little head, never ever checks his own spelling, grammar, or style.
Rantths angluriy like hthis!!!!

Type two: serious, and seriously wrong: attentive to spelling, has a semi-decent vocabulary and takes a more serious calm tone, but usually has one or two big boneheaded errors in usage, very ideological, and has no sense of humour. May not know the correct meanings of his own favourite words.
Sometimes tends to blame Jews, Masons, or the Irish.
ofTEN stumbles over CAps.

Type three: we all know and love type three. Type three is stupid, foul-mouthed, and repetitive. Let me repeat: Stupid, foul-mouthed, and REPETITITIVE!
Has a simple vocabulary, and can't read. The usefulness of type three is this: even the most beautiful garden needs fertilizer.
No visual example possible without offending.

One of these days I shall create an entire multi-part conversation between the three types.
I haven't decided yet whether it will be a love fest or develop into furious hatred of each other after the initial joy of agreement.



Over ten years ago I would occasionally cruise into the Afghan Political Discussion Web Forum, signing on as Seif El Hijaz or Sheikh Humza. The glory of the forum was that it was in English, but most of its members thought in Pushtoon, Dari, Turkic, Urdu, Baluchi, or Arabic. And they passionately, venomously, intensely (and with great zest) hated or despised something or someone, whose substitute or representative had only just posted on the forum. It was utter heaven.
Afghans can be such delicious bitches.

One member was located in Germany, spoke no English whatsoever, and obviously used a language-translation program to read the posts. Then he would furiously type a long-winded venomous response in atrocious Baluchi or Pushtoon-infected German, send it through the translation program, and post the result on the forum.
Sheer poetry, the memory of which still brings tears to my eyes.

1 comment:

Spiros said...

A prime example of seeing what you want to see: at first blush I thought you wrote "Hamfighters", and I was all agog, because for years I have been intrigued by the name of a Japanese Baseball team, the Nippon Ham Fighters, and thought you might be sharing some insight as to what a "Hamfighter" is, exactly. Quel damage!

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