MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
13 July 2005
is thomcatspike ok? what's up? he disappeared. i'm worried.
pssssstttttttt: item, Big D is just missing a coastal port to make the place more on track to cities that follow it in size.
You may be surprise the Arts it has now; and pitching a no hitter on anything seems priceless.
posted by thomcatspike at 6:39 PM CST on June 23 [!]
maybe all the interrobangers drove him away
maybe he's on holiday
i didn't follow his posting really but it's sad if they finally ran him off
i understand where you're coming from, interro, but once they run off all the obviously different, what next
and that makes perfect sense to me
so i guess i should leave too
bye
Amberglow, have you emailed him? And as long as we're talking about missing users, I wanted to mail sidhedevil (who's been missing since January, I think), but she doesn't have an email listed. Does anybody know anything there?
Anyway, yes - I hope thomcatspike is just on holiday. Ethylene, if I remember correctly, you are our zombie bunny army island cult leader, and thus we can't really spare you.
Where's the fun in a world where everyone's writing is immediately obvious? Is there no room for poetry, intentional or otherwise? And if ethylene leaves, who am I going to have a (internet-only, completely-platonic, sorry,I'm-otherwise-engaged-but-I-sure-do-dig-the-way-you-write) crush on?
Not that the rest of y'all aren't crush-worthy, but, y'know...
aww
that was not a ploy or affection
i just really needed to sleep
and that was attack cat trainer/beloved spiritual leader
anyone who noticed, that was the end of a very productive but loongggg day
my real problem was with the h word and i really didn't want to go into the difference between hate and boy, that guy bugs me.
here's the response i didn't want to give that you don't wanna read:
i've seen some callousness and cruelty over at meefy but the one thing i found most indefensible was an attack in metatalk that really killed something about it for me, that showed signs of how poisoned the well was.
i refer once again to EB who i happen to like when i am in the mood or have the time to read his responses. In that instance, i can pretty much guarantee a thought out and often balanced chunk of text. But when i'm not in that instance, he is very easy to skip until or if i am.
in a way he's like loquacious here. so far he's said some things i find amusing or interesting, but i'm not always in a place to appreciate him, and so i don't always read his big chunks of text.
no harm, no foul. just then and there.
hell, i'm not even sure it was EB, but i've been accused of being him or thomcat or half of everyone by any doofus who felt the need to think i couldn't be me. or make a really lame joke.
what i saw was someone i'd never seen make a long and in depth post about how she was "different" but ostensibly "better" than he because of an assembled list of things that had fuck all to do posting or what they had brought to the board. it was a hit and run personal attack because that person felt they were allowed, and that was pointless bullshit.
miguel was driven off the board. a lot of people have either gotten fed up with the grosser aspects of this type of personal attack or, before, the factors that lead to such things, people who use to be lots of fun to see act or interact with.
i know roughly of all in the handful of people who emailed matt to question me/have me banned because they had no idea who the fuck i was or made up their mind in two seconds i was not enough to their taste to take up their space, and that's no different than someone new deciding they don't like someone and these are the reasons i win!
i hate on occasion, sometimes with capricious whimsy, but that is more misplaced rage or fleeting but profound irritation. Real hate is something that shouldn't be bandied about like so much excess verbiage, and here you are questioning his word choices without understanding them or taking care your own.
i have nothing personal against you, interro, in any real sense. i meant no slight to freckle for posting my comment on her thread. you will find things to fear and offense where you like but i'm actually pretty clear and take care to say what i mean, whether you find it amusing or ever bother to divine what that is.
i don't know why you people don't think your growing piles of artless spite don't have a cumulative effect the same way you may blow your benefits into grandiose proportion.
i don't plan to be all hugs or nicey nicey all the time or constantly apologizing. there are all kinds of things i don't say i could, more than i do, far darker and deadlier than i do. and no one should use me as a role model or template or example because if you thought you could, you really don't know what i'm on about. that much is clear. and your imitations fall very short and clumsily to the floor way way down.
but Your Mileage May Vary and i don't Laugh Out Loud at much. and when i do i sure as hell won't be all lol about it. but i'm not gonna judge you if you do.
i hate things, and circumstances, and i'm not saying i'm constantly making the most anal efforts to moderate and tune what i type here
but hate?
hate is a word that has no strength until you have experienced it, like how happy is relative to sad. people may be very happy without ever being very sad, but people who have been very sad can at least recognize the distance between those two points.
(Like I said, though, I get a kick out of thomcat. Where's clavdivs, anyway? He kinda disappeared. He's about the only entertaining Republican on MeFi
;-) I mean, entertaining as in entertaining, not entertaining as in fun to watch like PP when he blows a gasket over us evil lib'ruls.)
He was? I always assumed that his absense was due to him being busy writing a big fat book or something. I must have missed the memo - did he say he left?
Who else has announced that they've taken their ball and gone home? Lots of regulars I haven't seen in a while, but I kinda thought they were just busy.Once I didn't post for a year [and nobody missed me, hehe!] But now that y'all mention it....where is everyone?
Did troutfishing quit too? He was pretty cool, taking his username from a Richard Brautigan novel. Of course, I think he called one of my MeFi posts pretentious or something. Whatever.
I hope they're all doing well, these prodigal MeFites...
He was? I always assumed that his absense was due to...
Yeah, I don't think he was driven off. He disappeared, some people called him back, he showed up again here and there... There was no messy break-up to the relationship that I noticed. I could be wrong.
hell, i'm not even sure it was EB, but i've been accused of being him or thomcat or half of everyone by any doofus who felt the need to think i couldn't be me. or make a really lame joke.
He's like SJIII on cheesecake usenet binaries or Ole Fuzzy on the TDPRI: he knows exactly what he's talking about. Teasing out his meaning is frustrating for some, fun for others. There's an easy solution for the frustrated; it's one that is suggested time and again, but some people are either thickwitted, thinskinned, or just looking to put somebody down.
I hope thomcatspike is well. If he's quit meffy, I can completely understand. He's an honest poster who shows who he is by how he writes. Shit on his writing, and you shit on him. And much of meffy sure loves to shit on people.
So thomcatspike, if you've left those bozos to their own conformities, congratulations. Hope to see you here soon.
Thomcatspike usually has something good to say if you can decode it (and once in a while, I recall, he forgets to put what he is saying through his personal enigma machine and that's kind of funny, I like it when people drop out of character, reinforces the theatre).
I think I didn't see that side, but I can imagine it, sure. It's odd how because we are text based ones impressions of people are built very slowly and can be totally one sided, I always know if I am going to like someone within about 20 minutes of meeting them, but you can have admiration and feel affinity for someone on the web and then you happen across some post and your jaw drops and you feel like you were suckered. It's disconcerting.
"Who else has announced that they've taken their ball and gone home
Mr Crash Davis "
Aww, thanks for remembering.
I've made a few comments here and there lately, but it's just not the same. Kind of like going back to the old neighborhood to have a look around and finding out the park that had the best slides is now a parking lot for a strip mall.
I've hung out with Thomcatspike in person, and he's a really cool guy. Also, he's perfectly clear from a communication standpoint in person. You know, sentence structure and all that.
It took me a while to understand the Thomcatspike riff on Mefi, but once I got my decoder ring, it was all good.
I hope he's ok too. He's a sweetie.
As to who all has left Mefi, the list is pretty huge, really. The vibe of the place has really changed, and I'm not sure it's for the better. The "community", such as it was, like a dysfunctional extended family, isn't really there anymore. It's a much meaner place than it used to be. I mostly scan it on RSS, and periodically answer askme questions...but I don't really have much to do with the blue anymore.