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MONKEYS_BUTT

                                           January 21, 2004   
                                             
Another thing on my list of pathetic                 
things to be proud of, is the line: 
                           
    "Is it because of your rat's ass                          
    that you came to see me?"       
    
I think that's tremendously funny, but
it makes no sense out of context, so 
now I'll have to provide it.                                     
   
Once upon a time, I was exploring a now-dead                                  
mailing list by the name of "crackmonkey".           (Web-archives of 
                                                     it still exist). 
At that time it was totally dominated            
by male techies spewing insults.  The                              
idiotic, forumlaic nature of a lot of                          
this was bugging me, and off and on I          
was suggesting that it was all            ("Did you ever get
automated.                                the feeling that  
                                          you were the last 
                                          human being in a  
I think the source of the trouble         world inhabited by
with the crackmonkey list (should         bots?").          
you give a rat's ass) was it's tag
line, which was:                  

  CrackMonkey: Non-sequitur arguments and ad-hominem personal attacks
  
I'm pretty sure that the reason Nick Moffitt
went for this is that he's an old-school net
head, the kind of guy who likes to express
himself in a blunt, direct way without
worrying about nicey-nice twits hassling him
for being "impolite".  So this tag line is a
joke of sorts (one might even call it
"ironic"), a way of heading off the people
who want to report you to their kindergarden
teacher if you call them a twit.
          
The trouble with this kind of thing is    
that most people are totally deaf to    
irony, and over time, the list        
attracted people who thought that                                     
content was forbidden and insults were        Or such is my                
required.                                     analysis of               
                                              the situation,
                                              anyway.       
But back to the story: on                                           
the subject of jwz's take                                              
on C++, someone responded            
"I don't give a rat's ass        
about jwz's opinion about C++".                   
                               
And days later, it occured to me that
the perfect comeback would be the line
I mentioned at the outset.

               Warning, tedious exposition ahead!

You see, it's a reference to the
infamous "Eliza" experiment in
mimicking transactional
psychoanlysis with a computer
program, now enshrined inside of
emacs as "Esc-x doctor".  In
fact, as long as I'm being
tedious, here's a sample session:

   I am the psychotherapist.  Please, describe your problems.
   Each time you are finished talking, type RET twice.

   I don't give a rat's ass about my problems.  

   I would appreciate it if you would watch your tongue!

   I can't stick it out that far. 

   Can you elaborate on that?

   I can touch my nose with it, but not my eyeballs. 

   Is it because not your eyeballs that you came to me?

There we go.  It doesn't take long for the
"doctor" to get stuck and try a line like
"Is it because of your XXX that you came to
see me?"; though it's grasp of English is
so poor that it has trouble picking out a
good noun phrase.

So the parody line: 

  "Is it because of your rat's
  ass that you came to see me?"
  
Does a beautiful job of accusing the poster
of mindless remarks while simultaneously
insulting his butt.

But alas, the sad spirit of the escalator
runs groaning through these remarks, and as
you might guess, I never did make this
reply.  The time had passed; the window for
a barbed quip had closed; day-old
cleverness is no cleverness at all.

And the crackmonkey list itself is now
no more...  Someone called the Boston
Redsox a bunch of assholes, and Nick
Moffitt responded with a rmlist.
                    
   Ah proud crackmonkey,                  
   to be brought down by                  
   a sports flame....                  
                                   
                        
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