Welsh Rarebit
- At August 30, 2004
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
- 13
BBC Online has a fine feature called The Day in Pictures, which today yielded A competitor in the World Bog Snorkelling Championships in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales emerges from the water.
The nervous, fidgety part of my brain that’s still a hyperactive ten-year-old amped on heavily sweetened breakfast cereal and Tom and Jerry cartoons seized on this picture and caption like a GOP delegate who’s gotten his first taste of hotel cable porn:
People go bog snorkeling?
That is so cool!
There’s a World Championship?
Who wins, the person who sees the least?
Are there bumper stickers: Snorkel Wales?
Is this a mental condition caused by vowel deficiency?
That is so cool!
A Theory of Flame Wars
- At August 28, 2004
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
- 18
Crossposted from
Every once in a great while I’ve given into the temptation and let fly with insults online. I’m a writer, and I was a sailor, so I have some fluency in the black arts, but it’s never really been satisfying. Why not?
I think
That brings me to the other reason why trading barbs online is unsatisfying. In real life moral outrage sometimes trumps other considerations, but more often the insulted and the insulting are engaged in subtle calculations of size, strength, and willingness to take the argument literally to the mat. Violence, or the credible threat of it, usually settles arguments definitively. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, merely that the world works that way. But people say things online so crude and insulting that they intuitively know they could never utter the remarks in real life, because it would invite immediate physical retribution. Online, of course, everyone is the same size (or at least their mouths are), and there’s no violent punctuation to stop pissing contests from evolving into flame wars.
Boy, I really went on a bit there. Well, the world is full of long-winded, self-important, hyphenated-insult douchebags.
The Rapa Nui Reading List
- At August 13, 2004
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
- 48
Reading lists are making the rounds in my little corner of the blogosphere: there’s one just downstream in this journal, and
At a recent writer’s workshop, we were talking about books on warwhich ones were worthwhile and which ones weren’tand I made my own short list of the good ones (hence that topic’s preeminent position below). While I was at it, I added a few more books that have moved me, educated me or entertained me over the years. I make no claim that these are indispensable books, or great books, merely that they left a lasting impression on me, and that I was amply repaid for the time I’d invested in them. Maybe you’ll find them worth a read, too.