What does it mean when you write a flame, and your flame gets fan mail? When your flame gets voted as one of the best posts of the month? It doesn't mean anything that I'm proud of. But there are times when the idiots get to me.

To the person who calls himself "DangerDude" and who flames others for posting from the closet while he himself hides behind anonymity:

Since you did not get the message the first, second, third, or fourth time, please allow me to try again:

YOU ARE A STUPID ASSHOLE. SHUT THE FUCK UP.

You have contributed nothing to this newsgroup. You are cordially invited to reduce your presence in this newsgroup to the same level. You are cordially invited to contempate the talk.bizarre FAQ--in silence--and meditate on the fact that you have failed to meet even the simplest expectations for participation in this group. You are cordially invited to comprehend that your inadequacy is self-inflicted. You are cordially invited to discover for yourself that your arrogance is without substance, that even your chosen pseudonym betrays the emptiness of your soul.

You are cordially invited to consider that you have been judged to be offensive to, and otherwise failed to meet the expected minimums of social behavior of, one of the most open and accepting groups on the net--although certainly not one of the most forgiving. Should you decide that you wish to remain here, you are cordially invited to contemplate the ways in which you have increased the difficulty of achieving acceptance in this group, and that you have no one to blame for this but yourself. You are cordially urged to understand that you are your own worst enemy in this group.

And before you respond with the sexual innuendo that seems to be your sole speciality, I will suggest that you do not know me well enough to know where to attack. Anything you say will provide your first (and last) humorous contribution to this group, and will further demonstrate to all observers that YOU ARE A STUPID ASSHOLE.

You are cordially invited to SHUT THE FUCK UP.

OK, this guy really ticked me off. When he gave me an abusive dismissal for Leftovers of Abuse, he asked for napalm. When he tried to lecture talk.bizarre about how they aren't who they say the are, he got it, from a lot of people.

Gerald Basham writes:

> Well constructed flames, ones that are, at least grammatically correct, and with most of the words spelled right, are still just flames, little man.

WAAAHHHOOOOO!!! Now I'll know how to write a well-constructed flame! I always though that the point of a flame was to leave the recipient singed and blackened, except for that circle around their crotch where they're still wetting themselves. But now I am about to learn the true art of flaming!

> Just like what you're reading right now. It's a flame; a response to your diatribe (my 16-year-old called your article "diarhea of the keyboard").

Oh. This is a flame? I thought you had something to teach us.

> Some of you just cannot be decent, so you get indecent posts from some of us back.

Lesson number one in flaming, Basham. If you're going to threaten someone, make it interesting. I'd suggest that you use some wit and creativity, but you have shown no hint of posessing those items. So far, your flame is devoid of fire.

Oh, and by the way, just between the two of us, you flamed me first, out of the blue, with no provocation, for a post that fits well within the realm of talk.bizarre. I wasn't rude to you, but you made your feeble attempt to dump on me anyway. So much for your superior moral position.

> You're hurt Mr. Perry. Hurt to the point of reaching for ways to try to hurt me, much like the Johnny boy post up there earlier in the thread. The problem is, everybody read this and digest it: I am not hurt by tiny minds,

Obviously not.

> or, probably more accurately put, by perfectly inteligent

Just as obviously not. You have no mind, Basham. You can't be hurt because you have nothing that can be hurt. No mind. No wit. No intelligence. No feelings. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. You don't even have enough emptiness to qualify for a novice Zen koan.

> (I know I'm a poor speller, and I don't use my spell-check, so relax and get the point) people who feel they have to use gutter language and

Relax and get what point? You are so far off-base about what this newsgroup is about that no FAQ, no tutorial, no clue mosquito will ever get through to you.

And you have a problem with gutter language? Is it above your comprehension? Or is it simply that gutter language is absolutely the worst catastrophe you've ever had to deal with in your entire life? I would suggest that you get a grip, but you haven't yet evolved hands to grip with.

> intricately woven (read as "convoluted"), line by line answers to my or anybody's articles

This is neither intricate nor convulted; I'm answering you point by point. Or would be, if you had any point to make. And as you seem incapable of learning, Basham, you have no clue as to what this newsgroup is about, and are therefore incapable of making any point about this newsgroup.

> just because they were made to feel uncomfortable by my opinion some of the posts in this ng.

You overrate yourself.

In one respect, your posts are quite enjoyable. I haven't seen anyone so clueless try to walk in and take over this newsgroup in quite some time. You're a hoot, Basham, a genuine gas. All your posturing without concept and your moralizing from a complete moral vacuum is simply hilarious. You are without a doubt the finest flame-bait I have feasted on in quite some time.

Would you like to see just a smidgen of the evidence of your cluelessness? You thought that this newsgroup rejected one of your witless posts, when in fact it was your newsreader. And when you finally did manage to post your insipid little flicker of a flame, you couldn't even follow up on the post your were flaming. Instead, you title it "you bastards" (oooooh, gutter language, from you of all people) and you show incredible moral cowardice by tagging it NOT A FLAME.

And from you we are supposed to learn (1) who we are, (2) why we're not who we say we are, (3) what kind of a newsgroup we'd really rather have, and (4) shame that we have strayed so far from the truth of talk.bizarre?

As I said, Basham, you are HILARIOUS.

Now I'll tell you the truth about talk.bizarre, Basham, so listen up. Talk.bizarre exists for itself. It has no other purpose. It certainly does not exist for the purpose of entertaining YOU.

Talk.bizarre is the way it is because WE like it this way. If YOU don't like that, guess what, Basham? WE don't care.

But we will feast on you for our own entertainment. That's in the FAQ, too, by the way. We're like that, Basham. No, it's not very nice. We don't care. Quoted from the FAQ:

============
   ceej@genmagic.com (C J Silverio) wrote:
      The management reserves the right to discriminate
      on the grounds of stupidity. It might enjoy mocking 
      your self-hatred, in a casual way, but it's stupidity 
      that gets you killfiled.
============

> My complaints about this ng have to do with the differences I noticed between what it purports to be, in a faq I received a while back from one of the decent frequenters here, and what it seems to be doing by the nature of the MAJORITY of the posts here.

I agree that this newsgroup has a singular ability to attract trashy, off-topic, pointless, idiotic posts. All of your posts are included in that category.

You've been given this clue already, Basham, and yet you continue to demonstrate your inability to absorb clues. If you want to know what the real talk.bizarre is, you have to learn to filter out the garbage. Instead, you contribute garbage, and fail to see the difference.

> I watched for a while, and scrolled up and down and found very similar banter as in other ngs. Then I posted a rather bitter little paragraph about that and, viola! I began to get in my email inbox a load of immature, swearing, goofy crappola

If all you've received is goofy crappola, than talk.bizarre is indeed falling off in quality. But I suspect that the truth is that once again you are unable to distinguish between crappola and a well-constructed flame. Being able to make such distinctions requires a mind, Basham, something that you lack.

> (and a few nice suggestions by a few nice people).

Like I said, Basham, you're funny.

You know why so few people are being nice to you? Because you haven't been so nice to us.

Tell me something, Basham, and I'd really like to hear the answer to this. In real life, do you introduce yourself to a new group of people by making vicious, unprovoked attacks on them, both individually and as a group? You don't? Then why do you think it's acceptable behavior here?

And if you really DO behave that way in real life, is that part of this moral high ground that you're standing on while preaching to us?

> So. Some of you proved my point. I know you like it here, you "regulars" who've been here for years; I respect that.

You respect WHAT??????? REALLY????????????? And yet you're still trying to change us? WOW!!! You are truly amazing.

We're on to you, Basham. You respect nothing. Not even a Zen nothing. You are incapable of respect. And this time I'm not flaming you. You have demonstrated this with your own words. If you value giving people the straight, unvarnished truth about themselves, then swallow THIS truth: You are incapable of respecting anything.

We know that, but you don't. That's what makes you so funny.

> But I don't think I'm in exactly the same catagory as the ones who you're used to trying to run out of here.

Really? How many people have you watched us run out of here before? Your idiocy is amusing, but your arrogance is tiring. We've heard it many times before.

You are just another in a long line of imbeciles who think they can walk into a community that they know nothing about, and by the mere force of their idiocy can reshape that community in their own image. THANK GOD it can't happen that way.

> I really am trying to see the gist of the character that I think might have evolved in some ngs like this and a forum or two in certain bb areas on the net.

From all appearances, you've had more than enough opportunity to learn what this group is about. If you haven't yet learned that, what does that say about you?

> Two big factors, folks (in my opinion):

Amazing, truly amazing. You bash us, you lecture us, you harangue us, you BORE us, and you expect that we will fall at your knees and lap up your wisdom? What mail-order catalog did you get this expectation from? You couldn't have thunk that one up all by yourself.

> 1. Some of you have stopped learning, yourselves.

You've shown no ability to learn, or even that you've mastered the concept that learning occurs over time. You've been here for virtually NO TIME. What do you know about what we've learned? You haven't even shown yourself to comprehend the basis of this group; why should we listen to your whimperings about what it ought to become?

>You're foolish.

YEEEOUCCHH! I'M WOUNDED!

Pot-kettle-black doesn't even begin to apply here; this group is far from foolish. We do have a few fools who hang around the periphery--in the words of one who does understand talk.bizarre, "those people whom no one respects." I can't see that you'll ever achieve any status above that.

> Leading to 2. You over-react.

Wrong again, Basham. You're here for our entertainment. We're having fun.

> Your foolish. I'm not at all saying that I came here to teach anybody anything;

BUT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO DO!! NOW DO YOU SEE WHY YOU ARE SO ENTERTAINING? YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE, AND YOU'RE TRYING TO TELL US WHO WE ARE!

> I'm saying that some of you have proven yourselves to be the diametric OPPOSITE of what the ng faq says you are.

Actually, the FAQ says it pretty well. But only people with some reading comprehension capability are able to recognize that.

Let me state that a different way: The people that we welcome into this group are those who truly do understand the FAQ.

> And, that leads me right back to the original thread title:

> YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE

Now, for truly the last time, I will ask: How could you possibly know that?

> "In your heart, you know I'm right."---Barry Goldwater

Just because Barry Goldwater said it doesn't mean that you're right when you quote him, Basham. Anybody can quote Goldwater, but it doesn't make them right.

I shall leave you with one final thought, the traditional talk.bizarre farewell to those who are unable to comprehend anything else:

YOU ARE A STUPID ASSHOLE. SHUT THE FUCK UP.