All it takes is hate

Colby has recently started a blog of his own. While I find the device of using a literary intertextualism for each post title to be a little trite, his selection thus far has been oddly entertaining. His ramblings are somewhat less refined than mine, but do make an enjoyable read.

Unfortunately it's not what's going on in his swimming/collab novel/gym addled life that has me hooked. I was perusing a few of the past entries, just outta fun, and I came across a certain Anonymous who has left very funny comments. I quote them here in case Colby should feel threatened and delete it in some effort to soothe his ego.

First one:

"or


4. You like boys and the realisation that this figure had a vagina made you wince"

"dear colby


your blog makes me want to slit my wrists and bleed on the computer so no-one else can see the screen. My interpretation of your situation, is that your lack of real life contact and inter-personal relationships leaves you making up your ideal meeting with alter ego female pseudo hetro colby, and it brings up these out of worldly conundrums which have no relevance or implication. eat cock you ass belonker. rofl stomp"

Can't say that I necessarily concur with Anon's analysis, though he does post an interesting interpretation. I am quite partial to "ass belonker".

Secondly:

"well.....
interesting?
enjoyable?
rambling?
non-sensical?
irrelevent?
uninspiring?
rip-my-cock-off-with-vice-grips-after-reading?
colby, have you ever heard of necrotizing faciitis? well, your blog has much worse ramifications. children contract cancer and then their families have to rape them to death to get them out of the pain that has been brought upon by the onslaught of pointless butt-sex-bloggery. ever heard of rimbaud? he was a writer colby, he was expressive, interesting and enjoyable. why? because he had something to say which was inspired some trace of thought. the only thought i have when reading this is how i can next hate on the post, before i drown myself in a bath of my own urine. eat penguin shit"

This had me laughing so hard. Euthanasiac rape ... "butt-sex-bloggery" ... "eat penguin shit" ... My, my, this Anonymous is a font for pithi rejoinders and I look forward to more nuggets of genius.

Can't imagine where this person came from, only that either Liv or someone else has promoted the link which inevitably lead to the hater. I've been blogging almost a year now (a little over 10 months) and am coming up on my 450th post. No haters in sight. Well, I know people who have turned their heads in disgust at my apparent (and they are so wrong) arrogance, but no one's dare comment here. I've had one or two really sweet, random comments from people who've never come back... and some I wish would come back. For the most part, I've had a dedicated commenter-base of Chris, Colby and James (<3 you guys).

I am a little jealous ... He's getting far more comment feedback than I am, AND he's getting haters :@ This is what I get for reneging on starting up a Youtube channel. That's still a dream I delude myself into think I will eventually go for.

In the mean time, I'll busy myself sifting through Anonymous' comments for pearls of wit.

IdeaDump #1

A new concept for you all. As I'm always churning about ideas in my mind and never really doing anything with them, I figure I should just unleash them out here. Maybe once they're out I will actually cognise it some more to put it into motion.

1. Figure out whether I count as an Amateur Professional or a Professional Amateur (I think there's a stark distinction ;))
2. A rethink of the dictionary such that he's organised by popularity. (EDIT: why did I put "he's"??? The dictionary isn't a person moreless a man...)
3. A blog/site/advice column about dating written from the perspective of me. (ie a total virgin/nerd/geek etc)
4. Seriously look into going to work at a gaming developer here in Canberra.

I love having a reputation sometimes.

In a documentary I once watched (it may have been a Stephen Fry one, but I can't remember its title, which makes me think it might've just been something else entirely) that mentioned at any one time, the average individual has 300 contacts with whom they regularly socialise or have a reciprical rapport. I can't remember if that includes random people you regularly see (say a newsagent etc), but for the purposes of Facebook, I just treated it as people for whom I had a good relationship. This was the philosophy I used to guide my Facebook friend-addage. Once I hit that 300 mark (with a lovely Teresa), I pretty much shifted gears and started adding people I wanted to establish contacts with, and/or wished to stalk.

This ideological change must've occured October'ish last year, because that's when my 7000th day was, and I recall talking to Teresa in Union Court about my joke party (yea sikkunt!) as well as mentioning she was my 300th friend. Anyway, now I'm close to 480.

Perhaps one of the most interesting observations I've made during this time is not watching how different people interact in my feed in real time, but watching how people interact with me. I'm pretty hefty in my stream of status updates, and I figure many people will prolly mute me. By the same token, I often have a lot of people that I've had very *very* little contact with will very readily comment a status update with a good answer to my question, or a laugh, or some other congruent reaction. People with whom I have had literally *no* contact, will Like things I do, but rarely do they ever interact.

Two overt interactions I've had has dealth with Facebook chat. A great tool for connection with people whose MSNs I don't have/need/want-to-share-mine as well as monitoring activity. It's why I have Facebook open whenever I am home, like my MSN being on 24/7 I like to keep myself open to any opportunities that come knocking. Thus far, only two people of my growing list of never-talked-tos have talked to me.

A few things I've observed that these people have somehow come to understand about me:

1. They always use proper spelling and grammar, taking care to be polite and will laugh at my jokes, always basing their attitudes to me based on how I treat them.
2. It's always for academic help - they know I've since left Grammar and that I am smart enough to be worth asking for help.
3. And that I will offer help.

Admittedly, two interactions isn't really enough to make such sweeping generalisations, but I will evaluate all future interactions along these three criterion.

But it is something, huh? How do these people come to know that? Do they gather that from my appearances in their news feed? It's possible, I'm pretty candid and open, especially in the commenting of those items. But these people respectively have a *lot* of friends (like 600, 700+, which is why I was willing to add them, 'cause they ain't prudish with friend requests).

Or perhaps it's just a reputation I've had that far outstrips me. Either I'm just a person the respective people that know me mention occasionally and thus people gain a peripheral knowledge of me or they've gone out of their way to find out who the hell I am and got just files upon files of my exploits.

The third option is that these people have needed help, and whorishly opened themselves up and asked for help from everyone. But I'm choosing not to acknowledge this because it doesn't stroke my ego. The final alternative is that they needed help, and went about looking at profiles of their friends finding out anything they can and thus stumbling upon my academically oriented profile. This is less likely - who has the time to do that?

So really it's down to two main options. Either it's the reputation I've built through my portrayal of me through the medium of Facebook, or it's the reputation I built two years ago still doing wonders. It's most likely a complex interaction between the two. It can be the teasing snippets I provide on Facebook filtering into the mainstream of IRL and people running around going "did you hear this about Shanan...?" which I know has happened in the past ;)

Prolly the thing that makes me feel ebst about myself is that those reputations do include the thought that I am willing to help, and for those two individuals I did my best to try to help, but since I didn't do the subjects of one of them I can't provide much help.

(I've just realised a huge flaw in my logic: I'm totally in the dark about any time a person has needed help and specifically *not* come to me. I can't measure how often that occurs and my above analysis depends upon that number of people not coming to me ... to be 0 D: D: D:)

In Defense of the Chasers

If you live anywhere in Australia, you must've heard about the shitstorm the above skit has caused. It's only a minute long - it was in the second episode of the new series of Chasers War on Everything. I'll confess that I'm not a huge Chasers fan, I find most of their stuff trivial at best. The only things that are consistently good are the talented Mr Andrew Hanson and his songs, Cannibal Corpse being one of my most played songs ;) So the first week they were back, I watched it because so many people on Facebook and Twitter were fapping on about it.

And they did not not disappoint.

Out of boredom I went and watched the second ep. Pretty much the only thing that made me laugh, and laugh really hard, was the above skit. One of the funniest things I've ever seen, and I assumed most people would've thought it was funny, because well it was fucking funny.

A few days later, I noticed something in my Twitter stream or Facebook feed, someone mentioning the Chasers being condemned or some such. Thus I investigated. It didn't take long for me to discover the furor that was been erected around this single minute of television time.

Suddenly the Chaser team have become disgusting people, the ABC has become a waste of taxpayer money because they approved it, the fathers on the Chaser team have become unfit fathers who don't care about their children.

Being the controversy seeking Shanan that I am, I posted the following on Facebook:

"Shanan 兆麟 Kan just discovered the whole furor over the Chaser's "Make a Realistic Wish Foundation" skit. What's wrong with you people? It's hilarious."

My good friend Nicole from Cooma replied a few hours later:

"why would u even joke about cancer? Its fucking low and sad to know u even think its funni. get a life."

Apparently the cancerous cancer sketch (ha ha) has spread to infect even the people who liked it. I've also joined the rank of an inhuman monster who cares not for the dying kids. I think I can provide only one response to that: Fuck off.

What's disgusting is the people who have completely overreacted to this, people who have irrationally taken offense at this. The kind of arse-ticklers who inappropriate attribute these labels onto people for all the wrong reasons.

And my reasoning for this is pretty simple. Jokes, like any form of language, are complex and sophisticated (in both senses of the word ;)), not something that can be taken at a surface level without investigating deeper. Let's take a moment to reflect upon what is funny in the sketch.

1. The absurdity of the sketch.
2. The harshness of the delivery of "take a stick" juxtaposed with the sickly children we're primed to pity
3. The spoof of the Make a Wish Foundation ads.
4. The timing of the last line "they're only going to die anyway"
5. The black humour in the truth of the last line
6. The meta-joke in the audacious nature of the sketch - its callowness makes it funny.

That's just off the top of my head. There's plenty more. Please note that nowhere on that list is "dying kids" or "kids with cancer". There's a very specific reason for that:

No one is literally laughing at the fucking dying kids for dying.

You'd think that observation would be abundantly clear. Like I argued on the comment thread of my Facebook status, it's not like everyone who thought that funny was laughing at the cancer kids for having cancer, as if a comedian could walk on the screen, just say "dying kids with cancer" and ellicit in me mirth. (As it so happens I probably would laugh, but only because of the randomness and absurdity of the statement, again not at the dying kids for dying).

Anyone who would laugh at the dying kids for dying could legitimately and rationally be called a monster or insensitive or whatever soccer mother term you wish to use. The kind of people who write into the Daily Telegraph and are always writing letters to people who "care".

If I wasn't totally cheap and didn't want to pay for a phonebill, I would call up the Make a Wish foundation and decry them for publically dismissing the Chasers and calling them out as offensive when they were nothing of the sort. I would slowly and very meticulously explain to them precisely why it was funny and they, parents of cancer kids and even the cancer kids should have laughed.

I admit it, dying kids are sad. But that doesn't make them immune to ever being included in any jokes ever. That's just stupid. Everything can be placed into a joke and everything should.

It's the same kind of retarded logic that people use when they tell you "don't laugh at the black guy for tripping ... 'cause it's racist". Fuck off it's racist. I'm not laughing at him because he's black. I'm laughing at him because he tripped, just as any ethnicity would. Or somehow we can't ever laugh at mentally retarded kids, or disabled people when they do something funny - even if they were deliberately trying to be funny.

This is what sickens me about society. People just lump everything together.

There's more to people than just what they are, be they of a certain race, gender, illness, disability etc. When you start saying we can't joke about them tripping because it would be offensive, you're the one who is actually insulting them, treating them as just an identity not a person. An arab person is more than just an arab person. I'm allowed to make arab jokes and so are you. I'm allowed to laugh when they do something stupid without being charged with racism.

When I seriously start laughing at them just for solely being an arab, that's when I'm starting to go into racism and you should totally call me on it.

But call me up on it at any point before that and I will fucking destroy you in an argument proving why I am right and you are most definitely wrong.