It won't work! It won't work! Your overthruster is shit!

Over at the Poor Man, the Editors are still being dicks.


In less exasperating matters, I must presume John Rogers has abandoned the field to me after my last comment kicked his ass entirely. A few of his toadies have posted in a rather surly, petulant fashion as to the usual nonsense -- "couldn't even read your entire rant", i.e., that old dimwit standby 'I have no attention span and somehow that's your fault' -- but Rogers seems to be treating his loyal minions in much the same way as Bush I treated the entire Iraqi civilian population after he urged them to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and they did. (Um... wait. In that analogy, I'm Saddam Hussein. Let me rethink this...)

Anyway, yet another of those stumbling ineptly to Rogers' unconditional support can't quite grope his way to a correct spelling of 'competent'. A third clears this relatively low hurdle, but... well, I'll let his comment speak for itself:

DJ said...

Rogers is a competent liquor jockey. Much like Muhammad Ali was a fine boxer or Arnold palmer was a good putter. Mozart could kind of play the piano. Bobby Orr sure could skate…should I go on? I think not.

Hey, DJ. If you're going to leave comments like that in regard to the guy who wrote the CATWOMAN movie, you really should just change your name to BJ and break out the kneepads. I mean, what the hell. Just be up front about it. (And of course, it goes without saying, when I speak of the rampant sycophancy I perceive in the Kung Fu Monkey comment threads, I'm completely clueless. There's no such thing. It's just me, and my obvious rage, and there's no validity to my observations at all.)

I know, I know, I'm being very pissy today. I had a bad day at work yesterday, I'm having another one today, and I'm taking it out on a group of low self esteem idiots who kiss another low self esteem idiot's ass over at that particular low self esteem idiot's blog. Why should this annoy me? Why is it any of my business? Idiots get their asses kissed every minute of every day. As far as that goes, our current Administration is built almost entirely on that principle.

I don't know. I'm usually more enlightened than this. I usually just try to appreciate the good stuff life throws my way -- and there's been a lot of good stuff this last year and a half, I frankly admit it -- and ignore the stupidity (although, truth be told, we've all put up with a great deal of stupidity the last six years or so, too). But I'm frustrated right now, and it's certainly not anything to do with John Rogers or his posse of pucker ups, but, still, I guess they're just who's in the barrel right now.

But, since they are, let's return one more time to our much storied comment thread over on Kung Fu Monkey. Yes, yes, two days later, John Rogers has still not troubled himself to provide further illumination as to my obvious emotional dysfunctions, his fabulous talent and/or articulation, or the number of relationships my poor attitude must have destroyed over the course of my life. But someone else is picking up his slack:

WRT Unfunny Pseudonym Lad: There's a certain sort of fanboy who, in response to some sort of perceived slight, will respond with such a desperately vindicative, bitter, and above all absurdly lengthy rant that they more than confirm anyone's poor opinion of them. Ask Kurt Busiek about this if you get a chance (and haven't heard about it already--Ellis probably remembers the guy, from WEF days).

It's worth a brief side observation, I think, to note that the guy judging my pseud of 'imperius rectum' as unfunny has chosen for himself the startlingly witty cognomen of 'dr. x'. More on point, though, is the remarkable cogency with which he compares my comment in Rogers' threads, meant to be a joke, which caused Rogers to come completely unglued, with the now infamous debacle betwixt me and my old buddy Slappy, which I started with a professional observation as to how unprofessionally derivative the bulk of ASTRO CITY characters, settings, plots, and stories seemed to be, which caused Slappy to come completely unglued, lo these many years agone.

I presume Dr. X has fired a bullseye all unwitting. Nonetheless, it does bring up a recurrent trope I've noticed for quite a long time here on the Internet, and that I'd now like to take a few moments to discuss -- how, namely, out h'yar on the Web, to his or her fans, A Professional Creator Can Do No Wrong.

These two specific instances, both of which involve me, a mere nobody, illustrate the point well. Let's look at the exchange with Rogers. A stranger posts a comment that is, I'm sorry, but to my perceptions, pretty obviously a joke -- and let's remember (because Rogers never lets his audience forget it) the guy the comment was directed at is a professional comedian. He did stand up for ten years. Hard to believe he simply cannot understand that a completely over the top, frothing at the mouth, utterly insane post, laden with self conscious geek references and phonetic spelling, for the love of jebus, which appears under the name 'imperius rectum', and which closes with the paragraph 'Christ. Christ. Christ. The shit you see on Sunday when you don't wear a hat.' was meant to be a joke.

And yet, he didn't. He took the post absolutely at face value, and was so enraged that anyone in his comment threads would dare to address him in such a fashion that he went totally mental, spending over three hundred words remonstrating with, again, a complete stranger, in the most hysterically, neurotically defensive and blustering fashion... all of this, because someone he doesn't know said something he doesn't like.

Bear in mind, this is the first time he's bothered to respond to anyone in this comment thread. My comment is the eighth one down. The first seven commenters asked him direct questions, praised him, posted their own thoughtful responses -- and they got zip. And I'm a vet of the Kung Fu Monkey comment threads; that ain't hardly unusual. As a general rule, all Rogers' entries draw direct questions, fulsome praise, and reasonably thoughtful responses... and he generally either ignores them, or, at most, throws in a sentence or two, before his busy, busy life reclaims his attention once again and takes him away from the mere insignificance that his his blogging audience.

But let someone say something he assumes is negative, and out come the howitzers. Pity all they can do is 'pop', but, well, there you are.

So I respond further, essentially pointing all this out, and saying he's being rather a baby. This leads to yet another several hundred word screed on his part. Again, he's still ignoring everyone else in his comment threads. He's absolutely determined to batter me back down into the primordial ooze from which I have impertinently arisen, so much so that he's now talking about my state of emotion (which he cannot know) and observing in regard to how many of my relationships my lack of self control must have destroyed, over the years. And, while doing this, he also notes that, once his comment threads grow past a certain length he doesn't even bother to read them any more.

In other words, he's dropped his pants and showed his ass to a pretty spectacular degree, while admitting that frankly, he just doesn't give a damn about the vast majority of his audience, or at least, those who bother to comment on his work.

And, amazingly, I'm the asshole here.

So, let's see: I made a joke, on a professional comedian's blog. He took this joke, posted by someone he doesn't know and has never met, as a personal attack, and posted several hundred words defending himself from and attacking a stranger for an attack that didn't exist. I responded, earning myself another even longer and crazier response, this one laden with personal insults and the admission that he really just couldn't care less about the people who read his blog or what they have to say about his work -- which is clearly true, unless they say something that annoys him.

I respond again, and he sinks into sulky silence, then quickly tosses up another couple of hasty, meaningless posts to roll the whole thing down the page so, hopefully, his regular readers will forget about the entire shabby affair.

And yet, I'm a 'troll', I'm 'unfunny', I'm 'boring the shit out of' people, and my posts are 'a desperately vindicative [sic], bitter, and above all absurdly lengthy rant'... the last of which especially amuses me, since Rogers' posts in the comment thread are longer than mine.

Rogers, on the other hand, is 'quite witty and quite articulate'. He's the blogging/comic book scripting/screenwriting/stand up comic equivalent of Muhammed Ali, Arnold Palmer, Mozart, and Bobby Orr rolled into one. And, last but not least, he's yet another poor, sad, beleaguered victim of a vicious, unprovoked Internet attack... just like Kurt Busiek.

As to the Kurt thing, well, revisiting that just briefly, and admitting that nobody but he, I, and maybe his wife know just how much of his scurrilous personal attacks on me were complete and utter bullshit (here's a hint: very nearly every frickin' syllable), still, there's the obvious fact that I dropped into an ASTRO CITY comment thread and stated that it seemed to me that most of what I'd seen published in ASTRO CITY had actually been swiped from many other sources, nearly all of whom had presented the material originally in a superior fashion. That's a professional criticism (and, if you've read any ASTRO CITY and know anything about the superhero comics genre, an absolutely valid one).

Leaving aside any question as to whether or not what Kurt said to me in response had any truth in it at all (it didn't, but you don't know that, so never mind), there remains the clear and irrefutable fact that, in response to a professional criticism, Kurt launched a vicious personal attack, posting a great deal of entirely personal nonsense that had absolutely no bearing whatsoever on whether or not virtually every word balloon, caption, sound effect, title, panel, and page of ASTRO CITY had been stolen from someone better.

That's obvious and inarguable, and yet, nobody even notices it. I'm Kurt Busiek's psycho stalker, and Kurt is, you know, everybody's favorite writer 'cuz they all just love The Confessor so much.

It's pointless to rail against this. Apparently, when one becomes a professional in any creative field, and acquires fans of one's work, one also attains utter infallibility. All actions the professional creator takes are above reproach; all detractors the creator may have, reprehensible and psychotic.

I can only look forward to a time when I, too, am a recognized and successful professional at something, however crappy and/or blatantly derivative my actual creative product may be, and to my fans, I can do no wrong, and cheerfully make the same sort of ass of myself as I so often do now, and have others praise me as a genius for it.

One final note: I'm actually pretty happy with how things have turned out here. Rogers does indeed incessantly praise himself as a professional funny man, relentlessly giving himself airs as this fabulous lettersmith who deploys words and phrases the way Doc Holliday and/or Wild Bill Hickock shoot shit off fence posts. In his mouth and under his fingers (it says there) the English language is a finely tuned instrument he can use to create entire soaring, scintillant sonatas with the casual ease shown by lesser men spreading peanut butter on bread.

His rhythm is matchless, his word choice without peer, his delivery devastating, his put downs, peerless. He's relentless, brilliant, cunning, a tornado of text, a master of mockery. If God Himself rose to heckle John Rogers from the peanut gallery, Rogers would, with a half dozen razor sharp words, send poor ancient Adonai reeling and weeping into the parking lot, bearded but majestic head in His hoary old hands.

And I shut the motherfucker down.

I ain't such a much. I'm not published. Seven novels, forty or so short stories, a dozen or so comics precis', millions of words on my various blogs and web pages over the years... still, I can't get anyone to read my shit. I'm lucky if I get six comments in a frickin' thread, and I work ten hour shifts in a christly call center to pay my family's bills. But I drove John Rogers to the brink of frickin' madness with 74 nonsense words, and when he pulled his irons on me, I blew them the fuck out of his hands and sent him crying into the saloon.

Maybe my overthruster isn't such shit, after all.