Defend the Indefensible - ILX

http://bode.diee.unica.it/~giua/SEBASTIAN/albani.jpg

on one of the year review threads i pointed out one of my highlights was meeting all the people i did from ILX in 2003 (not as many as other people here but enough to feel confident that the vast majority of people on this board are more than just bearable in face to face social situations. i'm SURE you were joking here but just in case...

To be totally honest, I never knew him that well, even though he lived just a mile or two from my family's house - my parents divorced when I was a wee lad, & I stayed with my mother, establishing a schism between my mom & my father's side of the family. Of course, this didn't actually PREVENT me from having relations with my father's relatives, but the rapport wasn't that strong before the divorce, & compounded with some "extenuating circumstances" (involving a reconciliation and a SECOND divorce when I was 14) that I won't get into here, I made a conscious choice to keep my distance from that part of the family. For a while, this included my father - it wasn't until 6 years ago that we started talking again (in a civil fashion). He suggested / insisted that I try to make time for his parents, but I decided to stand my ground re: keeping my distance (see "extenuating circumstances") (or just see "stubborn pride masking hurt that none of my dad's family really did much to stay in contact with me, though I had a wee part to play in that").

Up until today, I didn't really feel much of anything - sure, I empathized with my father & what he could be going through, and I experienced an odd, vaguely upsetting mixture of shock and relief, but this seemed to be more like a minor disturbance in my life than some seismic paradigm shift. He was an acquaintance more than a grandfather. Today, I asked my boss for Wednesday off to attend the funeral, & afterwards I started to feel that "something", that sort of unavoidable, inevitable rush of emotion that's equally cathartic and suffocating.

To stave the possible onslaught of blubbering off (if only to make it through the rest of the day, if not to actually attempt make some sense of all this conflicting emotional ... stuff), I came over to ILE & tried searching the archives for threads about relatives dying & familial relations & etc. - I figured it'd be better for me to peruse an online place populated w/ folks I'm semi-familiar with than attempt to talk to workmates I've known for all of 8 days about feelings I'm woefully incapable of vocalizing. (I acutally said to my boss - "...well, I never knew him, actually, but I'm empathizing with my dad, because, well, you know, he was his FATHER...") (ugh * 10^10^10) I found a few threads about what I was looking for, and that helped somewhat, but what helped me the MOST were all the things on here I browsed that had fuck all to do with families and death and bathetic things like that - stuff like Ethan's political cartoon threads or the "random stranger, I luv you" thing, or even getting a wee bit nostalgic about the grebe (back when ILE was a nubile, spry, wispy thing).

Since I'm being totally honest & forthright, there have been many times during the past year+ where I've been feeling quite despondent & sad (& perhaps a bit self-absorbed re: the sadness & despondence) about my situation, and this bitch has served as a way to both necessarily distract me from all the evil bitter noise surrounding me AND keep my shit in enough perspective to soldier on & deal with said shit as much as I can. Even when I sequestered myself to stew in my own junk (which I tend to do), it was nice, every so often, to read about how other people dealt with similar (or lesser / worse) situations & commisserate passively & silently with them.

Even thought I felt gratitude towards this collective, I felt a bit sheepish about doing something like starting a "THANK YOU BITCH"-type thread & getting all boisterously emo. But when I saw someone asking for a defense for this seemingly indefensible bastion of interweb procrasturbation, I figured I'd offer my two cents. So, yeah. Thank you.

Can't you read? It's that your weightist jokes are only directed at women i.e. you seem to think it's only women who shouldn't be fat, you've given nothing to suggest you find fat men offensive. This just reinforces your belief that women are nothing to you unless you want to shag them, and you evidently can't see beyond appearance.

This, incidentally, is not an invitation to start threads about fat blokes.

David R, I lost my grandmother on New Years Day. (Bone) hugs 'n' sympathy.

In this instance ILx has been a sanctuary, an oasis of light, that proves good things can happen on the internet.

(I also thank ILx for my boyfriend, lots of new, interesting and good friends, a general sense of community and a feeling that I am a lot more cosmopolitan and well travelled than I actually am. Impress your friends in bars: "Guess what? Americans don't have washing machines in their kitchens!")

Dan wrote a really nasty tirade against me not so long ago on one thread. I was being IRONIC you ill educated moron with a name that everyone laughs at.

Yeah, go back to HARVARD, you fool!

"Welcome to Harvard, Mr. Perry. Your prerequsite classes will include Concepts In Brutalism and Heartlessness 101".

No, but I saw "Warrior of the Lost World"

"It's that guy!"

Mainly because I hope someone finds that thread about the Manics and goes "WTF"?! It'll confuse you and now you made me ruin my fekcing cover.

Same reason I call out Julio.

Although to be fair Julio always seems pretty alright.

I did get annoyed by all the threads people started attacking gier. It seemed a bit pointless. Of course calum has started 2 threads attacking me, but wtf, his little bag of insults is quite very small, and I've seen them all several times, and repetition just makes them weaker and less effective.

I'll try this metaphor again. Imagine you are a stand-up comedian, and you do a set at this venue. Most of the audience are indifferent. One or maybe two at most laugh. A bunch of people are offended by your act, and act in a hostile manner. Your act is a failure. So you go back to the venue with the same act, and get the same response, except some more of the indifferent people are no hostile. So your act is a failure again. So you go back again with the same act. And so it goes on. when I came out w/this before, I suggested that you either change your act, or try a different venue. You claimed that you understood this, but here we go again, with the same act. Again. To most people it would be obvious what to do, but it just never seems to get through. It's fucking sad really.

Even on a bad day, this is easily the best board I've been on. there are loads of interesting, insightful and intelligent people here, and even on the worst day, there'll be something worth reading. Plus, it is "mixed company" which as I have mentioned before is rare in my experience. There are very few people who I would not wish to meet irl, and those I have, I was pleased to meet.

YOU LIKE IT HERE. YOU LIKE THE PEOPLE HERE. and why wouldn't you? it's a pretty great thing, even with the efforts of ppl like you factored in. there are a lot of smart and extremely funny ppl around. and unlike 99.99% of the internet (and 99.99% of your life i'm guessing) there are a lot of women around, who, like, write well and have personalities and stuff. unreal! you read the joke threads and the sex threads and the expert opinion threads and the politics threads and the whole thing seems so wild but sophisiticated and international but still fairly tight-knit, especially among the regulars.

so, unwilling (or unable) to participate, to get inside this place you love, you won yourself star status through notoriety. you'll claim it's all a laugh but your devotion to ilx says otherwise. your thrill, if i'm guessing right, is really sad: that on ilx, unlike in your life, when the cool kids tell you to fuck off it doesn't HURT.

you can download it from here, but i'm not sure if you can directly link to the image from there.

Hey Calzy-walzy, for the sake of the terminally unobservant, why not name him/her/it? Or should somebody start a book?

Ha, assuming that you can beat someone up who you have never met = possibly foolish, b/c what if you do meet them, and they're really hard? And you're not?