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Friday, March 7, 2014

The Beaglesonia ballot

I think internet flaming is more simple than you say. It doesn’t involve that deceptive trapping, you just jump on something somebody said innocently and hammer them about it and get personally insulting. Something like there is a discussion on oh, the late great Shirley Temple (joking, couldn’t abide her), and maybe you would say such and such was your favorite movie and out of nowhere somebody says that is the crappiest movie that ever existed and anybody who thought it was any good is an idiot and a traitor and probably a pederast.

I had something like that happen to me maybe five years ago where a friend of a friend on fb wrote that she was going to Texas, and I used to live there and I recommended that she bring back some Wolf chili and smoked beans, because these were things I loved when I lived there. Then some friend of hers somehow took this as an insult, like I was calling her some kind of hillbilly or something, and wrote something really insulting about me. I think I wrote something back trying to be both a bit humorous and conciliatory, but she took that as another insult and flamed me twice as hard about that. Eventually I think the woman who was going to Texas just took the whole thing off the page.

But what was strange about it, was even though I had no idea what kind of person my flamer was, but surely she was unhinged, and not worthy of my time, but I was seething. I knew better, but I was seething. If a perfectly sane, calm person like myself can be so affected, what about all those Tom, Dick, and Harry’s out there?

You know there are some people out there who like to seethe, and so I guess the internet is a place where they can seethe to their hearts consent. Going along with your original definition of flaming, I can think of something I sometimes do.

Sometimes these seethers are pretty normal in most respects, but there is something that just sets them off. I think even reasonable folks like you and me have things that set us off, and I certainly am not going to tell you what sets me off.

But anyway, a guy walks into the bar and you know he hates, oh Shirley Temple, and you know this, and you are a little bored, so you just casually mention, “Boy that Shirley Temple, some great little hoofer, huh?” And now you have some entertainment for awhile. Oh it’s a mean thing to do, but sometimes a guy gets bored.

Here’s the thing about your everybody votes thing. This country is full of people who won’t even let their kids get vaccinated for diseases that can kill them and you think they are going to let Dr Beagles put a chip into their bodies? Hmm. Maybe we could flip a little switch on the chip so that this subliminal message “Guns suck,” would be directed to their subconscious, that would be a pretty good idea.

Here’s another thing, and here is something I wonder. How come we can run all our commerce, stuff gets bought, stuff gets sold, on the internet, yet we can’t vote on it? I suppose it has something to do with trust.

We all know that ballot boxes disappear, then reappear with everybody signing in with the same handwriting in the same color of ink, in alphabetical order, and this is a terrible thing of course. But at least there are paper ballots, at least there is something solid there, at least it takes a lot of work. But I think it’s the specter of the guy who manufactures the voting machines, the guy with the curling moustache and the sinister cat in his lap, accepting a sack full of money from a commie, a dem, a rep, whoever, and laughing his sinister laugh and flipping a switch. Hey for an extra ten bucks can you flip the switch on the chip in Beagle’s head and make him quack like a duck? No prob.


Still another thing is what would be the mechanism? Would there be a congress that would make laws and then the people would vote on them? Or could anybody present a law and that would be voted on? How about I propose a law at three in the morning after the super bowl when most of the country is sleeping it off, that gay pet marriage become mandatory in all freeholds that begin with the letter B?

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