[Web4lib] Third Stone from the Sun

[John Creech]

look.  i've gotten some nasty backchannel mail on this.  i try to keep 
creecherman stuffed down inside the post-traumatic biochemical soup that 
is my psyche until 1501 hours but today it's getting, as doc watson sang, 
"tedious."

until today i didn't know who this guy was...  this is simpler than it 
seems--occam's razor.  this all started for me with a post to this list -

"Thu Dec 15 12:22:22 EST 2005" ... and some guy writes "We librarians 
ought to be a bit more vocal about supporting the open sharing of 
information and be opposed to closed and proprietary systems..." and then 
signs it,

"Against copyright and intellectual property," ...

then begins to insult people.  not to speak of the attorneys probably in 
the employ of Nature Publishing Group.

so i do a little whois, a little nslookup, add to it the following google 
free text terms - and i swear before any sacred powers that might bind 
this universe that this is true -

"[name of person deleted from list] idiot"

and i took the fifth hit off of that, read it, said "huh," and sent it to 
the list.  last time i checked this is all freely available 1's and 0's 
and in this virtual brave new world we are what we write.

now i didn't give it much thought at the time.  sounds like this guy has 
some issues in various places outside of this listserv.  kinda like a 
creative writing class i took decades ago run on the iowa writers' 
workshop model where you submit copies of your book chapter or short story 
to the class and the next week everybody discusses it and if one person 
says there's a problem in transition between sections that's one thing and 
maybe no B!D but if 12 people say there's a problem in transition there's 
a problem in transition.

so my sick and twisted logic said that if this is someone screaming FIRE 
in multiple places on the 'net that i have worked around for 20 years 
after giving up a fantastic career as a USFS fire lookout in 
backcountry idaho this person is attempting to do the same thing here.

i did not mean to insult him or anyone else.  hell, i don't even 
underSTAND wiki technology, rss et al ad nauseum ad infinitum all that 
well...i mean, i'm pretty good at unix and web services and eresources but 
i'm getting to be an ooolllld dog...

so just to save everybody's time--i just walked back in to the office from 
a long drive through snowy backcountry roads over lunch ... and see my 
name being bandied here in this bar, this is a bar isn't it [get back in 
there creecherman you vile little worm you hallucination you ... you ... 
flashback] ok so it's not a bar but that's beside the point -

i see my name appearing and that makes me feel just a little BIT ... 
dirty.

and then i see this posting from said person banned from the list directed 
to me where he used a naughty naughty word and all i can think of all i 
can hear in my head i swear is an old doonesbury strip from about 1973 .. 
so let's see said person recently thrown out of the bar would have been 
about eight at the time.

and in this strip the walden college football offense is huddled and 
zonker's little smoke ring is curling up as usual and quarterback BD 
stands up and starts screaming at zonk about all of the evils of weed and 
says "And do you know what else it causes? ... COMMUNISM."  zonker looks 
stunned, and answers "Oh Dear."

well ... Oh Dear.

creecherman get away from that keyboard!!@$! POSTPONE POSTPONE POSTPO--


  On Thu, 15 Dec 2005, Broun, Kevin (NIH/NCI) [E] wrote:

> Maybe this is what you should have said in response to Creech, instead
> of coming off like someone who resorts to vulgarity (in public) when he
> doesn't have anything substantial to say.