Dear “Mark”

December 20th, 2009

[All: Please forgive me for a brief blog-hijack, but if you are not our resident Troll, you should probably just skip the following. –Mentor]

Dear “Mark”:

Look, it’s like this: I don’t know what the problem is here, and I don’t really particularly care. But despite you’re having been quite active lately, it’s the holiday season, and I’m in jolly mood, so let’s proceed in that way.

First, I don’t know if your primary goal here is to annoy (or irritate or lecture) the regular readers of this blog. But the simple fact is that I’m reasonably good at what I do so and, as a result, virtually none of the readers here even see any of your “messages”.

On the other hand, if your goal is to annoy (or irritate or lecture) Alison Bechdel herself, then as you may have noticed she’s been pretty busy lately, and so far as I can tell she has not even been aware of any of the last couple dozen or so of your “messages”.

So that leaves just me as the only person who even sees your “messages”. And, to be clear, I don’t see the “message” long enough for any of the above to apply, i.e. only long enough to ensure that it is from you before I hit the delete link.

(In this last case you’ve actually made the work quite easy. As pointed out previously: 1) despite plenty of chances to the contrary you’re earned the unique honor of having *any* “message” banned from this site without further ado, something in all fairness I might point out that you’ve also managed to do on several other sites, as a quick Google search will demonstrate. And 2) on the chance that you ever do decide to seriously enter into the discussion here, it’s fully up to you to demonstrate that you’re capable of doing so in a remotely reasonable way. But a quick clue: The way to go about this is not to leave your messes around for someone, e.g. me, to clean up after.)

So my first seasonal gift here is to point out the obvious: “Mark”, whatever you’re trying to accomplish it’s just not working.

Second, so nearly as I can make out you seem to be working under the “notion” (again, both here and on other sites) that the only issue is with the content of your “messages”. That you are simply making reasonable points that, for some reason, the readers here “just don’t want to hear”.

Is it really possible that you don’t understand that the real issue is the name-calling, the obcenity, the insults, in short the ridiculous (for want of a better name) “tone” of your “messages?

So, my second seasonal gift here is to give you the benefit of the doubt; because I simply can’t believe that anyone can be that dense.

So in closing, I’ve really said all that can be said here. You’ll never hear from me again. But just look at things this way: Do you really have nothing better to do with your time?

However, if you really feel you must write these “messages”, here’s a bit of friendly advice: Go ahead and write it, but when you’ve finished just hit “Delete”. You’ll save everyone, including yourself, some work; and the final result will be the same.

Your pal,
Mentor

[We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog. –Mentor]