Friday, July 25, 2008

See SCSU Scholars for your all-day MilF coverage! 

As a rehearsal for my plans for the Republican National Convention, I am going to experiment today with mobile blogging from the cellphone as we cover the Millard Fillmore Invitational from Valleywood. Updates also available from the Twitter page. Word is the Head of Alfredo Garcia will also provide live updates throughout the day. Where, I do not know.

Ed and Billy Baru be with me today.

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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Soon to be dead and gone 

Molly Hatchet knows a little something about Mitch "Erstwhile MOB" Berg:
You think you're real sassy,
But you know your headed for your doom,
You look a little older but you sure ain't no wiser,
You're running for a stone-cold tomb.
Untouchable, he says? Hardly. We can get to him. We will give him no quarter in which to practice his silly bagpipes. He and his "it was twenty years ago today" navel-gazing shall be put to the power of the MOB.
You've got to find out for yourself,
You've got to learn it all on your own,
All this messing around,
Gonna put you in the ground,
I fail? Have you checked his Blog Readability? Go ahead, put the Berg blog in there and see what you get? Yes, Elementary School. Centrisity scores Junior High by comparison. All that pontification, all those twenty-years-ago-today piffle, and for what?
Start to feel the power,
Hundred miles per hour,
You're on the wrong side of the road,
There is of course hope for Mitch. There is redemption. He may indicate his loyalty to the MOB government by a very simple act. He must change the banner of his MOB badge to read

That's right. Sent to the Caucasus, the ancestral home of your mayor, where an eagle will devour your Guinness-infested liver each day and then have it regenerate each night, only to suffer that fate again.
Your hands a-start a-shaking,
You'll feel your mind a-breaking,
You'll wonder why it's getting so cold,
Your body's feeling icy,
That box will hold you nicely,
You'd better say goodbye to your soul.
This is your last chance, or the titans of the MOB will leave you dead and gone.

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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign 

The mayor notes with pleasure the creation of new badges for MOB members who wish to display their status in the MOBosphere. Unfortunately some choose to use these for ill and not good. As members of the NARN Council had already thrusted themselves into the public arena to opine on whether or not someone or some post was racist, they could not claim that their advice was not considered. Neither would it be true to declare the Council elected; only the seat of the mayor's office has been chosen by the MOB. My grant of councilor status is my choice.

As to the former mayor, his input is welcome and will be considered but again, only one person is eventually held responsible. In the words of the great Parcells, if I am making the dinner, I get to buy the groceries. In a moment of crisis, someone had to step up and make a decision. Since NARNians were already in turmoil over this, decisive action was needed.

So the ingratitude of this remark from Mitch will not go unnoticed:
I call upon King Banaian to relinquish control over the MOB�s policy-setting apparatus and, above all, the �Blue� and �Red� lists of blogs� standings in the MOB.
What to do, what to do? We turn to the source of all wisdom,
They'll come a day when you'll be free Northern Land
The band will play your folk songs Northern Land
Caught in this crossfire is it any wonder
We don't understand
The Mayor's office rules that Shot in the Dark must bear this logo in order to fly the MOBroll. There will be a meeting at the Patriot studios about this shortly.

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Monday, November 12, 2007

Regarding the MOB and blogger behavior 

Gary Miller suggests that this MOB dust-up regarding a post on Anti-Strib (details of which you can find damn near everyplace else on the MOB, go find it yourself) is a "major test" for the office of the mayor. I wanted to review the rules of the organization before saying anything. This set is more than a year old, but I believe is applicable here. Rule 4 states:
Membership in the MOB is a privilege not a right. If you comport yourself in a manner that the MOB leadership deems inappropriate, your membership can be revoked at any times. All decisions in such areas are final and not subject to appeal no matter how arbitrary and capricious they may be.
I have stated that I have NARN as councilors in this matter, but all decisions regarding any membership revocation will be issued from this office and is the responsibility of the mayor alone. I will not pass responsibility on to others, and have arrived at this decision without counsel.

Having read the discussion on Mitch's blog and the attempt by Tracy to explain his views, as well as other posts in MOB, I am hereby ruling that Anti-Strib shall remain a member of the MOB.*

In the rules, as has been discussed throughout the MOBosphere, membership in the MOB requires very little. If you can read Brian's rule 3,
After a thorough vetting process, involving criminal background checks, retinal scans, and psychological screening, they will either confirm or deny your request.
...and not think the whole enterprise is more than a little tongue-in-cheek, you should check into Dr. Humor. My interview with Derek should have made this plain. And blogs that appear on the list get there through a pretty haphazard system, sprawling to now over 110 such blogs (some of which do not post and at least one whose owner is deceased.) Sad to say, there's probably 90 blogs on that list I haven't read in months, including Anti-Strib. For someone to try to attach the opinion of one one post on one blog to over a hundred others is a stretch worthy of Eyechart's best days at first base.

Satire, as a part of humor, is often used in politics. As Learned Foot states, sometimes it works well and sometimes it does not. Likewise, a good political rant can go badly awry sometimes, and other times it can produce a hell yeah! from the reader.

MOB has a tradition of rant-blogs, and though good political thought should (I agree, Pat) be held to a higher standard there is a place in the blogosphere as well for the well-sharpened stick in the eye. Not every blog is meant to persuade the undecided or engage debate. Context matters.

By the poster's own admission, there were points in the Anti-Strib article that were poorly worded and left impressions that he did not intend. That stick was not well-sharpened. We call that a teachable moment: The point where someone has done something they can regret and amend and learn from. As Flash points out,
To the point that I see a sincere effort on his part to amend himself. He could have just flew the might [sic] middle finger, in true AntiStrib fashion, but he didn�t. That says a lot to me, and those that know him.
I don't know Tracy outside of one visit to the Patriot studios as Michael mentioned. It would be a shame for that post to be the sum of what we know about him. While I don't think Tracy has amended himself -- only his post -- I take Flash's point as being the right one. Also, while we sometimes will have to chastise or bring to heel the occasional rant that goes too far -- and there will be more, humanity being imperfect -- there will only be a chilling effect if we do not tread lightly on one's speech.

Who one links to as a "daily read" is a personal decision, and whomever wishes not to display Anti-Strib as one has that right. But the MOBroll is not a choice of this blog or that. You may either display it all or none of it. Those MOB members who wish to take the MOBroll down because of its link to Anti-Strib or any other blog may be considered for violation of the privileges of membership, applying Rule 4 stated above.

It is so ordered.*

*Now, if you can't tell that some of this pomposity is also an attempt at humor, off to the Ministry of Silly Walks with you!

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Saturday, November 10, 2007

First interview with your new Mayor 


I sat down with Derek Brigham of Freedom Dogs and True North for an interview. I'm a little concerned about the line "not a hard to follow academic windbag � well, most of the time anyway." I think I'm easy to follow.

We will begin a new category today: Mayor Directives. These should be viewed as official communications from this office. They will also be adorned with the seal.

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