@blatham,
blatham wrote:
I will point out one humorous aspect to all this. There is one poster on the site who has tried on a number of occasions to duplicate certain stylistic or rhetorical devices I use. And that's Finn.
Really?
This is really quite rich. You try to cop a pose of humility with george (albeit making certain to point how you compose your posts in a
compelling manner) and then conclude it with an assertion that I have
tried, more than once, to copy your style and duplicate your (presumably) clever rhetorical devices.
My
style is, for better or worse, the one I have expressed here and in Abuzz for a good many years now. I'm sure it borrows from some of the major influences in my life, but you, my friend, are not one of them. If, of late, I have duplicated anything of your style or any of your
devices, it was to mock them.
For most of our online association, teasing (sometimes with a sharp edge) has been, at least for me, a welcome and amusing feature of the Finn/blatham repartee. Reciprocal tweaks. Such banter is fun and I know I have complimented you, on more than one occasion, on your skill with it. However, over the last year or so (undoubtedly the same period of time that george noted, and certainly coincidental with your assumption of the role of leader of the A2K Resistance), I've found that, more and more, you invite mockery rather than teasing, and that the former waggish nature of our exchanges has soured. A
chicken/egg question but irrelevant. I'm certainly not some innocent victim of the spoliation of your sense of humor, and it may very well be the case that if we did a forensic analysis of all of our exchanges on A2K, we would find that I was the first to replace teasing with jeering, but it would be simply a matter of timing and not a causative action. This point in time was going to be reached, regardless.
It would be interesting though to learn just what
devices and stylistic flourishes you believe to be uniquely yours and which I have
tried to copy.
Off the top of my head I can think of only a couple, but I'm open to the possibility that there are more. You provide a target rich environment for mockery:
Your use of
"Must read" to flag something you think is of particular brilliance or importance. I admit I find it pretentious and pedantic and worthy of mockery.
Your "No **** Sherlock" awards: Here though no derision at all is intended. Your repeated use of this device sets it up for appropriation when a strikingly obvious comment is made by someone in
your tribe, and, after all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I hope, though, that you don't claim your use of the phrase, even in the context of an award, is somehow proprietary. The cleverness is in the selection of the recipient, not in a device that has been employed by many others in many other venues, however, if you feel you are entitled to attribution when I, in turn, employ it,
mea culpa.
I hereby acknowledge that blatham is the originator of the "No **** Sherlock Award" occasionally appearing in this thread. If it will make you feel better I'll even admit that my usage is but a pale imitations of yours.
Still, there has to be more you think I've tried to duplicate, and so I anxiously await your response.
