I'm off to other business, so don't go declaring any false victories in my absence ya kook.
--pseudonymous commenter anotherphoenician, June 16,2005
by Jerome du Bois
It's a lie, that name I've written just above. It's time to confess that our identities here on The Tears of Things have been elaborate ruses for over two years. We are not Jerome du Bois and Catherine King.
I am Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, and my wife is Anna Livia Plurabelle, and we are the Gods of All Rivers. When our falling tears hit the waters, the ripples rise as giant waves, reverberating, rocking, and roiling up many wonders in their finn-again wakes, from the bizarre, to the brazen, to the beautiful.
I feel better already.
And it appears we've sunk the hook deep into one of the creatures we've summoned from somewhere out there. This person, anotherphoenician, chooses to identify himself as a man; we choose to identify her as a woman, and we even made a guess as to her identity. But since nobody stands behind her rants, and since she stays submerged but stubbornly still there, we are free to speculate.
She thinks she's Jaws, maybe, big and strong enough to hijack the comment thread on the post People Love Mediocrity Best and run it out in her direction for her purposes. No. I run this blog. My wife runs this blog. Snip! We cut the line and leave her floundering. You're nobody, anotherphoenician. You have no rights here, but you are one bossy bitch, that's for sure. (Here new readers should check the comment thread for the full background.)
Let me emphasize for the reader: I will continue to refer to this person as she because of this person's claim to be male, without any kind of supporting information. He/she wishes to impose by arbitrary, anonymous will a new gender direction. Amazing thinking. Nope. Won't work, woman. Unbelievable that she would think I'd fold. I won't let it happen. That's just one disadvantage of anonymity, idnit? I'll be noting others below.
It's been fun deleting the increasingly shrill and scatological fiskings and rants anotherphoenician has vomited up on shore. Poking this detritus from a safe distance yields a few glittering bits, such as that precious epigraph above. I'm sure it will become part of our private vocabulary, since we've been laughing about it all day. ("I'm going to Circle K, ya kook. Don't go declaring --" and dissolving in laughter.) I mean --kook, false victories, in my absence-- the hubris of this woman would be sickening if it wasn't so laughable.
And there's more, much more. The overall tone sounds a variation on the Bible-thumper's mantra: "I said it, you damn well better believe it, and that settles it." [With a little foot stamp.] The arrogance --the damned gall-- of the anonymous! Just because this person says he is male, and that therefore I've made a mistake and so my whole post is BS, proves nothing. My claim stands: Kimber "We Built This City On Alt-Indy" Lanning is a cultural brake on the community, even if anotherphoenician turns out to be a one-legged transgendered Pakistani pole vaulter.
And just because this person says he saw us wearing shorts in a nice restaurant (or anywhere) does not make it true. We'd rather orbit Pluto than appear in public that way. Honestly, if anyone approached the people --merchants, retailers, acquaintances, family, passersby-- we see every day, and described us wearing shorts, they'd get something like: "Doesn't sound like them. The guy wears jeans, cowboy boots, long-sleeved shirts, cowboy vests, and neckties --with a collar pin-- in the summer. She wears Lagerfeld vests and Betsey Johnson tops, Gaultier jeans, wicked pointed boots, vintage jewelry, and her hair is dangerously complicated down almost to her waist. No, shorts don't go with those two."
anotherphoenician is lying, or saw a different couple. I say the former.
Her point, of course, is to smear us. No way we give that the go-by. Fashion is important to us, because it's about standards and discrimination, and profile and style, and confidence and being unique --everything the downtown crew is terrified of because they wouldn't know the first thing about those characteristics I just listed. We're not going to allow someone who probably shops at Lerner's to defame our inimitable style.
Because we love and nourish and talk about our style--
Because Catherine defines, refines, and redefines her own style, beauty grows from her busy, damaged hands like a rainbow on the loose-- where Galliano seems derivative, and Vivienne Westwood is left far behind--
Because of these activities, which we share with the world, anotherphoenician and others come crawling out squawking.
William Blake wrote, "He whose Face does not Shine, shall never become a Star." These Phoenix finks want everyone to keep their head down and go along and don't stand out. Shop at Swell and Plush and shut up. Well, they've got what they wanted.
There's more to say. When this post appears, after I'm finished crafting it, anotherphoenician will not be able to afford to identify herself/himself, I don't think. He/she will just look too stupid, manipulative, and infantile. By choosing anonymity, anotherphoenician instantly painted herself into a corner, and now she has to hide under a rock. Hah!
Let's see if we can pull this creature up closer to the light of day.
(Of course I won't reproduce the deleted comments. But I'll use them.)
The first thing I noticed from several comments is that the internet scares anotherphoenician --especially blogs and search engines. From one of the published comments:
The Jerome that thinks that getting to the top of a search engine list means a damned thing. A clue for you, it doesn't and it doesn't validate or substantiate anything you post in the least.
But people do find it easily and link to it and read it and make up their own minds. That's the whole idea. And are you the judge of meaning and validity and substantiation, and even damnation? No. You sound skeered, anotherphoenician.
I've had enough of an effect on you to get you to reply and who knows how many people will be effected [sic; it's affected] by my words. You have no way of really knowing, unless you want to make baseless assumptions on whose words have more of an effect. Something you simply cannot prove no matter how much you declare that you are right. And search engine listings are hardly evidence of truth or being correct.
I agree with most of this second passage. But I make none of the superiority claims she wants to attribute to me. (Projection, maybe?) I wrote in a recent post that we don't care how many readers we have; it's more important to direct the right eyes to the right words. Search engines help here. And she also implicitly endorses the power of blogs: "who knows how many people will be affected by my words." Making exactly my point.
From a deleted comment:
What a damn fool you are Jerome. Blogging will not save the world or even Phoenix. It is nothing more than wanking on the internet and millions of people do it and like your blog, it is nothing but ego masturbation.
You and Catherine are nothing but failed artists, who utilize your blog to make up for your sore egos.
Oh, we failed as artists in this city, that's for sure. But the big difference is that we walked away, leaving gifts in our wake. We chose to go. Nobody drove us away. We were not defeated by Artlink or any clique down there. We closed up our gallery and downed tools (as far as the public is concerned. We still make art, but just for us.) And, to repeat for the record, the Bentley crew didn't fire us --we quit after we found out we were being set up. You can look it up.
And any reader in the world can see what we "utilize" our blog for. Defending human dignity, the upward glance, the zone of respect around women, for starters; and always promoting the future, and calling attention to the vulnerable, the broken, the unfairly defamed . . . and especially the innocent dead.
Utilize. What a cold description for such a passionate mission!
I agree with your second sentence, provisionally. Blogging won't save the world, or Phoenix, but it will help in ways your tiny fearful brain cannot conceive.
Your third sentence is astounding, first because it ignores the new earth crater, still smoking, dubbed the Newsman Formerly Known As Dan Rather; but also because it condemns as wankers bloggers who range from Glenn Reynolds to Charles Johnson to Michelle Malkin to Franklin Einspruch to Bill Quick to James Lileks to Ed Morrisey to thousands of others. Carl Zimmer. Gene Expression. You call these people "nothing." Of course we'll take your expert word for it, idiota. Oh, but you don't blog, do you, whoever you are? Like Miss Amy Young, you're so over it.
I called this whistling in the dark before. You could also call this attitude, "If I close my eyes, you're not there." You could also call it having your head up your fundamental aperture, a pandemic in this metropolis.
In a variation of this blindness, anotherphoenician denigrates the validity of search engine results. In other words, if anyone in the world Googles "Kimber Lanning Phoenix" and we appear anywhere on the first page, to anotherphoenician this has no significance whatsoever. (Look, over there! Elvis!) And yet, from our tiny outpost in the blogosphere, we somehow get to park ourselves right beside her front door --stylish, intractable truth-tellers with irresistible stories and revelations, not her usual stepinfetchit cigar-store sycophants. Who can resist a shingle like "The Tears of Things"? Along with our catchy titles? Not many. Resistance is futile.
For a control freak like Kimber Lanning, who must always have the last word, this has got to be infuriating. Excellent: We want to play a more direct role in changing what is ignorable by whom.
Another bugbear for anotherphoenician: Tapping away, as with a small hammer on a purple bruise, at Catherine's mental illness. Sadist. Check out this meanness, readers:
It [anonymity] really has nothing to do with cowardess [sic: you mean, like a female coward? that's a tell, idnit? Haw!] or courage . . . it actually involves being "smart" in light of responding to a crackpot who is paranoid, carries a gun and is frustrated due to being incessantly pussywhipped by a crazy women who has been shellshocked by life and couldn't deal with adversity like most humans.
anotherphoenician is apparently physically afraid of us. That's a good thing. And smart, not "smart." We would never attack another human being unprovoked. But provoked --Nemo me impune lacessit! Translation: You goin' down.
Catherine wrestles with a condition called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is the only mental illness caused by other people. Some people suffer from clinical depression. Some people have conditions like OCD and mania and fetishistic infantilism --all recognized mental illnesses, syndromes, or conditions. Some people dress up like superheroes. Some people make so-called art from their urine. Some people are addicted to tattoos. Some people believe in teleportation and telepathy and alien beings. Some people are Adult Clowns; they paint the face in black, in white, in blue. Some people snort too much white powder, or live a lurching existence of eat-and-purge. Some people think our President is in league with The Devil. Others would describe these people, at least tentatively, as mentally ill, but I've just described a significant number of the downtown Phoenix art population, so why can't you sonsofbitches keep your fucking hypocrisy away from Catherine's pain!
Well, I know the answer. It's like a pecking party. The first chicken who sports a spot of blood becomes the bloodsport target. We've been there, we've suffered that, we got out of the way. And, of course, with no real arguments to bring to bear, the ad hominem / ad feminim is always ready to hand: they're crazy.
Yeah? So? We've acknowledged it. Crazy is a place: you go, you come back. We're still stronger, smarter, and better than you, anotherphoenician.
And Catherine deals with adversity every day, in herself and in the world. She's not alone in this. She shrinks from nothing, no matter what triggers may be hidden in events. What's your day like, anotherphoenician? Do you always have to watch out for psychological ambush? Of course not, because you always try to be the one who ambushes. Didn't work here, bitch.
Anyone out there can say what they want. That's why we have the blog. The blog stands for us. The blog speaks for us. Remember Ghandi? "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win." Wise words.
People like anotherphoenician want to be home invaders. This shitbird really thinks she can barge into our virtual house and talk trash:
[I wrote:]
For the last day or so I've let a foamer who calls itself "anotherphoenician" comment over and over on this thread. I had to delete a couple of comments from this being and samf, another anonymous commenter, for minimal decency's sake.
[ap wrote:]
More lies from Jerome. You "had" to delete my posts, simple bullshit.I wrote the truth and you couldn't take it, you can fisk others but can't take it yourself.
[I wrote:]
I wanted to let them run out their strings, which it seems they have.
[ap wrote:]
Another lie, you delete my posts and declare I have stopped posting, which I have not whatsoever.
But, you see, you stop posting when I delete you, otherwise, where are you posting? You have no control here, no power, no say, no standing. You are so thickheaded you think waving your useless electronic hands will get you somewhere. You think you can demand electronic space from me, and you don't even see how fookin rude that behavior is.
You're breathing thin air, fool. And you and samf were sexually insulting my wife, and you complain about me deleting your insults? Asshats. Ten to one you're alone in your life, both of you.
I really think you must be, anotherphoenician. I just went over the email / comment list from you, all but two of which I've had to delete. Since Tuesday, you have sent us thirteen comments: the original inspiration for the mediocrity piece --thank you! then five on Thursday, four on Friday, and three so far today. [Correction: #14 just sailed in.] You're as pathetically predictable as a Skinner pidgeon. Odd behavior for a bully.
In the name of the future of Phoenix, get out of the way.
The grown-ups are talking.
[Update: Numbers 15 and 16, duplicates of each other, and of 14 and 13, arrived on the comments to the earlier post after I posted this current one.]
Posted by Jerome at June 18, 2005 03:45 PM | TrackBack