Defecting Yeti
Monday, 4 December 2006

In spite of the fact that one Mr Pretty-Ok-Guy—née Taco John, née Matthew Baldwin—is quite clever, and in that way that some NYU-types use pejoratively but I consider complimentary, designed and ran the best game I ever played and had the pleasure of winning (on a team of three, the game was too big for one); he also sired the single best computing gag I’ve ever seen by writing a fake Unix shell at Amazon.com which intercepted regular commands and reported back, with misspellings and whatnot, that so-and-so tool was not found or such-and-such arguments were not allowed. If you’re not a *nix geek you don’t know just how fucking funny that was to watch. Where were we? Ah, yes.
Despite all that and other unenumerated personal charms, I removed a long standing link to Defective Yeti some many moons ago for this–
As you can see, he totally deserved it.
[I almost wrote “totally fucking deserved it” because I feel the point should be emphatic but I'm trying to stop using the f-word in print so much (there are rumors that MySQL TEXT columns develop byte reading errors at a certain upper limit of profanity). So I didn’t write it.]
And not just for the horror of steering the curious and the intimidated into avoiding the book. Also because it’s iffy comedy. Way too much work to prop up a “____ dick liar” punchline.
I responded, entirely without humor, annotation, or any writerly adeptness, myself, here—That one wasn’t very funny.
I went back to Defective Yeti recently for the first time in, as I think I used a silly American Indian cliché to relate previously, more than a year. And I discovered two things.
First, he decided just a couple of weeks before my return, to take another stab at reading Moby Dick and journal about the experience. So, by that alone, all would be forgiven.
Second, the following; which I reprint in its entirety without even asking Matthew because it’s complementary so I expect he won't mind and even if he does mind, he knows I'm much bigger than he is and his WHOIS records don’t, as mine do, use a PO Box. [Also DMCA forms are a pain in the ass to fill out—believe me.]
Didn't See That Coming
I'm going to write a psychological thriller for the blind. It's not all plotted out yet, but I have a great, surprise ending: the last Braille letter will be replaced with a thumbtack.
Any man who can write that, deserves all the second chances Liz Taylor has to give.
Myself: You sure have been leaning on that Liz Taylor gag lately. By lately I mean, for like three years.
Me: Beats your torpid dependence on the mother joke.
Myself: Speaking of torpid, how’s your moms?
Me: Did you just go after my mom?
Myself: What are you gonna do about it, big guy?
Me: Um, I don’t know. Fucking kill you?
Myself: Pfffff… throw, joto.
Me: Nah, I’m not really into Pokémon.
Myself: Write your own lines? Pussy.
Me: You are what you eat. Dick.
Myself: (Shoves me).
Me: You know what, I’m not going through with this. It’s pointless.
Myself: Why? Because you know you'll lose.
Me: More because there is no one here to shoot the winner.
Discussion
Comments
Re: Defecting Yeti
Woohoo!! I get to comment! Look at me! I'm finally commenting on Sedition.com!
Nice job cleaning up the place. Looks great.
By Jen on 4 December 2006 · 13:45
Re: Defecting Yeti
Thanks, Jen. Don’t forget to include a link to your own place, or whatever next time so I have a chance to
get back at youvisit you. (I’m not going to be sticking “nofollow” on comment links either.)By A is A on 4 December 2006 · 14:29
Re: Defecting Yeti
actually, all 8 recent postings are good: kotke, glay etc, but the matt baldwin one was particularly interesting. i'm not geeky enough to totally understand the unix joke, but i did the like one played on you by sean whereby you clocked into your laptop and a manic voice called everyone's attention to the fact that you were surfing porn. that Ransom. (why can't i use chris holmes as name without being lectured on alphnumerics?)
By chris holmes on 7 December 2006 · 07:56
Re: Defecting Yeti
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks!
IIRC, for Matt’s fake tool wrapper, you’d type in something like–
apond@nooksack>orderstat 002-3115723-0981221
and it would quickly clear/erase what you typed replacing it with something like–
I’ll tweak the user information to allow spaces. Probably tonight but next time you should be able to enter it as you like. I will also make the comment box wider and taller I think. Hard to read in here while you type.
By A is A on 7 December 2006 · 10:19