Defecting Yeti

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–

Read Moby Dick

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.]

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.