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Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Yer Mother Wears Non-Insulated/Flame-Resistant/Waterproof Army Boots!

I am in practice for writing comments on the blogs of brainy types that I like to read.
I have noticed an unfortunate phenomenon: my comment tends to be the final comment in a string of comments; if my comment is first, the comment section sighs, gives up, goes to the front door, and flips the sign hanging there from the "Open" side to the "Closed" one.

I suppose it is that know-it-all sanctimonious way of expressing myself - like I had some conduit to the future, the past, and the hearts of mankind. No,no. Don't say no. I've had people indicate as much to me when I have spent some time with them: are you a perfesser? are you a teacher of comparative religions? are you fer real?
Often the inquiry is not about me, but my home planet...or the craft that bore me hither.

I have decided to become an emblem of the Common Man - as they used to say back in the day when such notions were as thick as flies on the public mind........
A bit more of "yer a damn fool!" and less of "...it is at this point our views tend to diverge..."
No more shall I be the party-goer that closes down the Public House of Commentary !

7 comments:

Ruth said...

I'm no Montag, but I've been thinking along the same lines. If one more commenter calls me "erudite" I think I'll scream. I think writing can be just as intelligent and well crafted without loft and circumference.

Unknown said...

I don't mind erudite, and in fact I cannot ever remember being accused of such a failing. I appreciate any comment I get from thoughtful people. I appreciate people who take the time to read my ramblings. Much better this than being called an asshole by some troglodyte who stumbled upon my blog and immediately detected yet another enemy of freedom and the American way.

Ruth, both you and Montag should rethink your positions. We need all the erudition we can get.

Montag said...

OK.
I don't think I wuz...er, was too serious in the first place. I've tried it in the past. You can only get so far before you reach a stumbling block...like a commonplace vulgarism for "anonymity" or some such concept.

Before you know it, you've blurted out the word "anonymity"...or worse, "incommunicado", and from then on, everyone in the bar will know you as "the perfesser".
Since you really wanted to be known as "Rambling Red" or "Big Luke", this is a serious misstep.

Reading the Signs said...

Hang on a minute, Rambling Red (sounds like a winning horse to me) - there was a time when I experienced exactly the same thing, and no-one ever mistook me for a perfesser. Well, there was the sense people had, at one point, that I was Wise. It was said to me a lot, how Wise I sounded. Then I probably stopped sounding it, I dunno. Your common man, does not necessarily lack wisdom or erudition. You are not planning to come at us with a truck load of platitudes and dropped aitches are you?

Montag said...

I've already loaded the "h"s in a lorry and sent them off to places where children desperately need them.

I figger that if'n you can have a bear "friend" ( "bear... with me..."), I can be the Common Man.

You're right about the Common Man not necessarily lacking wisdom, etc., for as soon as I wrote it originally, I heard strains of Aaron Copland's Fanfare For The Common Man in memory...
but I had a deadline, so I ignored it.

Reading the Signs said...

Fair enough, mister Red. And here's me thinking (bear with me) that Common Woman has quite another resonance. I too have a deadline - shopping etc. And my 1,000 words.

Montag said...

Ohhh, you're right about that Common Woman business. Wow...it's like I can say Common Man, and strains of Copland descend, while I say Common Woman, and one immediately thinks of Hogarth, and sees Boswell slipping around corners looking for a lambskin...

Now that was decidedly in poor taste, but it's in keeping with my new persona of Rambling Red.

And as to sounding like a horse, winning or not, few men would turn up their noses at a parallelism between themselves and a horse.

I suppose if I am serious about the whole thing, I shall have to do a bit better than Hogarth and Boswell.