Real Goddamned Mail. Everyone Is Satisfied!
- I hate to complain, but when you posted my article last week you gave it a title that I think undercut the whole point of what I was trying to say. I should have given it a title I suppose, but if you couldn't have thought up a better one than you did, I expected you to contact me for my input. And the graphic didn't even make sense given the story. I know most of you work on a volunteer basis, but I'd think one of you could pay a bit more attention to bringing these posts to the blog in a more professional manner.
- Why do you let Xxxxxxxxxx comment so much. He/she goes on at such length that I'm unable to scroll fast enough to get past all the drivel. Is he/she one of the inner circle or something? Any other moderator would cut that shit off.
- I don't believe you've had 4.5 million hits. There's never any content to read except student editorials from Podunk U or whatever.
- Sometimes I can't log in on my iPad. Could you let me know if anyone else is having that trouble? And can you ask other iPad users if they've had luck using a proxy server through Safari? I would like the text on the mobile version of the page be larger, too, because half the time I read the blog on my iPhone 5. Could you re-set the settings to what they were a few months back when the text looked better to me?
- I can't find a post made by Zzzzzzzzzzz. I'm pretty sure you censored it or deleted it. It's that kind of bullshit that makes me hate this place. I don't know how to search for it, but I'm sure I can't find it and I went back several weeks. Do you remember when Zzzzzzzzzz posted the article about Yyyyyyyyy? Because I can't find it. Why don't you have an index or something?
- The new colors are styling are ugly. I wouldn't be surprised if you broke out a pumpkin spice tea recipe or something. It's not about the design. It's supposed to be about the text. Nobody out here gives a crap about your stupid design asthetic.
- I've offered to help fix the page several times and usually nobody even answers me. I actually teach CS and could make the page look and work better, and certainly draw more readers. I have a blog about Qqqqqqqqqqq and I get more hits in a day than you do in a month. It's about providing something that other blogs don't have. You don't even encourage people to write more creatively or about more interesting topics. I commented a few days ago when Xxxxxxxx was talking about Yyyyyyyy. My comment got more replies than anyone else's posted in the whole month. That's the sort of direction you need to take the page. I am offering again to take the page over, at least a few days of the week. I can assure you it'd be better instantly. I would like for someone to email me back because I want to help the page stay alive.
- I'm so fed up.
- Don't you think all the alcoholic humor gets old?
- Any graphic you put up of a woman is a sex shot of some kind. It's puerile and juvenile.
- I don't understand half the jokes you make?
- I'm writing this because I'm tired of the carping in the comments. Xxxxxxxxx is always shutting down discussion with his/her condescending b.s. I find it offputting and I often don't read the page simply because of that. Why don't you exert stronger controls on things. What are the rules for if not to limit discussion to on-the-point matters. For the last few weeks nobody has deleted any of the offending material.
- You having fun censoring everything? You are a fucking asshole. I posted a legitimate comment and offered a link to a new piece of educational software from a company that I partner with, and you took it down. This is my livelihood you're fucking with. Your audience is exactly the one that needs my help. I only posted it to give them a hand with automatic grading. What are you afraid of? That your readers might have more time to complain. Our company Zzzzzzzzz has propietary educational software that is changing the face of modern academia, and if I can't market it through your readers, you're doing me and your other readers a disservice. I'll provide a link below so you can put it up, if you need to APPROVE it first.
Who else reads Real Goddamned Mail and wonders if Zzzzzz or Xxxxx isn't them?
ReplyDelete(And does anyone else read the Xxxxx and wonder briefly if something pornographic and/or alcoholic or both is implied?)
I do. Because I'm kind of a dick.
DeleteSee, CM is ALWAYS about the comments.
DeleteActually I like the varying background themes... Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but it's not like they're there for a long time.
ReplyDeleteI agree entirely. Some, like the current one, I absolutely love. But when something is up that I don't like...who cares? It's a bonus. It's not why I come to the site. I know that Cal tries to keep the page fresh, and I appreciate that.
DeleteI care about the design. It cracks me up to see how awful it can get. I love it!!! It's like the PowerPoints my students put together! Thank you!!!
DeleteWhat's cool is when the design goes in a strikingly different direction -- so you appreciate it. All the other times, it's just background. I'm here for the dish dish dish.
DeleteDamn it! I must have been too drunk to see the sex shot.
ReplyDeleteI missed all the sex shots. Again.
Delete...Darla's shorts? xoxo
DeletePretty much Darla. And Proffie Galore. Let's not forget Proffie Galore.
DeleteYes, first on the list of things this page needs is indexing performed by one of our unprofessional volunteers. I'll get right on it after I finish preparing a graphic containing a woman in a suggestive position and think up some new euphemisms for getting drunk.
ReplyDeleteMake sure it's blurry.
DeleteHow will he know it's blurry if he's drunk?
DeleteYes, Fab's huge volunteer staff! What a bunch of nags and complainers.
ReplyDeleteI hate to complain but your choice of Xxxx, Yyyyyy and Zzzzzz is problematic. Obviously, you realize that using these alphabetical characters as generic names is very Anglo-centric. You could, if you weren't so racist, use a different letter from a non-English alphabet (you know those exist, right?). It's not as if choosing a character from another font and making sure that it appears correctly in the most common browsers and platforms would be any extra work for you. I'm not going to tell you what to do but I hope you choose to do the right thing instead of being evil.
ReplyDeleteI would send you a private email but this is the only way I can complain and show people I care at the same time.
By the way, thanks for all your hard work as moderator.
cracked me up!
DeleteBut being evil is soooo much more lucrative in the blogosphere! Just ask the would-be marketer from the last RGMail! (Whoever is keeping that shite from the comments section deserves a shiny gold medal and a bottle of scotch.)
DeleteI agree. Why aren't the XXXXX and YYYYYY and ZZZZZZZs not more carefully censored? Someone needs to censor the moderator!
DeleteI can put a face on nearly every one of these people. They all look like people I work with, including the last one, who stood up at a faculty meeting last year to try to sell us the software he had written. And the "I'll fix it all!" guy, too: oi. I've served on committees with this one: "You're doing it wrong, and I'll just fix it myself since everyone else is so useless."
ReplyDeleteI think they hate the page because they sense that they are the source of half of the misery.
I think we should stop bothering the moderator with our outrageous complaints and instead start writing him to tell him about our really weird dreams. I'll go first.
ReplyDeleteI had a dream last night that I was going to be executed because I sat on a baby.
There. Isn't that better than reading about some dumbass professor's idiotic complaints?
The babies in my dreams are always too tiny for me to care for (thumb-sized).
DeleteI once had a dream that I was watching a parade of doctors in white lab coats running across a street while pushing babies in office chairs. One doctor didn't have a chair but instead was dragging his baby along in a shopping hand basket tied to a string. When he got to the other side of the street the basket hit the curb and the baby went flying out. I woke up laughing, and it troubles me to this day.
DeleteI had a dream recently that all of my students arrived to class on time, were attentive and taking notes, weren't playing with their cell phones, and asked intelligent, thought provoking questions.
DeleteWhen I woke up, I called my doctor to ask for a refill of my meds.
The other day I dreamt that I got into a bar brawl with a couple of yahoos who kept poking at me and calling me "college boy". It felt like a scene from Southpark, a la "we don't take kindly to your type around here." After trying to mind my own business for a bit, I ended up shoving the broken lip of a couple of pint glasses into their chins. There was a lot of blood everywhere. And in the midst of the horror and chaos I felt truly and gloriously alive, ALIVE...
DeleteI have index misery.
ReplyDeleteI am writing to complain about a certain commenter who dreams about sitting on babies. You know, some people dream about falling in love or even making lots of money. Sitting on babies? That's disgusting. I don't understand why the moderator is so lazy that he lets this stuff get through.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, you're doing a great job, Fab!
I got this one.
ReplyDeleteQ:I don't understand half the jokes you make?
A: Bowling shoes. The answer is bowling shoes. RTFS.
If all goes well, we'll be out business before Christmas.
ReplyDeleteThat's what they said about World War I.
DeleteR&G, that was truly wonderful.
DeleteI love MAIL!!!! Thank you for posting.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't think the duck is getting enough publicity. Quite frankly, this strikes me as duck-ist or bird-ist or Ave-ist.
Evolution of fads:
ReplyDelete1. Pet rocks.
2. Frisbees and hula hoops.
3. Stuffing college students into telephone booths.
4. Sitting on babies.
5. Ducks sitting on babies.
6. Drunk proffies sitting on ducks sitting on babies (in phone booths).
Long live CM!
7. Sexy shots of drunk proffies sitting on ducks sitting on babies (in phone booths).
Delete8. Sexy shots of drunk proffies doing shots while sitting on ducks sitting on babies.
DeleteWon't someone think of the hamsters?
DeletePumpkin Spice Tea? Have you been holding out on us? Pumpkin spice tea would be exactly the right color to disguise the brandy in my mug!
ReplyDeleteI demand the recipe to this tea!
As always, real goddamned mail is a hoot to read. And I, for one, am glad that pitches for proprietary educational software, in which the commenter has a vested interest, are removed. I've got the whole rest of the interwebs to have product advertisements thrown at me, I don't care to read that shit here. Go bother our Chairs and Deans with that crap.
ReplyDeleteWhat I love about that email is the fucking egomania. He's a salesman and he thinks he's doing US a favor by using CM to parade his bullshit, that he's "owed" a free spot to hawk it, and has a right to be furious with the mod for taking the link down.
DeleteThat sort of sense of entitlement dwarfs anything that we could come up with from our students.
Agreed! (Both PP and SfS)
DeleteI won't believe RGM is real until I see a screenshot of the gmail screen. Sounds as fake as "heard around campus" quotes.
ReplyDeleteWe just posted real life screen capture evidence of the earlier email which was fake to begin with. So we faked a fake using Photoshop and a cloth rag soaked in vodka. Still, that we got it done while also tending to a sick dog and the Halloween prep is pretty outstanding.
DeletePlus I also posted as InvertedSquare over at our other fake site, CelebrityMisery.com, where Miley Cyrus's new video with porn star Jessie Andrews is our lead story.
Wait, is this microphone on? Cal, help me, brother. Did I write this to you, or did you write this to me?
I can vouch for the email that said, "Don't you think all the alcoholic humor gets old?"
DeleteI wrote that. I was drunk when I wrote it. Forgive me.
Now, back to my bourbon.
Was "I'm so fed up" the whole email? That cracks me up. Someone is off meds.
ReplyDeleteI love real mail because it reminds me of the RYS days, when nearly all of the mail was like this. Because we didn't allow comments, people REALLY had the need to vent directly to us. Some of us were better at compartmentalizing the abuse. Some went crazy, Chronos. Some smoked a lot of weed, Cash. Me, I just, well, I guess I was like the others.
ReplyDeleteRYS was great, but I do not miss the bottled-up feeling -- from "YES! THAT WAS MY DAY TOO!!" to "oh wow this person is losing it." I always wanted to talk things out on RYS like we ended up doing here.
DeleteOnce again, Fab and Calico, thank you for the page and putting up with the e-mails.
ReplyDeleteAnd dang it, Stella, you beat me to it. I was thinking, "What gall! He thinks no one's smart enough to see he was free advertising?"
Let me give (nearly) all the props to Fab, who started this page, and who has always been in charge, even when Leslie K, Gordon Presto, and I have taken SHORT turns.
DeleteMy only contribution is the spirit-killing blurry graphics, which I hope one day will drive every last reader away, so I can get on with my true interweb love, posting lo-fi videos of dogs spinning around in the snow.
ducks spinning around in the snow would be even better...
DeleteThis was the best treat for Halloween I could ever ask for! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteFor cynical professors these commenters have way too much time on their hands and should instead get down and do 20 or something.
ReplyDeleteYes, because dropping down and doing 20 is an efficient use of time, too. :o)
DeleteI love GDRM, even if it's faked by four of you.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the last orgy I attended.
DeleteHey-o!
For the last time, it's not alcoholic humour, it's a Leonard Cohen lyric.
ReplyDeleteTHIS is alcoholic humour: http://www.alcoholichumor.com
Every time I read comments like those above, I respect our profession more and more...
ReplyDelete