I'm wrote an entry about some guy who was having Christine flamed. I thought that posting that entry here might encourage some of you to try and pursuade this guy that he is doing the wrong thing (unless you think I'm wrong, but I've tried to make my position as clear as possible):

Some clown took offense to Christine's Bad Ass Cats page, and posted the following on an animal rights site:

Hi this is Skittles.I have found a site http://www.kwinternet.com/chris/stories/badass.html

It is about big cats as the titles says.But if you go in it talks about over feeding cats.Enourmouse amounts of food.With the site owners remarks puts a bad name on us cats.It also talks about other cats being violant (due to abuse) to poor defensless cats as the site owner put it.The site owner talks about his experiences with beating his cats!It talks about cats as slaves working in a garden for him.This site owner is not only a cat abuser but a crazy human!He logs demented stories in his site.His e-mail address is:chris@gta.igs.net All cats and kittens who read this please send this terrible human your opinion and a note request to shut his site down.If you have any questions my e-mail address is:Frednet1@home.com

Considering how, even in satire, Christine can't hide the fact that she loves cats, I decided to respond: Dear Skittles,

Calling Chris a terrible human for posting her cat jokes is like calling Jonathan Swift a terrible human for his essay on controlling human population by eating babies, or calling Carrol O'Conner a terrible human being for playing the racist role of Archie Bunker on television. It may make you feel like a good human yourself, but at the cost of deluding yourself that you are making progress at curbing any actual cruelty.

The difference between satire, and espousing cruelty, is that, in the satirical presentation, the satired character reveals clues to the limits to his or her perceptions, which Chris does clearly. It's ridiculous to think that Chris has somehow managed to squeeze labor from, of all creatures, A CAT. It's ridiculous to think that someone who would punish a cat for meowing would KEEP A CAT IN THE FIRST PLACE. It's ridiculous that a person's craving for a place to rest her head would force her to consider turning her cat into a pillow.

The fact that you did not pick up on these clues speaks of a deficiency in your reasoning. I recommend that you do yourself a favor, and withdraw your call to [harass] Christine, before you make yourself look more ridiculous. You aren't kidding anyone that you aren't just looking to pick a fight with someone, and this whole "defending animals from cruelty," in this case, isn't just you looking for a license to be a jerk. You aren't being brave by harassing Christine.

I don't think an apology to Christine would be out of order either.
--
Mike

"Skittles" replied: I am not a human I am a cat.I am new to the ARG.How ever I will not withdraw the article.Are you from CLAW?Are you christines friend?I think that the term the sites owner used to beat a cat is pretty much abuse and not a joke. To this, I replied: You got me Skittles. You win. I've broken down into the basic building blocks of human understanding how satire presents the paradox of perception versus reality. I can't stop you from ignoring my comments by arbitrary dismissal. I don't know how to counter your willful stupidity. You are a formidable machine accomplishing nothing. I hope your waste of effort, and disparagement of an innocent woman, is worth the delusion that you are something which you aren't, a positive force in nature.

Mike

"Skittles" replied: Hi thank you for your opinion.I hope you think better than you type.My job is to find cat abuse sites such as the one I reported.You misjudge me and have no right what so ever to post my name in that wretched site. But I have every right to report your friends cat abuse and inhumanity to the rights of animals.And if you have any further trash to send me please send it to yourself and deleted because thats just what I am going to do with anymore trash you send me. This clown thinks it's ok to encourage others to flame Christine, but it's not ok to flame him, because he feels he has some kind of license to, because he's too dense to comprehend humor which requires no more than, I would say, a fifth grade reading level. I hope everyone feels free to recommend that this guy stop looking to harass innocent people. The next journaller might be you.

-- Anonymous, February 22, 2000

Answers

Oh, and in case it needed to be spelled out for anyone, this guy had the nerve to post Christine's e-mail address, specifically for the purpose of shutting her down, but then had the nerve to say he had the right not to be flamed. I'm not encouraging anyone one else to send e-mail devaluing him (although, I may have crossed that line). I'm just suggesting that he needs to relent on having Christine flamed, and some of you may agree with me.

-- Anonymous, February 22, 2000

Oh that's just.... silly! ("Skittles'" freak out, that is.) I read that Bad Ass Cats page some time ago and thought it quite funny.

The link to the animal rights site doesn't work. Apparently someone pulled Skittles' post.

Good.

Power to ya, Christine. Keep beating them Bad Ass Cats. (By the way, do you freelance? I have a kitty that just decided to pee in the laundry basket full of CLEAN clothes....)

-- Anonymous, February 24, 2000

Mike--

Some people have nothing better to do than make trouble.

I used to read rec.pets.cats (before it split into a quadrillion sub- newsgroups and this was also before there were graphical-web-pages). Let me tell you...good GOD, but some people are nuts. I don't mean harmless nuts, either. I mean reality-on-a-permanent-holiday nuts.

It's cute and all to speak for your cat. When a sane person with some intelligence and humor does it (i.e., Pamie, for Taylor and Cal) we all are amused and entertained and we know that Pamie is not deluded into thinking she actually IS A CAT or that her cats are actually channelling through her. (Well, okay, maybe in part they are. But you know what I mean.)

Last time I checked, cats couldn't type anything but kfdlkjgn,gk;zsdirfv on a keyboard. Unless it was fhdoerstgfhdb or wdhfjhgjhfdhb, and even then, it was an accident. You get the idea.

You're arguing with someone who professes to be a cat, and who flames you, ungrammatically at that, and calls YOU stupid.

You're dealing with a person with deep and possibly unresolvable psychological issues. They are clearly bonkers or they like to play someone nutty on the Web.

It may also have just been a troll, which is a person who pretends to be so utterly cluefree that it baits normal people to respond, then the troll gets some jollies thinking about how clever s/he was to yank your chain.

Speaking of Bad Ass Cats, mine weighs 25 pounds. When he's bad, he beats ME.

:)

M

-- Anonymous, February 24, 2000