Subject: Re: Sunday Morning Sermon

Date: 15 Mar 1997 22:44:21 GMT

From: fruitbat@netspace.org (Eric the Fruitbat)

Organization: Central Services

Newsgroups: alt.slack

References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

>Is there any point in trying to talk about the Con when everyone

>desperately wants to believe they've beaten it? From my perspective, it's

>EXACTLY like trying to tell Christians that their intolerance puts them

>in Satan's path just like the heathens they can't stand.

I'm with Lou on this. I mean, it's one thing to rant a lot and flame the

most obviously Pink losers who end up getting stuck on a follow-ups list

somewhere, but let's face it: the Con is everywhere and the unwillingness

of most of us here to actually admit to how much closer its pursuit is than

we pretend only costs us Slack.

Let me give you an example: I know a woman who rails against her

ex-boyfriend (in her life the local instantiation of the Con) constantly.

She devoted a considerable amount of her time and energy to dealing with the

aftermath of their break-up, which was unbelievably long and nasty. The

consequences have had such a far-reaching effect on her life and way of

seeing the world that I don't think it's too unreasonable to say that the

negative experience has a major hand in making her who she is.

Even so, for all that her ways of dealing with conflict have changed, for

all that she's become a stronger, more outspoken person, whenever she's in

contact with him it all just evaporates. They still sleep together from

time to time: she can't help it, and it frustrates the hell out of her but

not so much that she doesn't do it again. For various reasons I was always

sort of inclined to take side in such things, but even so from my point of

view, frankly, the entire rest of her life is nothing more than an illusion

she maintains in order to pretend this guy doesn't still dominate her life.

The minute it actually matters she folds.

So how many of us live our lives like that? I think THAT'S what Lou is

getting at, that we're like my friend whose ex- still leads her around.

Some of us here even look like her: blonde, slightly busty, leather

jackets. You know the type. Alt.slack even smells like the cigarettes she

smokes. Anyway, I think that losers like Hipwell would do well to consider

the feelings of people like her when he posts his annoying lowbrow crap to

this already suffering newsgroup. In fact, I think that Hipwell himself

represents an aspect of the Con, that aspect which seeks by means fair and

foul to discredit any propriety or seriousness with jest and mockery.

Sometimes such tactics are blatant, and can result in hurt feelings and

outraged sensibilities. Sometimes however they become more subtle,

sometimes not manifesting their true intentions towards the benighted and

trolled reader until perhaps even the very last WORD.

eric

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