I might take it to Metatalk March 4, 2006 10:40 AM   Subscribe

verstegan is my newest Metafilter hero. [More inside]
posted by UKnowForKids to MetaFilter-Related at 10:40 AM (54 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

This is a fantastic comment that, coming two days after the original post, I imagine most Metafilterians missed. Truly, verstegan is a giant among wo/men.
posted by UKnowForKids at 10:41 AM on March 4, 2006


That was good.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:33 AM on March 4, 2006


I still cannot believe that nobody has bought "Henry James' testicle" as a sock-puppet account. sometimes I underestimate (or is it overestimate?) my MeFi brethren.
posted by matteo at 11:39 AM on March 4, 2006


Yeah, well, some of us are cheap.
posted by Asparagirl at 11:42 AM on March 4, 2006


Fantastic. I wish to purchase verstegan the beverage of his or her choice.
posted by scody at 12:26 PM on March 4, 2006


It was a piece of pure frivolity, written for my own private amusement, but I'm very pleased to know that other people enjoyed it.

Metafilter is my Great Good Place.
posted by verstegan at 1:00 PM on March 4, 2006


I didn't get it, but that's because I'm an uneducated hick.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:01 PM on March 4, 2006


by the way, as it sometimes happens, of all people it was Faze who settled the Henry James issue for me:
... I can see no good reason why James doesn't light my fire. He's often criticized for his prolixity, but I happen to like a nice, complex sentence. I'm thinking that maybe in my old age, James'll click with me, and I'll be able to spend my 70s and 80s in an easy chair, happily wafting down the long, winding passages of his prose. Or watching "Matlock," one or the other.
posted by matteo at 1:36 PM on March 4, 2006


crash, that's a pretty good Faulkner.
posted by bardic at 1:36 PM on March 4, 2006


That comment was like an oyster, with its strong taste of the sea and faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture. And as I read the fresh, clean prose and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans for forming my cabal.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:03 PM on March 4, 2006



crash, that's a pretty good Faulkner.


maybe we should all write our comments in the style of our favorite writers.

This fuckin' thread is nuts. Maybe I'm doomed. That chick has a nice ass. I put on a doo-wop record and imagined my teenage years then dreamed of being boiled in elevator piss.

(see that was a bad Richard Price imitation)
posted by jonmc at 2:46 PM on March 4, 2006


We should - we must! We are young, limber of spirit and more of body! Our comments should be seen, heard, should blaze across the page in the many styles of which I know you to all to be capable, my people, my community; We should write the silly, the sublime, the proud, the earnest, yes even the muddleheaded and forthright, yes even the political and argumentative; be glad to scrawl and scratch our marks, for why would we lurk? They, these writers-of-no-words, these takers-of-no-stance, they would wish you to lurk, would have you hold your breath and why? They will look at your posts and say, oh this is unimpressive, oh, i have seen it before, oh, it concerns only the news and is of no use to us here, in this place, but we are above it, above them - if it bores us we scroll - leap! onwards, if it offends if we click but do not remark, because to do so would be cheap, be unwholesome, because we come only to entertain! enlighten! to enrich! To share the things we find, and the knowledge we have, to change! To be changed! Do you not? Is this not why we are here? All of us?

/eggers
posted by Jon Mitchell at 3:23 PM on March 4, 2006


We were somewhere around McSweeney's on the edge of the internet when the referentialism began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit metironic; maybe you should post . . ."And suddenly there was a terrible grinding all around us and the blue screen of death appeared, so infinite and still, like crash landing in a ghetto oasis at about 100 miles an hour on the way to MetaFilter. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! I've cut off my right arm!"
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:38 PM on March 4, 2006


It was wet and cold and I wanted another grappa but I couldn't see the waiter, so I watched a girl walk by outside. She was young and pretty but she didn't have a grappa for me. I waited.

The waiter came in. His right hand was missing.

"Cosa è succeso, Paolo?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Chainsaw," he said.

I ordered another grappa and hoped the girl would come by again.
posted by languagehat at 3:43 PM on March 4, 2006


I MeFi’d in great spirits. Typing on my wife’s keyboard with one finger, I contentedly rolled onward. Metafilter had, after all, lots of charm. The posts whirred, the doubles had been freshly pruned. Smoothly, almost silkily, I turned my attention to AxMe. Everything was somehow so right that day. So green.
/Nabokov
posted by langedon at 3:53 PM on March 4, 2006


Ok, wow, this should stop.
posted by xmutex at 3:56 PM on March 4, 2006


So we beat on, posts against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
posted by the_bone at 4:12 PM on March 4, 2006


In the beginning, there was the MeTa
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:31 PM on March 4, 2006


. . . listen: this is the filter’s metasong, the mefites scream across beliefs and borders, and the posts are real. Posts flicker in the blue, as massive networks of unseen silicone, steel, and optics circulate current, carrying old dots and dashes evolved into pulses of laser light. Dipoles dance in baby steps, tiny d/dt’s oldtimers like Calloway and Murray never dreamt of, but our friend Maxwell had long predicted. Oh yeah, he had plenty of other demons. The machine continues to purr and spin . . . grinding was far too conspicuous . . . as users inject what were once philosophies directed at improving our lives, but are now fodder for political punchlines into its comment boxes. It will expedite barriers and tell us it’s bringing us together. All the while it needs to divide and subdivide through its propaganda, always stressing unity, and alliance. Ein Volk ein Snark. Trolls get timeouts, self-linkers and spammers get the hammer, the grey pullulates with ponies and callouts, and Miguel has long disappeared, as we sit apart from one another in dark rooms, warmed by the radiation of pixels, cathode rays, and liquid crystal. We have cameras but where be our souls? Around the blind wonks, beyond the quiet lurkers and axe-grinders, and out of quonsar’s pants, a sour smell of rolling-stock absence, of maturing rust and rotting fish, developing through those emptying days brilliant and deep with Rs, Gs, and Bs keeps us entranced as we march inevitably toward Absolute Zero. Cold Fusion. Yet who can really presume what #1 wants, so vast and aloof is he . . . so absentee. Have you ever fucked a sockpuppet while eating vibrating pancakes? Hope us, administrator. Hope us all.
posted by drpynchon at 4:34 PM on March 4, 2006


I gibbered at the edlrich horror that sputtered and writhed on the screen before me: a great tentacled horror of a post, a lunatic mind so seething with the horrors that gripped his fevered imaginations that in the midst of composing a sentence the had actually seized a cleaver and cleft through his own hand.

He was driven but the cult, by the cabal, by the whispering, nattering voices of the unholy dread that mocked him from the MetaFilter. Yog Soggoth! The Goat with a Thousand Young! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

By the way, Goat with a Thousand Young, your email address is not in your profile. Please email me, as I have some craft project suggestion in response to your post earlier this week. Let's just say it involves macrame.
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:45 PM on March 4, 2006


What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little click of the bookmark bar, which she was doing now, she could open The Blue. The Blue, so like the blue sea of her childhood, off the coast of England, the waves crashing on the sand. How fresh, how calm, stiller than kottke or digg, The Blue! Sitting there, looking at the open window, she felt as though something awful was about to happen; looking at the one-line posts, at the newsfilter posts with the flames winding off them and the comment-count rising, rising; sitting and reading until Matthowie deleted the off-topic flaming.
posted by kalimac at 5:03 PM on March 4, 2006


blue as sundays,
wonders, figures of beautiful blue
your magnificent sadness, your beneficent madness
here are you and i smaller than innocence,
eternally green as a question
asking
your luminescent menagerie
you are the white and i am the grey
posted by edverb at 5:30 PM on March 4, 2006


Calloway dreamt but had predicted. Wonks, the lurkers axe-grinders, quonsar’s smell of rust, rotting days with no march toward Fusion. Typing keyboard I rolled Metafilter after charm. Smoothly, silkily, attention AxMe. The purr-grinding far conspicuous as inject philosophies for punchline boxes. What once directed improving lives, are fodder into comment and us bringing together. Dance, baby tiny oldtimers. Through propaganda, stressing Trolls timeouts, hammer, grey and has disappeared, we apart rooms, radiation pixels, rays, cameras. Beyond quiet and pants, sour of absence, maturing fish, through emptying deep sockpuppet pancakes.

Writers-of-no-words, takers-of-no-stance, you lurk, have hold; why? Volk Snark! We are silly, sublime, proud, earnest, even muddleheaded, even political argumentative. Onwards, click remark, to so be because come to enlighten! Enrich! Share things found, is not we here? Flicker as steel, old evolved laser in our plenty. Get another warmed cathode.
posted by Dean King at 5:36 PM on March 4, 2006


There once was a mefite from Nantucket...
posted by horsewithnoname at 6:07 PM on March 4, 2006


Ha. Heminghat.
posted by Devils Slide at 6:22 PM on March 4, 2006


Quandoque bonus dormitat quonsarus.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 7:03 PM on March 4, 2006


Don't you realize the admins have to read every word you write here? Stop writing so much or they'll have to close the thread! It's called time-sucking, and you're all doing it.
posted by squirrel at 10:13 PM on March 4, 2006


the lines of the quoted are like
posts dug in next to the roads of the dead
they're words are not ours we cling
to our modern parodies our houses
are the houses of the young
the usurpers
our eyes are grey with the knowledge of nothing
that we do will change the broad lanes
of our collective knowledge of henry james

[/merwin]
posted by shmegegge at 11:19 PM on March 4, 2006


god. no one is going to get that. oh well.
posted by shmegegge at 11:20 PM on March 4, 2006


nice work verstegan
posted by caddis at 4:39 AM on March 5, 2006


So this is Metatalk. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives' tales!

There's no need for red-hot pokers. Metatalk is -- other people!

posted by gsb at 5:35 AM on March 5, 2006


First Witch: When hall we three post again? In thunder, lightning, or in the grey?

Second Witch: When the hurlyburly's done, when the battle's lost and won, there, upon the heath, to meet with MacHowie!

Third Witch: I come, Mayor Curley!

First Witch: Dios calls!

Second Witch: Anon!

exeunt....
All: Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through fog, and then self link on the main page....
posted by zaelic at 5:57 AM on March 5, 2006


MARCH is the cruellest month, seething
Boredom creeps from these dead pixels, mixing
Tonics and elixers
strange and unsettling, spewing
forth our vitriol and cleverness in the Grey winter.
MeFi kept us warm, blanketing
doldrum with mirth, feeding
our hunger with dried tubers.

Shantih shantih shantih
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:28 AM on March 5, 2006


'There is,' I ruminated aloud whilst Jeeves prepared a restorative whisky and s, 'nothing so heartening in this world as a cove who, despite his best intentions and efforts, simply cannot prevent himself from writing in Wodehousian prose, eh Jeeves?'
'Indubitably sir.' he intoned dryly, and oiled out.
posted by Jofus at 9:25 AM on March 5, 2006


I think that I shall never see
A post as lovely as a tree
A post whose writer long will fret
Upon the best of the internet
A post that sifts the chaff all day
And won't be called out on the Gray
A post that may in triumph wear
A wreath of pancakes in its hair
Posts are made by fools like me
But only photosynthesis can make a tree.
posted by nonane at 10:00 AM on March 5, 2006


On The Frontpage Of The 'Filter

The apparition of these posters on the blue;

Pixels on a calming, quiet hue.
posted by exlotuseater at 10:26 AM on March 5, 2006


I had just awoken when it behooved me to check a certain website with which I have become quite taken.

Name, color of website: Metafilter, blue.

/flann o'brien
posted by 235w103 at 10:37 AM on March 5, 2006


"MeFi-Fever"

I must down to the blue again, to the lonely blue and the green,
And all I ask is a good post and a link to click her by,
And the commenters' kick and the newfilter's song and the white text's shaking,
And a red mist on the self-linker's face, and a grey call-out breaking.

I must down to the blue again, for the call of the running feud
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is an accusation with the vitriol flying,
And the Bush-haters and the mac lovers, and the admins crying.

I must down to the blue again, to the vagrant lurker's life,
To the Project's way and the AskMe way where the query's like nothing else;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-poster
And quiet sleep and a stiff drink when the long post's over.

With apologies to John Masefield.
posted by patricio at 11:28 AM on March 5, 2006


I love you all.
posted by arcticwoman at 11:32 AM on March 5, 2006


I've always hated Henry James. Metafilter is a place where in one package I can learn about his avulsed nutsack, watch his heterosexuality impugned, and see his style ridiculed. I'm with arcticwoman: I love you all.
posted by scarabic at 12:03 PM on March 5, 2006


Buzz took Pacific Coast Highway all the way into L.A. - Wilshire into Bunker Hill, hookers glancing anxiously at the low dark clouds brewing, just like the jaundiced mess he was sure to find in MeTa. His hinky feeling all day had paid off, and now he was being called out by some dumb mug with a bone to pick. Buzz pulled up to the curb in front of a dilapidated Victorian number, tucked his snubnose in his waistband, and headed toward the front door just as the raindrops started to hit.

The mug opened the door after a couple of knocks. Fat and drunk, the smell of grease and cheap booze oozing out of his dirty pores. Buzz raised his the gun eye level with the bastard. "I was quoting SCIENCE, shitbird."

[with apologies to James Ellroy]
posted by scody at 12:20 PM on March 5, 2006


No! I am not Miguel, nor was meant to be,
I made the post, this one you see,
and, as such, escape comes easy now,
upon the grey I take my bow
and with apologies to Eliot true,
I head back to lurking and reading the blue.
posted by dazed_one at 12:41 PM on March 5, 2006


Bobby: I was...

Joe: You were?

Bobby: Yeah.

Joe: Yeah.

Bobby: Fuckin'... Fuck.

Joe: I... Cocksuck.

Bobby: You... You fuckin' try, and these fuckin'... Are you a man? Are you...

Joe: I didn't mean to post a double. I...

Bobby: (bashes keyboard to shreds) THIS FUCKING WORLD. THERE IS NO TRUST. EVERYTHING.

Joe: Fuck.
posted by Football Bat at 3:09 PM on March 5, 2006


AMERICAN BUFFALO REPRASZENT. I felt that.
posted by exlotuseater at 3:59 PM on March 5, 2006


One night feeling out of kilter, I chose to surf through MetaFilter,
And found many a quaint and curious site of forgotten lore,
While I sat there, at the keyboard tapping, suddenly, there came a rapping,
As of some one who's been ALL CAPPING, ALL CAPPING with his snarks galore,
"'Tis some troll," I muttered, "tapping at his own keyboard,"
Only this, and nothing more."
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:56 PM on March 5, 2006



)when
- (blue)
the spring day hung below the fat man in the balloon
and
- {green}
there was an unanswer which asking, ended -
and
- [grey]
a young librarian,
looking up at
hot air
shadow
(there)
was wellunsung, a notfelt nosong(

posted by freebird at 10:34 PM on March 5, 2006


Candy is dandy
But MeTa is bettah
posted by mono blanco at 11:33 PM on March 5, 2006


OK, this is not acceptable. Don't you know MeTa is only for whining, bitching and flameouts? I'm taking you to MeCha.
posted by dg at 5:54 AM on March 6, 2006


m(a

po
st
bl
ow
s)
eta
f

ilter
posted by I Love Tacos at 6:04 AM on March 6, 2006


Tacos: Reminds me of this poem by Lemn Sissay.
posted by Jofus at 6:28 AM on March 6, 2006


I drove back to Santa Teresa and paid a visit to the morgue in the basement of the hospital. A young deputy coroner named mathowie, whom I knew, told me that metafilter had drowned in double posts and witless snark. He pulled out a drawer and showed me the blue body with its massive hairy head and shrunken sex. I walked out of the cold room shivering.
/ross macdonald
posted by goatdog at 8:41 AM on March 6, 2006


Trent closed eyes and went inside, Johnny Johnny coming to life in between the spaces filled by megacorporations and hidden governmental entities. He ghosted himself 20 times into the ether, in case the phages sent to scuttle his code into the trash after the last job were still hanging around. This interface was fast.

"Boss? You going to sit there and ponder life, or are we going make a post on Metafilter?" said Johnny Johnny.

"Turn down the emote, Johnny. Yea, let's go."

In the real world, it was the summer of 2067. On the Net, it was all about posting in the blue.

//DKM
posted by thanotopsis at 11:44 AM on March 6, 2006


I will not post it!

Tell the mods to come,
for I do not want to see the links
to assworms on the blue.

I will not post it!

The thread wide open.
Frightful mefites crowding in,
and the brown silent
with trolls in its lowest depths.

I will not post it!

Let me spoon out my eyes!
Warn the jessamyn
of such vile prose!

I will not post it!
posted by Baby_Balrog at 12:39 PM on March 6, 2006


Outstanding!
posted by Frisbee Girl at 7:52 AM on March 7, 2006


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