Y'all kick ass! Brag on Yourselves!

Hug? This is more a circle jerk, frankly.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 11:16 PM on July 11

So we have. Thanks katilla. Shut it down.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:25 PM on July 11

Oh man, this one. Second? This one. Third? Are you sure? OK, this one.
No really, I think that's my favorite video mashup within the last two days at least. Also, I just found out that's on the Borat soundtrack. Wow, no wonder cocek and it's cousins are so popular amongst the punk rock crowd here.
posted by sleepy pete at 11:29 PM on July 11

whoops, too late. that third one is in there somewhere already.
posted by sleepy pete at 11:34 PM on July 11

homunculus is, to me, the best member of this fractured community. No bullshit, no craven righteousness, no fake morality though optional white-boy poverty. Just excellent posts, over and over and over.
posted by plexi at 11:37 PM on July 11

no fake morality though optional white-boy poverty

No, you don't understand. Climbing out of poverty would require kowtowing to the man, which simply isn't an option.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 11:46 PM on July 11

Yep, the well is poisoned. Thanks, guys. Shut it down, mods.

But before you do,
What do you look back on now and think, "right on, go me!"?
posted by Navelgazer
EPONISTERICAL!
posted by wendell at 12:02 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]

Christ on a pogo stick plexi, what the hell have you been smoking tonight?
posted by tkolar at 12:03 AM on July 12

(not to knock homunculus, who is a great fellow and should probably not have his name sullied by associating it with whatever sort of tear you're on)
posted by tkolar at 12:06 AM on July 12 [2 favorites]

next time someone comes up with this idea, let's pick our favorite post of the person who posts before us.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 12:16 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]

You guys, you're ruining it for plexi, don't you know it's his SPECIAL DAY?

He won't be able to comment for like a whole week when he goes on vacation!
posted by blasdelf at 12:30 AM on July 12

Now that I think of it between the random pugnaciousness, the self pity, and the bouts of maudlin sentimentality it's far more likely that you've been drinking. Scotch I'm guessing, but maybe it just does that to me.
posted by tkolar at 12:31 AM on July 12

I've made a few that I thought resonated with people. The scary stories one seems pretty good, as well as the automated mario one. But I'm most proud of my post on the cowboy photographer.
posted by puke & cry at 12:33 AM on July 12

And thanks for shitting in here, plexi. You're a rare class of asshole, apparently.
posted by puke & cry at 12:33 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]

Damn, plexi. Damn.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:36 AM on July 12

Just... damn.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:37 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]

My favorite MetaFilter posts are the dull Internet Drama Camp kinds of posts.
posted by cmonkey at 1:35 AM on July 12

no fake morality though optional white-boy poverty

I'm sorry. Maybe I'm missing something...but WTF is that supposed to mean, and who(TF) in particular is it directed at?

Optional white-boy poverty? Seriously?

Because I perhaps engender this statement as much as many around here, perhaps more. Fist off, I was born a white male. I didn't have any say in this particular arrangement, I didn't get to vote on it or weigh the options and help sway the decision in a particular direction. My voice was not counted among the many who decided that I would be brought into this world of my particular tone of skin, and my masculine gender.

You know, if I had, I wouldn't have opted for white male. Not in this day and age. I remember applying for college grants - I needed them because my family didn't have enough money to send me to college. I had to pay for it myself, on loans, and a full 8 years after I got my degree, I am still paying them off. But back to the application process - every single specialized low-rate loan, every grant, every kind of fellowship I filled out an application for - EVERY SINGLE ONE - had a field for "Race." They all wanted to know if I might happen to be African American, or Native American, or Asian, or Latino, et. al.. There was a field for everyone, even Caucasian. But Caucasian always came last - it even came after "Other" - and we all knew what it meant to check that one - it meant "move my application to the bottom of the stack please." The fact that I was born white meant I had to pay more for my education than most. But please don't understand that as complaining - at the end of the day I was blessed to be able to, and I'm thankful for that. I'm just saying it would probably have been easier for me if I could have been anything but white.

Male, too. I'm not sure I'd go with my gender if I had gotten a choice. I mean, I love being able to pee standing up and I'm glad I'll never have to pass a child, but the fairer sex is...well, fairer. And there's a lot of nice things that come along with that. A lot of detriments when compared with the male gender, historically, I realize, but the benefits remain, nonetheless. I'm not sure which way I'd go on this one, but the point was I didn't get any say in my first pair of pajamas being blue ones.

My work has a special focus group / community for almost every class of human but myself. There's the women's group, the groups for every race but Caucasian, the groups for working mothers, even the group for GLBTs. We straight white males don't get to have a group. Yes, I realize I am paying for the sins of my forefathers, which are many. But I still don't get a group.

Its the poverty part that really pisses me right off, however. I'm mostly convinced that anyone who has the discretionary income to afford even the $5 to pay for an account and make snide comments here has little-to-no visibility into what true poverty is. I know I didn't, until last year. Last year I took a 50% salary cut to come work for a humanitarian organization in Africa. And I saw poverty.

People begging for shoes and clothes because they can't get them. Their government has in fact banned humanitarian organizations from bringing such things (or food, or medical supplies, or anything else) in because the government insists they don't have a poverty problem.

Millions of people in massive, endless slums, stretching to the horizons. All within mere kilometers from major a metropolis, and all lacking running water, electricity, or even a basic latrine / sewage system. Millions of people drinking diseases, every day.

People still living as their ancestors did, thousands of years ago. Fishing river deltas in small carved out boats, with no refrigeration for which to store their catch in. Mud huts (more often cow-shit, however, as it doesn't melt as fast in the rain) with thatched roofs that are abandoned for higher ground when the flood waters rise. Most have never seen a television, many have never seen an automobile. I was the first white person some of the children had seen. Average life expectancy below 40, few of these people will ever be injected with penicillin.

I could go on and on. I've seen countless examples and have typed around here before about a number of them. As much as I can type, however, it will never do justice to the faces in my mind, that will always be there. The girl who fears going to the creek to relieve herself at night because rape is a regular occurrence. The boy with the distended belly who will likely succumb to his parasites within the year. The 3 children who's parents vanished thanks to AIDS. The mother too sick to care for her children because of a mosquito bite.

Poverty. You don't know the beginning of it.

Mine? Yeah. It was optional - in a sense - in another sense it was something I had to do. I'm still not poor, though. I wouldn't be "poor" on a tenth of the salary I used to make. Indeed, many of the places I've been working, I'd still make more per annum on a fiftieth of my former salary than would the average local.

So there's my confession: my morality - in a sense - is still horribly fake. I try to make others aware of the world we are actually living in, and the cost that a SUV-driven, Wal-Mart-stocked, high-def-digital-cable-programmed first-world lifestyle imposes on the rest of the planet, the parts that we're comfortable never seeing except when we can't sleep and Sally Struthers crosses our airwaves. I try to find ways to help people help others. I've tried to come and help myself, and yet I know that I haven't done enough - my sacrifices have been mostly meager - giving up the ability to afford a house in the US, or the luxury of a nice car. But I still sleep in a warm bed and eat 3 meals a day, and watch a DVD now and again. I have the internet and can afford clean drinking water and I'm quite comfortable most of the time. And in order to help more, I hope to go back to the US and get into even more debt to get a masters in international development so that I can help in more ways - because, well, I can afford to do that. My morality is a sham - I could do so much more to help those in need, and I don't.

So let's see. You got the fake morality part right, kinda. You got optional right, again - kinda. White and boy? Guilty as charged. Poverty?

Did joining this site mean that you wouldn't be able to eat for a day? Doubt it.

Please refrain from talking about what you don't know about.
posted by allkindsoftime at 2:12 AM on July 12 [2 favorites]

Since I missed the first round of this (and by "this" I do not mean whatever plexi is smoking), I'm still pretty proud of this answer.
posted by advil at 2:22 AM on July 12

Oh and Navelgazer, to your OP - I too think we've done this before. I took a cue from my MeTa post and some of the respondents there, and listed some of my stuff that I like and that others have liked in my profile.
posted by allkindsoftime at 2:22 AM on July 12

I'm sorry. Maybe I'm missing something...but WTF is that supposed to mean, and who(TF) in particular is it directed at?

allkinds, in response to your original question, my uneducated guess is that plexi was referring to this (ensuing MeTa chaos here).
posted by mykescipark at 2:59 AM on July 12

(...although apparently there's even more poor-folks righteous venting going on elsewhere, as I learned here, without wanting to go back and read that entire car-crash for myself.)
posted by mykescipark at 3:06 AM on July 12

Missed this last time around. I am somewhat (no doubt inordinately) proud of this. All the rest, meh.
posted by dg at 3:57 AM on July 12

plexi gets the biscuit, then.
posted by flabdablet at 4:23 AM on July 12

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?
posted by StickyCarpet at 4:34 AM on July 12

What?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:01 AM on July 12

Bus Plunge.
posted by fixedgear at 5:02 AM on July 12

Well, since you ask, I made a list of the top three posts of which I'm proud on my profile page a little while ago that you may find useful. Scroll down a bit to find them.

I'm also quite proud of my 'METAFILTER CONVENTIONS ON CAPATALIZATION' comment (really need to get round to updating that sometime) and my comment on celebrity worship. That last one in particular always makes me think "yeah, right on me!"

Since you ask...
posted by Effigy2000 at 5:47 AM on July 12

I'll congratulate myself on my excellent limerick once again and ignore everything else that I've written.
posted by h00py at 6:16 AM on July 12

Well, if we're talking limericks, then, I'll humbly submit my very last comment at this thread.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:25 AM on July 12

So we have. Thanks katilla. Shut it down.

naw, these are good filter threads and you tend to find some decent posts you otherwise missed.
posted by caddis at 6:36 AM on July 12

plexi you don't have the juice to be here. Come back when you learn to learn.
posted by CautionToTheWind at 6:55 AM on July 12

Broadswords in a pit was a nice find as was a reading of Ulysses. Which reminds me that we didn't have any Bloomsday stuff this year, but nevertheless this year's Bloomsday was packed with great posts.
posted by caddis at 7:01 AM on July 12

Plexi's not here to make friends. He's here to win.
posted by katillathehun at 8:19 AM on July 12 [5 favorites]

I wasn't going to answer this, because I didn't think I had any favorite self-posts. But then I remembered this AskMe question, in which I asked how to link the Munsters' theme song with "If I Were a Rich Man."

For an encore, I answered my own question and even came up with lyrics!
posted by grumblebee at 8:43 AM on July 12

By the way, I now know how to come full circle, back to The Munsters from Rich Man:

Just take one look at the size of them,
and you'll trash your burger and fries.

(Simultaneously with "fries") Big pizza. Big pizza.

You won't believe how many we have sold.

If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard.
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
If I were a biddy biddy rich,

Tasty hot and very tasty cold.

If you like sausage and parmesan,
Pepperoni -- and baloney...

We challenge you to finish every bite.
You'll be chewing morning, noon and night.

If you have taste buds and fortitude,
Buy our pizza -- and EAT!
posted by grumblebee at 8:49 AM on July 12

Oops, "Tasty hot ... balony" should have been in Italics, too.
posted by grumblebee at 8:50 AM on July 12

Oops, "Tasty hot ... balony" should have been in Italics, too.

I bet no one has ever said that before in the history of the world.
posted by danb at 8:52 AM on July 12 [3 favorites]

plexi, geesh.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:58 AM on July 12

I have and will always be proud of this comment. Aside from that, I'm also pretty happy with myself for this song.

All my posts to the blue were pretty much crap.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 9:06 AM on July 12

This one garnered more faves than I expected. My e-penis is so huge from that.
posted by brownpau at 9:31 AM on July 12

My favorite comment

My favorite AskMe question

My favorite Front Page Post
posted by jason's_planet at 9:36 AM on July 12

My favorite post (and perhaps the most actual, measurable good I've done in the world).

My favorite comment (because it inspired this).
posted by languagehat at 9:57 AM on July 12

My sickest post: Crazed runner keeps a ceremonial trophy.

My most artistic post: The Vija Celmins of scrotal art (NSFW).

My literariest post: Orwell Redux

My most profitable post: Give us all your money
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:07 AM on July 12

My only post to mefi, about mental health resources on the web.
posted by sondrialiac at 10:20 AM on July 12

I liked the time that I said the thing that was good.
posted by cortex at 10:38 AM on July 12

Post: This one, but only because it led to this comment which has me tearing up again.

Comment: Apparently I'm not the only one who has a hate-on for US educational policy.
posted by Skorgu at 10:49 AM on July 12

"I liked the time that I said the thing that was good."

Me too, and then we had that thread. Holy crap, that was fun!
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:27 AM on July 12

I really enjoyed how it later devolved into a series of comments in that one metrical style, with occasional diversions into that other, different metrical style.
posted by cortex at 11:32 AM on July 12

I'm deeply ashamed of every minute I've ever spent here.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:38 AM on July 12 [4 favorites]

AskMe answer - how to eat vegetables

MeFi comment - why anti-prescriptive linguists are wrong
posted by Jaltcoh at 11:48 AM on July 12

brownpau's Scientology one is the only one I remember. And was fantastic the second time. You win the imperium-best-ego-filter-filter prize for 2008.
posted by imperium at 1:29 PM on July 12

If I were a wealthy man.

There's a great joke involving the "If I Were A Rich Man," song and a trip to a whorehouse, but sadly, it's visual.
posted by jonmc at 4:58 PM on July 12

I make a throwaway one-liner and it earns 35 unexpected favorites; I pour out my heart and it gets crickets. All is well, really.
posted by Burhanistan at 5:26 PM on July 12

I make a throwaway one-liner and it earns 35 unexpected favorites; I pour out my heart and it gets crickets.

That's more or less the way it works. We just want a chuckle, we don't care about your heart. unless of course your heartbreak is funny. It isn't, is it?
posted by jonmc at 5:30 PM on July 12

My heartbreak is a fucking riot.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:39 PM on July 12

Mine's more of a fondling civil disobedience, but I'm a slacker.
posted by jonmc at 5:40 PM on July 12

When I riot, it's heartbreakingly funny.
posted by Burhanistan at 5:41 PM on July 12

Wow. Thank you all for redeeming this thread after the... unpleasantness. Also after the fact that we did this, like, a month and a half ago and I somehow missed it ("somehow" meaning that I was in the Hibredes without internet access for a week and a half, but that fact tend to garner less sympathy.)

Anyway:

My favorite comment (heart-pouring category)

My favorite comment (throw-away one-liner category)

My favorite post (because it was the only one that truly felt to me like a creative, worthy-of-MeFi, interesting find that people were otherwise less likely to come across, and because it inspired such great conversation and mentions of other unheard-of things)
posted by Navelgazer at 6:17 PM on July 12

Plexi's not here to make friends. He's here to win.

I feel so used.
posted by homunculus at 7:32 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]

You know, if I had, I wouldn't have opted for white male. Not in this day and age. I remember applying for college grants - I needed them because my family didn't have enough money to send me to college. I had to pay for it myself, on loans, and a full 8 years after I got my degree, I am still paying them off. But back to the application process - every single specialized low-rate loan, every grant, every kind of fellowship I filled out an application for - EVERY SINGLE ONE - had a field for "Race." They all wanted to know if I might happen to be African American, or Native American, or Asian, or Latino, et. al..

Oh, you poor baby.

The fact that I was born white meant I had to pay more for my education than most.

Since most people are white, you didn't have to pay more then 'most', just more then, hmm... what's that word that means less then a majority?

_{(Interestingly, this won't be true for those matriculating in a few years -- at least assuming an even racial distribution of new students, which probably won't be true)}
posted by delmoi at 12:16 AM on July 13

Oh, you poor baby.

Thank you, delmoi, for graphically illustrating why so many otherwise tolerant white people have become hostile to affirmative action programs.

There really is enough compassion to go around to for everyone. You don't have to be stingy with it. And the difference between "Yah, it sucks but it's a sacrifice we're all making in an attempt to correct a very imbalanced system" and "Suck it up loser" really is quite signficant.
posted by tkolar at 11:29 AM on July 13

Mine was necessarily sock-puppeted, but it was dirty and mean and got a lot of favorites and every word was true.
posted by nicwolff at 12:29 PM on July 13

Thank you, delmoi, for graphically illustrating why so many otherwise tolerant white people have become hostile to affirmative action programs.

You're welcome!
posted by delmoi at 4:09 PM on July 13

Wow. I'm late to the party, but: Eponysterical!
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 5:08 PM on July 13

Yeah... I get that lot...
posted by Navelgazer at 7:12 PM on July 13 [1 favorite]

Heh, I can only imagine. This place thrives on omphaloskepsis.
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 8:53 PM on July 13

Wow, people shouting out "Eponysterical!" never gets old.
Wait, it just did.
posted by signal at 9:37 AM on July 14

Credit card fraud: why it exists and how to prevent it.

Included in my comments is a detailed description of a secure payment system based on cheap, commonly available technology like smart cards and security tokens. This system provides for proper two-factor authentication and supports point-of-sale, internet, and recurring transactions. The system is easy to use, not prohibitively expensive, and would virtually eliminate credit card fraud.

(it was favorited by Miko, so you know it's awesome)
posted by ryanrs at 3:45 AM on July 15

This one time - tonight, in fact - I posted to this ridiculous thread that had no reason to already have 44 comments without being deleted at 2 AM EST. I had clicked on the main link, lol'd, and commented.

I was sad to see it go.
posted by frecklefaerie at 12:15 AM on July 18

and everyone else was glad to see it go
posted by caddis at 12:26 AM on July 18

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Y'all kick ass! Brag on Yourselves! July 11, 2008 11:12 PM Subscribe

Y'all kick ass! Brag on Yourselves!
July 11, 2008 11:12 PM Subscribe