schadenfreude blah-ze so called 'shameful joy', coming from a relief at seeing someone suffer, usually with the inference being on them suffering in your place. 031103 ... REAListic optimIST its also a really painful q3 map to play. all defensive and whatnot... no one ever wants to play it. oh well on blather though he's just a troll without enough spine to contribute stuff on his own, perhaps he is too scared people will make fun of him, so instead, to make himself feel better about not having the balls to say anything of worth, he pokes fun at others, and calls their writing drivel, without much of an argument to stand on, and without actually backing up anything he says. it's sad really. but of course now he has our attention, so i hope it was worth it to you, schad, making yourself into an ass so you would get negative attention. perhaps once you find the enlightenment you are searching for in others' words, you can get over yourself and support and nurture. now go to your room and write 5 worthwhile blathes. 031103 ... schadenfreude does my regular contribution to blather determine the accuracy of my opinion? is my opinion less valid if i have only lurked, but have done so for years? what if i am a regular blatherer using this name? will my opinion mean more if i unmask myself? i'm flattered that there are such flames fanned on my account, but i have no care for attention outside of it accomplishing a goal. again, i have no interest in going into the old shitraking arguments, but it seems we have a few newer to the number here, so i'll sum up and leave it be. this is not about intellectual_decay. this is not about my right to voice whatever the hell i want to, though right now what the hell i want to voice is a disgust at the fact that out of twenty blathes i went to, hoping with each to find some glowing bit of knowledge, something of substance to chew on in the night, fifteen were instead full of chatty bullshit, the pixie dust that everyone has been farting to the point of explosive shits. each and every one of you are capable of writing intelligent things, things that move people, things that inform or delight, but in only one in every four blathes did i find anything that even began to step away from the "i like macaroni!" club. blather_is_blather and blah blah blah, i obviously can't stop you from posting whatever you wish, even if it is nauseating dreck, nor would i if i had the magic god-button. but calm your self-righteous indignation long enough to think about my suggestion that maybe, just maybe, you could cut down on the chatty crap for a while and get back to worshipping words instead of turning them into worthless vehicles for thoughts that will not stand the test of time past a day, much less the eternity of blather. if you'd like an example, take a gander at this... picked randomly out of the pile, seeing_stars, has a great example of what i'm talking about... sorry to use you as an example, pipedream, but you're so good at saying nothing: "i miss stars. i need blacker night skies and a higher roof. or a telescope. [br] i want to see stars properly." is a completely empty statement, carrying no weight, doing nothing but imparting information that, really, i don't give a shit about. there's a second post from pipedream that is also a glowing example of the crap of which i speak. however, once we get to the line from the child in the car wreck, yes, that poked me, that made me think, it did more than slide past my skin, that is information that is worth allowing to take up space in my memory bank. nom follows through with some random imagery, and look! seeing_stars is no longer a waste of space. now, take into account that i've never been particularly moved by nom's writing style, but nom consistently reaches for something beyond the "i like macaroni!" kind of thing, and gets full props for it. that's all i'm asking. is to try to reach beyond the bullshit empty information that each of us gets thrown at us from every side and get down to the heart of the matter, say something worth saying or get off the damn soapbox. think deep thoughts, and it might help. don't assume that anyone cares what color underwear you're wearing, and that might help as well. consider if you really want your writing career, your worship of words, summed up by a bunch of pixie dust that was ground into grey before it ever left the first page and empty declarations. just think about it for a while. if you still insist on declaring your allegiance to macaroni, i'll still insist on saying you're wasting everything that *i* hold dear about blather. individual results may vary, and i can't force you to examine a viewpoint, but if i have to listen to your crap then you have to listen to mine. i won't leave. i will still read, and if i wrote under this name i would still write. but i will defend to the death the things that i love, and words are one of those loves. i'm just coming to scare the kids off of the ancestral ritual grounds. and, speaking of examples, these are some glowing gems from the rather short recent list here at the crack of day. real literary masterpieces. if you can keep your lunch down. caffi_laddie why_do_you_swanki_doo bring_the_meeple_to_the_people deathcab_for_cutie 031103 ... endless desire oh why do you care? get over yourself and fuck off 031103 ... schadenfreude i care because i love this place. i care because someone has been pissing in my sacred wine. if you *don't* care, i suggest it would be you that should be fucking off. 031103 ... stork daddy you're both idiots and i love it 031103 ... Road i won't say that I haven't been part of some of the chatroom stuff here, but (and this is where I defend myself) i did it at the time that this old brain just wanted to play with words, phrases what have you. you have certainly brought out some invectives at yourself, but you seem to truely not care. Alot of these youguns are just talking, to talk and they find this is the place that they feel most comfortable with doing it (although I don't quite dare to presume the variety of reasons behind being here). So, I treat this blather as a peculiar little galaxy, in some spots you will be able to just say wow, damn I really enjoyed that, some might just be there for show, other parts might make you puke, other doors will make you wish you hadn't opened them. So, in conclusion (although I've just scratched this particular surface), if you are what you claim to be, a watcher for many years, or another reincarnation of an existing blatherskite, my only piece of advice to you would be to approach this as you would an amusement park, buy your ticket, ride the rides, peruse the souvenior shop, and if you should feel so inclined fill out the customer comments card. But I ask that don't react with condemnation towards others tastes for playing here. And if you have dabbled here for awhile, you already know that blather can be an evolving creature, just like tidal pools washing and scraping the shorelines, often you'll find slime, scavengers and parasites growing in clumps, but most whither and return to the oceans currents. It takes patience and a willingness to keep exploring, to find those pieces of debris that are unique and special to each one of us. Well, I've said my piece. 031103 ... schadenfreude as long as i'm an entertaining idiot. 031103 ... User24 please stop this. 031103 ... schadenfreude fair enough, Road. you're right, and you're right again. though i never claimed to be anything at all, just questioned how identity influences weight of opinion, i do indeed know that this is an evolving ecosystem. and normally i do go on the rides i love and stay away from the fried cheeze curds. what made me pipe up was that i was beginning to see something of a zebra mussel effect, the empty noises choking out those that carried weight. my goal is not to antagonize (though i must admit, it can be a pleasent side effect), but to highlight, to draw attention to an emerging pattern and suggest that perhaps it is not a good thing. but you have very good points, and you made them without taking any of the bitter bait i laid. you actually heard me, and understood. that's enough to lay this ghost to rest. theoretically. 031103 ... endless desire i retract my previous comment. i do not usually bitch like that. . .i just don't care to have a place that i love so much get made fun of. whether or not you have been here for years, i checked your name to see if you had ever added to the beauty of blather, rather than just tearing it down. but who am i to decide that anyways. have fun with your experiment. it is certainly true so obviously blather has its pros and cons. my six month blather birthday is 2 days. 031103 ... pipedream i'd just like to say, in my defense, that i *have* contributed things to blather that i consider to be intelligent and insightful, and not because i think so, but because people who's opinions i respect and admire say so. tough luck if you've never come across them, i'm sorry you think i'm a fluffy idiot. your purely critical, unconstructive,rude, whiny opinion won't make the least difference to me, but it might do *you* some good to get off your high horse and your pretentious quest for true knowledge and light. if you can't see anything beyond your rather sad, preconceived notions of perfection, then you're probably just going to go on and on bellyaching about everyone else without attempting to be real, ever. most poetry *is* in the mundane- if you really knew what you were talking about you'd know that. and i agree with endless- i haven't read anything by YOU (at least with this SN) that made *me* react in any way, except for your lovely little comment on my page. thank you, it's so interesting to see the way you attempt to be the defender of blather's integrity by insulting everyone else and generating ill will. good going, you're on the right track. in any case, thank you for actually hitting 'pipedream', hopefully someday a post by me *will* move you. i acknowledge i may not be spewing lyrical fireworks these days, but you don't know why i'm not, so you should perhaps think before you speak. you have a right to an opinion, but don't slam people unless you have the right to- and you don't. blather is a place where anyone can come and just talk if they want. this is one place where you *aren't* obliged to be scintillating, or witty, or frighteningly intelligent- just yourself, and that's what gives you freedom. where do you think the hypocrisy of writing begins and ends? wishing for just a telescope makes you fluffy, and zeus' lightning to rent the sky asunder in a burst of deity and light makes you either pretentious or, in our good critic's opinion, worth being on blather. it's not me- you don't have to right to pass judgement on *any*one. 031103 ... blah-ze i was thinking about your opinion, on and off, for a while, when i finally decided to go to bed, and lay awake with nothing else to stew about but esters and other chemistry wotnot. you probably expect something totally different from blather then i do. you look at a screen of meandering nothing and slam it because it's pointless. maybe it is, maybe someone actually makes a use of it, a use you can't see. i don't write here because of my high opinion on things i know, my meaningful analysis of emotion, religion, metaphysics, so sorry, mate, i just can't scale up to your expectation of glorious everything on that little point. i don't write about that, because when i focus on all the negative crap in my life, it makes me feel bad, and for some reason, when i think about it, i see myself as being better off dead, so i just don't think about anything instead. i don't think about the people i know getting hurt or dying oh-so-frequently because of stupid little things. i don't think about how close i am to the brink, how many people i know have stood on the same point of life i stand on and simply broken. some i know. some went away, and i don't care to think about where they went. i try not to dream of how close i came to that and the only tangible thing that stopped me was that i couldn't stop thinking