This is highly amusing

Well, to me at any rate.

According to this website called Twitterholic.com, I am #445 on the list of top 500 Twitterholics, based on followers in Massachusetts.

I haven't been on Twitter for months - but still, I keep getting messages that people are "following" me on Twitter.

It's hard for me to condense my thoughts to a mere 140 characters.

Plus I think it's kind of mindless; although Ari Herzog, I'm sure, would beg to difffer.

I thought my comment was rather clever.

Don't let your fingers do the talking

*NOTE (I should have said this before): I'm not publishing any more comments on the topic of James Shanley and his appointment to the NRA.

Both 'sides' have had their say and that's it. I'm the only one allowed to cast aspersions on other people's characters on here!

But I take your point, Tom (Ryan): Why choose the City Council president when you could have picked any one of thousands of people who were not already in a position of power?

I'm not going to fault Shanley for accepting the appointment, though, even if he had promoted himself. He is deeply interested - and has educated himself - in all matters related to parking. And I happen to mostly agree with his positions on the subject (not crazy about the Green St. plan), so ...

But it will be interesting to see who is elected chairman of the NRA now that Nat Norton is not seeking re-appointment.

If it's Shanley, I may bitch and whine (especially if he becomes mayor).

South End Blend

I contacted the administrator of South End Blend because it seems to have ceased 'publication.'

It has, indeed, been pulled.

Being such an innocuous blog, you'd think no one would get particularly nasty about it. But there you go.

It was part of someone's life and part of our city - and now it's gone.

Sad.

You may be right - he may be crazy

Like Tom Salemi, I am a bit surprised at the amount and intensity of "McCavitt" hate being demonstrated by some of our populace.

I guess my perspective is skewed, owing to having covered Amesbury's previous Municipal Council. Some of them make Ward 1 City Councillor Larry McCavitt look like an adult version of Harry Potter.

Which, come to think of it, is not a bad comparison.

Remember how, in all the Harry Potter books except maybe the last, no one would believe him that Valdemort was still alive and plotting a comeback? His fellows turned their back on him, called him names, etc., etc.

As someone said to me today, what she loves about Newburyport is that everybody she meets loves living here.

I think that McCavitt loves living here, he loves the state regulations governing public waterways, and he sees it as his mission to preserve and protect said regulations.

So he's a little wacky and a lot opinionated. I didn't see anyone running against him in the last election.

Amesbury residents in the ward represented by a certain ex-Municipal Councilor got a recall vote - and it failed. I think it emboldened her even more.

Honest to gods, I covered a number of Municipal Council meetings for the Amesbury News, and this woman actually once got right up in my face. She was trying to intimidate me. I just looked at her for a few seconds, said nothing, and turned away to continue the conversation I had been having with someone else, before she interrupted.

Then again, all these people may be right.

The "Duke of Lemonade." hee hee, that's funny. (Disclaimer: I live in Ward 1)

I said it!

I've been so busy this morning, doing important stuff such as looking up the term "straw man" to make sure I understood the term.

Once I'd done that, I took a peek at a CNN.com video, in which Miami-Dade judge Lawrence A. Schwartz was issuing some determination to rapper DMX. It apparently was not what the rapper wanted to hear, because as he turned away, he muttered something that included the word "fuck."

"OH, well that just ingratiated you to me," Schwartz commented back, adding that it's not like he hasn't heard that word before. I liked the judge's attitude.

But more importantly, the headline on the CNN.com front page said, "Rapper drops the F-bomb in courtroom."

I was discussing this very thing with my sister and her immediate family just yesterday. That is, in a couple of years we will be out of letters of the alphabet to signify words that are taboo.

Soon we'll have to double up, as in: "Rapper drops the F(superscript 1)-bomb in courtroom."

Some letters that are already taken as verboten?

A and B: "asshole/a-hole" and "bitch," unless one is referring to a female dog.

C-word stands for a very bad word referring to a part of the female anatomy, unless you're a man using it as a unit of measure, to other men (one presumes)

D and E are clear?

We already know about F

G(od) is iffy

H(ell) ... well, no one I know refers to it as "the h-word"

I, J, K, L, and M are OK for now?

The "N-word" is the worst of the worst

O is free, but

P(issed) is still considered bad by some people's standards (I was once told never to say it again)

Q ... well, what begins with 'Q,' after all?

R now is taken because of the word "retard"

S(hit) used to be bad, but now seems to have entered the popular mainstream

And so on ...

OK, well, it's not as bad as it seems to be, at first glance. But it's getting there.

Some words that have been appropriated as slurs:

Ass (as in, the animal)
Bastard (you could argue that this was always a slur)
Bitch
Dillweed
Freak
Goon
Jerk
Lump
Er ... ummmm ... I'm not up on my slurs, I guess.

"Yahoo," on the other hand, has gone from being a slur to a pretty respectable level, as has "geek."

** Joke Alert **

Well, some would say, fuck you all - all you bitches and bastards who are nothing but dillweeds and freaks, jerks and goons and big old lumps for reading this instead of doing something productive.

** End of Joke Alert **

Thanks for reading, mutter, mutter ...

More on comments

Thanks to Ari for pointing me to this, via a comment he made on the Daily News website (it's those rules and regs for commenting on their stories again).


I found this piece, which is on PBS's MediaShift but from what looks like a Jan. issue of USA Today, to be very interesting.


Over the years, traditional media sites have tried forums, killed them, and tried them again, this time with more moderation. But still, the unruly aspect of online commentary continues to upset people, as the Hartford Courant’s public editor Karen Hunter recently railed against the “uncivil discourse” on her site’s comments, blaming it on anonymous commenters and calling for a requirement that people use their real names.


Sounds familiar, somehow. But my readers are not uncivil, at least not the ones who comment. I have never "banned" a comment, no matter how little sense it made to me!


I enjoy watching how new stuff, such as online comments and forums, play out.


Scott Anderson is vice president of shared content for Tribune Interactive. He says, in this piece, that newspapers shouldn't shut out people who talk about race and — gasp, sex! - since the role of the comments is to activate and engage the conversation, not stifle and control it.


What I mostly wonder about, though, is where are these people who are reading/commenting on blogs and stories on the Daily News' website?


I mean, are they at work?


Tsk, tsk.

Musings

I finally got round to reading more of the posts on my cousin Damian's blog, although he hasn't posted for a while. Probably working on that new play he talks about here. He blogs on Telegraph.co.uk.

The latter post will be interesting to writers, by the way.

But this one, about foreigners being allowed to vote in the U.S., reminded me of the little skirmish we in the Newburyport blogging world had a couple of weeks ago.

And a little of my post here about being a resident alien.

Damian - and because I know him, I know he's not serious (well, I think I know him, anyway; fairly certain he's not serious in any case) - writes about allowing foreigners to vote in U.S. elections.

The people of Afghanistan, Israel, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea - any number of places - have much more at stake in the upcoming election than I do, a resident of Brooklyn.

The comments to the post are mixed, with many people taking umbrage, calling Damian names and telling him he's "silly."

Eventually someone gets around to saying that Americans don't have a sense of humor.

I don't agree with that, of course. I don't get some British humor (what was funny about Benny Hill?), but I do know from my own family experiences that Brits say whatever and expect that if you don't like it, you'll say so. Then go on your merry way; or more often, stay and have a pint.

I have been pretty much 'Americanized,' having lived here for most of my life. My mother, who has lived here since 1960 (and who is a naturalized citizen) finds many things her siblings (all of whom still live in England) say to her to be hurtful.

Oddly enough, I, who am very sensitive, just let the "unkind" comments and unsavory insinuations from my English relatives roll off my back.

Except ... wait ... I have to say ... after my Uncle Tony (Damian's father) told me when he was here last year and was reading something I wrote under the byline "Gillian R. Swart," that the middle initial was "pretentious" - I think that was the word he used - I dropped the "R."

But I think that was more a case of respecting his opinion, as a long-time journalist. And you know, with me being his favorite niece ... c'mon, it's a well-known fact ... and vice versa, I took it to heart perhaps a bit too much.

So who knows who might find offensive, what you write or say tongue-in-cheek. I would guess it comes down to knowing the person you're reading or speaking to and knowing that putting a comic turn on something often makes people sit up more and pay attention.

If that makes any sense at all.

Thanks for writing

I'm going to go along with Tom Salemi who states this, among other things, on the sidebar of his blog:

You can post anonymously if you'd like, but names would be preferred, even a nickname would be nice.

It is difficult to track who all these 'anonymous' are - is it just one person every time, is it several people? You all get to hark back to things we bloggers said, so we should get to do the same.

Use a nickname.

"Hey, Bubba, you say this now, but last week you said X, Y and Z! Get real!" we could reply.

This works really well on the Daily News online, where people are able to really get down and attack, for example, this 'Carrot' person based on his/her comments across various websites and blogs.

Oops, I may have discouraged you with that example ... but as moderator, I would not post personal attacks.

Anonymous is difficult to deal with. But if it's what you're most comfortable with, please continue to comment as such. Thank you.

Yay: this is great

So ... there's a nice civil exchange between Ari and Mr. X on Ari's blog. See what happens when you get someone who thinks before he responds? And yes, I mean unlike yours truly.

But it wasn't my fight. If it had been, I MAY have been less reactionary. Plus I like to spark debate.

It touched a nerve for me, by the way. I was once, as a high school student, told by a teacher to "go back to England, or wherever you came from" - in front of the whole class. It was that last sentence, in which Mr. X told Ari to move back to Cambridge, that set me off.

But, you know, no matter how much Salemi sets me off with his thinking he has the blogger gig on the soon-to-be New England Development website wrapped up, I'm not going to point out what's so wrong about that thinking here on my blog. I only comment about it on his blog. As often as I can.

So anyway, enough levity. Already I've learned from a comment on my last post that Old Newburyport feels shut out. OK, that explains a lot.

I've actually heard a good deal about some of the newcomers here and to what lengths they will go to fulfill their agenda. So that's why it's a series. It's not just about Old Newburyport; it's also about the 'new' people.

The ones who made death threats against city councillors who did not support last fall's override initiative, for example. The ones who see the Waterfront West development as a personal cash cow ("the value of my home will go up").

That is just as repugnant, if not more so, than speaking out from behind a shield of anonymity. But none of them have a blog - as far as I know.

Just to be clear - I know it hurts the natives. It hurts me, and I've only lived here for 3-1/2 years. Moving around as much as my family did when I was growing up, I have no place to feel that passionately about. And yes, you can miss what you never had.

So Ari is apparently a symbol for all that Old Newburyport hates about the newcomers. I have to say, when he posted something a few days ago and said such-and-such happened while he was waiting in line for his chai, I winced. Not because he has no right to like or drink chai or say he drinks chai - but I'm sure no one in Old Newburyport drinks chai.

And I could already sense something along the lines of what happened yesterday brewing (pun intended).

But I'm sure I've said plenty on here of similar ilk. (This is real stream of consciousness. I hope you like it.)

Even my sister (the one who lives in Gloucester but is currently on the Outer Banks, on vacation), when I spoke with her yesterday said, "It's where we go for our chai ... I know, I know, we've become total yuppies."

Speaking of sis, she's sending me some photos and an account of a protest she and hubby came upon on the beach there. The situation sounded sort of familiar ... piping plovers, fishermen ...

Rant, part 552 (at least it feels that way)

Nobody I spoke with during last year's election season - and I mean nobody - was more thrilled that Katie Ives was running for City Council than her now-fellow on the council, Tom Jones.

Jones, who is a native of Newburyport, is a ward councillor. That means he is supposed to serve in the best interest of the whole city, not just a ward. He seems to be doing that in his own special way.

The fact that he so exuberantly embraced Katie Ives says something about the man, I think. Of course, Jones is often exuberant - but he was particularly so in this case.

Ives decided to run for City Council after, as I have said, living here for only a few months. Newburyport, you see, is the kind of place that you can move to and immediately feel a part of.

Anyway, the point is that there has to be a way for the old and the new to come together, like Jones and Ives have, to make this city work. Jones's mother's family has been around here since the 1800s.

Calling people names does not work. Labelling people who are trying to go about their business (Fremont-Smith) - in a rather thoughtful manner, I might add - with vile names does not help. And shouting people down is a definite step in the wrong direction.

Just because you're young and have some bucks does not make you an expert on everything.

A few years back, there was a tavern in Newburyport called The Wolfe Tavern. When it was torn down in 1953 (by the owner), it had stood on the corner of Temple and State Street for a century and a half. Read more about it on comity.org.

Is this the Newburyport we are supposed to be mourning? Or is it the pre-urban renewal Newburyport where there were dilapidated buildings along the waterfront? Or is it the pre-Lagasse Newburyport?

(These are questions pretty much that Ari has already posed to someone, but he posed them on Mr. X's blog and I'm still in 'boycott' mode. If you want to read it, go to Ari's blog and then click the link to Newburyport According to X.)

If you need to blame someone, why not blame the Lagasses. Aren't they are the ones who made Newburyport a place that was appealing to the young urban professional?

Or was it the state, that extended the commuter rail to Newburyport and I-95 so it ran by Newburyport? And then there's Boston, the proximity of which makes it a relatively easy commute into that city. Blame Boston.

I know the people in western Mass. blame Boston for every little thing, including using all their water.

And then there's urban sprawl. Why not?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: why do people always need to assign blame? Some shit just happens.

And I think the series is now complete. Amen.

Bye bye Mr. X

Just when I was about to write my final post of the day (another social engagement; 2 nights in a row - imagine that) I clicked on another local blog and came across an example of exactly what I was going to post about.

I was going to say we should thank our lucky stars that we don't seem to have the same level of animosity and incivility between "townies" and "newbies" that there seems to be in Rowley (first dog of newbie accused of killing pet goat of "townie" and now Rowley selectman/I assume "newbie" neighbor/"spite" fence battle).

But I was wrong; we can't thank our lucky stars.

It's natural and acceptable to not agree with something someone posted on their blog and to voice your disagreement on your own blog - I guess, since I'm doing it myself - but in my mind someone has crossed a line.

So I am myself breaking the rules of inter-blog civility by saying this to you, Mr. X:

If you've got something nasty to say at least have the balls to post it under your real name.

You're outta here, buddy.