As the Summer of Death winds down, I thought I would try out for Andy Rooney’s job on 60 Minutes, in case it should… become available. So: Here are some gripes, ones I don’t think Andy has touched yet in his 60-year career on the show…

People who clap their hands and rock back and forth when they laugh.

People who have long, loud conversations with each other in the public bathroom.

Performers/famous people who, while standing onstage receiving applause, applaud back at the audience.

The mandatory use of “From… comes” sentences in every trailer and preview. “From the [director/creator/mind] of [X] comes [Y]…”

Bike-shop guys. The condescending way they treat customers, especially ones that don’t know much about bikes. Look, I don’t care about how bikes work, that’s why I brought the bike to you, “dude.” End of conversation.

Making me say my order more than once at Starbuck’s. It happens when the workers are new/confused/disorganized and not following a production line model. So, the drink maker asks me what I’m having, and starts to make it, then the cashier walks up and asks what I had so she can ring me up. NO.

Thank-you emails. I.e., I send you back something I’ve completed for you at work, totally routine/ho-hum/whatevs, and you send me a little email that says “Thanks! ”. I have to open it, in case you’re telling me something is amiss. But no, it just says “Thanks! ”. Well, you just wasted two seconds of my time that I’ll never get back. Thank YOU.

When journalists insist on using aggravating, thesaurus-smelling synonyms for “eat” and “drink,” to wit: “nibble,” “munch,” “sip,” “gulp.” “Obama gnawed on nuts and quaffed a beer…” “At the happy hour, diners noshed on the yummy appetizers while slurping splendid cocktails…” Hands up! Drop the thesaurus, amateur. Just write “eat” and “drink.”

People who disregard my choice of channel for our communications. Channel-jumpers, if you will. If I send you an email, do not pick up the phone and call me to respond. And vice versa. If I call you on the telephone, that is a big honor for you. And it means I want to talk to you right now. Do not send me an email saying you got my message. Stay in the channel.

Photo courtesy of Scott Palmer

People who don’t know how to use a city sidewalk. Rule 1: Don’t take up the whole sidewalk with your fat tourist family. Walk in a single-file line. More Rules: Think of it as a roadway (although you probably don’t know how to drive either). Stay in the right “lane” and I will pass you on the left. Don’t “tailgate” me, it makes me think you’re going to mug me. Don’t get in front of me and slow down.

Headline writers addicted to plays-on-words, e.g., “Bonfire of the Profanities,” “Days of Swine Flu and Roses,” “Life Imitates Fart”—especially when there is no valid connection between the original thing being punned and the subject matter of the article (i.e., Tom Wolfe is not involved: The story is about a school speech code controversy.) Bonus peeve points for when every single headline in a magazine issue or newspaper edition is a pun.

People who wait in the line at the post office just to buy stamps. Look, the only reason I go to the P.O. is if I have some package that’s too big to drop in a mailbox, and it KILLS me to stand in lines. YOU ARE KILLING ME. Stamps you can get on your own time, at the grocery store or at the stamp-dispensing automat right over there, it doesn’t require a live person to place them in your hand, and take your little personal check that took you 5 minutes to write out, and chat with you about cats.

People who don’t dress appropriately for funerals. Dark suit and tie for a man, black dress for a woman. No shirt, no shoes, no service.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

SM Shrake: No, Facebook, What are YOU doing right now? You always ask me and I never ask you, Facebook! So, what’s up? You give us a status update.
December 2, 2008 at 5:31pm

Before everything goes fully a’Twitter (I never will), I want to immortalize the art of the Facebook status update.

Did you know you can keep going back and back with the “Older Posts” button on Facebook, all the way to the beginning? You can see your whole “wall” history. And maybe that would be a good thing for you to do, to see how boring you’ve been, how ashamed you should be…

The following are REAL-LIFE specimens of unfathomably lame-assed status updates I have seen on my Newsfeed, from people I can’t believe I call my friends. Actually, posting status updates like this gets you defriended quickly by me; this amounts to a collection of Facebook epitaphs for casualties of my defriending storms:

“[ ]… is at work trying to accomplish some tasks.” “[ ]… is getting stuff done.” “[ ]… is starving!” “[ ]… is glad to be done with work for the day.” “[ ]… is ready for the weekend.” “[ ]… is ready for this week to be over!!” “[ ]… is looking forward to Friday.” “[ ]… is getting coffee.” “[ ]… is disappointed.” “[ ]… is hoping that today is better than yesterday.” “[ ]… is thankful.” “[ ]… is predicting a crazy, if not unexpectedly so, week.” “[ ]… is wishing that the weekend wasn’t over!” “[ ]… had a great night last night.” “[ ]… has finished putting away the dishes.”

In response to such megatwaddle, I launched an ongoing anti-boring-status-update campaign through my own status updates:

SM Shrake … It’s raining boring status updates! April 20, 2009 at 1:11pm

… What is this, Night of a Thousand Boring/Cringe-Inducing Status Updates? February 15, 2009 at 1:23am

… is gearing up to talk about the WEEKEND with other weekend fans! Please don’t forget to ask me if I have any big plans. I love talking to you about it. January 9, 2009 at 1:12pm

… is itchin’ for some days-of-the-week talk. Here, I’ll start. Sure don’t seem like a Friday, does it? January 2, 2009 at 10:45am

… Oookaaay, let’s bring the room down a little. Anybody want to talk about how it’s Friday? TGIF! Woohoo! Mondays suck! Fridays RULE! December 19, 2008 at 2:01pm

… has today and Monday off. JEALOUS? Hey, anyone want to chat about the days of the week with me? I’m around. August 1, 2008 at 9:30am

WHY DO WE BROADCAST OUR STATUS TO THE WORLD? What kind of exhibitionistic freaks have we become? I remember on the chronically, bafflingly F.U.B.A.R. flop Friendster they had some kind of status bar, I can’t remember the magical little name for it, though. It seemed dumb then. Twitter seems dumb now. The first time I heard about Twitter, which was around the time in late 2007 that I joined Facebook, I thought “Oh, HELL no.” And I haven’t budged.

What is the difference between stultifying, numbingly banal status updates and ones that are worth reading? Well, if it’s about you or me — about our persons — it should tell something that is not boring, but rather, interesting. It should evince some kind of a reaction in my brain beyond stunned boredom.

SM Shrake… so, the memorial service is over… where are they planning to take Michael Jackson’s remains now? Does anyone know? Are they just going to drive around until they run out of gas, rather than admit there’s no plan? July 7, 2009 at 4:20pm

… COLLEAGUE: Did you get new glasses, Scott? You look different. SM: No, I’m getting really fat, so my glasses just look smaller. But they’re the same ones. May 6, 2009 at 5:53pm

… is nice once he gets to know you. So don’t think of him as “mean” or “scary” — think of him as “pre-nice.” April 10, 2009 at 11:08am

… knows he’s getting old, because he habitually refers to his iPod as a “Walkman” (much as Grandma Shrake used to call the refrigerator an “ice box”). March 13, 2009 at 10:26am

… wants to be on “Intervention.” But no one loves him, so it won’t happen in this lifetime. March 9, 2009 at 9:27pm

… is going to a puppet show with his ex tonight. Bringing some of my own puppets along so I can maybe get in on the act. February 15, 2009 at 3:54pm

… would be so embarrassed if anyone knew what song he is listening to (Hanson, “Mmm Bop”)… Oops, I guess it’s no longer “a secret no one knows.” January 15, 2009 at 3:48pm

… was thinking the other night: If I’m fat, then fat is hot. December 16, 2008 at 10:59am

… is returning to bed after eating some fried chicken for breakfast. December 12, 2008 at 10:22am

… is torn between two physical therapists, feeling like a fool. Getting manhandled by both of them is breaking all the rules. December 4, 2008 at 11:33am

… is dreading another weekend. November 21, 2008 at 2:15pm

…, when he was under 18, used to like it when he would get cards and letters from his grandparents addressed to “Master SM Shrake”. November 13, 2008 at 12:09pm

… is going to be at Halo later if you want to come try and assassinate him. May 16, 2008 at 5:07pm

… would never defriend the hand that feeds him. April 9, 2008 at 10:01am

… wonders if anyone else, as he does, wonders if others can hear the lame light-rock music you’re listening to on your iPod. January 11, 2008 at 11:42am

WHAT ARE THE NECESSARY AIMS OF A GOOD TOPICAL STATUS UPDATE? It should entertain, delight, challenge, blow a mind or two. This is all about realizing and fully accepting that Facebook is a stage, and we’re all players.

POLITICS

SM Shrake…
… thinks it would have been funny if President Obama had given the interview to Al-Arabiya in FLUENT ARABIC. January 27, 2009 at 10:20am

… is amused that it’s Obama’s first day on the job and the first day I was blocked by his motorcade! I just put on some Mary J. Blige and chilled while we waited. January 21, 2009 at 10:12am

… is going to ask Diego, the Barber to the Chief Justices, to give me a “John Roberts.” Cuz I wanna look like Justice John Roberts. Or should I get a “Rehnquist”? January 8, 2009 at 3:44pm

… “split his ticket” on Tuesday: He circled Barack Obama and crossed out Joe Biden, and crossed out John McCain and circled Sarah Palin. You can do that, right? November 6, 2008 at 10:35am

… is feeling weightless, in silent awe that this 8-year-long nightmare will soon be over. It’s deeply personal, jiggling every molecule in my body. November 4, 2008 at 4:21pm

… thought he had heard Sarah Palin say she and John McCain both believe “you can’t blink.” But last night at the debate, he showed he can blink like a champ. October 16, 2008 at 12:23pm

… is waiting for Hillary to walk him down the aisle and give him away to Barack. June 4, 2008 at 1:52pm

… doesn’t think the media is making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear with Obama… just a silk purse out of some above-average polyester. February 22, 2008 at 10:43am

… Even if Hillary found a cure for AIDS tomorrow, the headline from our super-fair media would be: “Clinton Pathetically Tries to Upstage Obama by Curing Disease That Was Started by Her Husband Anyway”. February 14, 2008 at 3:00pm

MISCELLANY

… Attention, people: Just because it’s warm doesn’t mean you have to immediately put on your scummy flip-flops and make everyone look at your feet. Grow up. March 7, 2009 at 5:55pm

… wonders if it’s okay, in lieu of “the Talk,” to just buy someone a copy of the book “He’s Just Not That into You” and say, “Here, read this.” March 3, 2009 at 8:58pm

… RE: Valentine’s Day: Do leather daddies give those LEATHER ROSES they sell at the gas station to their partners? If not, who buys them? February 14, 2009 at 9:57am

… is offended that Béyoncé was allowed to sing the song “At Last” for the Obamas’ first inaugurational dance. She would be great at a children’s talent show, but she is not up to this task. January 20, 2009 at 8:42pm

… The song playing in the cab, Nancy claims, was “Secret Agent Man.” But I swear it’s “Secret Asian Man.” Oh, secret Asian man: When will you come out as Asian? December 8, 2008 at 9:58pm

… Bogus business-speak terms of the day: “Pain points” and “sweet spots.” Is it a business or an S&M dungeon? December 5, 2008 at 11:56am

… paraphrases the Stones: You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you can’t get what you need either. October 13, 2008 at 1:46pm

… loves the strangeness of life. Barbra Streisand and I are both HuffPost contributors now. Reunited, and it feels so good! September 20, 2008 at 2:55pm

… likes “Intervention” so much that y’all might need to do an intervention on him to cure him of his “Intervention” addiction. An “Intervention” intervention. June 23, 2008 at 9:18pm

… called Barbra Streisand to wish her a happy birthday, but she was out so I talked to James Brolin for a while and told him he should blog for HuffPost. April 24, 2008 at 3:30pm

… I guess when they tried to make Amy Winehouse go to rehab this time, she said “Yes, yes, yes.” January 24, 2008 at 3:05pm

… is wondering what Evel Knievel’s funeral will involve, stunt-wise. December 10, 2007

I AM A PERFORMER and I only like (to hear things from) other performers. FB is a public forum, and you owe your “reading public” something more than “SM is at work.” Facebook gets it, actually: They have that HIDE feature now, where you can “shut” your most boring friends “up” (“down”?). Praise the Lord for that. One more pointless status update, [ ], and you’re getting hidden with extreme prejudice.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

AND YOU CAN FRIEND HIM ON FACEBOOK!

“YOU Were Meant for Greatness.” Those words are stenciled in black spray paint on a gray electrical box on my street. When I first saw this curious graffito, I indulged in a faint little smile. Some days as I passed it on my way home from work it almost made me cry. So many (other) toothless, hopeless wrecks in my neighborhood, you know, need some courage and a kind word. Hope. Then one day I noticed the little anarchist’s A in a circle underneath it. Ruined the whole thing. Now it’s taunted me for a year and a half of my not-great existence. I avoid it now like the curse it obviously is. One of these nights I will paint over it. Those messages that are born of anarchy die of anarchy, too.

***

We’re well on the other side of the wrenching election that brought such stirring hope and change to every molecule of our collective national being. Many have commented to me about how incongruous Mr. Obama is to them. They still can’t shake a dreamlike feeling. Did we really shed the poisonous Bush regime in favor of a young, smart, attractive, liberal president with a sense of humor and “compassion” that isn’t just a cruel joke, or will we wake up violently from this dream? At the same time, creeping across the proscenium, sneaking inwards from our peripheral line of vision, is a stealthy nightmare. “This Economy”®.

***

I’m going to say what President Barack and his guys have been hinting around at. It’s this: Everything is going to vanish, in stages. Every. Thing.

***

Think of all the vanished answering machine messages in the world, in all the languages of the world. Gone forever. Don’t be so confident that everything you say and do is cached in those “safe” and capacious server farms out in the middle of the country or wherever they are. Answering machines once thought they were indispensible, too. They didn’t see the next thing coming, and now they’re buried deep in a dump. I’m talking to you, Internet. The anarchists are not just going to let you keep going.

***

As the Depression solidifies into Armageddon, we’re all going to have to get more comfortable with committing a lot more crime, too. The average Joe of the near future is going to make Mad Max look like Paul Lynde.

***

I have some ideas for how to profit from the end of the world. I started by registering as a trademark the words “this economy,” so every time one of you uses those words you have to pay me a royalty.

I heard on TV that a lot of down-laid/out-sized people are starting businesses of their own because there are no jobs. I heard the trend is for groups of friends to set up cookie shops in abandoned office space. Like squatting, but the business version.

I think we can do better than a creepy bake sale in a ghost office park, don’t you? See what you think of my first few ideas for businesses to start:

1. Internet II. We all take for granted that there can only be one World Wide Internet. Why? Think of how much $$$ the first Internet generated for its inventor, Bill Gates. Don’t you want to be Bill Gates? He’s got all the money. Get all Chinese on his ass, steal the knowledge you need and build it. Anarchist-proof it. Then underprice him. This current Internet is vulnerable, and it CAN BE BEAT.

2. Eviction Shields. Your pitch to customers: “Don’t let them evict you. Fight back.” The evictioneering field is saturated. But that in itself has created a new business opening: Provide people with ways to eviction-proof their home, such as moats, impenetrable steel doors, and of course strategically positioned snipers. Offer an end-to-end eviction-prevention system and people will pay as much as they can to stave off the inevitable for another week.

You may ask, “But, if they are broke and losing their house, where will the people get the money to pay for the Eviction Shield?” I anticipated that question…

3. Shadow Economy Job Training School. The non-shadow economy, the big one, is f*cked forever, let’s face it. But that means the secondary, “shadow” economy will “boom” all the harder. Lots of former IT workers, secretaries, and HR recruiters have no clue how to get into the cockfighting or drug-dealing business. That’s where you come in.

“But Scott, where will people get the money to pay the tuition at your crime school?”

Maybe I’ll offer scholarships. At exorbitant interest rates. I’ll read up on how the predatory mortgage lenders and banking-product people ran their scam, and get an idea of how to do this. Before angry mobs kill them all.

By the by, I’ve got lots more ideas for Depression-busting businesses you can start, but they’re a little shocking/disturbing, Jeff won’t let me put them on here. (I’ll give you a hint: One of them involves Soylent Green.) Drop me a line and I’ll send you the complete list for $2.

Illustration by Patrick Moberg

On my recent trip to Dublin with my unforgettable sister, KP, I was thinking about how I had never been so comfortable with my American accent abroad. I hadn’t been overseas since 1999. Maybe it’s getting older that makes you just not care. I didn’t apologize for how I talk or feel bound to explain it or anything. I am who I am.

We were looking for the next haunted church on our packed “Death and Drag Tour 2008,” standing kind of in the middle of an intersection. An old man with a forest-green wool coat and cap, wearing three-day stubble and dried soup speckles on his chin, carrying a cane, saw us hesitating over our map and asked if he could help us find something.

At first his impression was of the kindly, gallant, avuncular Irish bloke with a pipe in his mouth of postcards and legend. This guy said “’tis” and was Straight from Central Casting (“We need a ‘Twinkle-eyed Old Irish Sod’…stat!”). The stereotypical Irish brogue that people use humorously outside Ireland to imitate the Irish is not exaggerated, they sound exactly like that.

But then on a dime, he descended into a curious, unmotivated assholishness, repeating back to us the name of the street we said we were looking for, but corrected (we said “St. James St.” to which he responded in that “uh, you’re an idiot” tone: “Ah, yes, James’s St.”), then offered to show us how to get there.

Pointing around the bend with his cane, he gave us the usual bullshit British Isles–style directions (everything is always “just here, ’round the corner there” but in reality it never is, it’s always hideously, fiendishly far away) that really didn’t even make sense. He invited us to follow him instead, but he walked at about five steps per minute, causing us to feel an awkwardness about… where to stand while he was “leading” us.

“Where ye from in Europe, then?” he asked. I said, “America.” His demeanor changed immediately, on the final “a” in the word America, from that odd disdain covered with phony kindliness … to rage.

“How many millions has that bastard – excuse me, young lady [more fake gallantry] – Bush, killed? Hmm? How many millions?” he bellowed. I wanted to answer *maybe* 200,000 – that would be Iraqis and American-coalition soldiers combined, plus some Afghans and miscellaneous. That’s an unforgivable sum. But not millions, and not killed personally by Mr. Bush, though I understood what the old man meant. Not answering him engendered more awkwardness, because after all, I’m a stickler for facts and I’m not going to take the “respect old people” thing into the realm of trafficking in wild hyperbole with them.

After a few more shouted questions it became clear he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted, but then we didn’t know what he wanted. Did he want us to say, “Oh, you’re so right. We and all Americans are just demonic warmongers from hell. Thank you, sir.” Or did he want a debate? Out of a lingering deference to his oldness, we put up with his ranting, though frankly I was getting a little put off by being reduced to a baffled whipping boy for Mr. Bush’s misdeeds, and not being believed when I protested that I DON’T SUPPORT MR. BUSH OR HIS POLICIES.

“We didn’t vote for him,” I insisted. “That’s what ye all say!” the implacable old sod yelled into my face.

Then he demanded to know why the Supreme Court had handed the 2000 election to Mr. Bush. Why. Why? We didn’t have a good answer for him. KP said, “They’re majority-Republican-appointed” or something like that. Then we moved out of the intersection and he gestured over to the right, around the corner. “Here, come ’round here, I want to talk to you about politics,” he said, looking around suspiciously like we were being followed.

I said, “We’re voting for O’bama!” To which he replied sourly, “Who’s that, the Republican?” This sounded the final gong on our abortive “political discussion.”

He kept turning again and again to the side as if to try to compose himself, yet he found he just couldn’t control his exaggerated, 19th-century-actorish indignation. But I think he sensed we were disturbed, bored and annoyed. My patience was worn to the nubbins by our failure to connect with this old man, and even old leprechauns with dried soup on their chin can pick up on that when it happens.

So, with no real segue except an implicit “here’s another outrage!,” he closed by asking us in a doomsday voice did we know what the Irish government had just done to the pensioners (or somesuch)? It was, of course, something “political” and infuriating to him. He ominously dared us to read it for ourselves, whatever it was, which, like the ugly American swine that I am, I don’t care about.

Moving himself backward and away at five steps per minute, he waved his arm in disgust at us and muttered out to a dwindle, leaving us only with those initial dubious directions and an earful of bombastic brogue: We equal Mr. Bush because we are Americans. All Americans are Mr. Bush. No grays here, just blacks and whites.

We were still in the process of shrugging this ugly incident off when, 10 minutes later, across town, we were again looking at a map… and, oh look, here’s an old woman saying, “Whar ye tryin’ to go? The river?” (The river was plainly visible about 100 feet from where we were standing.) I told her we didn’t need any help, but thanks ever so much, in a nice tone of voice. She said where ya from we said America and in the same unhinged howl as her soup-splattered countryman she lit into us about the evils of Mr. Bush. I really wasn’t listening this time. I made my own dismissive hand gesture at her.

In an apparent reference both to him and to the fact that I had declined her help with the map, she sputtered, “Yer the second American that’s let the Irish down!” It was such a clever, thought-provoking line that I couldn’t tell if maybe she was wowing us with her comedy, but when she turned and rejoined her friend and gestured back at us as though we were something horrible, then with broad stage mannerisms tried to “warn” another group of passersby that we were American, trying to incite a riot, really, I realized she was serious. “Don’t get lost in Ireland!” she hollered back at us from down the street, a veiled threat. I felt like we had time-travelled into a medieval village and were about to be rounded up and put in the stocks then burnt at the stake.

I’d read about the ferocious anti-Bush sentiments people encountered in foreign countries. Now I’ve experienced them and obviously it hurt my feelings, because I’m berating, in writing, these two old folks.

But I loved Ireland, and found everyone to be lovely except these two. They can go rot in whisky barrels buried under the River Liffey.

They’d probably like that.

I’m sure when I go back — and I will, because excepting these two rude old clueless Celtic cranks I was charmed silly by Ireland — I’m sure I’ll get my Yankee ass kissed, because we elected a biracial butterfly in the USA, so all is forgiven. But I don’t deserve any special credit for that, just as I don’t deserve the wrath of the leprechauns for Mr. Bush’s stuff.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

Porcelain Suffers Crushing Defeat: I like Kevin Smith a lot (the man, not his movies), he’s a funny no-bullshit kind of guy and a very informed movie reviewer. So I’m sad to hear (and see!) just how obese he has gotten. Smith recently broke a toilet. Ooof! Pull it together Kev, quit the pot, hit the gym and put some photos of Chris Farley and John Candy on your fridge.

Crystal Ball: The Onion predicted Joe The Plumber back in 93.

Looting: Phillie fans = small time. Republicans = BIG TIME!

Pumped Up! Listen to Phil’s announcer Harry Kalas make the final call while watching Chris Wheeler’s awesomely aerobic and silent celebration.

“Why is he swinging a pocket watch in front of our faces?” Beware: Barack Obama’s speeches contain the hypnosis techniques! Looks like he’ll get at least 33 Million votes.

Hear More Seymour: Brian Seymour celebrates the Phils victory on Saturday night, Nov 1st:  Fergie’s Pub – 1214 Sansom St. – 9-11pm – one long set, don’t be late.

Photabulous! Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners announced

I Spy with My Little Eye: Learn how to build and use tiny surveillance devices!

I Smell Scam: Philly fix my car! Maybe not, you decide.

Halloween Warning: Scaring Tyrone is not a good idea.

Free MP3: I love Fucked Up’s new CD The Chemistry of Common Life. You will too.  Download MP3: “Twice Born” [via Matador]

Look, I want comments. Reader comments are the way to measure my worth as a writer, and, by extension, as a person.

I crave them the way I crave smack. I recently got over 100 comments for the first time, on my last The Huffington Post piece, and I have to say I was… quietly satisfied… about crossing the three-digit comment mark. I had a moment. I celebrated that night with an extra bottle of champagne and a special iced smack drink I make sometimes.

In the spirit of writerly camaraderie, I hope for my writer friends to get lots of comments, but then I’m envious when they do. So I leave anonymous comments about how their articles stink.

I want at least 2,000 comments next time I write something. (Luckily, I think at HuffPost there are exactly as many commenters as there are bloggers: roughly 10,000 of each.) Nothing’s ever enough for me, or anyone.

Numbers matter. After something goes live, we writers check back obsessively to see how many comments we’ve gotten. I notice you guys don’t leave many comments here on UsedWigs. Because you are stingey people. CHANGE THAT.

But the question is: Where do you even begin reading a comments section with thousands of comments in it? And when do you stop? Like so much on the Internet, comments sections can be a tragic time waster.

When I started contributing to Arianna’s site, a blogger friend told me NEVER to respond to commenters. “It’s a power differential,” he said.

Fine, I get it, I’m very available to elitism, but I like comments because… I actually do want to have a dialogue with my readers (all four of you), something that wasn’t possible back when I started writing, for print publication, over a decade ago. A back-and-forth! I was so excited when I got my first “f*ck you” from a commenter on my first HuffPost piece! “F*ck you, Shrake!” Made me smile.

When it comes to comments, websites and bloggers have choices. Do you allow comments at all? Do you as the site owner or blogger respond personally to comments? (Historically, some writers have gotten in trouble for commenting under an alias — at their own sites and others’! — and pumping themselves up, etc.) Do you moderate the comments or let it be a free-for-all? Moderating means deleting people, banning them, etc. Do you want to be that bossy? Unwebocratic?

When I was young, before the Internet was set up, ordinary folks had one option for responding to something they read. They could write a letter to the editor of the newspaper or magazine in which the article appeared. Maybe it would get printed, but the chances were mighty slim.

If you could say something that caught the interest of the editorial powers-that-be, you’d be the star of your block that day. You’d be famous!

But that was it. Then they invented the Internet, and with it soon came a chaotic marketplace of shitty ideas and profanity.

There was a time when UsedWigs was young, before it went blog, that we didn’t have comments. If someone had something to say about something I wrote, they sent me an e-mail, and I ignored them. It was the opposite of a free-for-all.

Nowadays literally anybody who can use a computer is able to be the star of their block in their own mind, all day, every day. We now have what I will call the Lumpen-Commentariat: They are the “trolls,” the hopelessly illiterate or drunk or insane underclass that insist on typing their thousands of comments per day, on getting in on the action and making their opinions known… way underneath what I’ll call the Blogeoisie (blog-wah-zee) — the uppity people who own blogs (or, like me, “rent” space at other people’s because they don’t know how to get their own); and the Commentariat — the people who write the blogs.

Case Study: David

One comments section I can never resist reading for an hour at a time is the one situated next to any column by David Broder at the Washington Post. It represents an intense competition among commenters to humiliate and eviscerate this old man who looks like he’s constipated, the reputed “Dean of the Washington Press Corps,” and it is superb insult comedy.

Everyone knows Broder can’t possibly be looking at the comments, because he’s Andy Rooney’s-age-plus, but it’s fun to think of how cranky he must be because he doesn’t get why the readers are allowed to send all these “electric letters” or whatever they are, directly to him in that small type and Who are these people, anyway? He’s an important man laboring pen-in-hand over his steno pad to come up with incomparably obvious columns every few days (such as the recent “I’ve Noticed Hillary and Barack Are Two of the Main People Running for President” by David Broder). So they taunt him, saying how he needs to retire, holding him to account for helping elect Bush 2, and just… I don’t know, running rhetorical circles around him. Many of the comments are such perfect specimens of verbal acidity, it makes me gaga.

That’s what I want. Sock it to me. When you’re ready. I’ll be feverishly refreshing this page, drinking my delicious, special, ice-cold Smack-Aid. Let the dialogue roll.

And when I cyber-die, please put “Leave a Comment” on my e-tombstone.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

[NOTE: This quessay is cross-posted on HuffingtonPost.com]

*Big ups to Crispin Glover, who really should’ve run for president this year, and who once wrote an “essay” called “What Is It?” composed only of questions, with a subtly discernible anti-Steven Spielberg thrust to it. Subtly discernible, the way the media’s anti-Hillary Clinton bias is subtle. I’m paying homage to Glover’s genre*** and giving it a name**: Quessay (question essay). (Actually, so no one accuses me of stealing anyone else’s words, according to Google as of today ONE OTHER person, someone named Rockin80sChick4ever, has used the term quessay. And I think she meant something else.)

Why have we seen Chelsea Clinton but not Bill in the audience at the recent one-on-one debates, and why don’t Michelle Obama and her daughters ever appear at them?

Isn’t it strangely prophetic that Barack Obama, in his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, after admitting his own “unusually — and at times undeservedly — positive press coverage,” (p. 120) cites only these two people as an example of right-wing bias in the media: “A vote or speech by Hillary Clinton that runs against type is immediately labeled calculating; the same move by John McCain burnishes his maverick credentials” (p. 124)?

What would you say if you knew Hillary’s mom’s married name and Barack’s mom’s maiden name both end in “-ham” (Rodham and Dunham respectively)? Are the Rodhams and the Dunhams related? Isn’t Barack Obama distantly related to the current vice president, Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney?

Was Barack Obama’s maternal great-grandfather named Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham? Did he die on October 4, 1970, the same day Janis Joplin died? Wasn’t Janis Joplin a drug addict?

Were rock stars Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison (rumored to have been) killed by the U.S. government?

Do Hillary Clinton, Mamie Eisenhower, Spiro Agnew, Laura Bush, Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, the late Bobby Kennedy, Michael Dukakis, Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Scarlett Johansson, Condoleezza Rice, Billy Graham and Maria Shriver all share a zodiac sign (Scorpio)?

Do Barack Obama, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Rosalynn Carter, Marilyn Quayle, Tipper Gore, Lynne Cheney, Bill Clinton, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Hill, Fidel Castro, Loni Anderson, Caspar Weinberger, the late Jerry Falwell and Arnold Schwarzenegger all share a zodiac sign (Leo)?

Do scorpions sting themselves to death when cornered by an enemy, rather than be killed? Do lions roar a lot (“variations in intensity and pitch, rather than discrete signals, appear central to communication”****)?

Is it interesting that Barack H. Obama Sr. went to Harvard and earned a doctorate in economics, making Barack H. Obama Jr. a “legacy” student at Harvard? Did both Barack and Michelle Obama receive law degrees from Harvard, and did both Bill and Hillary Clinton receive law degrees from Yale? Who else went to Yale? Did any of Bill or Hillary Clintons’ parents attend Ivy League schools? Am I an Ivy League graduate? Was Bill Clinton the only person in his family of origin to attend college?

Is Barack Obama allowed, constitutionally, to pick Bill Clinton as his running mate?

Did Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s fathers both die relatively young as a result of automobile accidents?

Do William J. Blythe III (Bill Clinton), John S. McCain III and Barack H. Obama II have numbers after their names that, all together, add up to eight (8), which is the same as the total combined number of books the three of them have been the top-billed authors of? Eight?

Does it surprise you that Hillary Clinton’s house in Washington, D.C., is the only one on the block with no house number displayed anywhere?

Where does Barack Obama live when he’s in D.C.? What’s his favorite restaurant? Is it the same restaurant favored by Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney? If not, why not?

In their youths, didn’t Bill Clinton meet John F. Kennedy and Hillary Rodham meet Martin Luther King Jr.?

Will Barack Obama respond to those calling for him to pick Bill Clinton as his running mate?

**When I was in grad school I would make up words all the time, but one of my sour-faced professors (a German) tried to rid me of the habit by writing in the margin: “It’s not necessary to invent a new word for the purposes of a term paper.”

***I’m also paying homage to the lists of intriguingly paranoiac questions that certain commenters from both fringe ends of the political spectrum like to insert into comment sections (again and again). Except my quessay is different because I can spell.

****Schaller, George B. The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations. University of Chicago Press, 1972. pp. 103-113. Via Wikipedia.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.