NP re: journalism

[Doug Millison]

Malign:
"You intend to stimulate discussion and you're inept. "

If you're the test case, I can accept that characterization, no problemo.
Obviously, I don't know how to successfully engage Malign in a flame-free
discussion on this list.  Of course, nobody else has been able to do it, so
I don't feel so bad about it.

I can see how it would quite a bit easier to keep a discussion going on
Pynchon-L when you have a bunch of anonymous email accounts talking to each
other.  But, naively perhaps, I think Malign remains unique (the nasty
wisecracks have stayed at more or less the same braindead level since
he/she started slamming me and M&D back in '97). Given his/her failing
grade in How to Win Friends and Influence People, who knows what the
fallout might be if he/she started quarreling with him/herself through
multiple personae each with its own email account. The mind boggles at the
thought of spleen thus diffracted and amplified! I mean, look at what
happened to Terrance, and he's basically a pretty nice guy, he just gets a
little testy when people won't play by his rules.  (Speaking of Terrance, I
was thinking about that post he wrote yesterday, when he was up on his high
horse about what "we" are supposed to get when "we" subscribe to Pynchon-L,
and I was wondering, does any of that apply to those vast chunks of
Melville and Aristotle and the rest -- including what kai, I think it was,
or was it rj/jbor/rjackson, or Morris, or Malign, used to refer to as
undigested gibberish from his journal or some such --  that he has
routinely posted to Pynchon-L, or is it only when other people post
tangentially that he gets upset?)

Still, far better to get a flame by email than an envelope full of anthrax
the way some very unfortunate, desk-bound journalists in New York seem to
have done today (I guess we'd better drop a bunch more bombs and maybe
invade some more countries to keep us safe). So I'll continue to count my
blessings, and wish the best to you all, even you folks who don't know any
better than to cheer when bombs blow little kids to bits for reasons
they'll never have a chance to understand.

Peace,
Doug