I not only like having it, I like eating it, too.
Here's the Ideal American series again, for those who missed the fuss. I am considering perhaps putting it in a "humor" "banner" on the "right sidebar" so that people not otherwise familiar with my "writing" will "know" they are getting a "parody."
I'll still try the more serious approach, but this way I may add to it every now and then when I'm feeling stupid, which is most of the time.
Anyway, we'll see how it goes. The fact is, I thought a lot of it wasn't too bad, and the batting cage sequence I was especially proud of. Can I deprive the world of this treasure, this gift to humanity?
I don't see how I could, in clear conscience.
Posted by Proteus at January 24, 2004 9:40 PM
Welcome to the Eject! Eject! Eject! commenter community. Please read and understand the following:
1. This is not a public square. This is a dinner party on personal property. Good conversation is not only tolerated but celebrated here. But the host understands the difference between dissent and disrespect, even if you do not. Louts will be ignored until the bouncers can show them the door.
2. This is a voluntary online community. Your posting of any material, whether in comments or otherwise, grants to William A. Whittle, Aurora Aerospace, Inc. and their affiliates, a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide license to use, sublicense, reproduce or incorporate into other material all or any portion of the material posted, for commercial or other use.
3. If a comment does find its way into a main page essay, print, or other media, every effort will be made to credit the individual making the comment. So chose your screen name accordingly, SLNTFRT33@yahoo.com!
Now let's see some distributed intelligence and basic human decency! Don't make me come down there every five minutes!
Comments
I'm glad you put them back, Bill...and VERY glad to hear it wasn't the trolls who caused you to pull them in the first place. As for your suggestion that the whole idea may be "fatally flawed" (in your previous post), I don't think so. It may possibly need some fine-tuning, but that's all...and not a whole lot of that.
Keep 'em coming!
Posted by: JimC | January 24, 2004 11:29 PM
Yay!
Posted by: A Recovering Liberal | January 25, 2004 7:25 AM
Thank you.
Posted by: StMack | January 25, 2004 7:39 AM
Excellent. Like I said below, people who didn't get it lacked an essential ingredient of the "ideal American" - an appreciation of self-deprecatory humor.
Posted by: Kevin Baker | January 25, 2004 9:17 AM
thank you Bill!
Posted by: stract | January 25, 2004 10:02 AM
No complaints here. Maybe it will grow on me eventually. If not, whatever.
After all, some of my writing is downright absurd. I once wrote a page and a half in King James English about how everything you Do is a Balloon. It also touched on supernatural mad warrior-cows.
*Silence. Crickets chirp.*
Ahem.
Posted by: Lord Duppy | January 25, 2004 10:44 AM
Posted by: Richard R | January 25, 2004 11:18 AM
(insert cheering here)
Posted by: Richard R | January 25, 2004 11:19 AM
Awesome.
Posted by: in10sity | January 25, 2004 11:51 AM
I never understood that. What is the POINT of having cake if you cannot eat it?
Makes no sense.
;)
Posted by: Mrs. du Toit | January 25, 2004 4:25 PM
Well, cake sure smells good. I don't mind having cake and not eating it!
Posted by: homer jay | January 25, 2004 4:30 PM
Once you eat the cake, you no longer have it. So you can't literally have your cake and eat it, too.
I'm enjoying the series, but...you do know that Fidel Castro played baseball, right? Perhaps he was the Westworld version of the Ideal American.
Posted by: Sean | January 26, 2004 9:25 AM
The bit about Castro being a ballplayer is an urban legend. There's no proof he played ball ever except in a few exhibition games after he took over the country... and baseball is very popular in Cuba, after all.
Posted by: LabRat | January 26, 2004 10:43 AM
It was the homework assignment wasn't it? Our lists weren't funny; nothing caught you by surprise? Went too far with the whole "dinosaurs on fire and shot into the sky with rockets" home movies?
Ah well, enjoy your cake. (And don't let Sean fool you, when you run out, just make more cake.)
Thanks for putting them back into archives. You are absolutely right about the batting cage sequence...at least I'm no longer humiliated about my own experience. (Okay, it's still embarrassing but now I know I do not suffer alone.)
Looking forward to what you have in store for us next.
Posted by: Serenity | January 26, 2004 5:18 PM
Personally, I greatly enjoyed the series and was really looking forward to more installments. I think that once completed and bounded together in dead tree format, it would make an excellent gift for new parents.
Bill, I say don't worry about the people who "don't get it." Write for your own enjoyment first. Share it with us, but write for YOU.
Posted by: heath | January 27, 2004 6:22 AM
Now where is it? [sounds of a sword being sharpened...] ;)
Posted by: Emperor Misha I | January 27, 2004 6:24 AM
Hey, I never said Castro was any good at it, just that he played. He was probably slow from being full of cake, having given Serenity's "lather, rinse, repeat" simultaneous cake-having-and-eating strategem a whirl.
Posted by: Sean | January 27, 2004 11:18 AM
Great! Glad to hear it. Never try to write for anyone but yourself. If folks like it, fine. If not, well there are plenty of other writers for them to read. If you're not writing what you want, what's the point of the exercise?
Unsolicited, pompous presumption over and out.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 27, 2004 11:47 PM
Greetings
Posted by: Jim Tayler | November 4, 2004 4:14 AM