karlkuehn
Banned
Okay, here I go again...not venting so much this time as attempting to provide a little enlightenment on the importance of interpersonal communication, no matter what the vehicle of that communication is. Please understand that I get a little wordy, and if you don't have time to read through this essay, I won't hold it against you. I try to make my thoughts and opinions perfectly clear, and since I barely have time to eat or sleep, I don't spend a lot of time editing my posts down for minimal length/optimal affect type of writing. I enjoy writing, especially when it's something that I care a good deal about, unfortunately most of my best stuff gets published in the first rough draft. Bear with me, or not, your call. I'll try to put enough interesting and humorous content in there to at least make it a great way to kill a half hour. I'm 'Jokeboy', remember? heh
At work today, while I was mindlessly shooting nails and filtering a few pounds of wood/drywall dust through my lungs (which is actually good, it gives all the cigar smoke and tar something to cling to so I can hack the lot of it out at the end of the day), I spent a lot of time today hashing over the threads from this weekend (mine included), pondering the differences in opinion, and I've got some resulting thoughts that I'd like to share.
Regarding the 'tussle in the sandbox'/'car wreck'/-whatever analogy you'd like to apply- over the weekend, I'd really like to rebut Ed's response, as I think he gave a good amount of information that, while well-worded, well-thought-out and heartfelt, it was also false regarding the true impact of 'Internet conversation', and how it is perceived and received by many people. Since he requested that only positive comments were welcome on his post, I decided to start my own thread, where I'll also quote and utilize the whole 'freedom of speech' thing, and abide by it as well. What?! Aren't I entitled to a cheap shot, too? []
On a side-note (I'm really good at these side-note things, and most of you that read my stuff on a regular basis know that there's a good chance that we'll end up discussing/arguing about why it is that natural, not imitation vanilla is much better to bake with when you use real butter as opposed to saffron or peanut oil; some people use side-notes, I actually exist in them), I actually Googled 'rebutt' and 'rebut'; both search results handed me dozens of examples, but (there is is again, the 'b'-word) I went with Thesaurus.com's spelling, and even though a couple of the 'if they'll pay us, we'll give you a list of places selling [insert any darned thing here]' stupid shopping sites that tried to sell me my own personal 'rebut' through Amazon, I think I picked the right spelling of the word itself. Cav, insight? [okay, end tangent]
Shoot! Another sidenote (see, I told you, it's where I live...), Ed, please don't hold any of this against me. I love reading your posts, and respect you very much. I've really enjoyed the emails that we've shared outside the forum, and I hope that this won't change our relationship more than one friend disagreeing with another friend. Heck, while I'm at it, Cav, as much as I poke fun at you, please understand that I'm a spelling and grammar freak myself, I'm just not good enough at it to feel like I can correct anyone when, most of the time, I've got more green and red squigglies in my posts than the original post that I'm correcting on. There, I've sufficiently given the two of them equal opportunities to turbo-boost their post-counts, giving me the verbal thrashing that I deserve. The race goes on! [end tangent #2 â€" you see what I'm saying about the rough draft? heh]
Due to the 'newness' (siddown, Cav!) of the Internet, communication styles have seen a hyper-growth spurt because one can essentially hide behind their keyboards and monitors and be whomever or whatever they wish to be, without risk of personal, and ultimately public reverberations (Please see and take note of the number of, “fifty-eight year-old [insert podunk town name] man pretends to be nineteen year-old hunk in chatroom, apprehended Sunday by FBI stingâ€). Unfortunately, the amount of time that people spend together in these chatrooms (I'm sorry, 'forums'; God forbid I use the 'C' word and people start thinking that we're akin to a bunch of bionic-thumbed teenagers who spend more of their lives texting than actually talking) enables people to get emotionally attached to those that they spend time with online.
Enter my rebut (man, that word just bugs me...it's like “wait, my original 'but' wasn't good enough so here's my new one?†I wish I could do that with my other 'but'. Too many french fries? Time to rebut! Sign me up! []) to the 'Car crash' analogy.
Side-note-o-rama, I didn't come up with any good comparisons to the 'sand box' thing; I just didn't want to taint my wonderful sandbox memories, apparently. *Karl, in kindergarten* - "Hey guys, look! If we all save up our chocolate milk and pour it in here, we can make sand pens! *proudly holds up blob of sand*...
Picture this: In Ed's analogy, you're driving down the road and you see a car wreck. The people in front of you slow down, the people behind you slow down, you slow down, all of you curious about what's going on over on the other side of the freeway. Some people comment, other people ignore, impatient to move on and get past it, eager to be on their way home. Some of us might comment on the damage that was done to a certain type of vehicle, some of us might say a prayer for those invloved, some rare people will pull over and volunteer to help, but most of us are just glad to get by the delay and move on with our lives.
Now, imagine: When the line of cars finally reaches the bottle neck of those other people, you take a chance and glance over to see what's going on, and you realize that one of the cars involved is just like your spouse's (since we're using marriage as a comparison), and then after further investigation, you realize with horror that it IS YOUR SPOUSE'S!!!
Are you going to continue to drive on, just trying to get past the idiots and get home? Duh, of course not! You're going to bury the nose of your car in the swampy median and jump out with your hair on fire.
See, that isn't 'someone else' in that other lane, that's your family! None of us is just going to drive by and say, “Golly, I wish they'd have driven a little more carefullyâ€, or, “I'm too busy right now, I just don't have time to helpâ€, or, “the firemen have it under control, just let them do their jobsâ€...NO! You're going to lose your mind, pushing firemen and cops out of the way to get to the person you care about.
Now, I'm not saying that I love any of you more than I love my wife, but most of you could count on me to at least bury my truck in the mud, hop out and look ruggedly heroic, and then you'd have to help me pay for the tow-truck to get me out of the gunk, since I'm chronically broke...
And aside from Ron in Drums PA (Ron Sardo â€" see, we all have real names worth learning and knowing), I've never met any of you, but if we all were able to have a big arrow that points to our cars that said, “stevers drives hereâ€, or “Proud_Poppa_of_2 on boardâ€, I'd look for all of you, all the time!
I've only spent months on this forum getting to know you, and know you I do. You are my friends, you are my family! Every day when I get home, I look forward to my time on the computer when I can see who's created what, who needs prayer, who's posted something funny, who's continued to be a dork (that'd me me..."karlkuehn types here" â€" arrow flashing).
You can't tell me that if I were to call any of you on the phone and call you a filthy piece of distended rectum (free stinkwood blanks to anyone who can tell me where that quote is from) right to your face, you wouldn't be offended; I couldn't write you a letter and tell you that you're stupid and your opinions are crap without you getting upset; I darned sure couldn't show up at your car wreck and tell you you deserved it, or you had it coming.
And I only know you guys through the faceless, emotionally detached, hide behind the keyboard Internet forum that we're all a part of. I also know who's suffering because they lost a loved one, who's dealing with 'outside' financial pressures on such a scale that they have to sell off the wood shop that they love just to pay bills, who's feeling down because they miss the family they are separated from, and who's up against a wall because they can't figure out whether it's CA then BLO, or BLO then CA, and what kind of paper towels to we use, anyways!?
All of those things that I learn about you, I learn them here on the net, and thank God that most days it's only silly stuff like, “skew or gouge? Shellawax or Mylands? Rollerball or fountain?†type of stuff, and yet still I care enough to give advice, offer condolences, provide reasources, or apologize in advance for spelling errors. (I'm sorry Cav, did my best!)
So you can't tell me that IAP is an anonymous communication source where I can learn how to communicate without feelings, and as such, ALL of us have a responsibility to treat each other with respect.
I darned sure wouldn't stand up in church and start or continue a fight with my wife, and I'd be hard-pressed to go at it in front of my closest friends, and that's what I consider each of you, my closest friends.
As far as my outburst on the 'Cav' thread, while I do regret a couple of the words I used, I do not regret anything that I said there.
I received many emails from people thought that what I said made great sense, and in an effort to not 'stir the pot', they chose to PM/email me instead, and for that I'm grateful.
Here are some of the emails:
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Karl -
I am disappointed that your January 13 post to the "Cav" thread in the "Casual Conversation" forum received no public acknowledgement. It was intelligent, cogent, heartfelt and, in my opinion, balls on accurate.
I write privately because I believe it would be counter-productive to enter the fray publicly, especially now that it seems to have calmed down somewhat. I think it important, though, that you be aware of your words' impact and that they have not been lost on all readers. I appreciate very much your putting yourself out there as much as I regret the fact that your feelings seemed to have gone straight over the heads of your audience.
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Great post Karl! I wanted to PM you because I hope your post is the last one on that thread...[remainder deleted for anonymity]
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Karl,About your post on the "cav" thread.
You dun good! My sentiments exactly (well, ok not exactly...I would have to delete a word or two ) but it was well said. I did not want to respond online because I didn't want to add fuel to the fire unnecessarily.
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Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is don't fall into the trap of the idea that posting your thoughts and opinions only on the forums allows you to change who you really are. All of us are members here, and by running head-on into someone, you do great damage, but on the flip side, burying your keyboard/car into the median to assist and protect your family is not a bad thing.
That's my $2.57.
At work today, while I was mindlessly shooting nails and filtering a few pounds of wood/drywall dust through my lungs (which is actually good, it gives all the cigar smoke and tar something to cling to so I can hack the lot of it out at the end of the day), I spent a lot of time today hashing over the threads from this weekend (mine included), pondering the differences in opinion, and I've got some resulting thoughts that I'd like to share.
Regarding the 'tussle in the sandbox'/'car wreck'/-whatever analogy you'd like to apply- over the weekend, I'd really like to rebut Ed's response, as I think he gave a good amount of information that, while well-worded, well-thought-out and heartfelt, it was also false regarding the true impact of 'Internet conversation', and how it is perceived and received by many people. Since he requested that only positive comments were welcome on his post, I decided to start my own thread, where I'll also quote and utilize the whole 'freedom of speech' thing, and abide by it as well. What?! Aren't I entitled to a cheap shot, too? []
On a side-note (I'm really good at these side-note things, and most of you that read my stuff on a regular basis know that there's a good chance that we'll end up discussing/arguing about why it is that natural, not imitation vanilla is much better to bake with when you use real butter as opposed to saffron or peanut oil; some people use side-notes, I actually exist in them), I actually Googled 'rebutt' and 'rebut'; both search results handed me dozens of examples, but (there is is again, the 'b'-word) I went with Thesaurus.com's spelling, and even though a couple of the 'if they'll pay us, we'll give you a list of places selling [insert any darned thing here]' stupid shopping sites that tried to sell me my own personal 'rebut' through Amazon, I think I picked the right spelling of the word itself. Cav, insight? [okay, end tangent]
Shoot! Another sidenote (see, I told you, it's where I live...), Ed, please don't hold any of this against me. I love reading your posts, and respect you very much. I've really enjoyed the emails that we've shared outside the forum, and I hope that this won't change our relationship more than one friend disagreeing with another friend. Heck, while I'm at it, Cav, as much as I poke fun at you, please understand that I'm a spelling and grammar freak myself, I'm just not good enough at it to feel like I can correct anyone when, most of the time, I've got more green and red squigglies in my posts than the original post that I'm correcting on. There, I've sufficiently given the two of them equal opportunities to turbo-boost their post-counts, giving me the verbal thrashing that I deserve. The race goes on! [end tangent #2 â€" you see what I'm saying about the rough draft? heh]
Due to the 'newness' (siddown, Cav!) of the Internet, communication styles have seen a hyper-growth spurt because one can essentially hide behind their keyboards and monitors and be whomever or whatever they wish to be, without risk of personal, and ultimately public reverberations (Please see and take note of the number of, “fifty-eight year-old [insert podunk town name] man pretends to be nineteen year-old hunk in chatroom, apprehended Sunday by FBI stingâ€). Unfortunately, the amount of time that people spend together in these chatrooms (I'm sorry, 'forums'; God forbid I use the 'C' word and people start thinking that we're akin to a bunch of bionic-thumbed teenagers who spend more of their lives texting than actually talking) enables people to get emotionally attached to those that they spend time with online.
Enter my rebut (man, that word just bugs me...it's like “wait, my original 'but' wasn't good enough so here's my new one?†I wish I could do that with my other 'but'. Too many french fries? Time to rebut! Sign me up! []) to the 'Car crash' analogy.
Side-note-o-rama, I didn't come up with any good comparisons to the 'sand box' thing; I just didn't want to taint my wonderful sandbox memories, apparently. *Karl, in kindergarten* - "Hey guys, look! If we all save up our chocolate milk and pour it in here, we can make sand pens! *proudly holds up blob of sand*...
Picture this: In Ed's analogy, you're driving down the road and you see a car wreck. The people in front of you slow down, the people behind you slow down, you slow down, all of you curious about what's going on over on the other side of the freeway. Some people comment, other people ignore, impatient to move on and get past it, eager to be on their way home. Some of us might comment on the damage that was done to a certain type of vehicle, some of us might say a prayer for those invloved, some rare people will pull over and volunteer to help, but most of us are just glad to get by the delay and move on with our lives.
Now, imagine: When the line of cars finally reaches the bottle neck of those other people, you take a chance and glance over to see what's going on, and you realize that one of the cars involved is just like your spouse's (since we're using marriage as a comparison), and then after further investigation, you realize with horror that it IS YOUR SPOUSE'S!!!
Are you going to continue to drive on, just trying to get past the idiots and get home? Duh, of course not! You're going to bury the nose of your car in the swampy median and jump out with your hair on fire.
See, that isn't 'someone else' in that other lane, that's your family! None of us is just going to drive by and say, “Golly, I wish they'd have driven a little more carefullyâ€, or, “I'm too busy right now, I just don't have time to helpâ€, or, “the firemen have it under control, just let them do their jobsâ€...NO! You're going to lose your mind, pushing firemen and cops out of the way to get to the person you care about.
Now, I'm not saying that I love any of you more than I love my wife, but most of you could count on me to at least bury my truck in the mud, hop out and look ruggedly heroic, and then you'd have to help me pay for the tow-truck to get me out of the gunk, since I'm chronically broke...
And aside from Ron in Drums PA (Ron Sardo â€" see, we all have real names worth learning and knowing), I've never met any of you, but if we all were able to have a big arrow that points to our cars that said, “stevers drives hereâ€, or “Proud_Poppa_of_2 on boardâ€, I'd look for all of you, all the time!
I've only spent months on this forum getting to know you, and know you I do. You are my friends, you are my family! Every day when I get home, I look forward to my time on the computer when I can see who's created what, who needs prayer, who's posted something funny, who's continued to be a dork (that'd me me..."karlkuehn types here" â€" arrow flashing).
You can't tell me that if I were to call any of you on the phone and call you a filthy piece of distended rectum (free stinkwood blanks to anyone who can tell me where that quote is from) right to your face, you wouldn't be offended; I couldn't write you a letter and tell you that you're stupid and your opinions are crap without you getting upset; I darned sure couldn't show up at your car wreck and tell you you deserved it, or you had it coming.
And I only know you guys through the faceless, emotionally detached, hide behind the keyboard Internet forum that we're all a part of. I also know who's suffering because they lost a loved one, who's dealing with 'outside' financial pressures on such a scale that they have to sell off the wood shop that they love just to pay bills, who's feeling down because they miss the family they are separated from, and who's up against a wall because they can't figure out whether it's CA then BLO, or BLO then CA, and what kind of paper towels to we use, anyways!?
All of those things that I learn about you, I learn them here on the net, and thank God that most days it's only silly stuff like, “skew or gouge? Shellawax or Mylands? Rollerball or fountain?†type of stuff, and yet still I care enough to give advice, offer condolences, provide reasources, or apologize in advance for spelling errors. (I'm sorry Cav, did my best!)
So you can't tell me that IAP is an anonymous communication source where I can learn how to communicate without feelings, and as such, ALL of us have a responsibility to treat each other with respect.
I darned sure wouldn't stand up in church and start or continue a fight with my wife, and I'd be hard-pressed to go at it in front of my closest friends, and that's what I consider each of you, my closest friends.
As far as my outburst on the 'Cav' thread, while I do regret a couple of the words I used, I do not regret anything that I said there.
I received many emails from people thought that what I said made great sense, and in an effort to not 'stir the pot', they chose to PM/email me instead, and for that I'm grateful.
Here are some of the emails:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Karl -
I am disappointed that your January 13 post to the "Cav" thread in the "Casual Conversation" forum received no public acknowledgement. It was intelligent, cogent, heartfelt and, in my opinion, balls on accurate.
I write privately because I believe it would be counter-productive to enter the fray publicly, especially now that it seems to have calmed down somewhat. I think it important, though, that you be aware of your words' impact and that they have not been lost on all readers. I appreciate very much your putting yourself out there as much as I regret the fact that your feelings seemed to have gone straight over the heads of your audience.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Great post Karl! I wanted to PM you because I hope your post is the last one on that thread...[remainder deleted for anonymity]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Karl,About your post on the "cav" thread.
You dun good! My sentiments exactly (well, ok not exactly...I would have to delete a word or two ) but it was well said. I did not want to respond online because I didn't want to add fuel to the fire unnecessarily.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is don't fall into the trap of the idea that posting your thoughts and opinions only on the forums allows you to change who you really are. All of us are members here, and by running head-on into someone, you do great damage, but on the flip side, burying your keyboard/car into the median to assist and protect your family is not a bad thing.
That's my $2.57.