Month in review
Yay, a month’s worth of updates! Dealt with in chronological order:
First, while I’m as happy as the next guy about inappropriate sexual advances, please do make sure they’re witty or entertaining. Comments that are just rude and mean spirited made anonymously to the fairer sex will be deleted from now on. I realise that many of you worship Nathalie Fleury and she’s become some sort of poster child giving hope to java losers everywhere that they too might end up with someone erudite and charming. However, expressing your love in such crass terms is unlikely to woo her sort, I assure you.
Next to everyone’s favourite clown to punch, Gerald Bauer. Even javalobby is now getting sick of his delusional disturbed raving. While Gerald has on the whole been a good boy and managed to stop himself from commenting here, he has slipped up a couple of times. So Gerald, any more comments from you about anything being free, or ANY url’s to any of your sites will be promptly deleted. You’re simply too offensive and stupid to allow any sort of platform. Freedom of speech is one thing, but your speech just makes me want to drive red hot pokers into my eyes to numb the pain, so I’d rather just go without.
Thank you to all the people who wrote in and expressed words of sympathy to the Christmas special bilebile. I was quite hurt, but sadly, it was not a user contribution and the person who said those cruel thoughtless words should be ashamed of himself for thinking that just because he’s talking to himself, that he can take off the gloves and go for the jugular. What a bastard.
Finally, THAT book review. I still stand by most of what I said. Pat’s blog corrects a few factual errors, and I stand corrected (eg, JPublish’s usage of xwork). It should be obvious to anyone with the slightest whiff of common sense that the authors clearly did not set out to deceive or con anyone, and that the implication thereof on my part was more about perception and appearances, and how certain facts could be interpreted in that light. Now, I cannot clarify this enough, but I am NOT advocating you go to Barnes and Noble, sneak a copy into the bathroom, and smear it with turds or urinate into it. Nor do I recommend using it as toilet paper (for different reasons though, book paper is notoriously sharp and abrasive). Having said that, I also do NOT recommend you go out and buy it and read a few pages to your family every morning to motivate them. Make up your own damn mind, flick through, and decide.
Now, I haven’t reminded you monkeys of this recently, so I guess another lecture is long overdue. IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE BILEBLOG, THEN GO AWAY. It’s one thing to have someone proclaim ‘this is the worst entry ever!’ (and there’s almost ALWAYS someone else who will say ‘this is the best post ever!’ about the same material). I’m heartily sick of people constantly proclaiming what an awful blog it is, yet consistently and persistently lapping it up eagerly with a shit-eating grin. The blog is self contained, I don’t post this kind of material anywhere else because it’d be rude and inappropriate; I only shit in my own backyard.
Believe it or not, I DO make an effort to at least not outright lie. So I’m more than happy to retract factual inaccuracies. Still, if it helps some of you to cope with your worldview being challenged, feel free to dismiss everything I say with the customary frantic limb flailing and chants of ‘he’s a superficial idiot who doesn’t understand anything and never does anything!’. Everything you read here is specifically focused towards the negative. I will NOT present a fair argument outlining pros and cons of anything, I never have, and never will. I WILL present the cons and stick to those. The reason is, yet again, because even the most casual observers of javablogs will notice how incredibly tedious, dull, and self-congratulatory all the blogs are, perpetually engaged in a happy circlejerk lovefest, and this is my only way of coping. I’m sticking it to the proverbial man, in my own somewhat sick and twisted way.
January 5th, 2004 at 10:18 am
Well said.
January 5th, 2004 at 10:57 am
BEST POST EVAH!
I really liked the circlepunch reference…..nice touch!
January 5th, 2004 at 10:59 am
You’re a superficial idiot who doesn’t understand anything and never does anything!
January 5th, 2004 at 11:05 am
“The blog is self contained, I don’t post this kind of material anywhere else because it’d be rude and inappropriate; I only shit in my own backyard.”
Great. I guess I can look forward to never again seeing the bileblog on javablogs.
January 5th, 2004 at 1:27 pm
“Great. I guess I can look forward to never again seeing the bileblog on javablogs.”
JavaBlogs? Is that site accidentally up again? ;-)
January 5th, 2004 at 3:30 pm
I know this comment is rather out of place, and I’m breaking the frivolous happy-go-lucky mood of the Bileblog for a while by being serious, but saying “If you don’t like it, don’t read it” is really just a facile way to excuse yourself from being responsible for what you write.
The world, and people, do not exist in little compartments. The web is not designed to allow you to close one blog off from the rest of the world and put it in its own little hermetically sealed container. In a web of unidirectional hyperlinks, if it has a URL, there’s no way it can pretend to be self-contained.
The BileBlog is consistently among the top-ranked blogs on Javablogs, and is very highly linked-to from within the blogging community. It gets this because it’s well written, and because people generally find the misfortunes of others funny. As Mel Brooks once said: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.”
When words are written, and a significant number of people in the community are reading them, they continue to exist whether or not you read them yourself. Exposure and popularity, however little they have been sought out, bring influence. Those who are biled are left with the dilemma that to defend themselves is to lend you a further air of legitimacy, but to ignore you is to allow so much more of the mud you have thrown to stick.
Whichever way you react, you can’t make the words go away by sticking your head in the sand and pretending they’re not there.
The BileBlog feeds a tabloid mentality. Most of the blame lies in the audience: if we didn’t read it en masse, it would have no reach. But that just leaves us in the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma multiplied by a few thousand people:
we can’t stop everyone else reading it, so we may as well keep having fun ourselves, right?
On the other hand, the responsibility of the author is far more obvious: the author picks the target and hones the barbs. And the author, as much as he might protest otherwise, enjoys his audience: the whole process would have got boring and stale after a few weeks if it weren’t for the celebrity-in-a-teacup that came along with it.
There are no compartments. The Charles Miller who gets guilty enjoyment from reading the BileBlog is also the Charles Miller who writes his own blog, the Charles who talks for five minutes on IRC then lurks for the next three days, and the Charles who cat-sits for his mother when she goes on holiday.
Similarly, the Hani who contributes to OpenSymphony and Webwork 1.4 is the same Hani who consistently heaps shit on Jakarta and XWork in his blog. And that Hani should deal with the fact that people will get pissed off about having what is usually their well-meaning volunteer Open Source work (the book review an obvious exception) torn to shreds. People who won’t take the laughable excuse that “Oh, that’s not me, that’s the _other_ Hani!”
Whining that you’re being misunderstood and that your own detractors should just go away and leave you alone doesn’t accomplish anything but project an air of extreme self-deception.
January 5th, 2004 at 4:05 pm
Ok, whatever.
Sold any bikes on eBay lately, Hani?
January 5th, 2004 at 4:53 pm
Charles Miller, you should go away. Everyone has their own opinion. Hani has every right to write them.
Some of us enjoy his blog and we agree with some of what he says. Maven and common-logging actually do suck!
Mr. Miller, you shouldn’t be the one telling people what they should read and shouldn’t read. Most of us are adults and can think for ourselves thank you.
January 5th, 2004 at 5:01 pm
Sorry, I don’t know what happened.
I let my retarded half take over for a while.
January 5th, 2004 at 6:24 pm
I find it amusing that someone will fanatically defend their right to read the BileBlog… and then post anonymously, just in case someone finds out they’re reading it!
Thus proving what I was saying in the first place.
I guess irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.
January 5th, 2004 at 7:43 pm
Damn…there it went again!
January 6th, 2004 at 6:06 am
This is the third auto-referential post you have been writing in a month Hani. “anniversary bile”, “christmas special” and now this one. I hope it is not getting middle-age crisis, as I love reading the bileblog for the bile it spews on java projects.
You see, the bileblog is something like an alarm clock telling the inner java luser inside you to wake up and write good code. If you take too much time to write about the frequently bashed losers again and again, bileblog becomes a comic relief, not the public service we love.
Just constructive criticism, I know my blog sucks more and I should go in the corner to feel ashame.
Ok, I now will click on the cancel button, I don’t think this comment is meaningful to anyone.
January 6th, 2004 at 6:11 am
Your right your blog does suck
January 6th, 2004 at 8:00 am
Charles: The only way to respond to a bile is to FIX THE DAMN PROBLEMS that got you biled in the first place. Now I realize this is a novel idea, but just because the Jakarta people didn’t think of doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. Now toddle off.
January 6th, 2004 at 1:12 pm
+1 for Charles…Hani enjoys his spotlight and basks himself in it. He has a responsibility to think about consequences.
January 6th, 2004 at 1:27 pm
-1 for Jason for being a Moron too
January 6th, 2004 at 2:30 pm
This is the worst blog ever!
January 6th, 2004 at 2:30 pm
Hey, great blog!
January 6th, 2004 at 2:31 pm
“I am NOT advocating you go to Barnes and Noble, sneak a copy into the bathroom, and smear it with turds ”
And I thought blog was short for ‘brown log’. Silly me.
January 6th, 2004 at 3:59 pm
“I am NOT advocating you go to Barnes and Noble, sneak a copy into the bathroom, and smear it with turds ”
I thought it came with turds smeared on the pages….that’s what the review was about, right?
January 6th, 2004 at 4:16 pm
One of the amusing things (in a secondary kind of way) about this great blog is the commenters that just don’t get it. Yes, CM and JC, I’m talking about you.
January 6th, 2004 at 6:34 pm
Charles does get it, you clearly need to read his comment again. He does not censor Hani’s right to make comments, merely points out the disingenuousness or naïvety of claiming that a blog is self-contained, and that the author therefore has no responsibility about what is written. It is a reasonable call, a blog is a form of publishing (and one that the courts would no doubt agree with if Hani was unlucky or careless enough to cause someone to test it), and Hani is of course free to ignore it. It is not a major attack on Hani or the blog, and you lot leaping to the BileBlog’s defence are displaying some of the uncritical worship Hani is always railing against. You notice a new bile, and the legendary shit-eating grin starts to form…
January 6th, 2004 at 10:07 pm
Terrible spoilers go away. Hani rulez. You shouldn’t make him feel bad, he gives as so many masterpieces. If you can’t enjoy it, please do us a favor and leave.
January 7th, 2004 at 12:33 am
charles,
this blog (or any web page) does not “push” itself on an unsuspecting reader. This is not like walking down a street and hearing a street preacher screaming. you can’t avoid hearing that. But in this case, just don’t click on the URL again. Duh!
January 7th, 2004 at 3:58 am
> and that the author therefore has no responsibility about what is written.
Where, o where, does Hani claim THAT? I hereby proclaim that JW-S also does not get it.
January 7th, 2004 at 7:07 am
How is this more complicated than: if you don’t like it: stfu and go away? You’re all like the fat bastards suing mcdonalds for getting fat.
January 7th, 2004 at 11:41 am
Vardaman, out of curiosity, you wouldn’t happen to a cousin of Sartoris Snopes, would you?
January 7th, 2004 at 1:48 pm
“Vardaman, out of curiosity, you wouldn’t happen to a cousin of Sartoris Snopes, would you? ”
Lot’s of cousins. Eck, Flem, Sartoris, and many others. Frenchman’s Bend is full of us.
January 7th, 2004 at 5:38 pm
Late Christmas Present. You’re kind of funny…. in a fucked up way. I found a bile generator for you. If I have time, I’ll write one that uses your standby’s. ie: “makes me want to poke ${color.rand} in my ${orifice.rand} to relieve the pain”
Bile Generator:
http://www.umop.com/acronym/acronym.php
Enjoy!
:#D (shit eating grin)
January 7th, 2004 at 8:33 pm
Charles, your comment is certainly one of the more thought-provoking ones posted on Bileblog (although there’s generally not much competition in that domain).
If Bileblog is satire,
“…the literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn or indignation…Satire has usually been justified by those who practice it as a corrective of human vice or folly” Abrams, Glossary of literary terms.
the author must compartmentalize himself/herself and remain completely opaque to the readers; and it would not be disingeneous to claim to be misunderstood by people who take the writing overly literally or seriously.
Perhaps the issue you bring up has to do with the perceived distance between the objects of the satire and the generalized tendencies they are meant to represent. Swift provides one approach to that topic, speaking of himself in the “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift”
Yet malice was never his aim;
He lashed the vice, but spared the name…
His satire points at no defect,
But what all mortals may correct…
He spared a hump, or crooked nose,
Whose owners set not up for beaux.
January 7th, 2004 at 10:30 pm
fate is the man and you are all a bunch of losers pushing a bunch of free garbage!
January 8th, 2004 at 10:01 am
…
Yet malice was never his aim;
He lashed the vice, but spared the name…
…
And yet this is exactly the opposite of what Hani does when he’s at his worst. He picks out individuals, by name, and attacks them directly. As Charles points out, you’re left in a difficult position as to whether you should ignore the ignorant rantings, letting them go unquestioned, or to answer the charges, unfortunately giving credence to those same ignorant rantings.
Are we really better off with this tabloid mentality? Doesn’t the publisher have a responsibility?
I personally felt that the implication, for instance, that the authors of “Open Source Java Programming” “continues the fine tradition of outright lies” to be rather libelous, and I think that a court would agree. We, the reader, deserve better.
January 8th, 2004 at 10:22 am
Jason, don’t make me come over there….
January 8th, 2004 at 10:34 am
It’s only libelous if it is incorrect ;-)
January 8th, 2004 at 1:55 pm
Actually, it sounds more like someone is pissed about not getting a book deal of their own. Should we put Bile Blog The Sequel on our wishlists at Amazon anytime soon?
I love Hani’s blog. He often does get a good pinprick to some egos that need it. But I do have to question the fact that this is the second huge rant that I’ve seen directed at Pat. Being honest with your friends is one thing. Attacking them in public for attention? That’s low, and I never thought Hani would stoop to being low.
And to all you Anon and alised commenters… shit or get off the pot. Funny that it’s so easy to throw stones when you can hide your own foibles behind an alias.
January 8th, 2004 at 2:27 pm
You mean like Hani admitted that it was?
January 8th, 2004 at 3:03 pm
Get off the pot? Translation: Bileblog is all in good humor and a welcome pinprick to overblown egos, when it’s about somebody else.
It’s a different story when one’s project or one’s friends happen to be the object of the rant…Have any of you guys ever stood up for the other poor sods who get biled here? To his credit, Hani doesn’t exclude his friends or limit his bile to the unpopular and obvious targets.
January 8th, 2004 at 5:56 pm
> Have any of you guys ever stood up for the other poor sods who get biled here?
Yeah, but that poor sod Hani got biled here, and we’re certainly not going to stick up for that azzhat.
January 12th, 2004 at 5:07 am
In reply to Jason, absolutely correct. Hani admitted he was incorrect in a later post therefore libel would not stand.
January 12th, 2004 at 10:09 am
Pippa? Who the F— are you? Funny how you call out anon posters. Kettle, meet the pot.
http://www.btinternet.com/~pippa_doll/Images/DOLLS/pip.gif
January 13th, 2004 at 10:29 am
I would stand up for people I know are being unfairly biled, no matter who they are… The problem is I can’t know the truth about everything Hani biles.
If Hani chooses to bile himself, that’s his psychosis manifesting itself… I’m not a psychotherapist, so I’m not sure what I can do to help.
February 3rd, 2005 at 10:47 pm
Child!