Some Hard and Fast Rules for the VCA (or, Responding to Comments)

#1. Do not physically attack the writer of this blog because you don’t like something he said. This is very important, and must be committed to memory. Waiting until my back is turned and coming up behind me with an iron skillet with villainous intent is not an acceptable response to the material being published. This writing here is presented on what is known as the internet, which is a virtual arena for communication, if you will. Feel free to respond, or even attack me, in a virtual sense, in keeping with the nature of the arena. At the point where you actually hit me, you are doing two things: first, you are demonstrating an inability on your part to understand the nature of modern technology, and second, you are hitting me. Neither of these will put you in good position to prosper in the exciting yet complex world of the 21st century.

Oh, and by the way, [insert raspberry sound here].

#2. No intramural dickering in the comments. If the staff of WTF wants to have at each other, then they can take it outside. Jeeesh! If necessary, I will have the Rev BA discipline you people, since he obviously has the time and you obviously have the need.

#3. Do not mis-estimate the writer of this blog. I may not be a cultural lout, but I do keep myself apprised of cultural loutitude. Then again, Farscape was not particularly obscure. I only watched it to the point where I realized it never really was going to be that good, but I did watch it for a while. I watch Star Trek and Star Wars stuff too, not to the point where I know, O'C-like, what Jean-Luc had for breakfast the day he put on his cellphone headpiece and became a Borg, but enough. I can name the stars of American Idol without having to suffer through the show. I’ve never watched Survivor but I know that it’s on. I can recognize Donald Trump, Paris Hilton or Justin Timberlake in a crowd. (Okay, not Justin Timberlake, but allow me some leeway here.) I’ve seen almost every Arnold Schwarzenegger film. I’ve seen enough Adam Sandler films to know enough not to watch any more of them. I have read more Beetle Bailey cartoons over the years than I have Immanuel Kant essays (and I can categorically state that one of them is a deist, thus undermining much of his philosophy in my eyes, and the other is in the army, although I’m only 75% sure at any given moment which is which). The one category in this year’s Oscars that I saw all the nominees was Animated Feature (and I agree with the academy’s vote on that one), and the only sports I watch in a given year are the SuperBowl and the Triple Crown, but that does not mean I have not put The Departed into my Netflix queue or that I am unaware that March Madness is about college basketball (although I am not above pretending that I do not know the difference between basketball, baseball and synchronized swimming, simply because it annoys people). I actually have owned a New York baseball cap, and realize that it was either the Yankees or the Mets; it was blue, if that’s any help. Anyhow, my point is that I am not culturally illiterate, and I have plenty of meatloaf tastes like everyone else. In fact, I still listen to Meat Loaf, but I also listen to tropicalia, Faure, Disney soundtracks, Monk, B.B., Feinstein, Louis, Frank, Carlos, and just about everyone else, except the Ramones (aside from “Sedated”). I contain multitudes. Remember that. So should you.

#4. Failure to observe these rules will cost you your Coachean reading privileges. In other words, don’t make me have to go out there and discipline you. I make the Rev BA look like Florence Nightingale. Everything I have learned about order and obedience comes from late-night prison films. Everything he has learned about order and obedience comes from— Well, all right, we won’t go there.

(Sorry, BA, but since you don’t run the Pffft website, you are obviously not doing anything, and are therefore available for random swiping. If it wasn't you it would have to be one of those college boobs who keep posting to WTF, and I've already had enough of them to last a lifetime.)