Vice, advice and assorted mice with a price

10.57pm local time / 13°C (55°F) rainy and cold that was the day before

10.18pm local time / 15°C (59°F) drizzly that woz yestahday

1.12pm local time / 17°C (62°F) f@#king ray of sunshine coming through

YOU’VE GOT THE MEMO about my furloughing this blog already.

So some people at lunch with me today yesterday Monday got to hear my side of the story and why I got so blazingly livid recently.

It’s generally easier to explain things out face to face about all the crap that has turned me into a High-Velocity Ballistic Rabbit.

Naturally, not all of the reasons for my ballisticality are related to the blog — but the blog crap “tipped it” for me, as one of the lunchmates put it rather well.

What you need to know is this: I’m not entirely unpersuadable. Frankly, judging from the words I got on this blog and from people in real life, it might actually be better for me not to furlough the blog.

My aching chest and still-wet cowboy boots would disagree. Then again, I am (semi-)famous for my horrible habit of not budging from a decision made in anger (even if it’s a bad decision). Not changing my mind — THWACK!

(Thumping on my desk right now, kicking the proverbial invisible cat, and chucking the proverbial invisible brick at the TV set.)

So I’ll be going ahead with the furlough regardless, just to prove a point. It’ll be temporary (if I’m going to be in a good mood) or something else (if I’m not).

__________

Lunchtime O’Argle-Bargle

Anyway, my lunchmates yesterday on Monday might have made some good points, I think, but I’m not in a proper frame of mind to listen properly.

Judge for yourself for me (names are just placeholder names):—

Anne: “[...] I suppose [deactivating and reactivating the blog] could be a bit of a chore. How many articles have you done so far? Nine hundred eleven?! How long did that take you? Erm, maybe —”

It took me since August 2008 on WordPress.

Bob: “— maybe you should tell these people to just [STFU]. It’s not like you’ve ever done anything to them [...]. You’re pissed off, you’re tired, your pelvis is giving you pain again — this is not the time to make big decisions.”

Ya think? Bob said those 911 posts are represent an investment in time and effort, and shouldn’t be scrubbed just because a bunch of people managed to anger me (online and in real life).

Charlie (a lawyer): “I mean, Rob, I know you’d prefer to do something else more constructive, given the choice. But how about doing something less constructive for a change, and really step on them later?”

Anne: “Actually, he might as well just — what was the word you used? — furlough it for the time being, instead of accidentally putting out something that could get you sued or something.”

Me: “Or be mysteriously silenced because [my] knowing some sensitive and illegal practices of these bankers, lawyers, accountants and officials from work.”

Anne: “You see! This’s exactly what I mean! You’re gonna end up in a war with them precisely because you’re gonna be f*ck-it-all angry enough to shoot your mouth off. Rob, the way you write, no one could tell whether you’re actually angry or not.”

I’m crazy — not that far-out crazy.

Charlie: ”Plus he’s not afraid of anything when he’s mad, which doesn’t f@#king help sometimes.”

Anne: “Just ignore these peep’l. Ye’aaah — those blog peep’l and the otherrrsss. They’re just jealous. You’ve been living in Hong Kong a bit too long for your own good. You’re starting to take on their bad habits.”

Charlie: “You shut down — hey, they win, you lose. That’s what they’re hoping for. You know this. Stay on it just to get in their face. Be a goddamn obstruction. The blog, just publish their names and details — I don’t know — pictures, whatever. Get them to sue you even. Sue them back. Just tie up their resources forever with one lawsuit after another.”

Yeah, riiiight, Charlie, like I’m loaded like you for a string of lawsuits. As if I don’t have other things to do.

Bob: “You don’t have to that [furlough the blog] because those people have been giving you a hard time. What? Your blog, it’s not a major part of your life, right? [...] Tell me you’re not one of those people [...] who can’t get laid and have to do it online with one hand on the keyboard. Shit.”

Shit. That puts it rather well, actually.

(No, I’m not a single-hand keyboarder, thank you very much.)

Bob: “Like I said, just lay off it for a while [...]“

Charlie: “Actually, there could be a case for just shooting your mouth off, in fact. I suppose — and I’m only imagining this, by the way — it could be argued as [prima facie] evidence that their conduct have led to your angry state of mind.”

Thanks a bunch. I don’t want to be prima facie’d as going out of my mind. Defence by reason of insanity usually doesn’t compare too favourably with being executed by firing squad, very slowly shot by shot from the kneecaps up, from dawn to midday.

Bob: “This guy wants revenge — don’t you, Rob? We can practically taste it in the air from here. He damn quiet now because he’s bouncing ideas off us.”

Charlie: ”Why don’t you keep a running count on them? They seem to be doing that on you.”

But. I. Don’t. Want. To. Keep. Feeding. This. Goddamn. Anger. With. A. Running. Scoreboard. Got that?

Anne: “You know what I think. Rob’s got all these rules for the rest of us, but he buggers them whenever it suits him. You need to follow your own advice.”

O rly, Anne? You calling me a hypocrite now?

Anne (looking at me): “No, actually, you’re pretty good following your own rules. Just that, you know, you break them pretty quickly too.”

No, not really, Anne. Not really.

__________

Perhaps I have been vague…

Accidentally ran into somebody I know (geddit?) who told me something.

The words were originally Chinese, but you gotta read it in an East End London Cockney accent for them to gel.

“Dun wanna know noff’ing ’bout your stuff. This blog ff’ing is for you educated types, innit?

“Why dontcha just do naice pictures from everywheah — no words — while you ff’ink about wotcha wannna do next? See ’ow long ff’ey could put up wiv it, roight? They’ll ff’ink they’ve shut you up good ’n proper.

“But they’ll be coming back, justa see whatcha up to — just to find out if yah evah back on yer game, wroitin’-like.

“Do the same ff’ing for them otha peepoe. Dun go blowin’ off on ’em, know wot I mean? Do it all sportsman-like, y’know.

“So quietly, you let ’em ’ave it in the goolies. They’ll know it’s you — but they can’t prove it — ff’ey got noff’ing on yah — but they’ll know ff’at you could ’it ’em again ’arder next time around, couldntcha? Then smack’em again even before the next time needs comin’ around.

“D’you know, do you know, I ffink you’re too polite — domesticated-like. Rough ’n tumble is wot these smarmy little pricks can’t ’andle.”

Determination. Passion. Insanity. Ballet.

Who sez them Chinese can’t speak Cockney?

__________

Enough of this claptrap

I’m not going to hear any more of this claptrap from friends and foes alike about not putting the blog on leave of absence.

They got good points. But my cowboy boots are still sopping wet.

It all just sounds too much hard work.

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012.

Images: Comeback via c4c | Conversation via Spoonfed | Conversation lasagne via Some Worthwhile Quotes | “Fak Awf” T-shirt via Zazzle.

Hurt feelings

5.30pm local time / 12°C (54°F) cold and rainy

ABOUT THE ONLY THING siding with my miserable life this week has been the cold, dreary, English-like weather. Otherwise this past week must have been Tread On The Naked Listener Week, and I didn’t the memo.

Just this afternoon, I got told off at a shop for unscrewing a pen. I wasn’t — I was actually tightening the thing out of the kindness of my heart.

There are two specific things that really get my temper burning white hot:—

1. yelling into my left ear
2. being told off by Cantonese people (rightly or wrongly)

I’m actually a particularly easy person to offend, even if I say so myself. But I’m also a person who lets things pass 99% of the time. Which is also why others say I’m a particularly hard person to anger.

Boy, but was I livid at that retailer’s remarks. It really stung. So I told him, “I wasn’t unscrewing your precious pen. I was tigtening it up for you.”

“Well, thank you for your concern,” he said.

“Are you sure about that?” I shot back. “Are you quite sure? I’ve been patronising your store for a long time on a regular basis, you know. Are you going to tell me off like that next time?”

I just kungfu-gripped my banknote so he had to tug on it.

Oh, I’m sorry, did my purchasing interrupt your business? Did my browsing interrupt your sitting on your fat arse hollering at people? Did my speaking in the middle of my sentence interrupt the start of your sentence?

Better wash your mouth, boy.

This retailer have always had a bad fothermucking attitude to customers. He behaves as if he’s got on a monopoly on running a business.

He also has an unlovely habit of dissing people based on outward appearances (Chinese English: ‘outlook’) — so you could imagine what he thought about me with my ponytailed hair, semi-homoerotic whiskers, leather biker jacket (this one without the fringes), denim trousers and tan cowboy boots.

Twerp.

I’ll take my business elsewhere from now on.

So much for Chinese desire to have a harmonious society.

* * *

You should know that anger in no way affects my ability to write coherently. You might take a different opinion, considering the general incoherence of all my writing anyway. *Smack*

* * *

Don’t yell into my left ear

Yelling into my left ear is definitely the way to go to get my temper burning white hot. It usually results in I.A. (‘Immediate Action,’ for those who’ve had some kind of training in skill-at-arms), which in my case is (and has been often enough) a belt around the mouth**.

My left ear, folks, and the finger that goes with it

** For our non-English cousins, ‘a belt around the mouth’ is a quick right jab to the face, just above the mouth and under the nostrils.

Down the years, I’ve unknowingly managed to condition myself (like a kind of operant conditioning) to react that way. I reckon it’s become too much of a second nature now for me to change that.

For some strange reason, I’ve never had my arse hauled by the police for belting someone in the mouth.

I suppose there has to be first time for everything, so maybe it’ll happen some time in the future for me.

(But I have once been hauled into the police station for beating the crap out of someone, who royally deserved it, but let go by the cops.)

* * *

The Cantonese: shut your gob

Another thing that gets me going is being told off by the Cantonese, who make up 90% of Hongkongers.

For those unwashed in Chinese matters, the Cantonese have long been described by other Chinese Hans as the hotheads of China. Guangdong (formerly Canton) province is the Texas of China.

(No disrespect to Texans, whom I admire greatly, especially General Robert E. Lee, who was actually a Virginian, but we’ll let that small detail go.)

I am particularly (over-)sensitive to bollocking at me by the Cantonese — but not to the point of carrying out I.A. (above). This one kicks in my own other I.A. of yelling back into their left ears in high-velocity Cantonese foul language in high decibels.

Just like how the Japanese and Mandrin-speakers see it, Cantonese is an ugly, grunting language that’s actually Khmer-Thai in origin. It’s also the only Chinese I know as mother tongue.

(By the way, I don’t have a drop of Cantonese blood in me, so you could infer the possible reasons for my Cantonese sensitivity. Yeah, I know — a non-Cantonese whose native tongue is Cantonese. Having said that, I am definitely not anti-Cantonese people, and I’ll friggin’ smack anyone who even remotely suggests that I am.)

“How would you like to pick up your teeth
from the floor with broken fingers?”
(heard in the late 1970s or early 1980s)

* * *

Oh, yes, there ARE good bits

On a much, much happier note, the distemper of this past week have more than made up for by these two events:—

You're not supposed to look at this

1. A casual chitchat encounter with Canadian-Chinese Dionne at the local stationery store, who was really, really, really cute and nice. Gee-whiz, the cleavage was amazingballs. I have her contact details. Tee-hee-hee.

2. Last night, those two Mandarin-speaking 北菇 buck gwu (‘northern mushrooms,’ i.e. mainland Chinese chicks) in the lift (AmE: elevator) both of whom had legs and skirts that went ‘up to there’ and bodices ‘down to there’ as they made their way back to the mainland. It was 15°C (59°F) last night and was I ever srsly hot under the collar.

The buck gwu, I don’t want to tell you how ‘friendly’ they were. Honestly I don’t. And they’re not even ‘working girls.’

Who says I don’t like Chinese cuisine? Whoarr!

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012.

Images: Told off via NewsBiscuit | Left ear by the author | Mainland Chinese chicks via Wicked Fire.

What’s it been? Venting (Part 4)

FROM PART 3

This is another tl;dr instalment. Woe betide you if you forego reading it, for it contains a number of broadsides that may actually affect YOUR blogging activities.

* * *

VENTING

This is the right time to speak up.

Normally I don’t like to hit back, not especially at blogs anyway, since, as a renegade blogger myself, I know full well how brain-damaged the whole exercise can be.

But man has his limits, as Detective ‘Dirty Harry’ Calahan once put it.

____________________

A little about my personality

You need to know something about me first so you know overall why I’m venting here:—

Be surprised to learn that I’m actually a Type A personality.

You’d never thought so just by the way I mostly carry on, but many people actually think I’m a milquetoast (a timid, unassertive person for those unused to americanisms) because of the way I let things pass 99% of the time.

That is, until they get up my nose long enough. Then they find to their terror that I have a high-velocity explosive temper with a physical speed and agility to match.

• That sociologist on Job No. B08045 received my ‘hairdryer treatment’ at 50% capacity and, boy, was scared fartless.
• That pushy sonofabitch salesperson who tried to sell me barely existent 100gsm-weight coated woodfree paper for US$1,500 a reel (double the market spot price) got a faceful of my 75% temper and almost felt he was being garrotted with No. 3 Piano Wire.

But 99% of the time, I just let it be. Pushing back isn’t automatic even for Type A personalities, you know. Type A’s aren’t psychopaths. Many Type A’s are really patient, easygoing people — so that Type A/Type B theory can go straight into the dustbin.

My life is one long emergency and I don’t have the time or energy to go ballistic at the slightest provocation. I leave that to the great masses of uncontrollable animals elsewhere.

‘They are what they are’

Intellectual discussions don’t normally scare me — not even those well outside my education or training. Trust me, I’m no intellectual. I’m an educated man but I can’t speak intelligently about the habits of others engaged in intellectual discourse. But then again, if you’re like me,** just about nothing should scare you.

** A chopper biker, legally trained, mum telling you to wear long hair after she died, 37 months on crutches, two months in a neck brace, and 114 years of printing legal documents for government-approved financial scams IPOs.

Personally, I’m not terribly fond of intellectuals or academics, especially the more egregious types. They are what they are, as the Italian phrase puts it rather well. I take their facelessness at face value, enjoy their foggy and oracular discussions for what they’re worth, have a larff, and move on.

Not to bottle things up

People who know me even for five minutes will know I’m not the type who holds a grudge against anyone — for sure not over the Internet — mainly because I operate on two principles:

1. outlive them so I take pleasure in seeing them squeal and die before I do
2. die early myself so I don’t have to breathe the same air as they do

However, I tend not to bottle things up. Yet I’m not exactly disposed to implement advice like ‘Don’t hold back’ either.

Truth is, I’m 88% easier-going than 95% of Type A personalities, 77% of lawyers, or 51% of bikers (of the motorcycle variety).

____________________

A little about 1.67%

Like I mentioned in Part 3 already, I’ve been following some 300 blogs and mailing lists of all types (via email, naturally) for (much, much) more than a year — and only 1.67% of them manages to upset me. But it’s out-and-out 99% upset.

They’re only blogs, right?! What the hell?!?

You’d be surprised just how talented some bloggers are at disruptive behaviour. You’ve got to hand it to them to actually get others to lose their rag over the Internet.

Out of my 300+ follows:

• around 50 on language, grammar and/or linguistics
• maybe 25 on various countries or other languages
• maybe 25 on China
• a dozen or so on Hong Kong
• the rest are on cool stuff that pleases me (food, drink, bikes, chicks, cats, graphic arts, travel, music, gigs, news, porn, etc).

Certain issues need to be addressed regarding 1.67% of those blogs.

Tense humour and ‘the pits’

My biggest source of dismay and consternation (in a word, distemper, in the English literary sense, not the biomedical one) have been:

• linguistics sites or blogs
• China-watching or related sites or blogs

At the meeting point between those two, the worst has been

• China-related linguistics blogs or sites from inside China written by foreigners who think they are ‘Chinese’

While I admire their confidence and knowledgeability in their own spheres, I do not admire their tense humour and the inanity of their commentary.

(I can handle racism, I can handle lack of humour, but I just can’t handle tense humour.)

It IS truly amazing that the Great Firewall of China hasn’t managed to stop those blogs from invading out onto us. Not one bit, given that that firewall has the ability to practically block sunlight.

‘They are the pits’ is my John McEnroe’esque assessment.

____________________

A little about linguanophiles

If you care to pay any attention at all, linguistics, translation studies and pedagogy (education) are highly rigid and rigidised fields.

Of the lot, linguistics is the most rigid and rigidised.

The most hotly contested (and heated) debates in academia today are in linguistics, which fact should help you infer the type of people who populate that field.

Read the sidebar for the key reasons for intellectual rigidity and rigidisation.

____________________

A little about comportment

The most galling thing on many of those lingo blogs is the way the bloggers and their regular dogpile of commenters actually go to extremes and deliberately exclude newcomers or those who simply hold different (though often non-dissenting) viewpoints.

I’m reminded of someone’s insight that, if The Establishment feel so fearful and threatened by a 76-year-old retired gynaecologist like Ron Paul (the American politician), there must be something seriously wrong about your turf.

Offensive antics

One of their more offensive antics is the blogger and his (usually it’s a ‘his’) favourite commenters collude behind the scenes, so to speak, to plot a comment dialogue done in such a way that’s deliberately littered with arcane technicalities that newcomers or uitlanders cannot possibly join in.

If you’ve ever been to boarding school and have constantly been abused there (not sexually, I’m embarrassed to say) or have been handed purposely designed ‘aggro’ as I have been, it becomes extremely easy how to figure out who’s colluding with who. Over time, it becomes second nature and you could do it ‘by remote,’ so to speak.

‘Uncooperative’

This pattern of bad behaviour is not one-off. It’s frequently seen in just about every academically related blog and Facebook thread that I’ve ever visited or got sucked into. The same takes place with some regularity on sites and Facebook groups that discuss sociology, translation studies and pedagogy (education).

Indeed, I myself have been solicited by some lingo bloggers or Facebookers to do just that against some unsuspecting victim. “Give ‘em a break,” I say to these characters, “We’re still young enough to do that.” And then they brand me ‘uncooperative.’

Shaken to the core

I’ve been following a variety of linguistics, language, translation, sociology and pedagogy sites for well nigh on 10 years on a regular basis — in addition to having handled their authors for print publications for roughly the same amount of time. The same repertoire of antics are repeated time and time again. I’ve learnt to time it when antics start kicking in.

It’s disgusting. It’s offensive. It’s highly prejudiced. And these people aren’t even aware that they’re doing this themselves.

I lose my rag, and I really do have it in me to tell them to f@#k off, go to hell, and don’t come back.

Any inherent faith inside you in the goodness of people easily becomes shaken to the core because of seeing or knowing that.

____________________

A little about grace, if not face

The English aristocracy are famous for their grace — the ability to make a person feel really welcomed.

Clearly, the people who run blogs about linguistics, language, sociology, pedagogy and translation studies did not know how to learn that.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Such swell intellectualism, and yet ignorant of these simple rules:—

The Golden Rule
Treat others as you yourself like to be treated.

The Silver Rule
Don’t treat others in ways that you wouldn’t like to be treated.

Not unless you’re a sado-masochist, in which case you WOULD enjoy begging to receive pain whilst also enjoying being refused it.

Try mine:—

The Naked Listener’s Malleable Copper Alloy Rule
Go easy on those who think, speak, eat and shat differently than you do because they don’t necessarily have your loaf, gob, eating irons or your porcelain shatware.

____________________

A little about face-off

Sometimes there’s just no way out.

The Naked Listener offers some timely advice:—

The Wax-On/Wax-Off Maxim
“That is the way I do things. If you don’t like it, then find me a driver who WILL comply with the way I do things.”

The English Displeasure and Reprisal-in-Kind Rule
“If my presence here is not up to your standards or expectations, I would appreciate it if you be so kind as to step away from your cheese and crackers for a minute and tell me directly what your requirements or particular preferences are for my presence to be acceptable.”

And remember this:

“If you tolerate this, your children will be next.” (English proverb)

____________________

Your question now must be, why continue with them?

That question is perhaps easier to answer if you care for broadly aimed broadsides in the next part.

____________________

UP NEXT IN PART 5: BROADSIDES

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012.

Images: Keep Calm/Screw Calm via Sarah C. | ”I have nothing to say” via Cascade Web Development | Good Habits/Bad Habits Signpost via Marketing Leadership Council | ”Once we hit capacity…” via Eddie Codel/Flickr.

Site Updates: About me, menubar

FROM THE MANAGEMENT

Dear all,

The Naked Listener’s Weblog has two new improvements:—

About me page now sports new copy (relatively speaking)
http://thenakedlistener.wordpress.com/aboutme/

Menubar (the labels under the nameplate photo) now sports new running order

The new copy for the About me page is from the post “Blogger bio: me!” that originally appeared on 19 Feb 2011 and again on 01 Jan 2012 with minor amendments. It also includes 16 random facts about me to keep nosey parkers entertained.

The reason for porting a post into a page is to give readers a single landing zone to get an idea of what makes me tick, click, flick and dick — at least for the purposes of this blog.

Kind regards to all,

The Naked Listener
a.k.a. the Seeker of Serendipity, the Defender of Italian Virginity, the Spiller of Secrets, etc, etc

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012.

What’s it been? The Engine Room (Part 3)

FROM PART 2

(Updated 07 March 2012 to fix broken links)

TL;DR, but should be worth your read.

This part is a ‘rando’ (newspaperspeak for ‘review and outlook’) about my online reading and writing activities. It’s really about the human chemistry behind the written word that makes the whole sordid exercise of reading and writing worthwhile, considering the finite time we all have on Earth.

* * *

THE ENGINE ROOM

On the blogging front

“Pool’s Closed.”

That’s Internetspeak for the yearlong raid by readers who email me comments but, altogether bizarrely, won’t comment on the blogposts themselves.

Those shatloads of long comments complained all possible manner of complaints, prattling on that my posts weren’t in English at all, not up to academic standard, ‘poor’ idioms, not writing in Chinese, and so on and so forth.

Hilarity did NOT ensue.

The comments weren’t even spam — they’re from real people. Just un-bloody-real.

__________

On following blogs

As a testament to my own brain-damagedness, I follow roughly 300 blogs (via email) of all kinds of subjects imaginable. Ninety-nine percent of them have been fun-filled, entertaining, enlightening, thought-arousing, learn-something-new-every-day reads. A handful of them are even ever so slightly sexually arousing, especially if I really concentrate.

However, just like the “We are the 99%” vs. 1% making the rounds all over the USA, it is the 1% (in my case, 1.67%) that have caused 99% of the consternation for me.

Half the time the stuff from the 1.67% is a rehash of stuff already fleshed out in books or someplace else that, quite frankly between you and me, has been done better elsewhere.

That 1.67% are those sites related (‘devoted’) to China and linguistics. If you can figure out between the two, the worst must have been Chinese-related linguistics blogs from inside China. Of that, the pits are those written by non-Chinese who imagine they are Chinese.

If such a small number is causing such a great upset, why continue reading them?

Jeez, I went to law school, you know — just because I don’t like something, doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t read it. (Are YOU able to do that?) I assure you, it isn’t sado-masochism on my part.

“Don’t hold back,” my friends and my lawyers (yes, lawyers!) tell me, whilst I mulled over the advice for quite some time. But I demur. So indulge me, and let me state certain thoughts in conclusive manner in Part 4 coming up.

* * *

UP NEXT IN PART 4: VENTING

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012.
Image of Chinese stanza in blue calligraphy by Samantha C.-S.