PooterGeek has somehow acquired a reputation for taking the piss. It is also currently the sixth highest Google hit for Oliver Kamm, because, although I have publicly said more positive than negative things about his writings, I gave the man a bit of a going over once.
Despite these facts I had nothing whatsoever to do with this parody of his ‘Blog. I did laugh at it, however—even when I shouldn’t have. That’s satire for you. It also scores by inventing attributes that its target doesn’t possess, but that somehow seem right (like Barry Norman saying “and why not” or Denis Healey calling people “silly billies”). I have to admit a sneaking admiration for the idea of Kamm suffering from a kind of ‘Blogging coprolalia and having to censor himself.
[Of course, if I were the perpetrator, this whole post would be so PooterGeek, wouldn’t it?—distancing myself from something I am secretly responsible for, while at the same time drawing people’s attention to it. And wouldn’t it be the cherry to then write a cautiously positive review of my own work? Being a smartarse can screw up your life.]
I did it, actually. The Barry’s Place one didn’t work out as well as hoped, so I read Kamm’s blog. He may as well have proffered his arse with a slab of butter melting between the cheeks. Few bloggers set themselves up for as much of a fall as he does.
Why do I loathe commenters who lack the guts to sign their own names? Never mind, “Anon” above may not be much of a satirist, but the ‘sight’ of a childish Lilliputian shaking his puny fists at a grown-up man with grown-up thoughts that he expresses in impeccable English, provided me with a giggle to start the morning.
David – I am sorry that you are so sensitive to criticism of your idols. You will remember, however, that the Lilliputians were, in the Swiftian lexicon, clever little bastards who could easily have put the intruding Gulliver to death. Similarly, Gulliver was distinctly under-sized when he meets the inhabitants of Brobdingnag. Translation? He was almost undone by the little guys and couldn’t quite cut it with the big boys. As George Orwell did once say “I never wanted to shoot that damned elephant, and wouldn’t have done so if it hadn’t been for those expectant coolies.”
PS: I note that the disgraceful word “bastards” has infiltrated the above comment. I trust the proprietor of this blog will delete the offending morpheme. And hopefully David will show a little more respect for his hospitality.
“Anon” remains just that, and I would remind him that at least Swift’s Lilliputians showed themselves. Come out, man, and let us all see what you’re so ashamed of?
As for your PS, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re writing about? Please explain.
I am not a day care assistant, and it isn’t my obligation to point out the obvious to those of decadent mental faculty. I wearily resign myself, nevertheless: the PS refers to my own comment. Unfortunately, I suffer from a rare breed of coprolalia which manifests itself just when my prose is at its most pristine and usually when my polemic reaches its diamond-sharp toughest. Still, as you seem to be easily baffled, I accept the burden of explanation. Public service is its own reward.
Not at all, Sir, please accept my thanks, and my sincere sympathies. My dictionary informs me that ‘coprolalia’ is “… a symptom of mental illness or organic brain disease.” Thank God that not only is your ‘prose pristine’, but so also is your spelling; you might so easily have confused both of us by the mistaken use of ‘coprophilia’, and then we’d both have been in the, er, you know what!