Month: April 2002

I am safely back from visiting my brother in North Carolina. It was a good experience. Upon my return, I (thankfully) discovered that all of Minneapolis’ April snow had melted. Let’s just get on with this “spring” thing, shall we?

I wrote an email message to a long-lost friend today. Actually, I emailed about 4 long-lost friends. Hi, long-lost friend! [The other friends I wrote today are only mildly lost.]

I feel some guilt for sending an uncomplimentary message to a newspaper columnist (see previous entry below). Writing to Alex Beam didn’t really accomplish anything other than to make me look like a bit of a jerk. If I could take it back and simply say nothing, I would. There are more important things, I always say but never act on.

More snow. More trips out of town. More later. Happy April.

To: “Alex Beam” <beam@globe.com>
Subject: A comment on April 2nd’s Boston Globe column
Cc: “James Lileks” <lileks@lileks.com>

Dear Alex:

I expect that I’ll be one of many to respond to your column on weblogs, so I’ll present only a few points.

James Lileks’ writing is far more amusing (and interesting to read) than yours. However, your writing is elitist, and his is not. It seems you’ve both achieved your (apparent) goals.

I especially like the way you’ve taken quotes out of context in order to strike the snottiest note possible. You’ve gotten so many things wrong in your column that I’ll refrain from pointing the rest of them out. (Evasive, to be sure, but you’ve probably received plenty of dissections of your column so far.)

By the way, I don’t think that weblogs present themselves as the ultimate authority on everything, as you seem to have inferred. (Perhaps you’re projecting your own inflated sense of importance onto them.) In my experience, they simply reflect a person’s individual (or a group’s collective) thoughts, opinions, and observations. When I don’t like one, I don’t write a nasty column about it. I simply stop reading it. (Of course, it’s not my job to write nasty columns; I think I understand some of your motivation.)

Finally, I realize this message may be overly harsh and not especially funny. I realize further that I’m judging you without a full understanding of your point of view. For that, I apologize.

(For a less sarcastic version of my opinion, see my comment at http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2038#32249.)