arndt@lymph.DEC (02/16/85)
Oh, Ken, Ken, Ken. I have received your love letter!!!
(It was posted EVERYWHERE!)
[Be still my heart! You have quite swept me off my feed, er, feet.]
[You must be beautiful when you get angry! Do you flex your pecs and
[paw the ground? I can almost TASTE the blood in my mouth. But I digress.]
[Sorry!]
But alas, I fear I must reject your suit and bust your heart. I can only
hope that you, like I, believe unrequited love's a bore.
So let me take your tender missile in tow, point by point, and attempt to
release you from your strange passion, and perhaps when it's all over . . .
well, . . . perhaps we can still be friends.
[YOU SAID:]
Well, I posted something to net.kids about spanking. Said that
it wasn't all that great to have to hit your kid, but it sure
beat the way I was raised: electric cords, leather belts, face-
slapping. You raise your kids that way, Kenny Baby? Ooops, I
digress. Sorry!
*** Sorry you got beat up as a kid. Hope it wasn't all the
time. Perhaps the way I was raised accounts for the way I am? I remember
well my father and I climbing the stairs to my bedroom in the attic. (Yes, I
had to sleep in the attic! No bathroom up there. Imagine in the middle of
the night pissing out the third floor window - in the winter! But that's the
way they did things in Newark NJ in those days.) Anyway, my mother stands at
the bottem of the stairs egging him on, "Beat him up", "Beat him up". When we
get up there, with me quaking in my boots - you should've seen the biceps on
him, he always lifted weights when he was away in jail - he takes off his belt
and folds it over double so he can give it a loud snap! "Now son, I know you
can do better", SNAP!, SNAP!, . . . "holler" . . . "HOLLER" (I'm slow). So we
made mom happy and I promised to try harder to stay out of trouble.
So you see, perhaps if the old man had done a better job on
me I'd be a different person today. And if I didn't have to sleep in the
attic!
As for what I do with my kids, well, it's WAR. I attack them
with my hand, a belt, a spoon, hugs and kisses, words, tickles - whatever it
takes to teach them my values and win their hearts and minds. But I'm afraid
that like my dad, I'm a softy. I rarely spank. So it's mostly the later
weapons of war I use.
[YOU SAID:]
You see, great engineer, you do less psychological damage to
someone if the punishment is perceived as against their ass, not
against them as people. Ohhhhh, I forgot: you don't know any way
to come back at people EXCEPT via the ad hominem attack, do ya,
sweetie? Well, try to figure it out, anyway. It's good exercise
after a day of DEC and whatever you read during lunch.
*** FIRST, I take exception to being called an engineer,
great or otherwise. I mean, those are the people you see around hi-tech
companies like DEC bumping into walls, falling off their chairs and coming
into work as I am leaving (haven't you read SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE?). Only
the fact that you liked my SUBWAY OUTFITTERS piece even alows me reply to
your current upset.
SECOND, "punishment is perceived as against their ass, not
against them as people" ???? Tell me that again the next time you get kicked
in the ass! Sounds like you don't know your ass from the rest of you!!!
Which, by the way, was really the point of my attempted wit about the
KINDNESS BOX. If you don't believe me, try telling your son the next time
you spank his ass, "I'm not hitting you, I'm beating your ass."
THIRD, the above is in a sense a cheap shot because I really
beleive you just didn't make yourself clear. I agree that a strike to the
face IS more personal than on another part of the body. That's why when you
start a fight - ALWAYS start the fight! - strike to the head and face as it
is the best target to use to dominate the issue.
[YOU SAID:]
So what'ja do, then, Kenny? You responded with one of your famous
bits of wit for which you're justly famous among netters far and
wide: a KINDNESS BOX. Put a kid in there and beat him with a
broom handle! You can't see him so there's no psychological
damage! What a parody! What wit! No wonder Rich Rosen loves
you so! You have the imagination of Josef Mengele! I'll bet he
can quote from the New Testament ad nauseum, too.
*** Ahem. Er, Ken . . . only a total dolt would have
even THOUGHT I was serious. (Now all those who have a KINDNESS BOX
screwed to the wall or partly built in the basement or have even picked
up a pencil to draw one, write in to prove me wrong - or confirm me,
depending on your point of view.) It would seem from your statements
above YOU didn't think I was serious; you just object to my imagination.
Had to drag Mengele into it, didn't you? Why not the Devil? He can
"quote from the New Testament ad nauseum, too!"
WHAT??? Rich Rosen loves me too???
Anyway, a lot of parents who read the 'KINDNESS BOX'
loved it! You're just sore because I used you as a foil and mistook
what you said on purpose. Come on guy, lighten up! Your complaints
about something or other I said so long ago now that I can't remember
anymore was what prompted our first exchange. I called you 'Sweet Ken'
etc and so forth. Look, I really am sorry you took offence. How about if
I call you in a few days on the phone and say so in person?
[YOU SAID:]
Best bit of all, Kenny. You posted it not to net.kids, but to
net.jokes! Whatssamatta, you didn't want to go up against the
people in net.kids? You thought ridicule of someone else's
method of discipline would have some sort of effect?
*** By now your face is red. I DID post it to net.kids and
that, by the way, was the only place where I actually used your name! In
flame and jokes I used Ken W*****.
"You thought ridicule of someone else's method of discipline
would have some sort of effect?" Look at it this way, Ken, I wasn't ridiculing
YOU, only your method!!! It works for me! Look, this seems to be the heart
of your anger at me. You think I ridiculed you. I am truly sorry it looked
like that to you, or anyone else. I really thought you would take it all in
good fun. Come on. Don't be a stuffed shirt. Walk a mile in my socks.
I don't take myself too seriously and so I don't expect others to take me too
seriously either.
[YOU SAID:]
WELL, old sport, look like that private message I sent you back
in December is off, isn't it? I mean, the one where I said I
was off you. Pick a side, you once said, big boy! Okay, ace,
you're on!
*** Ah, come on. Look. It's morning and I still respect you.
[YOU SAID:]
I just have the horrors wondering about what kind of mind can
invent a KINDNESS BOX. What kind of a presumed father can even
imagine such a thing? Answer: a bad one.
Maybe it was a breach of nettique to post to all your favorite
haunts on netnews, but I figure all your friends and lovers out
there (whoa, I left out net.motss) should have the chance to
meet you. You are as sick and pathetic an individual as I've
ever encountered.
*** Gee, you sound just like my mother!
You're right about my mind. Remember Ole MacDonald's
Torture Farm? But have a little sympathy. It must be from when I was
a child having to sleep in the attic all alone with the night noises and
shadows. These thoughts just pop into my head - I don't know where from.
Don't worry, I'm keeping my son as far away from something like that happening
to him as I can - he sleeps in the basement!
---------------------------------
Say hey, my man.
Keep chargin'
Ken Arndt johnston@spp1.UUCP (Micheal L. Johnston) (02/22/85)
Listen, to both of you. Have you heard of network MAIL not NEWS. I've got better things to read than a pissing contest. Mike Johnston