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The Haus of Questions - Barbinterview

  
  

Page: 1(2)3456

 
 
Mazarine
11:57 / 25.09.02
Haus fences? Badass.
Epee, Saber or Foil?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:06 / 25.09.02
Foil, almost exclusively. I found epee dull and sabre tasteless.

I liked the sheer absurdity of fencing - the way that you are quite literally never going to get into a drunken exchange of ballestra lunges in qint at chucking-out time at the Dog and Duck. I enjoyed the idea that, if you were going to have a fight with someone, you both had to arrange a time and venue some time beforehand and then hire a small car to transport the kit. Thus, it seemed simultaneously more polite and less wussy (because with swords rather than girly kicking) than other martial arts.

Also, it was cool, in a very Peter Wyngarde way. Chicks, the young Haus might have figured with great and perfect wrongness, would dig it.

As for how good was I....no idea. I passed a passle of examinations, represented my school, placed pretty well (2nd, I think - forfeited the final due to injury) in the U21 county championships at 16. Because the number of fencers in the school was fairly small, and competitions usually held at terribly inconvenient times (fencing rarely has to worry about accommodating its spectators, as a good fencing match will be almost totally incomprehensible. It is the only sport I can think of in which the participants pay to compete but the audience are let in free), on a number of occasions I would find myself competing against an entire opposing team on my own - thus having to play 9 matches, 5 of which I could usually hope to win.

So, yes. I was certainly the best fencer at my school, probably one of the better fencers in the area...but what that actually means I don't know. The talent pool is pretty small, after all. When I returned to it (long lay-off originally due to injury and subsequently the distractions of college), it took me a long time to get past worrying that my knee would go again, and in general I was horrified at how badly my skills had atrophied; would like to get back into practice, but just don't have time at present, and probably won't have money when I do.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:55 / 25.09.02
And back to the list....is anyone getting bored yet?

If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?

Good question. My immediate response was "obliterate the hegemony of America in particular and the West in general", but, really, without addressing the issues that have led to that hegemony, I can't see much point - you'll just end up with something else equally crappy.

So....if it was completely utopian, it would probably be the removal of humankind's ability to hate based on what rather than who somebody is - that is, to hate people who are despicable, rather than to hate infidels, Sunnis, queers, women and so on.

Something ridiculous but theoretically possible - free clean energy, and thus the end of a lot of industries, but also a lot of industrial costs. Although the global realignment of power would be a bit traumatic - I can see pristine poles perched atop a charred ruin of an Earth...

Something impossible but highly personal: For Janeane Garofalo to have had a larger corpus of better roles in her acting career.

And failing all that, I just can't understand why nobody has ever thought of doing an all-black Wizard of Oz....

(I know what you're thinking. And don't. Just don't say it.)

Do you find irony in arguing for greater political sensitivity while often berating or criticizing Barbelith posters?

Fortunately, my dictionary was printed outside North America, and thus the word "irony" is contained therein:

1. Dissimulation, pretence, esp. the pretence of ignorance practised by Socrates as a step towards confuting an adversary.

Well, shucks, I surely do do that, but I don't think it's all that germane to your question. Let's move on:

2. The expression of meaning using language that normally means the opposite; esp the humorous or sarcastic use of praise to imply condemnation or contempt.

Once again, guilty as charged, but that definition don't seem to fit with the contention.

3. fig. Discrepancy between the expected and the actual state of affairs; a contradictory or ill-timed outcome of events as if in mockery of the fitness of things (like rain on your wedding day. If you married a meteorologist. And he named the day).


I think this must be the one you're a-thinking of. Unless it's the use of a language with one meaning for a privileged audience and another for those addressed or concerned, which is actually pretty much how everything I say seems to come out, though often through spectacularly obscure references to David Bowie's Anthony Newley period.

So, presumably the expected state of events is that, since I want people to be more "politically sensitive" (the politically correct term for "politically correct", I assume), that I should also be nice to people on Barbelith. The discrepancy then being that I am in fact not nice to people on Barbelith.

Except..."politically sensitive" means something like my utopian vision above, don't it? Where people do not despise their brothers and sisters because of the colour of their skin or their choice of sexual partner? In which case, surely that means that I should be *more* abrasive, not less, because I have so much more ability to dislike people on their merits, *as people*, rather than wasting energy disliking billions of people I've never even met. Yay me.

Or, to look at it another way, thinking that people in general should not be plagued with people behaving like wankers and also thinking that specific people at specific times should not be plaguing Barbelith by behaving like wankers seem remarkably *congruent*, if anything....

So, Lawrence, in your rather charming way, you actually appear to have identified the single, solitary non-ironic element of my entire life. Nice one.
 
 
Seth
17:13 / 25.09.02
No-one's getting bored, dude. Keep at it.
 
 
The Apple-Picker
17:57 / 25.09.02
Yeah, keep at it. Not bored.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:00 / 26.09.02
(Just like to make clear that the irony comment above is in no way intended to be a slight on our North American cousins, merely a slightly peevish comment on a) the kind of lazy thinking that leads to such terms being thrown around without any real understanding of what they mean and b) Alanis Fucking Morrisette)


What do you see as the greatest weakness of the political left and the greatest strength of the political right, and vice versa?

Wow. I'm really not the person to talk to about politics - at best I am well-meaning and at worst completely clueless. However...the eternal failure of the Left has been and probably will continue to be its utter inability to organise in a coherent fashion, which I think is probably an outcropping of their failure to understand how they present themselves to the general public (this is probably proof if proof were needed that I cannot really understand Blairism as left-wing in any meaningful sense). So, take the "SWP or Countryside Alliance" thread elsewhere. Logically, the Socialist Worker's Party should be a major force in British politics - after all, it represents a largely left-wing constituency who are feeling ever more alienated from the traditional party of the left. But it isn't? Why not? Well, partly because they lack the resources of other political parties, but that probably wouldn't be the case if they weren't so damnably ugly. By which I mean the factions, the infighting, the splits, the spin-off parties and, ultimately, the sheer ugliness of their public face. I am sure that somewhere out there there are many potential SWP members who are in fact socialists and do in fact work, but there was no more telling or depressing thing than the beginning of "College Girls", where the donkey-jacketed bloke with the huge house in the country and his plum-mouthed daughter hawked the Socialist Worker. If you're trying to reach out, try saying "Tories", not "Taw-wies", idiots.

And, because of this paralysing inability to present convincingly enough even to convince other members of the left, we find ourselves in a state with no credible left-wing opposition (a large number of stranded and utterly powerless "Old Labour" MPS and about half of a still-derisory complement of Liberal Democrats), in the shadow of a state without even a left-wing party.

As for the right....probably that, done right, the right is beautiful. It's all proud assertions of rectitude by blond boys and towering architecture. The left may be romantic, in that moustachioed, straggly, Che Guevara white-dreads way, but the right is something that you could use as a style plate for grown-ups. Neat and tidy suits, big leather armchairs, perfectly-pressed grey uniforms. The right bespeaks a stratification where everybody knows their place, and we are at the top table.

And hey, everybody makes mistakes. Nazism, for example, fucked up the art completely, but a decade later abstract expressionism had taken up the banner of ideologically libertarian art as if porky rhinemaidens had never happened. But D'Annunzio's Fiume, for example, embodies the romantic conception of a conceptually whole right-wing polity. Nobody knows a damned thing about what happened there, but it sounds frickin' cool.

Incidentally, I think this is why television has probably done more damage to the right wing of politics than any other single innovation of the twentieth century. Because we can see now that the leadership of the Conservative Party or the Republican Party are tiny, deformed men in gigantic suits, stumbling over their words, saying on Tuesday what they take back on Wednesday. The hunters are revealed not as dashing blurs of red across a chill morning, but as fat, whiskery halfwits. Say what you like about Thatcher (no, really), but she knew how to do it - a huge, seamless, near-parodic tory matron, feeding back the viewer a magnified, metal-knickered vision of his or her own Britannia. It was only when she tried to be media-friendly - answering a call from one of her citizens on live TV over the Belgrano, or giving the press a soundbite on the birth of her grandchild that did as much harm as the Tony's rumpled, piss-eyed "Hi guys, how's it going?" did good - that she came, inevitably and ceaselessly, a cropper. Done well, the right can beat the workers down for a thousand years, and not one of them will even think for a moment of joing the fucking SWP.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:20 / 26.09.02
And now, the light relief:

Is it true that you are really Ganesh?

Would that I were.

Do you think I'm sexy?

No, Rex. Really, no. Because, although I am intellectually aware that you are probably somewhere in your early-to-mid-twenties, I cannot but from your manner and methods imagine you as about fifteen. Therefore, to think you are sexy would just be wrong.

No really,are you Ganesh?

Ask Zocher if he could tell us apart in the dark.
 
 
Ethan Hawke
12:21 / 26.09.02
Could you, would you, recommend a good book or two on D'annunzio? Because all I know about him is from that trashy Hakim Bey book, and he certainly seems like an interesting fellow. Thx.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:43 / 26.09.02
Actually, probably not - I haven't read much about him. That's just it - everybody agrees that he is interesting, but nobody seems to know *why* - except that he was made a Prince in 1937, which so very rarely happens. Nobody seems to know how a man with three years of parliamentary service could take over a town, how it was administered, or indeed why it took so long for the whole mess to be sorted out. Or, really, what his politics were, I guess. I suspect not even him. Adriatic nationalist? I suspect he is interesting primarily as a writer whose parodies of decdent literature are rather *too* loving, and whose insane ragbag of left and right ideologies inspired Mussolini, who very sensibly declined to give him a further platform to upstage him.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:02 / 26.09.02
And more with the comic relief. Come and see the damcing FREAK! Five dollars to SEE THE DANCING FREAK!

Have you ever paid for sex?

Anything of the "we all pay for sex" variety would be utterly hackneyed at this point. So, if the question is "have you ever engaged the services of a sex trade worker", the answer is no.

This is not to be taken as a condemnation of the sex trade, although as it currently stands I think there is an awful lot wrong with it. I have quite simply never felt the need either to fill a gap in my life that my current sexual relationship(s) do not or fulfil a need in the absence of a current sexual relationship through the contracting of a sex trade worker, and if I did would probably be defeated by the logistics thereof anyway.

This may change in later life. Who knows? Promise to post about it if it does.

What is it about Ultra Magnus?

Ah, Ultra Magnus. Dear, dear Ultra Magnus.

There is not a single "it" about Ultra Magnus. There are many "its". I mean, the D00d turned into a car carrier! That means his entire self was oriented towards helping his injured or exhausted collleagues to get around. That takes a lot of humility, and a lot of goodwill.

Most of the issues around Ultra Magnus centre on his brief but ill-starred leadership of the Autobots, so let's just get that out of the way first. It is worth noting that he was clearly not born to the purple. Like Avon, he only ever wanted to stand near the sexy idologically committed leader bloke, and was utterly mortified when that proximity meant he actually had to take over his raggle-taggle band of idiosyncratic warriors.

Unlike Avon, his elevation to command came as a surprise, not just to him, but to everyone. His "Prime, I'm not worthy" was not low self-esteem (although he was plagued by it, another rare thing among Transformers and much to be admired), just self-knowledge.

Let's think of it like this. The Autobots have never needed a chain of command. It's just never been an issue. The Decepticons haven't managed to kill Optimus Prime in the better part of four million years of fighting. Who knew they were going to learn how to aim their guns now? Or that they would actually hurt? How many Autobots died that day? Six? Seven? My God, that's more than the fatalities of the previous million years! Everyone's in shock, and if Prime appointed Magnus to steady the ship, he knew what he was doing, dagnabbit.

Although I can see Springer in the Autobot City Bar later that day, drunkenly slurring, "What's he got that I haven't? I was actually *doing* stuff in the battle. I even got a catchy line. 'I've got better things to do today than die'. Whaddafuck more does Prime want?

"Oh yeah. I know. It's because Ultra Magnus is a truck, isn't it? Fucking truckism! What, so if Hot Rod turned into a van, we'd all have to make him leader? Oh yeah, that would be a great idea....frigginfrassinfuckin trucks."

So. Yes. It's hardly Magnus' fault that Prime made him leader. Anybody around that table could have said "Guys. Not wishing to speak ill of the dead or anything, but...well, he was delusional. He was raving. He was on the verge of death, for God's sake. He was thinking of a *different* Ultra Magnus. Why don't we hold a quick vote?"

Also, although he never wanted the position he finds himself thrust into, Ultra Magnus, unlike Avon who nances off to spend more time with his rock, didn't shirk that responsiblity. He wasn't afraid to make the tough decisions. He wasn't afraid to blow up three-quarters of the ship (and actually, Mr. Fancy Pants heckler, the Decepticons *would* have blown up all four quarters. I mean, you know, they did anyway, but it took them longer, and that counts for a lot). He died a hero, buying time for others to escape, still fighting even though he had been let down by the one thing that, as an Autobot, he had always been raised to believe in - the Matrix of Leadership (and/or Creation Matrix). The one thing you would certainly take the time to take out of somebody's body before jetting it off into space. Yes.

In the comics (that is, the things of beauty crafted by Simon Furman), Ultra Magnus' role is yet more nuanced. Plainly oppressed by the fact that his commanding officers are perpetually either killed, crippled or kidnapped into dark dimensions full of mind-sucking parasites, and the fact that every time he comes up against his opposite number he gets his arse handed to him (little realising that, whereas he is just a Transformer who works out, Galvatron is the living embodiment of the dark power of Cybertron's Dark Opposite, and twenty years' more technologically advanced, to boot), Ultra Magnus was increasingly crippled by self-loathing and insecurity, leading him to overachieve compulsively, on one occasion to the point of very nearly executing Optimus Prime himself (all right, that was a bit toss, but what balls it must have taken!).

Ultimately, his redemption was as complete as it was heroic. Having realised that he was trapped in an abusive relationship in which Galvatron beat him and he just came back for more, occasioning a complete nervous breakdown (and how often do you see a hundred-foot tall robot having a crisis of confidence?), some handy-dandy relationship counselling from Goldbug (who had his own problems with Buster Witwicky before the sellout turned hetero) helped him to face up to a) his mortality and b) the fact that he may be Galvatron's bitch, but even a bitch can bite. The subsequent hardcore, balls-to-the-wall, walk-out-that-door-just-turn-around-now-cos-you-ain't welcome-anymore knock-down drag-out I-depend-on-me slapfest ended with the two of them entombed in flash-frozen molten rock. Entombed...and yet strangely liberated.

So, yay Ultra Magnus, really. Besides, there weren't many gay Transformers out there to provide positive role models. In fact, if there had been a few more happily out Transformers, Magnus may well have been a lot more freewheeling. Who knows?
 
 
Sax
14:10 / 26.09.02
In the event of war and Lord Kitchener himself turned up at Chez Tann with a fully combat-ready SA80 rifle which he held to your head until you signed on the dotted line to be one of Our Lads out kicking Johnny Foreigner's butt-ocks, which of the armed disciplines would you join, and why.

And that question is to number three, Cilla.
 
 
Panda.
15:11 / 26.09.02
Haus...

Q) Why do you suck so bad?
 
 
Morlock - groupie for hire
17:04 / 26.09.02
Five bucks? Bargain! Encore!
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
18:15 / 26.09.02
Panda...

A)Perhaps he was tired. Or just didn't find your special trick a turn-on?
 
 
Mazarine
20:48 / 26.09.02
What have you learned about yourself and fellow barbelithers from this interview?
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
20:53 / 26.09.02
Haus, would you mind going on with answering the questions that have already been asked of you ahead of the latecomers who are asking questions in this thread? They're kind of rude, it's like cutting in line.
 
 
some guy
21:59 / 26.09.02
Isn't this a bit like asking Max Headroom questions, considering the nature of the subject?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:07 / 26.09.02
Flux: That's a very good point, and one I would like to address. In essence, obviously, my Celtic Fringe (but still a bit English) heart is oppressed by the idea of queue-jumping, but as a test to myself I am trying to answer all of these questions as honestly as I can, and as such am concerned that I might miss or forget the ones coming in now. If some kind soul (exp?) were good enough to collect or collate these new entries and PM them to me, I would of course attempt to deal with them afterwards.

But, just quickly until such a mechanism might come into being...

Sax: In general, my family has joined the Navy, I suspect for the rum, sodomy and the lash. However, I think I would struggle with the lack of gender parity and toilet arrangements. My grandfather was discharged without honour from the army. This leaves the Air Force, which is persuasive for a number of reasons.

1) Lengthy training periods mean long periods before any actual scrapping needs to happen.

2) Recent government policy has focused on aggressive acts against nations without air defences. Yay!

3) Chicks, Haus repeated mantrically and, as ever, incorrectly, foil cradled to make of him some grotesque herm, would dig it.

Panda: Well, some would blame the government. Some would blame my teachers. Some would blame genetics, or the parents, or the preachers.
Ultimately, it's one of those difficult questions.

Mazarine: That *is* a question I would like to save for later, as it would then lend an air of Star Test (Channel 4 Saturday morning interview program) to the whole surreal proceeding.

Lawrence: I'm afraid I don't understand the question. Could you rephrase it for somebody who doesn't watch an awful lot of television?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:38 / 26.09.02
Cats put to bed, trolls put on ignore, and off we go again:

Haus, do you like the Smashing Pumpkins? And, more importantly, do you like me

Not heard much by them, except that song about being a rat in a cage notwithstanding the remarkable quantities of rage Mr. Corgan appears to have accumulated.

That sucked donkeys.

As for liking you - I find you relentlessly in-character baiting at "Poetrial" intermittently amusing. I am quite fond of the Barbeloid whose fiction suit you are. I think you're a one-joke suit, but then many might say the same about me. Maybe we should form a club.
 
 
Seth
06:34 / 27.09.02
I'll collect further questions, starting from... now!

Just let me know when you've finished the first list, Haus. My, you are popular in the "grill a Barbeloid" stakes.
 
 
The Strobe
08:26 / 27.09.02
Oh my god. You mentioned Star Test. I'm going to have nightmares about further Barbeinterviews being just like that. With the fake Virtual Reality thing...

wasn't it Sunday mornings?
 
 
Cat Chant
09:43 / 27.09.02
(sucked in by references to Avon's leadership style in S3 - a series in which I maintain he was not in fact the leader, as you would know if you ever read any paper zines, but let that pass for the moment)

What do you think of Blake?

Honestly. Dreadful old Fascist? Intergalactic pig farmer? Strong-jawed hero of the Left? Angry Young(ish) Man? Pointless cretin? And how does your view of Blake affect how you see Avon? Do you think Avon likes Blake?

Which Avon do you prefer - Awkward Tech Avon or Flawlessly Cool Cynic-Genius Avon? Do you synthesize them into a single Avon, Hegel-style, or allow their contradictions to fray the selvedges of the character, Derrida-style?

Why is Soolin so nice to Tarrant in Warlord?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:53 / 27.09.02
I will say only for the moment that, actually, I was referring to Avon in Series 4. I'm quite aware of your theory that S3 Avon is a sort of science consultant, basically letting Tarrant boss the day-to-day runnng of the ship until either something interests him or Tarrant does something monumentally fucking stupid and he has to rescue them. However, I would suggest that Tarrant's need to assert his own primacy means that he keeps getting into slapfights with Avon that reluctantly drag him back increasingly back into the leadership role that he has assumed completely by the end of "Terminal" - the loss of the Liberator makes Tarrant, after all, pretty much a fifth wheel, or an eighth one.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
09:59 / 27.09.02
Avon is clearly a briefs man. Blake looks all commando-stylee. Do you model your underwear choices on them or do you strike out rebelliously into the underwearunknown?
 
 
some guy
10:23 / 27.09.02
I'm afraid I don't understand the question. Could you rephrase it for somebody who doesn't watch an awful lot of television?

Max Headroom is also a fictional character (of the type familiar to the culturally aware, regardless of the quantity of television watched. At least in the US). I find it interesting that people keep asking "Haus" questions after you've basically admitted the persona is an act. I actually didn't know that before this thread, but now I suppose the revelation saves a bit of time because I can just ignore your posts to Head Shop as trolling.

But in the spirit of things: Do you think Avon's disastrous personality is a result of childhood trauma stemming from being named after a line of cosmetics?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:47 / 27.09.02
(I am actually trying to answer a question in another window, but the troll must be fed...)

Lawrence, acusing people of trolling rarely gets you anywhere. See above. The relationship between Haus and ur-Haus is a more complex one. You claim to be a writer, and as such might perhaps be expected to realise that character functions differently in text than it does in everyday conversation. This is why simply relating the events and conversations of a day in a person's life rarely succeeds as narrative.

If you wish to dismiss the voice of anyone who points up the instances of lazy thinking, bad practice and cheap personal abuse that characterise many of your contributions to the Head Shop as that of a troll, it is your prerogative to do so. In which case, for God's sake just put me on ignore so we do not have to cope with any more of your adolescent willie-waving.

For the record, Max Headroom the chat show existed briefly on late-night television in Britain in the 80s, the film has appeared on British TV a few times and the sci-fi drama series spun off from it had a brief, irregular run in the small hours. If I recall, in both film and TV series, the relationship of Max Headroom and ur-Max Headroom, the news reporter whose personality was somehow digitised to become him, was complicated. I understand the character perfectly well; I did not understand why, in particular, you were addressing the question to me, which presumably you must have been since you were posting in a thread devoted, for better or worse, to asking me questions.

Now you have made it clear that you were not, and were merely indulging your need to squeeze out one of your fartlike little opinions, no matter how unnecessary, into any enclosed conversational space, we can get on with the show.

Ah, the joy of it.
 
 
Cat Chant
10:57 / 27.09.02
Haus: basically, agreed, then - sorry, was misreading your reference to the sopron.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:39 / 27.09.02
(Cultural awareness....Max Headroom. Sorry, that only just sank in. *Bless*)

Which is to say, answering the actual B7 questions when exp sends me the follow-up list at the end of this topic. And Nick: I am so scared now.

How different is Haus to you IRL? How much is that difference (if you perceive there to be one) intentional?

This is a very tricky question to answer, because the contexts in which I encounter Barbelith and "real life" are so very different. I think this will probably answer a fair bit of stuff further down the line, so I hope nobody minds if I take it slow and steady.

First up, if I am on Barbelith it usually means that my brain is too fried to do anything else very much, or that I *am* doing something else. Please don't take that the wrong way. So, I use Barbelith to keep my mind busy when I'm working, or if I have a bit of downtime but need to stay focused and cannot just pick up a book or write something, or am having a sleepless night...and so on. Whereas, generally, when I engage with the world I am engaging with *it*, primarily.

Second up, I started coming to Barbelith for the topics, not the people (although I was tipped off to come here by a member after a very enjoyable meeting in a coffee shop after watching X-Men). Let me unpack that. A lot of people say of Barbelith that it is full of the cleverest people they know. Now, some Barbeloids are among the cleverest people I know, but my peer group is in general pretty bright, or more correctly pretty highly-educated. But they are educated in a generally homogenous way. It's something I'm working on at the moment, but right now most of my meatspace friends outside Barbelith have very little interest generally in say, comics, or, frequently, gender issues or theory. Or, with very few exceptions, Ultra MAgnus' guilt-ridden battle with his homosexuality.

So, Barbelith gives me opportunities to read and talk about things I rarely get a chance to talk about IRL. Which is great. The downside being that, because of the inclusivity of Barbelith, as contrasted with the exclusivity of most of the systems for developing friendships I have outside Barbelith, the actual *level* of those conversations is frequently wildly variable. Put it this way - I actually don't *know* if I get as scratchy in real life as I am prone to on Barbelith when confronted with ill-informed dogmatism, ad hominem argument, mindless gainsaying or offtopic ramblings, because it just doesn't happen. I live in a bubble. Barbelith, as a network outside that bubble, is very useful and very broadening but also very different and a bit challenging.

For example, if a sally of the level above had been made among most of the people I know in meatspace (including, it must be said for the sake of clarity, the Barbeloids I have met and grown to love with the ever-popular pale, medulla-gnawing fire), it and its progenitor would probably be either laughed from the room or simply ignored. It's all a bit Hayley Joel Osment, really.

As for self-conscious differences...this may seem like a faintly ludicrous statement on the second page of a thread in which I talk about myself at length, but I'm a lot less open on Barbelith, which I think is something people who know me outside Barbelith may pick up on. I only generally talk about how I feel *right now* on B. when I am exhausted or feeling some intense emotional state (yes, irritation counts). I am trying to be less guarded about myself, but unfortunately that has coincided with a couple of new bugs and not-so-new bugs in unconvincing false moustaches whom I suspect don't have the emotional maturity not to try to use that against me. Which is a bit awkward, because IRL I think a modicum of emotional honesty and articulacy probably leavens the discursive instinct and occasional cruelty, and if that is missing then "Haus" is probably frequently an unbalanced character.

There are times when I think I do self-consciously slip into Hausishness, often for comic effect (absent-minded, unworldly, cerebral, sarky...I think it's a nasty uncle thing), or because I am sufficiently discombobulated by somebody's approach that I am briefly stripped of my ability to engage with the *emotional* fact that they are a thinking, feeling creature with their own hopes and dreams, and instead see them as the landing pad for a smackdown. I think Kegboy's thread about Mardi Gras was a bit like this - when the concept was so unexamined, and so badly expressed, that I ceased to be able to think in terms of "hmmm...well, yes.....but no.....on the other hand", and instead went all Chris Jericho. Or, say in sttab's repeated assertion that Lloyd George led the British government into appeasement in the 30s. Because, simply and cruelly, it was funny.

Now (warning - rant approaching) the other day I found myself reading the Grauniad, as one does, and there was an article in which an authoress talked about how clever her husband was by mentioning that he knew what "ataraxy" meant.

FOR FUCK'S SAKE. If you want to know what ataraxy means, look it the fuck up. That's what he had to do at some point, you vapid, worthless excuse for a scrivener. That's how you gain knowledge - you learn things. It never ceases to amaze me how often people on Barbelith, when corrected or questioned, simply restate their premise as if the correction mor question had never occured. It's fucking lamentable, and probably accounts for a lot of what could be defined as bitchy Haus behaviour, which probably counts as intentional on one level but I honestly believe could be seen as an entirely understandable, if somewhat unhelpful response. Lack of intellectual curiosity, smugness, bad use of language...these are a few of my least favourite things.

So, I don't know how different the Haus suit is from ur-Haus. I know that at times I play it up, and that I could probably start again and emphasise different character traits, but that isn't a difference so much as a focus. I don't know how, IRL, I would respond to an environment that precisely mimicked Barbelith and, saving all your presences, I'm not at all sure I'd like to. It would be somewhat overwhelming.
 
 
Ethan Hawke
12:26 / 27.09.02
You never talk about what you do for a living, except in the most oblique fashion. Why is that? I can't be the only fictionsuit who is curious about that. In another setting, like a cocktail party or something, occupation would probably out rather quickly, but I've no idea what you do.*

Also, how much money do you earn, do you have any chronic ailments, and what size is your cock (both length & diameter, please)?

*of course I realize a job is just that, a small part of yoru personality, not an indicator of "who you are," blah blah, fishcakes.

Oh yes, how do you feel about being the progenitor of so much Barbe-slang (my particular favorite being "grown-up juice")?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:32 / 27.09.02
How much of what you say is bullshit and/or just because you know it'll annoy people, and how much is stuff that you actually believe?

I usually assume it's pretty self-explanatory. If I say something like "Yeah, what are they, black or something?" or argue for the systematic extermination of people who look like paedophiles, I'm probably using a reductio ad absurdum or otherwise attempting to lead somebody to look at the intrinsic or extrinsic fallacies of his argument.

Whether I have to believe something to advance it as a position is, of course, a totally different matter. I think you've advanced a binary opposition that doesn't really work all that well...

I may *be* annoying, bit I don't usually aim to annoy. Provoke, yes. Irritate, like the Socratic gadfly, if I must. Insult, at times most definitely. Not really annoy. Seems a bit reductive.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:46 / 27.09.02
Possible bonus question; If Optimus Prime spent three million years deactivated in a mountain in America with the Creation Matrix in his gut, does the fact that there are still Transformers alive on Cybertron all these years later to fight a war make that race the most inept fighters in the universe?

Ah, well, that's a question and a half. Obviously, Cybertron has a lot more Transformers than Earth, and we have no record of the population at the time the Ark blasted off. Therefore, they might well have utterly decimated their originally massive population, and we might be seeing the last survivors of the cybertronian war slugging it out.

Certainly, when Cybertron is pictured in the comics, it seems usually to be in ruins, although whether that is universal across cybertron or just Geoff Senior liking quirky skylines is probably open to debate.

Besides, that's hardly surprising. The Transformers have a proud history of *demolishing* things. Scarcely a day goes by without one of them, through collateral damage, malice or incompetence, blowing up something big and important. So, they could have destroyed their cities without leaving a dent in each other, in much the manner of equally shit warriors the A-Team, the fatalities being from disruption to public services and confined primarily to civilians. As per usual.

This seems credible. However, by 2004, according to the movie (or 2006, depending on who you talk to), Cybertron was in the hands of the Decepticons, the Autobots having been driven off onto its two moons and their bases on Earth. Therefore, at some point there must have been some breakthrough by the Decepticons that enabled them to win the Cybertronian war. After long cogitation, I have reached the following conclusions.

1) Transformers are, in general, pretty hard to kill. This was what always confused me about the death of Optimus Prime – surely they could just replace the damaged widget, hammer out a few dents and have him roadworthy again? All most peculiar. We have seen Transformers take hits from far bigger guns than Megatrons poncepistol and walk away.

2) With the exception of Optimus Prime, Autobots cannot fight for toffee.

3) With the exception of Megatron, neither can the Decepticons. The level of ordnance unleashed in a Transformer battle expressed as a ratio of the amount of actual structural damage done to the shapeshifting metal beasties themselves would make any quartermaster weep. Basically, they suck ass.

Except…clearly everyone had been putting in some work during the twenty years between our modern tales and Transformers: The Movie, as some of the shots were actually hitting their targets. The joy of practice. However, if I recall, not one Decepticon is really wiped out by the Autobot shelling – they are loaded into Astrotrain injured and dumped in space later.

All this leads us to only one possible timeline.

Somewhere between 1984 and 2004, intensive training allowed the Transformers on both sides to improve their accuracy to some level involving actually hitting each other once in a while. The fact that both achieve this bespeaks some sort of independent contractor.

Unfortunately, once their shots actually hit Transformer once in a while, they discovered that their guns were utterly ineffectual. Against oil tanks, towers, rock formations, futuristic buildings…all good. Against Transformers, utterly cack. Completely ineffectual. Embarrassed silence settles over the battleground as the warring factions realize that they may as well have spent the last three million years down the (no longer extant) pub.

However, somewhere around the turn of the millennium, superior Decepticon science (or, to put it another way, Soundwave. Soundwave rocked very hard. He had the coolest voice, and chicks dug him because he was a single parent) produces a gun that *actually* works on Autobots. Nice one. Autobots thus driven headlong from Cybertron, although reports from survivors of Decepticons using guns that did more than blister paint were largely dismissed; as confusion had turned to boredom and increasing ataraxy (look it the fuck up), and thence absolutely enormous drug abuse among the disenfranchised and deeply unengaged (both literally and figuratively) warriors. After all, what point was there in eternal vigilance when a surprise attack would at worst melt your wheels, if the enemy had a chance to play his weapon over your body for about half an hour before you turned around?

So, the element of surprise is still intact when the newly-functional Megatron attacks the Autobot shuttle. Which is why Prowl, Ironhide, Ratchet, Brawn et al go for the traditional tactic of running in to close with the enemy, since there really isn’t much else to do. Before crying, “Oi! Shit! That hurt! OK, time out! TIME OUT! Stop shooting at us!” and expiring in some consternation.

So, in conclusion, for a long time the Transformers were indeed unilaterally shit, but between 1984 and about 2001 they could have conquered the universe, had they only tried using their pathetically inadequate weaponry on literally any race other than the Transformers themselves. This, I fear, is one of the perversities of galactic history.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
03:06 / 28.09.02
This is the best thread ever.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
07:55 / 28.09.02
Agreed... 'Megatron's poncepistol', heh heh heh...
 
 
Seth
09:29 / 28.09.02
Re: Why Haus is not a troll.

A troll subverts the board for their own goals. Haus subverts himself for the board's goals.

Simple as that.
 
 
some guy
11:03 / 28.09.02
A troll subverts the board for their own goals. Haus subverts himself for the board's goals.

Actually, Haus may be on to something. Barbelith as RPG has potential...
 
  

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