News trucks from several local tv stations were at the Bradford Bank in Jacksonville tonight — if you’ve been following the story, the Exxon gas station at the corner of Paper Mill Road and Jarrettsville Pike suffered a loss of 25,000 gallons of gasoline into the soil. Gasoline was detected in the bank’s ground well.

The WJZ news truck was still in the Bradford Bank parking lot as I returned to the store tonight after my last delivery. The bit they aired just a few moments ago wasn’t yet available, but this one from earlier today, was. The reporter, by the way, is filming from the southeast corner of the strip-mall the Franchise is located in.

I’m particularly interested in the harsh language the MDE representative used. I don’t know if this Exxon location was owned by the corporation, or a franchise. Either way, my keen sense is saying “lawsuit” and “indictments.”

Greg, as the owner of one of the businesses in what can only laughingly be called “Downtown Jacksonville”, attended a meeting of all affected business owners this afternoon. He’s a bit upset. I mean, yeah, that massive MDE work crew at the gas station has been coming in for huge food orders, but as he put it, “Perception will impact our operations.” If customers think our water well is compromised, would they order from us knowing we wash our dishes in potentially gasoline-tainted water? I doubt it. (Although so far, business has actually been increasing as we move out of February).

This isn’t the first sloppy Exxon gas leak in the area either — up at the intersection of Rt. 152 and Baldwin Mill, another Exxon station was closed for leaking gasoline.

Can anyone say … lawsuit?

Oh.

Oh wow.

Oh wow I think I’m in love.

Now, if only I had $300 lying around …

I wish I could, but I can’t. Because I’m stubborn and immature like that.

This appeared on the blog I criticized in this post.

So… I’ve taken to moderating comments for the moment — something I’m not happy to do, but since the aforementioned troll experience of yesterday I’ve been going back and forth about the merits of deploying some sort of comment registration system (ie, TypeKey), having seen [other MT Bloggers] recently take to using it with apparent success.

It isn’t simply the issue of trolls and their ilk; though I’ve dealt with them before, their appearance is typically little more than an infrequent annoyance. I do think, however, that having *completely open* comments allows people the luxury of feeling that they don’t have to be accountable for what they say; I quite frequently get fake-name/fake-email-address comments from individuals who obviously want to say whatever they’d like without having to take responsibility for it, which is behavior I personally find contemptible.

When I post on blogs, I identify myself as “Mal Snay” or “Malnurtured Snay.” I post either my hotmail or g-mail e-mail addresses, both of which I check several times a day and are valid. I almost always post the web address of this blog: http://www.malnurturedsnay.net. I know for a fact that another individual, whose comment was also deleted, posts with the identity he uses for blogging, with both a valid e-mail and his blog’s URL.

This is after-the-fact justification of the deletion of comments critical of the blog author. It had nothing to do with the “fake-name/fake-email-address” bullshit the post claims. I can’t speak for the other commenters who found their remarks deleted, so I’ll say this for myself: I left a comment with a valid point. I left my contact information, and clearly I returned to the post to elaborate on that point. I don’t see how I could be more “accountable” for my comments. It wasn’t a spam comment, it wasn’t an irresponsible comment, I made the mistake of thinking that the blog’s author wanted a discussion as opposed to a pity party.

That was my mistake.

She wants to talk about accountability? How about she starts getting accountable for her behavior in deleting comments? I would be very surprised if it happened.

This was the comment I posted in response on her blog. It (duh) did not appear on her blog, which is why I’m posting it here.

“I quite frequently get fake-name/fake-email-address comments from individuals who obviously want to say whatever they’d like without having to take responsibility for it, which is behavior I personally find contemptible.”

[blog owner],

Both of my comments yesterday were posted with my valid e-mail, website, and the name I identify myself with on all internet postings. Both comments addressed legitimate concerns — first, to do with [Alleged Troll]’s post. I think she made a valid point regarding internet privacy, and while you have the right to disagree, I assumed the reason you brought the attention to her comment was so that there could be a discussion on the validity of her comment.

The second comment I made was in regard to your deletion of my comment and other comments that didn’t fall in line with where apparently you wanted the discussion to go.

I find it reprehensible that you delete comments at will then turn around and blame the commenters for their supposed “lack of responsibility” while failing to acknowledge that what you’re doing is censorship of opinions you deem unworthy.

That’s irresponsible.

By the way — I dealt with comment spam by upgrading from MT to WordPress and enabling SpamKarma2. I remember many months ago giving you advice about how to help cutting down on MT spam, and noticed there that you didn’t accuse me of irresponsible posting practices.

(Since I fully expect this comment to be deleted by you, I’ll be posting it on my blog. Don’t worry — I won’t delete your comments. I believe in free speech. Unless you’re trying to sell me a penis enlarger or Canadian drugs).

I really don’t know why I’m getting so worked up over this. I think I need to go masturbate.

Buffy is one of those shows (Deep Space Nine is another) that can be hard to rate on an individual episode-by-episode basis the later you get in the show’s run, as plot-arcs begin to expand across multiple episodes. While arcs themselves can probably be rated from “great” to “mediocre” to “awful”, when an episode contains “great” arcs and “awful” arcs it can be difficult to rate the episode as a whole. Don’t get me wrong — “story-arc” episodic television is great — it just makes picking individual episodes a bear.

Thankfully, Buffy’s great episodes were in seasons two through three, where the show peaked, only to drop off its last four years.

Innocence

Angel has sex with Buffy. Sex with Buffy makes Angel bad. I don’t get the basic premise the episode is founded on — the gypsies put a curse on Angel so that he’d feel really bad about all the bad stuff he did, but then they also made it so that if he ever felt happy, he’d turn evil again? Well, that seems stupid — it’d be like curing Hitler then making it so that if he ever fell in love with a Jewish woman, he’d turn evil again and start the genocide back up. Did the gypsies ever consider the innocent people they’re directly responsible for Angel having the opportunity and desire to hurt as a result of his renewed loss-of-soul? In any case, it’s still a great episode, largely because, y’know, Angel’s a good guy, except now he’s a bad guy (so we should hate him), and really, the line from the Big Bad as Buffy opens fire with a rocket launcher (because no weapon forged can defeat him): “What’s that?” Then he goes “ka-blooooooie!” (Except, without the quotation marks).

Becoming Pt. 2

We’ve had this evil-Angel running around for half the season being really evil, so we, as the audience hate him, but even knowing that a plot is underfoot to return the “good” Angel, who can honestly admit they weren’t siding with Xander when he lied to Buffy so she would finally kill him?

Dead Man’s Party

I love Giles’ line in this episode, as he realizes the reason dead people are re-animating and attacking Sunnydale is the result of an ancient, magical African mask in the Summers’ household. “Americans and their masks, look at me, I raise the dead!” (Or something to that effect). In the end, though, it’s just a great, fun episode where Buffy returns triumphantly home and gets to stick a shovel through the face of an over-neighborly nosy bitch who probably wishes she never got posessed by the mask in the first place (if she, y’know, didn’t have a shovel through her brain).

The Wish

Not just a neat introduction for eventual-series-regular Anya (as the Bad for the episode), but also a nice take on the “It’s A Wonderful Life” episode every long running tv show seems to have, where we see how the series might’ve progressed without the lead — in this case, Buffy’s been assigned to the hellmouth in Ohio, and Sunnydale is overrun with vampires (led by the Big Bad of the first season — The Master). This Buffy’s badder and bitchier, Xander and Willow are vamps, and Giles has a sort of “Three Musketeers” gang with crossbows and holy water trying to keep everything in check.

The Zeppo

It’s rare that Xander has the opportunity to save the day — generally, he’s being pushed aside or abused (he’s the Chief O’Brien of Buffy) — so this story, told from his point-of-view, is a refreshing change of pace where’s he has more to do than mere exposition or damsel-in-distress. Plus, he gets to have sex with Eliza Dushku, (I, for one = jealous) and take out a gang of bullies, and feed were-Oz in the process!

The Prom

Yeah, as if writing a “Buffy Top Ten” list wasn’t emasculating enough, why does one of my favorite episodes have to be titled “The Prom”? Damn you, Whedon. Damn you to the hellmouth! (See? I made a funny). I’d be hard pressed to explain why I like this episode, except that I’m an overly sentimental goober who won’t admit to tearing up (just a little) at the end of the dance when Jonathan presents Buffy an unusual thank you from Sunnydale’s graduating seniors.

Fear, Itself

It’s a great little take on the “haunted house” theme — a frat decides to “liven up” their Halloween haunted frat-house with a book of fake spells they find. Oh, actually? A book of not-so-fake spells (particularly when one of the frat boys accidently drips blood on the mystical pagan drawings). I love Giles’ line at the end: “Oh, I see now — ‘drawing to scale’” when the “Bad” is conjured at the end of the episode. Also, seriously — bunnys? C’mon.

Hush

So these guys come to town to steal human organs. First, they use magic so no one in town can speak (rather, and more to the point, so no one can scream, speaking merely being a side-effect). Then, since their victims can’t scream (having no mouths to scream out of), they perform surgery on their living victims, minus the usual niceties — y’know, like anesthetics. The scoobies have to communicate with hand gestures — I particularly enjoy the “conference” scene where Buffy intends to communicate with her gestures “stake the bad guys” but which everyone else seems to interpret as “give the bad guys hand jobs.”

Buffy vs. Dracula

I mean, c’mon — the van Helsing of the modern day meets and beats the undead guy who inspired the whole vampire genre. Plus, as a vampire who can do stuff the run-of-the-mill episodic guys can’t (turn into vampires, etc.), it’s a nice change of pace from merely stabbin’ the fuckers in the heart with a stake. Purely classic dialogue: “Like I haven’t seen your movies.”

Family

I’d be hard pressed to explain why I like this episode as much as I don’t — as a character, I find Tara to be a bit too whiny, sort of a junior-unskilled-Willow/female-Xander mix that makes her hard to take much seriously. Maybe it’s Buffy’s (surprising) support for her at the end that I like. (I’m such a sentimental fool.)

A blogger etiquette essay, in two quick parts.

Part the first:

So, on the internet, there are folks called “trolls”, who essentially go from site to site seeking to stir up trouble. Who becomes a “troll” generally depends on who you ask — one person’s troll might be another person’s favorite reader.

I have a fairly simple understanding on trolls — it boils down to this. Trolls want attention. If you show a troll attention, they will troll you more often. If you don’t show a troll attention (or, alternatively, if you IP ban them) they’ll probably, after a while, leave you alone.

On the other hand, posting an entry about a troll’s mean, nasty, or rude comment or e-mail, while in the pretext of offering a way for you to vent, actually feeds right into what the Troll wants — attention.

What gets worse is when you, expecting love and sympathy from your “adoring” audience, are dissapointed when people chime up who may agree with certain points the Troll makes. And let’s be honest here — there’s a difference between a Troll who says “Hey, you’ve got fat fingers!” and a Troll who says, “Wait, so just because six other cars were speeding on 695 and the cop singled you out to be pulled over — that doesn’t make you in the right, that just makes them in the lucky.” You might not be happy with the criticism leveled at you, but I think a lot of times that’s because there’s a realization that the Troll, in this case, might be making a point that has some validity.

Now, part the second:

I’m real quick going to refer to my comment/troll policy, posted on the right-hand side of this blog. This is actually how it looked last night when I composed most of this post:

Only spam comments will be deleted, but I reserve the right to IP ban trolls (I make determinations as to what qualifies as spam comments, and who qualifies as a troll).

Thinking about this, I’ve decided to expand it. It now includes, “In the rare occasion I choose not to recieve feedback on a post, the comment feature will be turned off either at the time of posting, or before the first comment has been left. I will not turn off the comment feature on a post because of negative or unpleasant feedback.”

I think it is extraordinarily rude to write a post, then invite comments only to close the discussion when the author is tired of either being criticized, or finding other commenters who think the “troll” might have a valid point. Sadly for the author in question, he or she is very unlikely to be the only person with access to a blog for their own venting purposes, and must then deal with assholes like me, writing a whole post to complain about their bad form.

Even worse than the above, is to re-open comments after selectively deleting comments the blog’s author doesn’t like. Hey, dumbass: I wasn’t commenting in defense of the “Troll”, I was commenting because I felt the “Troll” made a valid point (ask permission before you post someone else’s kid’s photo on your blog), but apparently the blog author can’t be criticized on any level because his or her skin is too fucking thin. Boy. I hope he or she doesn’t read this post — I don’t think he or she is too stupid to not realize I’m writing about him or her, and I’ll probably make him or her cry. Gosh, darn.

After finding my original comment deleted, I wrote this follow-up comment. Edited to avoid drama:

[Blog Owner] —

I don’t know if [Alleged Troll] is [other person]’s husband or not, and I didn’t post originally in her defense, but because I think she made one valid point: if you don’t have the permission of a parent, don’t post a photo of their kid.

I don’t know your past history with [Alleged Troll]. I don’t know what thread [Alleged Troll] posted her comment in. I don’t know if you do or don’t have the permission of the parents whose kids’ photos you post. And, yeah, maybe not having kids makes me and my comment worthless.

What I do know is that in my rare but occasional posts on your blog, I have been respectful to you. To find my comment deleted was a slap in the face, and you giving me both middle fingers. I’m deeply offended by the way you’ve treated me, and the other people whose comments you’ve deleted.

The next time Jon Stewart makes a quip about government censorship, I hope you reflect that censorship seems to be alive and well on [Your Blog], and that’s a goddamn shame.

I had an edited version of this post prepared if my second comment appeared (it didn’t, but people’s comments who posted after I did appeared) — the blog of course switched suddenly to comment moderation. Coincidence?

In short: For shame.

We all love loving, supportive feedback. But if you can’t handle critical or hateful feedback, y’know, lots of blogs these days don’t even offer a comment option. And that way you get rid of the “troll”, too. Better yet, why not move your blog over to MySpace and only let your sycophants on your “friends” list. That way, it’ll always be love-love land.