Get your "no fits, no fights" vomit bags here — Page 5

"Thank you Nina, whoever you are,"

Nice try Namo, but I know that you already made a major slip with interview girl and now I'm being asked to do an interview for an internet blog or whatever it is. Oh well, such is life. I still love you.

Back to the topic at hand. I'm glad to see that so many people posted after my comments about not egtting it and proved my point.

"Nasty = interesting and genuine
Nice = bland and insincere"

Plum, obviously not getting it, as usual.

Molly, I'm sure you're a very sweet child, but you are obviously a still child. Be very careful when trying to play with adults.

Nice is different than good indeed. I can't tell you how many "nice" people are so backhandedly rude and disruptive and crass. So am I and people with my personality, only the difference is we don't sneak around and try to fool you into thinking twice about it. I'm honest, blatantly so and to be anything else would be to deny who I am. I am nice, I'm genuine but I'm also a smartass, a jerk, a whiner but I try to make my points as well as I can. If someone feels offended by my methods I can't be blamed. It is their personality being offended, not mine.

Namo is as blatantly honest as they come. He is a smartass but he is also genuine, intelligent, well-informed, and all those things contribute to his unique and uncanny ability to form an opinion of HIS OWN and stick to it.

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Or tear you to pieces!

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I'd also like to point out that some people who are extolling the virtues of 'niceness' can have that come back and bite them in the ass. We've ALL said things on here that have been nasty...and they can be brought back up in a moment's notice. It wouldn't be too hard.

And then there are people who's tone in their online personality comes across as obnoxious. Ya know...it's not what they say, but how they say it type of thing. You can be sure that Namo knows exactly what and how he's saying everything he types. Others, I suspect, don't have that kind of self-awareness.

"Nasty = interesting and genuine
Nice = bland and insincere"

I think I'm the only one to take the bait on this one and say yes...absolutely. Why else do so many of us find vallians so fascinating...the best part of a movie? Why do we as a culture find Hannibal Lectre and the Joker and Alan Rickman in nearly every film he's ever done so fascinating and compelling? Why do we like the Evil Queen more than Snow White? Cause they are simply more interesting. We all have darkness inside us and have been conditioned to keep those hidden...so we all are thrilled and titillated by those who allow themselves the expression of their dark sides.

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Updated On: 6/18/05 at 11:38 AM

Nina,

As you know well, even when you're cast as the 'hero' or the 'good person', you'll fail miserably if you don't explore the darker side of that character. There will simply be no interest by the audience if all we see if 'good' and 'strong' and 'right'. I've been lucky enough to play both villians and heroes...you make the villians as desirable as possible and the heroes as flawed as you can. It's that tension that holds interest.

It's sort of the same way here. We all love the tension created by terrific drama...why else would we post on a theatre website? So it will naturally play out here...as it does in life every day.

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Because, in the end, so few of us really know each other, so how do we be genuinely 'nice' to each other? We can say things that sound nice, but, in the end, what do they mean? I can say, RobbO, you are SO funny and SO smart and SO talented...but how the f*ck do I really know? I don't. Now...when someone posts something that they are obviously passionate about, you start to get an idea of who they are...a small idea, but you start to get it. 'Nice' here only goes so deep.

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RobbO, you've come after me in your way. That doesn't bother me, in the least. I'm not afraid to parry with people. Keeps the synapses firing. So I parry back and you inevitably go off on a meta narrative about how you've heard it all before and I have problems and blah blah blah.

Seems you miss big chunks of things. And what you seem to have missed here is that nobody is saying that all niceness is fake. What I started this thread for was to be an antidote to the FALSE hothouse atmosphere of the threads that pop up regularly where "it's all positive, and no fights." I went to great lengths to argue for the genuine. GENUINE nice and GENUINE arguments and GENUINE opinions.

But. You. Keep. Missing. That.

Fine. You're more than welcome to keep coming after me, just give me something good for once.

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When man's compliment is another gal's pain.

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papa, we missed you last night at "guys night out."

The cam corder was definitely in use, for private collectors only.

I know I’m late to this conversation, and perhaps there are those who were happy it disappeared into the ether. However, there are just a couple of things I’d like to say.

Yes, of course it’s true that life is comprised of myriad complexities and variations. However, the one thing that remains constant is our personal freedom of choice as to how we respond to that stimulus. I, for one, don’t think it says anything about personal awareness if one chooses to walk on ‘the sunny side of the street.’ There are many who have experienced a great deal of what life has to offer, and in the end, decide to focus on that which brings pleasure and fulfillment to them as individuals. Making the choice to focus on the positive doesn’t necessarily mean that the awareness is any lessened, it simply means that priorities have been made that lean toward the positive rather than the negative.

And you know what? The concept that creation or art needs the catalyst of tension or friction is debatable at best, and false if meant as a definitive statement. I believe Johann Sebastian Bach may have had something to say about that concept, if he wasn’t too busy creating foundational baroque compositions.

What I’ve gotten from this discussion is that there are those who are tired of some people’s fear of dissension. My thought is that it is up to them to allow everyone their own response to the experience of life. If you have reached a state where you understand – for yourself, anyway – the various levels that existence can play on, then good for you. Why is it so disturbing when others haven’t reached that state of awareness - especially if they are of an age that decreases the chance of full development?

And I’m aware that personal emotional fluctuations can influence the responses one gives on the board. For just one example, a poster who rationally yet passionately defends the devolvement of young adult gay men into meth use because of the pressures exerted on them by society can then turn around and dismiss out-of-hand a 15-year old who demonstrates a problem with alcohol. Where lays the difference? In the individual perspective of the person commenting – and that’s part-and-parcel of the human experience.

And just one final note. I must respectfully disagree with the opinion that Namo’s posts are difficult to understand or process. He presents complete thoughts utilizing a demonstrable command of the English language. If there is a problem, it is with the thoughts that he is willing to present. He simply doesn’t restrict himself to the mind-set of the masses. That thinking may indeed be conventional, but it is seldom wise. Anyone who can distill the reaction to another poster down to a picture of Narcissus can generally be trusted to be thinking through and experiencing the meager offerings of this board to the fullest extent possible. Anyone’s inability to digest the offering is a reflection on them, not Namo. I’m reminded of a priest friend who was constantly being taken to task because his sermons were ‘going over the heads of the congregation.” His reply was that he aimed his sermons for where they should want their heads to be, not where they were stuck.

Well, you know I love my fruit, papasan.

that's so gay, d.

marquise, i have had it with you propositioning people in threads!

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