I’m sorry, but you are going to have to follow the link before any of this makes sense. I am not prepared to spend the afternoon cutting and pasting.
www.scalzi.com/whatever/My 1998 Meandering Essay on Coca-Cola
Done that? Read it all? Cringed a bit, did you? Yep, that’s our Reed, making a jackass of herself all over the comments (and can you see the typos? The grammar mistake in that last post? Oy vey. For this we sent her to school).
Reed is on edge about this. Reed is so on edge that she has locked herself in the bedroom with Handel on at full blast. And why is the idiot woman on edge? Well, it is threefold:
1) Reed actually likes that blog and the guy, John Scalzi, who writes it. It gets lonely, out here in starting-a-writing-blog-land. It’s nice to go chortle with a Real Writer (a published one) and enjoy the reflected glow. He’s witty. He’s intelligent. It’s cool. She is considering whether to buy his novel: She was very happy lurking. And now she can’t decide whether she feels a complete fool or merely half a fool. Because:
2) She really really does have an annoyingly wide ethical streak. All the coffee, I mean ALL the coffee that passes her lips is fairtrade, and if at all possible organic too. So is the chocolate, and most of the tea. Her reasons for buying organic meat are mostly to do with animal welfare. So when she goes blog-surfing on a bad morning after a sleepless night, she has her crap-o-meter on over-sensitive and her loathing of all purveyors of caffeinated shit on extreme. And shoots her mouth off. Because all good people who Reed likes should not drink the nasty C-word without knowing exactly what they are drinking and why.
3) And now she is a little disappointed. She thinks before shooting her mouth off (clearly not carefully, though). She posts what she fondly imagines to be a quiet little post, acknowledging the nastiness of dumping, what was it, turds in the punchbowl? BECAUSE she is aware of the combative and fiery nature of the blog-owner, but nevertheless feels it’d be quite a good thing if some Americans knew this stuff about Coca Cola’s eco-habits. Mr Scalzi nevertheless and probably rightly calls her on it and tells her not to be a chickenshit. So she loses her temper altogether. I don’t think Reed is quite used to the American way with swear-words. Oh, we all know she swears. She swears a lot. But she feels, in her damp British way, that if someone swears AT you, you have every right to give it to them with both barrels. I think this may be a cultural thing, and our trans-Atlantic friends think no more of saying ‘Don’t be a mamby-pamby chickenshit about it, for God’s sake’ to someone than we Brits think of saying ‘Could you explain yourself more clearly please?’. But in Blighty, them’s fightin’ words. So stacks are blown, and it seems now she has gone too far the other way. Reed can’t work out whether she’s annoyed with John Scalzi or herself. No, truthfully, mostly herself. If she were annoyed with Scalzi, she’d be listening to Tom Waits.
Now what? I mean, I know I told her to comment more about the place so she could get some traffic back here. She told me to get stuffed. So I let her off the leash for one, just one, damn morning and there she is giving object lessons in how to Lose Friends and Irritate People. And why? Because when it comes to Moral High-Ground, the bloody woman thinks she bought the entire damn mountain.
Well, I don’t know. I mean, the trouble is, as ever, cultural, visual and, um, sexual. And the lack of such here.
I’d go with the fact that you can (usually) get way with the most unpalitable comments if you abase yourself a bit first. Especially if you are a female talking to a man. Hve you seen The Apprentice lately? I hate to bring in my trash TV viewing, but everyone Keeps Going On about how one of the contestants is dominnering, mostly as she’s a little on the stridant side for a woman. In a man, sh’e be merely dominant.
I suspect he reacted to the post thinking you were an American male, to be honest.
Still, I thought you acquitted yourself with admirable resonableness thereafter. And to be fair, he doesn’t seem Lost or Irritated.
Anyway. Hope you have turned off the Handel and on to something less bland (deary me, where are the smileys? Imagine me mugging a wink madly).
Left by Sol on May 9th, 2006
Oh dear, I’m on form with the typos….
Left by Sol on May 9th, 2006
Sol, I have no idea where the smileys are. Some blogs have smileys. Mine doesn’t. Up with which I shall have to put until the magical day dawns in which I understand IT and no longer assume it’s all done by grumpy goblins.
We had moved on to Louis Armstrong by dinner time, thank you.
And thank you for being reassuring. I think you are quite right. I am a British woman and therefore conditioned to apologise for even breathing assertively. An American man seems to be conditioned to assert on all and every occasion, even, and especially when, he should shut the heck up. Annoying, isn’t it - if someone assumes I am a male ‘murrcan, they see my apologising as some kind of weird guilt-trippy wimpiness. I know from other situations that if they assume I am a female Brit, I am a bolshy wee gobshite of the worst order for saying similar things in much the same way. I wonder how he would have reacted if I had announced I was a British woman in the first post? We shall never know.
Ach. Stuff it all. New rule to be post-it-noted to the top of the computer screen: Must drink coffee BEFORE surfing.
Left by Editor on May 9th, 2006
I see a distinct lack of problem with what you posted. I didn’t know either, and will now look into the matter. But… I hate both coffee and tea, and I need caffeine (I work in a higher education library, so of course I need caffeine). What should I do? Panic, panic.
David
Left by David B on May 12th, 2006
David - Whole Earth do a cola, with all the yummy cola nut* extract a man could want, plus smugness. I agree it’s not quite as cheap as That Which Shall Not Be Named, but it is cheaper by far than Fentiman’s (cola of choice for absurdly smug people, makes me higher than van-load of hippies after a week at Glastonbury, lovely retro glass bottle for extra eco-points). And you can get it in Holland and Barretts.
*the highly caffeinated nut that tastes hideous in the raw but yumminy scrumminy when seriously malted and then sugared and carbonated into the bargain. That caffeine gets everywhere. Quite a lot of it in me today. Can you tell?
Left by Reed on May 13th, 2006
Reed, reading your archives has been fascinating for me. I like to think of myself as environmentally aware and this post was quite an eye-opener for me.
I have hated all sodas for a very long time because of their seriously bad effects on people’s health. Now you have given me another reason to despise the purveyors of carbonated beverages.
I’m with David, I seriously did not see what was the matter with your original post.
Left by healingmagichands on August 21st, 2006