Tuesday, October 25, 2005

If it’s Tuesday it must be a new Ocean rule day

I had an exchange with someone in one of my post comments sections and it left me puzzled. Why, when I asked so sweetly, gently, kindly, would someone refuse to give an identifying name so that I could tell who they were – even if only I could recognize the nickname, initials, or what have you?

This exchange was the final straw. It made a tough woman out of me. So good-bye sweet gentle kind request and hello tough Polish peasant stock momma taking charge and putting in some changes.

From now on, an anonymous comment without some reference to a name, pseudonym, nickname, blog name, any name – gets stricken by me. I don’t care how innocent, how praising and supportive, how generous the comment is – no name? no initials? nothing? Out it goes.

I take risks by publishing without the protection of anonymity. Sometimes I think I am about as dumb as a mule (are mules the dumbest animals ever? Googling this produced mixed results) to be doing this. But I think it gives me permission to ask that commenters at least take a half step and speak from behind some set of identifying symbols.

And no, contrary to what you may be thinking, I do not sit and count comments and I most certainly do not mold posts so that they would entice you to speak up here. To my knowledge I have twisted only one person’s arm to write comments. True, she now wears a sling and avoids me at work, but this is between her and me. For the rest? Well, I see Ocean as this neat little package of things percolating. Take part in it however you wish. Only if you write here, do sign in some way, or out you go.

10 comments:

  1. Turkeys are the dumbest animals - hands down. You should know by now I'm an animal expert, so no reason to google this.

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  2. Chardrian: I always thought you were into reptiles.
    Actually I had googled it and there seemed to be some discussion as to whether it was mules, turkeys or opossums. I decided I preferred to be similar to a mule than to either of the other two.

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  3. Even though I only reserve the right to delete unsigned anonymous comments without warning, I can understand where you're coming from. To prevent misunderstandings, you might set up a permanent 'house rules' link to this post in the sidebar, or otherwise you can just administratively ban anonymous commenting.

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  4. speaking as a "dumbatarian" (I only eat things that are smarter than the average house dog) I can tell you that mules are mighty smarter than the following animals:
    chickens and turkeys, sheep, cows, rabbits, goats.

    smartest of animals is of course our primate/ape cousins and then probably border collies/poodles and pigs (although there's considerable argument over which is smarter, dog or pig?).

    would I eat a mule? probably not. they are awfully smart and very likeable. Possums just taste nasty so I usually categorize them as almost dog-smart.

    and, I'm not afraid to sign my name to this :) although it is a pseudonym.

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  5. oops, make that sentence read "I only eat things that are NOT smarter than the average house-dog!"

    sorry

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  6. Seems like a reasonable rule to implement. It's not clear to me why someone who posts anonymously would object to posting under a psuedonym.

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  7. Mules leave their droppings in one area of a pen. This shows signs of intellegence, or at least a sensitive nose. Consider the horse, proud, used in statuary! The leave their droppings wherever, whenever! They just can't seem to grasp the connection between bowel function and distance. How did we miss how dumb they are. Nobody mentioned the horse as being dumb...or edible.

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  8. Mules aren't really dumb - they're just... well, weird. Any animal that simply can't reproduce is just weird. Good thing I like weird.

    And no, I don't know anything about reptiles - but that python vs. gator was purty cool.

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  9. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  10. Okay we were having a discussion about the dumbest animal ever and well we decided to google it. Googling it produced a hit to your blog... though the entry is over 2 months old, I wanted to interject that I personally think that COWS are the dumbest animals ever. I don't know if turkeys are dumber but I definately don't believe that mules are. Though they are quite stubborn they are very "intuitive" on trails. Turkeys at least a mean and you can't sneak up on them in the middle of the night and "tip" them over. Opossums, I have no idea about them.... Okay any other comments would be appreciated.

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