Trolls are one of my favorite things. I don’t collect troll dolls or anything, nor do I amass a collection of troll-doll paraphernalia. In fact, the little troll dolls kinda creep me out, to be perfectly honest. That’s why I’m not actually talking about them. The trolls I like are the ones you find on blogs—the kind of person whom, by the way his (and trolls are normally male and don’t seem to mind letting us know this) fingers punch about on the keyboard, one can readily recognize as “someone who doesn’t get out much”. And if he does happen to “get out much”, one can readily discern that his interaction with the universe is relatively—possibly even exclusively—so hideously self-absorbingly anthropomorphic, that his ability to interact on what most of the rest of us would consider to be a common level of awareness, is severely lacking.

Okay, so those several sentences above have probably already driven Bing and every other well-educated reader of this blog mad with their poor constructions. This is one of the reasons why I don’t write much. Since, when I try to plan a written thing out, I never seem to get it done, stream of consciousness is pretty much my only viable method of operation. Which, by the way, is something I will admit to having in common with what many people complain about trolls doing: the stream of consciousness thing. However, if one thinks about that a bit more clearly, one would be reminded that stream of consciousness is the basis of most oral conversation, and the expectation that written conversation be any different is at least slightly misplaced. At least, I don’t tend to treat conversation in the same vein as discourse, anyway.

At any rate, I always enjoy it when a troll comes along on a blog I read frequently. Naturally, this happened recently during a period when I’ve not only not been able to post here as much as I would like, but also have had to curtail my reading a bit as well, despite the realization that I am slowly becoming a better person for continually reading each and every one of the blogs that I have so conveniently linked on the right. Hey, did I digress again? Hush.

To repeat myself (it’s a talent), at any rate, I enjoy the trolls, but not so much that I want to have them around me all the time. That was actually one of the considerations for the format of the otherwhirled, truth be told. I know my captions and titles may piss some people off from time to time, but I’m an avid believer in the principle, “If you can’t take a joke, then get the hell out of the kitchen.” Or something like that. Anyway, I’ve had a couple of people not understand that what I do here is satire, but I don’t get much trolling because I rarely expound upon a particular subject. However, I used to deal quite frequently with trolls on a now-defunct blog I used to participate in daily. We have some particularly charming trolls out here in the hinterlands…er, I mean, the northern Midwest…and I’ve been missing their company—not really enough to remain involved in some of the other blogs these particular trolls frequent, but I’ve missed them nonetheless.

So imagine my initial joy to discover a troll over at Jess‘s and Fran‘s places! Followed closely on, of course, by a modicum of depression due to the fact that I discovered this troll rather late in the game, and he seems to already be gone. Sigh. If there is any Justice in the Universe, She is a high-handed bitch. Damn, there I did it again, going and digressing in just two sentences. See? I suck at this.

You may enjoy skating on over to the following threads where our most recent troll outbreak has been spotted. I think he’s pretty much done now, but perhaps he can be coerced to pipe up with additional examples of his personal inadequacy in the near future. Perhaps I’ll even get lucky and he’ll come over here and piss in my back yard for a while.

• FranIAm’s War…What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again!
• FranIAm’s Sophie Scholl – Or why we must expand and not contract in the face of fear
• Jess Wundrun’s Could it have been me?

Relatedly, I’ve read this article before, but I’m still not convinced it’s entirely helpful in the way I want it to be. Of course, that’s probably just because I enjoy poking trolls (and poking them and poking them and poking them) and watching them spew ever more incoherently and passionately until they have to stop because their heart rate is giving them fits. Of course, I realize that’s at least partially due to the fact that I keep in touch with my semi-sadistic inner child and give him food and water every day, but it’s also because it violates one of the principles behind the practice of trolling, which succinctly is, “No backsies!”

Anyway, if you want a bit of fun, go read the troll, and Jess and Fran’s fine rebuttals to his missives. I will say this for him: He types pretty well for having one hand down the front of his pants.