Pegs Knocked Down, Egos Bruised; or, Tonight at Ten on Ten: No One's Perfect, Pass It On...

I know y'all waited for months and months to learn exactly what John Bruce thinks of me, and well, now you've got your chance.  He's "slammed" me for dangling a participle ... asserted that there's no way a hiring committee in 2008 would hire someone who dangled a participle in 2005 to teach, well, anything.  Since he's obsessed with inflating his hit count (because, as you well know, the more people who laugh at your blog, the more they esteem you), I encourage all my regular readers to peruse Bruce's accusations (including his devestatingly charming habit of refering to me as "Scott Eric,"  as if it wasn't my name but constituted an insult) and tell them what they really think of me.  Seriously.  Unlike the Bruce, I have no illusions about my audience.  I know y'all find me amusing and have the utmost disrespect for my intellectual shortcomings ... and I think John Bruce needs to know that Scott Eric's audience laughs at him instead of with him.  Because, well, because John Bruce has "issues."  Since I don't, I'm more than happy to oblige his delusions of importance by dangling participles like an agrammatical fool.  Anyhow, you can read his silly bloviation here.  Feel free to inflate his hit count by demeaning me in every which way you can.  Because unlike the Bruce, I acknowledge my imperfections and don't think anyone not suffering the delusion of perfection will think any less of me for them.

Update: Bruce has penned another "anti-Scott Eric" screed.  He calls it "Two Questions for Scott Eric."  But he's banned me from commenting on it.  You may be asking yourself: why would you directly ask someone questions then deny them the ability to answer them?  Could it be that you fear my cold hard logic?  (Because you should.  What with it being so cold and hard and logical.)  If I were to answer the ridiculous charges he levels, they'd read something like this:

Ahem.

1. Yes, I live in a dorm.  That's where graduate students live.  In dorms.  No, really, we do.  Seriously.  In dorms.  I'm not kidding.  We.  Live.  In.  Dorms.  Exactly.  (Note to John Bruce's busted Sarcasm Detector: the preceding remarks are sarcastic.  Many of the following will be too.  Failure to recognize them as such will make you look awfully silly.)
2. I threw a tantrum?  For someone who prides himself on his fine ear for all things literary, you routinely miss stuff like Big Obvious Sarcasm.  "Hysterical" is how I feel when the ball passes through Tony Graffanino's legs; "amused" and "desirous of having fun at your expense" is how I feel when you target me with some of your patented hard-hitting investigative journalism.
3. You don't seem to know how names work.  As I wrote, you're more than welcome to refer to me as "Scott Eric," but that'll put you in the minority of the human race.  You don't mention that I've explained to you before (at least twice) the eminently practical reason I do so.  If you choose to not remember said reason, that's your business.  But you look silly.
4. I don't deny having your blog bookmarked, nor do I deny opening it when I take advantage of the Firefox's nifty "open in tabs" feature.  Know what else I don't deny doing?  Reading blogs.  Know how I do that?  I "open all tabs."  You can continue to consider this practice evidence of obsession, but when you think other people's browsing habits reflect upon you, personally, you look silly.
5. Your post is titled "Two Questions for Scott Eric," but you ask three.  I believe this to be definitive proof that you can't count.  You should know that no one will ever hire you if you can't count.  I'll be doing an expose of your inability to count based entirely on this one example.  No,  I don't think that's absurd.  Do you?  Obviously not.  I'm excited.  My "John Bruce Can't Count Series" is bound to be a smash!  It'll double my hit-count!  I may even write a serialized blog novel about it.  That'll draw the crowds!  (Paging John Bruce's busted Sarcasm Detector...)

Comments

[Luther Blissett]

According to John Bruce's own touchstone -- the dictionary -- a dangling participle only requires revision when the meaning of the sentence is unclear (the example, "Looking to west, the river widens at it reaches the sea," is offered a perfectly acceptable sentence). Given the context in which your cited sentence appears, I don't think revision was necessary. As someone who corrects more dangling grammar than I care to admit, I can admit that it took me ten re-readings of the sentence to even *see* the dangling occuring. Why? Because your post on London made it clear from the start that it was London switching philosophies.

There's a word for those who think style is about rules and not clarity: bureaucrats.

Keep up the good work, and let John Bruce type his tales of middle-managers. To paraphrase Capote on Kerouac, that's not writing, it's typing.

(Notice how JB won't take on someone like Berube -- the mocking he'd bring on himself would be quite fun though.)

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

LB, as always, you turn coal into diamonds. (For the record, as soon as I can live down the "detailism" for "verisimilitude" comment, I'm going to continue that conversation as well. Granted, I had a long-standing association of verisimilitude with ekphrasis...which in retrospect doesn't sound nearly so sound as it did at the time. But anyway, expect my "response paper" come morning. Or something. As I may have to "deal" with some "middle management" types...'cause you know, damn it feels good to be a gangsta. I.e. I will rob them blind by stealing staplers, or I'll burn the place down.)

[gzombie]

I sympathize, A. The Internet is full of sad little men, isn't it? And yet unhappiness is not alleviated by attempts to spread unhappiness.

[gzombie]

^ "their unhappiness is not.."

[Amardeep]

As a non-sequitur:

Someone (me?) should write a satirical academic thriller called "The Hiring Committee," where an extremely competitive and self-conscious graduate student does Whatever It Takes to get hired, only to discover that the particular job he wants is actually going to be given (an "insider" search) to an undercover FBI agent who is investigating a murder.

But it turns out the FBI agent is someone the protagonist dated in graduate school. She had dropped out and fallen off the radar. Unbeknownst to anyone, she started working undercover for the Agency.

While uncovering this mystery, our schlemiel anti-hero gets romantically involved with the chief suspect for the murder being investigated. (She -- the suspect -- happens to be the chair of the Hiring Committee)

What do you think? I'm aiming for David Lodge meets John Grisham.

Oh, and John Bruce will be a character in the novel (not sure what his exact role will be yet; perhaps he will be a boorish blogger who runs a blog called The Alley Gory).

[Rich Puchalsky]

"Feel free to inflate his hit count by demeaning me in every which way you can."

An ironic blogwar with John Bruce? So, so not worth the time.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

But they try, Gzombie, they try so very hard. Sure, we laugh when they inevitably fail (during the course of which they deny, mightily and absurdly, that we're laughing at them); but in the interim, they make wonderful object lessons for students.

Amardeep, I'd be there opening night, all three of my names in tow. (I may even invent a fourth for the occasion. Let's see: "Scott Eric _____ Kaufman." Maybe another "Eric" would work: "Scott Eric Eric Kaufman." No, that's ridiculous. I could mock my paternal heritage and go with an "Uber." "Scott Eric Uber Kaufman" has a nice ring to it. "You think you can out-sell the Uber-Merchant-Man? Come on down to CRAAAAAAZY KAUFMAN'S!"

Rich, I should know better than respond to his barbs with anything other delightfully derisive laughter, but...nevermind, there's no "but." I should know better.

[Adam Roberts]

Don't do as he says, Mr Ace, by the way. If you came up for a job in my university I'd be very well disposed towards you academically speaking even before you began your presentation -- never having met you before -- precisely on the strength of your blog.

One thing that's been an eye-opener to me, as a middle-aged Southern English man with the repressive conditioning always to be polite at all times, even to people who are smacking you in the head with a cricket bat ('I say would you mind awfully if I asked you to stop doing that ...?') is how r-u-d-e people can get when they're online. Is it a 'I can't see your face therefore you don't register with my conscience as a human being' type thing? Or is it just that people are more fesity and aggressive over there in America?

Tolkien once claimed that he spoke 'the politeness dialect of the old Westron man', which if it could be purged of its reactionary ideological odour would be a wonderful language indeed to speak.

[Adam Roberts]

I was going to correct the 'fesity' of the ultimate sentence of my para 2, there, to 'feisty'. But now I look at it I'm minded to leave it as 'fesity'. A perfectly expressive word.