A few years ago, I took a trip with a company that came highly
recommended, called the Green Tortoise, and wrote a journal
about the experience

http://web.newsguy.com/commonsense/burning-tortoise.html

The name of the journal is "Bad Times on the Green Tortoise".
It's not an endorsement. I would not do business with them again,
and the account should make my reasons for this clear.

That was in 2001, and by the time 2003 rolled around, I expected
that this story would be over. The facts are not in dispute,
and if one is running a business, and reneges on one's agreements,
and abuses ones customers, common sense should tell one that these
are not choices that will help one's business.

But Pop Christianity, the spiritual basis for the American
cultural mainstream, has never had much of a focus on personal
responsibility, and sure enough, some nitwit wrote in to
bitterly complain that I had done his "friends" at the Green
Tortoise a terrible injustice by telling the truth about them.
Apparently, I was supposed to keep quiet about that, because
the truth was bad for the Tortoise's business.

I deconstructed a few of the boy's rationalizations

http://www.geocities.com/commonsense666atlast/green_tortoise.html

Same old garbage - "if you were really tough, you'd give me what
I wanted without any backtalk". ROTFLMAO. I wasn't aware of the
fact that one had to remove one's own backbone in order to
become "tough", and I have to admit that I'm still a little
unclear on the notion of how caving in to pressure can be seen
as a sign of strength.

But then, I don't have a drug habit, either.



Enough of this c**p. The beauty of having one's own rebuttal
page is that this kind of thing eventually is OVER. When one
finally nails somebody, it's like shining a light on a burglar
- what's he going to say? Once the details are out, they're out.

And getting them out has taken a bite out of my time. It's
delayed the Burning Man movie night which will now be post-burn,
but finally, this is starting to wrap up. The PC era, in general,
seems to be on its way out, and the forums I find myself
in (eg.chi-burning) are saner, friendlier places that don't
leave me with a lot of rumors that I need to rebut.

The principle for creating and running such a forum is so
simple, I'm amazed that so many have had trouble finding it,
or accepting it - if somebody acts like a nitwit, show
him the door. Don't hold a poll, don't have a debate, just
send him away. For all of the wasted bandwidth and thought
that has gone into constructing rules and regulations for
forums online and off, simplicity is what works best. Adopting
it closes the door to those who would play "lawyer",
wasting our time.



Once I've fleshed in my rebuttal to the BMORG fan club
silliness, that's about it for the Internet rebuttal pages.
So, what's coming up? Photos and recipes, mostly, and
an occasional restaurant review. Time to mellow out a
little, and after running into the Otherkin (people who
seriously believe that they are elves), I've really had
my quota of strangeness for a while.



Joe Dunphy