Word War 2006

[CaptHayfever]

As seen in the topic entitled “Essays”, I write for a campus newspaper called The Monitor, which is a free-submission paper; that is, it accepts contributions from anybody, regardless of subject, stance, or literacy. (Students who want conventional journalism read The Index, the more “official” campus paper.)

The following account will be divided into separate posts for what happened in each issue of The Monitor this semester.
___________________________________
3 Feb 06:

Doctor Larry Iles is a British man living in Kirksville for the sole reason that his wife is a professor at my school. He hates America, especially the Midwest, and utterly loathes his time spent here, traveling to Paris whenever possible.

Iles is a socialist, but the only way you could possibly tell is from his absurd ad hominems against anyone more conservative than Michael Moore. Because despite his being extremely well-educated (as mentioned before, he holds a doctorate), in touch with world issues (works with Amnesty International), and internationally published (I guess Paris has a Monitor too), he writes like this:

Multiculturalism must be rooted in reality, not abstraction, to survive
Opinion by >> Larry Iles

Resisting the dreaded despair upon return to rural Kirksville from sophisticated Sorbonne, Paris visiting History researchership last semester via coastal beautiful Eastbourne UK father’s homestead, what have I more optimistically learnt from 2005? That might cheer all we progressive MONITOR type enthusiasts fully up yourselves similarly en retour for 2006 opening semester! After all, frankly politically, we need the spirit non-sexistly of erectile orgasm, emphatically not impotent reaction to the ultra-conservative puritans in control of both this campus administration and pathetic White House with its uncritical TV, sycophantic male overweight bully boy white editors and trivialized female scandal reporters.

Firstly, having personally lived barely a few miles for nearly half last year from some of the worst race riots antagonistically in this century so fat in PARIS history, I have learnt to vehemently distrust the consequent, exaggerated pessimism of those from our Anglo-Saxon egocentric own afar about them! From, that is, those who do not really, evilly want “multiculturalism” to more peacefully work at all in 2006! Therefore, they see the car burnings and manifest but occasional subway, metro system race hatred fights I have personally aghast witnessed in Paris. To be, what? Proofs of the “failure” of such harmony efforts as represented by multicultural housing co-existence, public provided as we in Europe have more in site abundances of than here in wealth, worst-segregated FORTRESS, dog-guarded North American private enterprise sink or swim quagmire land.

Don’t be mistaken, FOLKS!......[Capt: Cutting it off here so as to avoid making anyone’s head explode. This was only the first 25% of the column.]

People from all points of the political spectrum have often criticized Larry’s uniquely unintelligible writing style, and each time he responds in the manner of an arrogant, self-righteous jackhole who thinks that anyone who can’t tell what he’s saying at first glance is a backwoods right-wing nimrod. (There is even a Facebook group called “I’m Liberal, But I Still Think Larry Iles Needs to Shut the Bleep Up")
____________________________________
And remember, “I’m-a Luigi, number one!”

[CaptHayfever]

17 Feb 06:

But after the article excerpted above, one young student named me finally snapped and broke out his finely tuned parody skills in a letter to the editor:

Dear progressive Monitor type enthusiasts-

Many times with the visual comprehension of the writings by Larry of the British Iles, and wonderingly if he truly madly deeply purpley monkily dishwasherly the English language? But fear not the lack of commas even in excruciatingly running on sentences such as the ones in his piece about peace or as they say elsewhere, using, too, many, also, verily, irritatigly, lacking, a predicate. To be, what? Adverbs, too, usingly often suchly that they indeed certainly helpingly distractingly from OVERUSED and misplaced capitalization, FOLKS! Shine get!

If I may disagree for A moment OF YOUR time, but I can't, because confusingly the tosh is scribed by a drunkily lunatic hencefore, I am un-warily OF what IS being stated throughout. After all your base, why quotate what is NOT neceSSARILY obvious, like as the nAme of "Kirksville", do we? A winner is you, the master of unlocking!

Garry Trudeau sums it up best: "A verb, senator! We need a verb!"

And I'm not even a Lang/Lit student,
Al Hayfever

Yes, I used the name Hayfever. This was not done to protect myself, but rather because I wanted to write in-character, and Al Hayfever is a far more brash individual than I.
__________________________________
And remember, “I’m-a Luigi, number one!”

[CaptHayfever]

8 Mar 06:

Larry does not like being criticized. Not at all. The following letter was scanned into the issue rather than retyped, because the editor wanted to show us the ink revisions—here shown in red, except where only punctuation was written— which Larry himself scribbled all over the typeset letter, no alterations whatsoever. (I wish I knew the editor; he seems like a cool guy):

Suggested, only title, NO “HAYFEVER”, I DON,T LIKE YOUR OVER_LABOURED “AMERICANEEZE”, EITHER!!

OR DOES A FELLA HAVE TO BE A PROFESSOR BECKER TO GET OVER_DEFENDED IN THE MONITOR? (illegible scribble, REALLY!!)

Dear LETTERS,The Monitor.

Do permit, in natural justice, a reply from the attacked party, moi, to the(sic) ‘’bravely’’ anonymous “AL Hayfever’’ in you last February 22 issue LETTERS SECTION.In the course of which missive diatribe, this (sick) courageous gent is permitted to enthrone himself as, in his own unclearly abusive mind, as what, an authority! On something,pretentiously like so many snobbish Americans of his snobbish male middle class he feels,modest ain,t he, like some medieval pope, he miscalls “English’’! And yet by self-candor in his own vanity-fair eyes,he is not even ‘’a Lang-Lit student’’; as if, incidentally, that twer strangely qualifies you for such self-proclaimed arrogant a role as he assumes, at all.

I confess, like that great over-verb user St. Augustine ,I have now got so accustomed to this type of “TSU” REPETITIVE critique !That, sinfulle, with not too many, even, commas too, I rather enjoy retoting and ridiculing your “USA” narrow-minded mediocrities back.Seriously, if I can so in elementary intellectual and prose freedom be permitted to use either adjectives or adverbs when I so choose, thank you, it is the last straw! For me, this came last year in letting such prose ridicule go unchallenged, ever again.

WHen, I saw a well-known TSU English professor, whose global publication record equals my own in acquaintance, they himself viciously lead-letter INDEX “critiqued.” By a supporter of EXACT leden prose equivalent to “Hayfever,s’’, of the now self-resigned Mayoral and Council Masten tendency Judged grammar poor “unsuitable” to teach; just because he, excellently, assembled the case, as too few students were doing, against the still dangerous potential Hazel Creek water landfill sale.

Wha,s particularly sad is that ALBERTCOLDFRENZY,S abusive trash on grammar faults, masks very little hard content; and yet its considered by the writer something ha’s mastered-anonymously willing to see in print!WHY?IN SUCH CRETINPRIDE? WHY?

Finally, though, as I have noted often about such vanity-fare offended displays by American males, from Ben Franklin onwards in sheer hypocrisy which even would be FUNNY, yes, I shall capitalize where I undictorially wich, sir-idiot, the ridicule exercise falls more down: in its sole, serious charge of alleged incomprehension! What W.H. Auden, who got fed up, too, with this USA backward region and supposed colleagues trying to meat priorities OUT his style by such grammar “FLATTENING” felt, namby-bamby silly, about such pedantry efforts.WHY?

Because AL SUNFLOWER DROOPER gives, just enough away! to show he does comprehend exactly what I mean to annoy him. And paradoxically if not logically show thereby he needs to examine his own ‘’predicate’’ etc nonsense. “Stuff,” I am relieved to say, went out into the conservative dustbin, where it belongs! When UK grammar school BEATLES lyricists, J. Lennon and P. Macartney first challenged its artificial class (bourgeois!) constraints in Frankfort and Liverpool in the much missed by me healthier and liberated 1960s!

Without too many adverbs for your mentally 2006 limited imbecile, let’s prove it. Firstly, my own nationality and name is singled out as “British Iles’’, to be pun effective should be spelled correctly ISLES, as if that’s a what “wonderingly” too different thing! Actually, in real content, I prever the Norman, European community origins when I do prose, “or anything else,” whose to use nationhood critiques, more validly. And I hope less with maly obvious prejudice intent, abusively!

Two ALBERTUS-DROOP finds too much on ‘’peace’’ or anything else.Well sorry for breathing, Yank?But oh so revealing; as “peace” is the one thing lacking, be a USA land that is both in real LAMENTATION the planet’s very biggest arms exporter. And in [color=red]side its own borders by your[/red] state executions and gun homicides is our planet’s most violent society; even when not, really, at war for anything but other peoples (MOSLEM) oil!

So in a nutshell, “Hayfever” I invite you 2006 to proffer more nonsense. Because it says so much: about why Midwesterner US citizens make such noted leaden prose non-contribution to real change, even of the non-sexistly ‘literary’ variety.

YOURS “CAPITALISED” DEFIANTLY AGAISNT PRUDISH HUMBUGGERY
Larry Iles

P.S. Oh, and not that it will make any impact on ‘Hayfevers’ of the USA and others—illegible—will read my—illegible—and such—3 more lines of illegibility.

So now he thinks he’s the pope, Lennon, & McCartney combined, he doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘hayfever,’ and he doesn’t know how puns work. This, of course, is still on top of his absurd assumption that claiming “I can’t tell what you’re saying” is the same as “I disagree with you.” Plus, how many completely unrelated tangents did he go on at the end there? Nationalism, Iraq War, sexism, claiming the word ‘stuff’ is a conservative thing, and revealing his own hypocrisy…that’s 4 unrelated tangents. And the psycho thinks I wasn’t trying to sound nonsensical, so he doesn’t get how parody works either.

Larry’s wife is a lot more literate than he is. Most of her letter to the editor in the same issue was about a different topic, but she did take time out to go after me:

…The person or persons using the pseudonym “Al Hayfever”, for all the jibes against Iles’ style, did not succeed in convincing the readers that the content and substance of the articles Hayfever read by Iles were not understood. They or (s)he just found it easier to ridicule.

On the contrary, my dear lady, several readers told me that they knew EXACTLY what I was talking about. In fact, the only complaints I was made aware of were from you and your husband.
Meanwhile, in the rest of her letter, Professor Betty Louise McLane-Iles was also upset over what she perceived as a bias in what The Monitor covered in the last issue. Senior editor Jon Lawinger gave this brief response to that:

Editor’s note from Jon Lawinger: The Monitor welcomes criticism as much as praise, but on one point I would like to briefly respond. Claiming that this “newspaper feels compelled to praise and recognize one radical while ridiculing another” misrepresents the structure of the Monitor. The Monitor is not a unified entity supporting a single viewpoint. Thus, as an entity, it cannot feel compelled to praise or ridicule anyone; it can only be a forum for praise and ridicule by individuals whose different perspectives are included in its pages.

Seriously, I want Jon Lawinger to be my friend.
__________________________________
And remember, “I’m-a Luigi, number one!”

[CaptHayfever]

29 Mar 06

Unlike Larry, I appreciate criticism. Like Larry, though, I have (or at least the Hayfever character has) a quick temper, and an idiotic blithering rant like that most definitely will incite it. I have no quarrel with the professor, though; she’s done nothing to me except being wrong about my intent.

An open letter of response Professor McLane-Iles,

Thank you for your civil and legible response to my earlier letter. I appreciate the feedback. And while my comments may have been a bit harsh, I admit, I must take issue with your insinuation that I was merely using your husband's writing style as a substitute target for his ideas. As a matter of fact, I truly do not know what ideas he was trying to express. I haven't a clue what he was saying. Indeed, the only times I have been able to determine Larry's intent were in the letter immediately following mine on the page (because of the editor's response) and his letter in the last issue (because it was about me). Again, thank you for your constructive criticism.

Sincerely,
Al Hayfever

An open letter of response to Larry Iles,

--You certainly do have the right to use as many adverbs as you want, but try to remember that they don't replace verbs.
--See, I emphasized the fact that I'm not a student of language because I'm sure someone who is would have a much longer complaint list than I.
--McCartney. The man is a knight; you could at least do him the respect of spelling his name correctly.
--Also, thank you for adding in their first initials; we ignorant Americans otherwise never would have figured out which Lennon and McCartney from Liverpool you meant.
--Breaking the rules is one thing; being really really bad at it is another. Go read some Cummings to learn how to do it right.
--I like how you make so many assumptions regarding my nationality and economic status. Never mind the countless other students of varying countries and financial "classes" who agreed that your sheer incomprehensible blather is sheerly incomprehensible.
--To be, what?
--I'm strongly in favor of peace. However, since it sounds exactly like the word "piece," it's kind of funny to say "piece about peace".
--Yes, I am aware of how to spell the word "isles;" however, the pun would not have worked had I spelled it that way.
--Pretension is a two-way street, my friend; make sure you're not driving on it when you accuse others of doing so.
--Hay fever (n) - An allergic condition affecting the mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract and the eyes, most often characterized by nasal discharge, sneezing, and itchy, watery eyes and usually caused by an abnormal sensitivity to airborne pollen.
--Alexander. Not Albert. Never has my name been Albert.

Try handwriting it before you type it next time,
Al Hayfever

Meanwhile, “provoked” by Lawinger’s note, both Ileses sent in new correspondence to this edition (Betty’s letter is short and will be copied entirely; Larry’s is absurdly long and will be excerpted):

Dear Editor:

Regarding your personal editorial response to my letter in your last issue of March 8th, Wednesday, you, as editor wrote and published the article on Professor Becker. You, the editor most actively involved in responding to Iles and myself, make the decision to print the supposedly anonymous letter by Mr. “Hayfever”. In this instance, both actions reflect most certainly a single viewpoint. The letter itself may well have been an editorial product, given the malevolent publication of a carefully reduced copy of Iles’ response to your Mr. “Hayfever”.

Thank you,
Dr. Betty Louise McLane-Iles
Professor of French

(Yes, she signs all her letters “Professor of French.”)
Wrong motives, lady. First of all, Jon and I have never even met; my only contact on the Monitor staff is a different editor who doesn’t handle the letters page. Secondly, the letter was only reduced so that whole rant would fit on the page.

This except will be annotated for my MSTie pleasure.

Dear Jon

Readers should know! This letter is, carefully, typed on yellow pad paper [Capt: Who types on yellow pad paper?] and is punctuated the way I want it. It is, also, addressed not to the usual complete MONITOR editorial collective, at least one of whom I know from Amnesty International work, Ian [Capt: Ian is the guy I know, oddly enough.]. Despite, too, the going-on farcical discourtesy of the letter reproduction I am complaining about, I will also continue to submit my perhaps less censored BY MR LAWINGER Monitor Opinion column [Capt: We’re outside contributors, Larry, we don’t get official columns.]; requesting however! That if you still are genuinely a democratic collective, other awake MONITOR members bring some accountability to Lawinger: for, frankly, the sheer Jane Austin [Capt: Dude’s not very good with names, is he?] tameness and nastiness friends of mine such as past MONITOR associates Andres Delgado and Mary Burford briefed me “one day I’d have to face!!” [Capt: So either they used first person pronouns to refer to you or else you just misquoted them.]
………
an HONOURABLY submitted non-EMAIL letter! [Capt: My response to this bit of technophobia will appear in the next post.]
………
Two other rejoinders to the prissy giraffe; [Capt: Giraffe?] yep, we can all be nasty can’t we in LAZY easiness! One: I notice in reply to Professor Mc Lane ILES [Capt: He just misspelled his own wife’s name.], Lawinger reiterates a line of defense for his return to PUNDIT predecessor jejeuneness [Capt: I don’t know what this word means, but MS Word is telling me Larry misspelled it.], a line that the magazine under him does not have any line but “individuals.” HOW VERY USA BOURGEOIS IN NONSENSE!? [Capt: Nonsense? It’s the paper’s freaking mission statement and has been for 10 years, long before Jon Lawinger showed up at TSU!] ‘JL’ calls himself an “editor” and thankfully unlike the PUNDIT most published works inside your average MONITOR remain “liberal” or “Left” by both INDEX or even national US media standards less prissy than ‘Humbug-Jon!’ [Capt: Because, as we all know, only liberal writers are worth reading ]
………
YS Larry Iles

Jon’s last word on the subject:

Editor’s note: In the interest of not turning the letters page into a shouting match or arena for personal bickering, I won’t be publicly responding to the letters directed at me here. I think private communication would be more appropriate at this point.
- Jon Lawinger

__________________________________
And remember, “I’m-a Luigi, number one!”

[CaptHayfever]

12 Apr 06

Larry & Betty, to their credit, did not respond to the open response to them. This time.

I can and will use my default pseudonym for future matters, both in and out of the paper, but in the interest of restoring the order, Al Hayfever will not further antagonize the Larry Iles matter. But I’m a man of many aliases. Alii. Whatever.

Dear Monitor,

Upon reading your last issue, I was appalled at Dr. & Prof. Iles for their attacks on editor Jon Lawinger’s actions. The Monitor is a free-submission paper and always has been; that’s the very reason its readers enjoy it. The same policy that allows Larry Iles to send any column he desires and know for a fact that it will be printed also allows Alex Hayfever to send any letter he wants with the same security, and to suggest that Hayfever’s letters should not have been run is to vote for dissolving the very principle upon which this newspaper was founded, indeed, the very principle that lets Iles see his work published. As for the comments about the reproduction of Larry’s letter, I don’t think it was a very fiendish decision, nor were the editors intending to obscure its content; I, for one, had no trouble reading it whatsoever.

By the by, to Betty McLane-Iles, I know the man who uses the name Hayfever personally, and I can assure you that he is in no way connected to Lawinger; in fact, the two have never met. And to Larry Iles regarding his viciously fallacious denigration of email, there is no dishonor in emailing contributions to a newspaper; one would assume that an editor on deadline appreciates the ease of copying a text file rather than retyping a paper submission.

With all due respect,
Nathan Rator

Since Rator is a more real-sounding name, I gave Larry a fighting chance to decode it with a few well-placed clues, but given that he probably isn’t much of a Snicket fan, he probably won’t get it.

A closing note: Keep in mind that all of this was going on at the same time as my regularly contributed opinion pieces that I send in under my real name.

There is only one issue remaining for the semester. None of my fake names will be in it, leaving Larry as the only wild card. After the next issue runs (in 3 weeks due to a contest), I’ll report back in.
____________________________________
And remember, “I’m-a Luigi, number one!”

[DELICIOUS POISON]

Amazing. I agree with you, certainly. This man's writings baffle me. I can glean from them some sort of vague malcontent... Which means you most certainly are doing your job. Carry on, Cappin'.

[CaptHayfever]

3 May 06

The last word on the matter comes not from Larry at all, but from Betty, so it will actually be coherent and civil.

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your interesting letter from Mr. Nathan Rator.

I would agree that it is the editorial right and responsibility to publish substansive letters representing diverse, frequently opposing views, from all different sources, and to determine articles of significant content and depth. [Capt: Actually, if you had actually paid attention to what Nat or Lawinger said, the Monitor editors are not supposed to determine anything of the sort.] If you had the opportunity to read the March 8 issue, I had given considerable praise to the editor for the quality of coverage and substance in the Monitor. I then also discussed some aspects that I found worthy of criticism; just as it is important to communicate praise to a publication, it is just as important to communicate criticism. My second letter was merely a response to the editor's comments to my first letter; basically a disagreement between us as to whther or not the choice of material is an editorial decision. [Capt: What part of FREE-SUBMISSION do you not get?] I found the tone of Mr. Hayfever's original letter disturbingly close to the spirit expressed by the unedited reproduction of the Iles letter in the subsequent March 8th issue. To say that the two editorial decisions [Capt: One decision.] were not related is simply very obviously disputable.

I would add that Mr. Rator states that he didn't feel it (the manner in which the L. Iles letter was reproduced) "was a very fiendish decision". I would agree. I wasn't 'very' fiendish. I had not used such strong vocabulary, qualified carefully by Mr. Rator. [Capt: She gives me too much credit; I was simply sneaking in VFDs to give clues that it was another psuedonym.]

I am glad that the person writing these anonymous letters does exist, as Mr. Rator assures us. I used to be an editorial policy of newspapers on this campus that letters to the editor be signed by the actual person writing and that the newspaper staff confirm the existence of that person. [Capt: Since one of my articles last semester had been written as Hayfever--in fact, my editor friend Ian had been informed that it was me--the staff was able to take the letters on good faith. Certainly, it is not easy to come forward and to pen openly and honestly a provocative letter or article to be published as the prouct of the author's own thought or satirical musings. But it certainly affirms the spirit and aspirations of an open society to do so. And it helps other people be less afraid of thinking and sharing each others' words. Being too afraid to admit to one's own thoughts nowadays falls in too closely with the dangerous fears carefully encouraged in the recent publication by Horowitz, a McCarthyite terrifying compilation of scholars branded as 'dangerous'. It's like the spirit of fear and conformity forcing the last of the human species to give up their human form and dignity in Ionesco's play "Rhinocerous". [Capt: Gee, thanks for calling me a coward, lady. I reiterate to my friends here, the use of an alias in these letters was an ARTISTIC decision, not an issue of security.]

That's about all I have to say on this topic. Our thanks for your consideration of our views.

Dr. B.L. McLane-Iles
Professor of French

As I mentioned before, I'm done with my side of this fight, and I'm glad the Iles' final shot was so restrained, but that couple still annoys me.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"