LAST WORDS ON THE GET SCAMMED? FALLOUT
I got up this morning and initially didn't think anymore about it. It was old news (scroll down for the beginning of the mess); there was a whole new day of things to do, places to go, yadda, yadda, yadda. But, me being me, I had to go see who else had taken a whack at me since I had walked away from the keyboards last night. So I took my coffee into the office and fired up the beasties and scrolled through the comments to the ones that had arrived after I had thrown up what I had intended to be the close of the conversation.

And, sure enough, DreamBoy had tossed another brickbat at me. The first paragraph of his reply to my final entry just left me so exasperated I decided I needed to, once and for all, just stop this train wreck. There was obviously no way to talk to the guy through the comments; he never got the basic premise of where I was coming from when I tossed the original post up. He had decided I was some form of life beneath his own, who he could impugn without any thought to the consequences. And he had, once again, committed the cardinal sin: he spoke to me in a condescending manner, as if he was some sort of fucking sage trying to teach the peasant why he was a fool.

I decided to write him directly, and walk through the mess once last time. Here's how it went:

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Eric,
The Kill van Kull is a major shipping lane that lies between Staten Island and New Jersey. Any heavy transport ship, like those carrying oil or shipping containers, that does not go to Brooklyn uses it to access Howland Hook or Port Elizabeth in order to off-load their cargos bound for the tri-state area and beyond. You can see pictures of it here (last two pics). It's located a short stroll from my front door.

I never do anything "pseodnymously" (sp:pseudonymously). My name is TC. It's at the bottom of every post on my blog and in Jarvis's comment thread. Type the phrase "leather penguin" (don't forget the quotation marks!) into any search engine and the top five or more results will direct you to one of my pages, which can lead even the newest newbie to my last name (Lynch), and even a mugshot. I don't hide who I am; I think that's a punk move, as is using spoof e-mail addresses. Anyone disagreeing with me can easily contact me through a variety of methods, such as comments on my blog, posts to the various message boards located in my website or on a separate server, or via e-mail.

No "threat" was ever issued. I said that if you had made the snarky comments (which I consider to be "flames," albeit you might not agree and believe that they are merely pithy derisions) in my physical presence they would have elicited from me an overt physical response. That did not constitute a "threat." It was a statement of fact.

The first paragraph of my blog posting clearly stated that I wasn't sure about the article concerning the interview, and after a cursory ("spent ten seconds") query it still seemed fishy. I searched for "WSNR" and got the link I posted. I clicked "listen" and found the Sporting News radio website, where the host and show were nowhere to be found. I clicked the "listen live" link and heard some guys talking about A-Rod while I looked up Talkline and got the link that I posted, where no mention of the host or show in question existed.

That was the entirety of my, as you put it, "crackerjack investigative reporting." The sports boys gave out a phone number for listeners, so I called. The screener had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about the host and show in question.

I wrote my riff and posted it to my blog. I e-mailed Jarvis a link to the posting because I check out Buzzmachine regularly and wanted to see if he thought I had something. It was more of a question than anything else. I didn't write that the interview or host was a con job. I wrote my riff because the bell was ringing away, because the website I found when I Googled "WSNR" was jock radio.

He slapped the extract and link up on his blog and the rest, as they say, is history. He didn't see if what I sent him played out. He just banged it onto his blog, which kind of goes to the point of my post.

My blog says, right up top, "rants and ripostes." I don't portray myself as anything more than me, and the stuff I post is nothing more than what pops into my mind at any given time based on some form of outside stimuli. The original post I tossed up is what it is: my reaction to an article that set off a bell in my head, and after a quick look at it the bell was still ringing, so I blasted away.

Anyone familiar with me, personally or through the stuff located on either my blog or on my website, has an idea where I'm coming from. Just as I gleaned an impression of you from reading a variety of the things you have posted on your blog before I sat down to write this. We probably have more in common than in opposition.

But I have one, overriding rule that governs everything: any stranger fucks with me in any way whatsoever gets fucked over hard enough to learn to never try that shit again. The link you posted proved nothing about the post I put up, and I held Rule One in check when you made the first crack, but the "Holy *&$? Have you ever even used the internet before?" That little bon mot flipped the switch.

I was using 300 baud modems and dumpster diving when you were in grade school. Before the browsers, before the dot coms, back when you had to learn how to keep your telephone bill from looking like your rent check through creative use of the network nodes you were dialing into. Throwing that shit on the table was like grabbing the tail of a dog you never met before and thinking you wouldn't get bit.

At that point the Irish in me took over. It's not like the Irish in you, boyo. You're a half breed who couldn't care less; I'm the fully loaded model who goes back to visit the places my parents were born whenever he can, who grew up on stories of family members who took part in The Rising.

You're probably a very nice guy, Eric. A regular metrosexual, from perusing the posts on your blog. I'm not. I am a hardheaded king high motherfucker. I got a rage hardwired into my DNA that'll probably get me killed but I don't fucking care once the anger is washing through the veins because man, that buzz is better than them all combined.

Don't ever fuck with someone you don't know, Eric. It's a rule I learned growing up in a NYC housing project before you ever took your first lungfulls of Indiana air.

If I wanted to threaten you, Eric, it wouldn't be by posting some text on a message board, believe me. It would be, after making the bits and bytes that make up a life dance a fucking jig, when I met you at the elevators of your job. You work in publishing at a company located directly above Penn Station. 2 Penn Plaza? It wouldn't take much to figure out. It wouldn't take much to find out anything at all.

Think next time you want to play games with strangers, Eric.
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DISCLAIMER: The link to the pics in the original letter was farked; I was looking at one screen while working off another and got something wrong. Sorry 'about that Eric, old boy! And I entered a comma I missed in the original and deleted a word that had been entered twice while I was writing the sentence about the buzz. Bad Me!

Then I leashed the youngest of the household's beasts and took him for a vigorous run through of his workout while I let my blood pressure come back down. There's nothing like watching a canine's canines chomp down on a rope and refuse to yield to bring a sense of contentment that everything in the world is relatively OK. Well, that and well tended armaments.

Off to the weapons locker!
This is TC Lynch, signing off and not giving a shit what happens next!