Monkey, See?

Jim Valvis. I was speaking metaphorically when I called him a monkey, but after reading this and this I have to think it's a far more apt description than I ever imagined. These little attention-seeking screeds of his resemble nothing so much as a monkey in the zoo waggling his nuts and flinging poo at the crowds in a frantic bid to be noticed.

He wants to piss people off. Any attention is better than none, I suppose, so he deliberately crafts this nonsense so that people will mutter and shake their heads and point it out to others and, most importantly, talk about it. Attention is attention is attention, and if Jim can't get it legitimately with the stories he posts, well then he'll do it some other way. And it works: get me, hooked like a fish on the barb of Jim's insouciant wit. Wiggle, wiggle.

Well, I've spit out the bait and won't be drawn in again. Jim can caper about without my interference now; I have better things to do than cement my rep as the Guy Who Can't Play Well With Others by sending more attention his lonely way. I will make one final observation, though: Jim certainly does speak highly of himself, to the point that one wonders why he proclaims his worth so loudly and so often. Just who is he trying to convince? And why? As The Bard himself might observe, methinks thou doth protest too much.

So, okay. That ought to put paid to the monkeyshines. In the next entry I'll go into why I was away for so long and the lovely electronic distractions I discovered during my absence. But for now, as Fast Eddie Felson said in the last line of The Color of Money: "I'm back!"