Reader Abuse Post #2

Comic courtesy of xkcd.com as part of their not-for-profit reproduction allowance, an open-source comic, if you will.
*Note: This comic predates YouTube's actual comment 'Audio Preview' option by several weeks. SHOCKING!*


A few of you, though not many and certainly not likely, may remember way back when I started this blog and had a brief post talking about the planet Pluto.

Yes a planet. Not to open old wounds, but the premise of the post was that it seems insane to stop calling Pluto a planet when it's new classification is "dwarf planet" and the second half of that term happens to still be "planet." We just created a junior class of planet and named it that. Big deal.

Still, I received a long and rambling post gratuitously sucking off the theoretical johnson of some specific astrophysicist who was waging a veritable war against the tyrannical minority who won the majority vote of reclassifying Pluto. More to the point, this response went on to talk about blatantly wrong understandings of both science and English grammar, arguing against me but supporting my exact point, but less funnily.


That said, I now bring you a new entry into what I am officially dubbing the "Reader Abuse Series." This past week I wrote an entry called "On Sloth" which for two of eleven paragraphs I describe very poorly what little I remember about the animal whose name is also "Sloth":

"The one I always liked best was Sloth, because it's the only sin that is generally frowned upon while maintaining a presence in the animal kingdom. Cats are notoriously slothful, but there are actual animals called sloths. There is the three-toed sloth and the four-toed sloth and I am fairly sure they both have five toes and the name is representative of lengthy claws or some such thing.

"But guys.

"Sloths can actually move really fast. And they can shred you with those claws, however many in number they are. These critters just sleep like 20 hours a day. They hang upside-down just chillin'. They are downright lackadaisical."

I then went on to mock myself, Quentin Tarantino, Twilight, My Best Friend Is A Vampire, and Kiefer Sutherand.

Apparently, I merely glossed over a major issue, because I have received some kind of fan mail that, though only partially signed, is evidently from a member of a watch group dedicated to preventing lies and libel from hurting our poor, defenseless friends the sloths.

Mathew writes:

I really do love how you got nearly everything about the sloth wrong. There are in fact a two-toed and a three-toed variety of sloth, named after the number of fingers they have (both species have three-toes on their rear limbs). They are actually very, very slow, and so absolutely harmless they don't even kill the moss that grows on their backs. Also, they are quite free of the sin Sloth, as they are very active, just not at all quick.

Still, you're description of them as 'lackadaisical' is quite appropriate.

With friend's like this, who needs haters?

Apparently Matt loves how I got everything wrong. I added +1 to toes, though this one should have been obvious since everybody knows that all sloths come standard equipped with +1 boots of slomotion and a shiny, silver dagger.

Apparently they also behave just as I describe, except way slower. Matt just wants to point out that even though their claws, which he mentions, are razor sharp for tree climbing these are not at all harmful to people unless you try to, say, hold a sloth. Additionally, despite being incredibly slow moving, a sloth is not actually slothful.

Well of course they're not, you asshole, because sin requires forethought. Sloths by nature do not possess a frontal lobe large enough to for evil intent. They will not gain that until mankind has been wiped from the Earth and our weak Eloi descendants are mere food for them and the Morlocks who dwell deep beneath the surface world.

To end I would like to point out three things. Firstly, Matt seems to have missed the point of this blog as a place of humor and intellectual silliness. For shame, Matt. That was a bad thing. You can't see it, but I'm tsk-tsk-ing with my fingers.

Secondly, Matt's closing line is hilarious because it professes that A) sloths have friends and enemies upon whom their self image is based, like Chris Brown; B) Matt is a "friend," despite him taking ten minutes out of his life just to publish a blog post "hating" on me and my unimportant and admittedly nonscientific tirade about sloths; and C) completely fails to correctly utilize the English language or rhetorical logic to make any valid point.

Also, I've been singing Dave Chappelle's R. Kelly "Piss On You" song all morning and I keep playing over in my head:

"Haters wanna hate, Lovers wanna love. I don't even want none of the above. I want to pee on you."


This concludes the second installment of the "Reader Abuse Series." If you liked this and wish to read more I suggest also the first in the series, dated March 5th of this year. I also suggest more people post absolutely insane comments on blog entries in the hopes of getting publicly mocked on the internet like so many gag contestants on American Idol.

If you found any of this offensive, please fuck off to either my blog's privacy policy or its "About" section located at the bottom and right of the page, respectively, where I reserve the right to mock anyone I see fit. I would like to thank Matthew for his comments, as without them I would have had nothing to write about this weekend. From the bottom of my heart, next to the cockles, thank you, Matt.