OT - douchey MgoBlog users

That Deftones album kicks. When I was a student at Mich, we played that CD in my friend's room one time and we suddenly went from an "I'm in a band" dorks' pedantic modern-rock-ripping session to a Wrestlemania-Bedspring-popping-TV-going-through-the-window melee. So that's two things we have in common, WP. We like Michigan football, and you apparently like the Deftones. Then again, I don't really fit in well with most people at a Deftones concert. I came to them via Far. I got to Thursday the same way. I don't really fit in well with most people at a Thursday concert either. I miss Far, even if all that's left is a huggy, well-meaning skinny kid who plays beside an R2D2 unit. You know why? Because I'm an intellectual snob. My non-sports-related websites include Woot and xkcd. I don't really ever give people direct crap about spelling/grammar unless it's someone I know would normally not make that mistake (e.g. Brian). On the other hand, Brian's knowledge of English far outclasses mine, so if I ever did start pick-nicking nicks, I'd be inviting the same on myself. Still, I very much appreciate good grammar, for the same reason that I appreciate strong speaking skills in conversation. Communication is about getting ideas across. We agree on certain rules to make it easier to communicate. One thing that does tend to bug me, though, is when people refer to a dialectic as a "rant." A rant implies anger, and a lack of reason. If you admit you're ranting, then you've basically said "what I'm writing should in no way be construed as a valid opinion." But we're straying from the topic. And the topic is White Pony, and Deftones concerts, and Thursday concerts, and how most of the people there are mostly interested in finding a pit in which to mosh. I've moshed. In a bedroom on Williams even. But I'll never get to be one just one of the dudes. I liked going to school. I was good at it. Almost a decade removed from freshman year, I'm even better at it now. This is my corner of the Internet. There's a whole Thursday concert out there for you to mosh in, where, as you pointed out, there is nobody to correct you for grammar, or improper use of a comma, or the inherent inability of a person typing an anger-fueled diatribe to break up that stream-of-consciousness with a new paragraph. A new paragraph is a pause, a moment to collect the information of the previous stanza, and then begin on the next coherent thought. That's of little use to a boiling rage, to what would properly be referred to as a "rant." So, like I said, I'm not one to mutter about bad English. But I like the people who do. A lot. They're my kind of nerds. They're the same kind of people who would stay up 'till 5 a.m. in a crappy house on East William, muttering about how teenieboyz who paint their fingernails black and play a bar-chord 1,4,5 progression to an aggravatingly simplistic 4/4, call themselves "Benj," and try to convince people they're "punk" should be removed from the universe. So rather than pass stereotypes about my kind of people, why not just let us have this corner of the great big World Wide Web. Let us have our university, which, as you point out, isn't the best in the country, but is still mighty up there. We've got our biases against EMU. All druggies. Dirty Meijer. So unfair they got Sidetrack. But I've never really met a U-M student with the kind of anger toward the stereotype that you seem to have. I always thought we were so close to each other the communities just overlapped, meshed, and were both the better for it. So maybe I'm wrong about having our own corner of the Internet. Maybe we do need the Eastern rats to keep the Michigan brats grounded. But there's a better way to do it than direct insult. Have a little respect for the institution up Washtenaw, and the high standards that have kept it such a great place. We're a little different, sure, but fuck, man, when we're ripe, we all bleed out of control.