keith said:
>   it truly shows that he has
>   no true argument that is decently valid

one more thing here before i leave this all behind...

no one here has spent more time over the years entertaining jim
and his stupidities...  like i said, jim gets stuff "correct" at times,
but there are also _many_ other times where he is off the wall...

which is probably why the vast majority of you simply ignore him,
and have done so for all of the years he has been on this listserve.

any cursory examination of the archives will clearly reveal that
i am the person who has responded to most of jim's messages.

indeed, if my memory serves me correctly, i would say that the
only other people who've engaged in any extended interaction
with jim on _anything_ approaching "a regular basis" have been
keith and michael (who was totally exasperated by jim's posts)...

indeed, i'd be willing to bet that _all_of_you_combined_ have
responded to jim fewer times total than i have all by myself...

i chose to converse with jim since i was attempting to stimulate
_any_ kind of dialog here, with _hope_ it would turn interesting.

but, as everyone saw, a dialog with jim was far from interesting.
it was usually a confusing mess, maddening in its inconsistency.

a good dialog is like an extended rally in tennis, where each of
the players executes clean return of the ball to the other's court.

i was constantly baffled when having dialog with jim, because
all of a sudden he'd make points for _my_ side of the debate,
while giving the full impression he was arguing _against_ me!

it was as if i was playing tennis against someone and suddenly
i turned around and found him on _my_ side of the net, hitting
the ball back to the empty space on the other side of the court!

it woulda been totally bewildering if it wasn't so darn hilarious!

(even i am forced to concede that jim _amused_ me quite often,
and the arguing-both-sides tack was one of the funniest of all.)

at other times, it was as if we were both playing on court #1,
but jim was hitting his serves into court #2, or even court #3.
and then acting like he had hit an ace!  really, jim?  seriously?

what are you supposed to do when someone "plays" like that?

so i was constantly asking myself whether the guy was _really_
that stupid, or if he was just _acting_ that stupid to irk me off.

because there coulda been a certain method to his madness.

as i've said, there are lots of people who have kill-filed me...
so the only things that they "know" that i've supposedly said
are the misinterpretations which other people feed to them.

so i needed to consider a possibility his crap was deliberate.

if he could give the _impression_ that he was defeating me
to his audience, then they would actually believe he _was_.

there's an old t.v. show called "three's company", where the
landlord of an apartment thinks a male occupant, "jack", is
_gay_, which is why it's acceptable he's living with two girls.

but the guy isn't really gay, they just told the landlord that.

still, the landlord _misinterprets_everything_ that happens
within his mistaken belief that jack is gay, so he constantly
"accumulates" more and more "evidence" that jack _is_ gay,
thereby, of course, strengthening future misinterpretation.

this is one of the main sources of the comedy in the show.
as the audience is wise to the fact that jack is _so_ straight.
we know he's mistaken, but we see it "makes sense" to him.

and it's just as silly to see the same thing happening here.

there is this one group which sees me as "a troll", and they
are constantly accumulating more "proof" that that's true,
because their "evidence" continues to show that i'm a "troll",
thus their misimpression has become truly self-sustaining,
even though people who read all posts know that it ain't so.

so it could be at least plausible jim takes advantage of that.

but after a while, it became clear that it really doesn't matter
if jim is "really" that stupid, or if he's just "acting" that stupid.
either way, the stuff that comes out of his mouth is _stupid_.

so i just decided to stop rewarding that with my own dialog.

and now that i've stopped amusing him, jim knows that he
has nothing left here anymore, so he's whining about that.
he says i'm "not man enough" to respond to his sniveling...
hey jim, i _tried_ to dialog with you, for _years_.  i gave up.

i was the only one who recognized jim on a regular basis,
and now i've stopped, and he realizes he has nothing left.

tough luck, jim.  you used up your last lifeline.  so you die.

and i can already tell y'all that my decision is a _good_ one.
which i always knew it would be, since every other time that
i've put someone in my kill-filter, i've been happy that i did,
and wondered why it took me so long to come to my senses.

i'd guess jim will continue to whine for a while.  but i'm done.

-bowerbird