Swearing off the bottle

***QUOTE***

Okay, this is definitely the LAST time I am dealing with you guys.

# posted by exbeliever : 2/24/2006 11:59 PM

***END-QUOTE***

Well, I have to admit that exbeliever has, indeed, maneuvered me into a real dilemma.

You see before you two statements posted by someone with the very same moniker.

According to the former statement, posted yesterday, the individual in question assures us that this is the very last time he will respond to us.

But according to the latter statement, posted today, apparently the very same individual goes back on his emphatic resolution from only a day before.

So this confronts me with a moral and logical conundrum. You see, if I attribute both statements to the same individual, then he’s broken his word, in which case it’s hard to salvage a “shred of honesty” from his EXPLICITY contradictory statements.

I suppose I could resolve the taint of infamy posed this onerous dilemma by NOT attributing the latter statement to exbeliever, even though that is what it says.

In that event, we can simply void the statement altogether, as issuing from an imposter who wants to make the real exbeliever look like a morally vacillating “village idiot.”

***QUOTE***

k7,

Thank you. That's one of the few shreds of honesty I've seen on this blog.

steve still seems to think that he is justified in attributing ideas to me even though 1) they were added without my knowledge, and 2) the added comments EXPLICITLY state that they are not my words but someone else's.

# posted by exbeliever : 2/25/2006 4:57 PM

***END-QUOTE***

This is getting to be high comedy. Or maybe low comedy.

i) He defends himself by saying that the words were added without his knowledge. I see.

Of course, they were also added without my knowledge of their being added without his knowledge. So somehow his ignorance is exculpatory, but mine is culpable. Fascinating logic--especially when he's a team member while I'm an outsider to the editorial process.

ii) He then says the words I quoted were explicitly stated to be someone else’s rather than his own.

That is quite true. Most-all of the words I quoted were the words of St. Peter from his 1st Epistle.

However, I don’t suppose the average reader would have any great difficulty in perceiving that what I intended thereby was to ascribe the post to exbeliever, and not the text of St. Peter, contained therein.

But I now realize that such a distinction is far too subtle for exbeliever, and so I will need to connect all the dots for him in the future lest I once again overestimate his reading comprehension.