Basically, bigguns, the shorter version of your position is you want people to be mean to you. Here's the thing. People are mean. They're mean on the internet and they're mean off the internet.

I write professionally as well, though I write novels. Among novelists, there's always a lot of talk about how to cope with reviews. Read 'em, don't read 'em? How to respond to the bad ones. And no matter how good you are, you get bad ones. If you're not that good, you get lots of bad ones. Some authors are cope with this better than others, but the bottom line seems to come down to the fact that you have to have a thick skin, lest you let your inability to deal with criticism turn you into Buzz Bissinger, who basically went batshit, or Deborah MacGillivray. (http://www.crimespot.net/Spotted/2008/04/well-this-sucks.html)

Maybe it's easier for me than some people because in a previous life I was a cop, and neither the interwebs nor reviewers come even close to the kind of invective cops have to deal with. I look at the internet and I think, "Oh my, such harsh language - yawn." Yeah, maybe it would be better if people dialed it back a bit, and I've even advocated for dialing it back a bit. But at the end of the day, it's just words. If they bother you, maybe you don't have what it takes to write for public consumption except from behind some kind of editorial firewall. But, as Lynx pointed out so ably, even that firewall is a phantom, and the alleged temperance of print is a fraud.

You have a choice. Suck it up and join the brave new world, or be left behind.

You DON'T want people to be mean... blah blah blah.

Well, of course I meant it in the ironic sense of Huxley. In fact, I see it as neither cowardly nor brave, but often both, which in a larger sense is really no different than print has ever been. We might point to bad words in anonymous comments on blogs and breathlessly feign shock, but come on now, is that actually worse than "anonymous sources" quoted in the New York Times and used to browbeat a shell-shocked nation into an illegal war? I'll take being badmouthed on the internet over the willful deceit and manipulations of typical print journalism any day of the week.

As for my real name, well, Bukk63 ain't it! I do write my novels under my own name, but my phone number is unlisted and my public address is a box at a UPS Store. I ain't that brave in one sense, though here at Salon I own all my comments published under my pseudonym, thoughtful and intemperate alike. (And, yeah, did through my history here and you'll see I can be a dick with the worst of them).

There are 4,000 American kids in caskets based on lies published in traditional media. No naughty words were used, but the words killed nonetheless.

I don't suggest that words aren't dangerous, but they're no more dangerous in an anonymous post than anywhere else, and considering the degree of unjustifiable trust we put in traditional media sources, probably less dangerous. A MySpace page didn't bog down American troops in an illegal, dead-end war in Iraq and cost the American people trillions of dollars.

And in the end, bullies and the like committed their acts of cruelty and mayhem just fine before in the internet. The internet isn't the problem. People are. Always have been, always will be.

See you there.

GTA is just about the only game I've seen that really tempted me to buy an XBox or PS or whatever it works on. Among my cop friends, of which I still have many despite retiring to less dangerous work some years ago myself, GTA is hugely popular. 50-year-old sergeants enjoy it as much as 20-something probies. None of them seem to worried about its effect on the children.

...the little type size buttons. I have tired, old eyes and those were nice because they made the main text big while leaving all the side matter small. It's not a big deal to make the whole page big with the browser text size controls, but I did think the old feature was nice.

Otherwise, I just want to say that I think your mother's basement looks very nice. (Is that the right thing to say, or should I have used swears?)

I'm shocked.

No, really, I am.

With a boy who's team this year has been 10-run ruled every game, I appreciate your Little League Mom sensibilities, but these guys are adult pros. I'd be really surprised if any Major League pitcher would be happy with a "they went easy on me in the ninth" no hitter.

We don't actually know if she's drunk. It says "drunken pirate," but I going to go out on a limb and guess she's not an actual pirate. Maybe she's not actually drunk either. Or actually drinking an intoxicating beverage. Maybe she's drinking Dr. Pepper, or melted Mr. Goodbars.

But, of course, even if she is drunk, so what? I realize America is a bubbling cauldron of hypocritical prudes, but good grief. This seems like a helluva stretch even considering the typical depth of American idiocy.

If that was "off message," then King goes off message pretty much every other paragraph. But of course that's why we love him, especially since he's not really going off message. He's using things like irony and humor to illuminate and enlarge traditional sports narratives, to break them out of the shackles of tedium which is typical sports reporting and commentary.

If it's bland platitudes and cliches that you want, espn.go.dum is that way -->

Once, I was the only non-Mormon in a Mormon softball league. I got thrown out of a game for saying "Oh good grief" to a called third strike against me.

Oh good grief.