Tuesday, June 06, 2006

in a funk

Well, I haven't been into writing in my blog at all lately. It's strange, because I was really enjoying it, and then suddenly I was too busy or too stressed.

Matt, over at Saving The World, seems to be in a similar situation this week. I wonder if "blogging funk" is like when girls live together and their "blue days" eventually begin to coincide; that there is some kind of blogging hormone. If there is, I am pretty sure I don't want to be regulating my hormones with Matt's.

I am writing today because I have I received encouraging e-mails from a new blog pal Rachel (thanks!) and from my sister, Amanda (I miss you!), who's birthday is coming up. Thanks, ladies.

I have needed it, because in addition to an infestation of spiders (!) in my house, I have received some lovely fan mail as well.

The newest comment on our website the ballad of vicki and jake says:

"God - what an unbearably awful film if the stills/synopsis are anything to go by. Presumably you are some middle class atrocity on the first year of a film studies BA, spending Daddys money and having a gawp at the low life. Trust me, after college you will end up in the press office of some grim council office depressed and masturbating over the arts pages of the Guardian."

And it ends with:

"I hope you get cancer."

Lovely. I have been threatened with death before and was even threatened with death while we were making the film. But it's always been something like "I will shoot you", never something like a disease. I can't tell if I am moving up or down on the scale of "the state of having death wished upon oneself". My guess is that I am one step higher.

I have asked our webmaster to remove the comment. But don't get me wrong, I don't want to hide the criticism we receive. In fact, I want to make a new section on the website specifically for giving our detractors a voice. If anyone wants to respond to, agree with, or otherwise make contact with the sender of the above comment, please do so by sending an e-mail to:

foxfoxton@yahoo.com

I'm not so adept at using the internet, but since not so many people access our website, I think I can discern that Foxy came across us by looking at this link on Matt's website. The entry is, strangely, about a guy who makes execution(!) equipment that although illegal to use in the UK, he enterprisingly ships abroad. Not sure how Foxy got over to our site from there, but am hoping that he (or she) just pushed on the link for "the ballad of vicki and jake"(which is located in a menu to the right of Matt's entries) and not that Foxy was drawing any kind of connection.


Since I am back on Matt anyway, it seems that he has hayfever. It also seems that this makes him better than those who don't. Let me just say that I made my "hayfever debut" this year and my doctor said that that was about right since I had turned 30 and was now, officially an OJISAN ("uncle" in Japanese) and no longer an ONIISAN ("older brother"). Gee thanks. Anyway, that puts Matt's rate of decay at a higher pace than mine, so he may be younger than me now, but...

I feel a bit better now.

update:

The e-mail address on the comment was fake, so don't bother to respond to it. It figures that a person who would write that kind of personal attack wouldn't own up to it. Just plain weak.

7 comments:

Matt_c said...

Just to say that - as I thought - the Foxton comment email was a fake. However, their IP was 80.189.82.52 and they accessed the site using servers from brightview.com.

Fucking loser.

Anonymous said...

It turns out that the gallow-selling story was fake also, or to be more precise, the guy involved exaggerated his sales to foreign shores (which were non-existent) in order to draw attention to his favourite cause, which is campaigning to re-introduce capital punishment.

Anyway, Ian, don't get the funk too bad - even though we have only met a couple of times, I enjoy nosing about and seeing what you are up to.

Anonymous said...

glad your back, I missed the connection to you so far away! What assholes there are in this world. Nobody ever f**k with you or they will have to answer to me!

Matt_c said...

Yeah, I read about the gallows hoax thing on Lenin I think, but he didn't link to it... Anyways, there's been quite a bit of debate about anonymous poison pen comments here in the UK following a post by a British columnist Polly Toynbee - I link to it here. It's unavoidable but I think the assumptions the commenter made says more about him than you, Ian.

Ian Thomas Ash said...

Thanks for looking into it, iian and matt, and for sticking up for me, Panda. I had thought I was being clever by tracing down the time of the comment and then comparing it to our website tracker... that's why I thought Foxy had reached us from the story on execution goods on Matt's site. But if that wasn't Foxy who got to us from that page...

Matt_c said...

No, you were right about who it was, Ian. I found the same info that you did - good net detective work! :)

Shame that guy's a wanker.

Ian Thomas Ash said...

I don't think it's a shame that Foxy is wanker, but I bet Foxy's mother does. (I am refraining from referring to Foxy as "he", becasue you never know...)