"I don’t mind you quoting me from a public forum as long as you don’t mix me up and attach my comment with someone else’s — which you did in the
Monday ‘Lectronic update on the sinking of
J/World," writes Scott, no last name given. "I’m the guy who suggested — tongue in cheek — using cherry bombs to avoid collisions between boats and whales. I’m not the guy who said that the Ha-Ha was a ‘party fest’, even though you attached that to my signature line."
Scott said he would like a retraction printed, and as we had indeed made the error, we’re more than happy to comply with his request. Our sincere apologies.
In a follow-up letter, Scott wrote, "If you really spent any time on our or any forum, you would know it is much like a bar atmosphere, and a lot of the comments are ‘just trying to fit in’ type of comments." He also said, "Most of our humor is very good-natured and just something to break up the ‘Newbie wants cheap RTW bluewater cruiser’ questions for the umpteenth time."
Perhaps it’s going to make us sound like complete assholes, but the above is precisely the reason we don’t spend much time — any, actually — on such forums. We know there is some excellent material in some of them, but the filtering process is so wearying that we leave it to other editors when they can find the time, which is rare.
Getting back to the cherry bombs, Scott writes, "No, cherry bombs are not going to be a viable whale deterrent, but you do have to admit that the idea has merit for gaining attention. But fumbling to light a cherry bomb safely, and get it overboard, is, as you mentioned, ridiculous. I make my jokes knowing they will be read as being ridiculous and be taken that way — hopefully by level-headed people. There will always be those with no sense of humor, and it seems to me that you are one of them."
We like to think we have a sense of humor, abeit a stunted one. But with some postings in sailing forums, it seems impossible to tell whether the poster is making an attempt at humor or is simply off their rocker. Maybe there should be a ‘Just Kidding’ box they could check next to their posting so dull people such as ourselves won’t be confused.
"Anyway," concludes Scott, "thanks for quoting what you did of me correctly in ‘Lectronic. I’m famous now. I’ll be waiting for Opera to call."
At the risk of sounding like a complete asshole once more, we’re totally confused yet again. Several times in your various missives you’ve used the word ‘hummer’ rather than the word ‘humor’ to mean ‘that which is meant to induce laughter’. We corrected it, hoping we were doing the right thing. And now you’ve used ‘Opera’ to refer, not to a place where operas are performed, but rather to the African-American media personality and mogul. Are these typos or, as you suggest, do we just have an underdeveloped sense of ‘hummer’?
Anyway, onward and upward.
