Think before you type.

Today was quite a funny day. A man (if you can call him that) commented on one of my girlfriend's poems, and the comment was actually pretty rough. Basically, he assumed and stated quite frankly that the title was wrong. Then, continued on to say that he didn't like sappy poetry or free verse. Well...

First and foremost, you may ask where did he find this poem. I was quite surprised by the answer to this.  Apparently, he decided to harp on her poem just after entering in one of her contests! K, not dealing with the brightest guy here are we.

So, his comment was about her usage of French in the title. One letter to be precise that defines pluralization. To which I disagreed. Now I was very reserved in my reply to his comment. I rewrote it multiple times before I posted and the final result was rather bland if you ask me. I pulled out all the things I wanted to say, and stuck with a respectful disagreement.

Boy, I'd love to see what would have happened if I had posted what I wanted.  From just my bland little comment, he blocked me. Yup, he is now ignoring me. The guy has not even read any of my work! Jumping the gun don't you think. He also put my girlfriend on his ignore list after sending her a nasty little message. 

Well no sir, that just won't do. I don't know how things are done in Iowa, but down here we have a little something called respect. Now of course since he's ignoring me, I can't send him a message in AP. But, I am however an IT professional, and within 30 minutes of his little tantrum, I had:

  His full name (god bless copyrights)

  His email address (thanks to a zine he edits)

  A list of the other poetry sights he lurks on

  His home address

  and his home telephone number.

I love the information age.

Now, I'm a peaceful man, I wouldn't do anything to cause this "gent" harm, but there's a certain peace that goes along with knowing that you can literally "reach out and touch someone".

While I was looking around at his other poetry sites, I realized something. He does this to everyone! This wasn't a critique that was taken out of line. I read suicidal poems which he thrashed the author in his response. I've read beautiful poems which he tore to pieces. Even one that was an obvious copy of a classic poem that he had nothing but complaints for. This guy, for all intents and purposes, was spoiling for a fight.

Now for what I know about him from my brief little stint of research.

  He has a rather large ego, as he does nothing but brag and berate other writers.

  He is sick, as that is his excuse for why he hasn't written anything lately. Can someone say "I'd kick your ass if I didn't have degenerative bone marrow!" Oh come on, don't judge lest ye be judged.

  He's not perfect, I know this because his own AP page contains a misspelling. 

  He's out of work, which is pretty funny considering his profession would either be professor of literature or editor and the word on his page he misspelled was unemployed.

  He thinks nothing of picking on women, and kids, yet is an advocate against genocide. LMAO!

  He obviously doesn't care about the handicapped, because his flashing background damn near gave me a seizure and I'm not epileptic.

  He does not know the wealth of information one can find with a few commands and clicks of the mouse.

Now, as I said, I'm fairly docile and have no intent of further communication with this jack ass. But seriously people, think before you type. If you must criticize, be constructive and if you're going to be an asshole, don't get upset when someone is an asshole back.

Just my two cents.