A55M0NKEY's Journal: With a name like A55M0NKEY....

A55M0NKEY is my handle on slashdot. Think of the monkey that Jim Carey conjures with the Power of God from the colon of the thug in the movie Bruce Almighty. Yeah, that's me.

It took somewhat longer than I believe it would have taken to accrue 'Excellent' Karma with an offensive-to-morons handle like A55M0NKEY. It has the word Ass in it, and it is written in 5CR197-K1DD13-ese. EG: the 5's and the 0. I used to have a different handle ( nagumo76 ), for which I forgot the password, and have since changed ISPs and so changed email addresses. I bid that account farewell. I also made my homepage http://goatse.cx.

Before achieveing Excellent karma, my posts would be modded as 'Troll', 'Flamebait', 'Overrated' etc more often than they used to be when I used the nagumo76 account, but once I got Excellent karma, people seemed to leave my 2 point posts alone, as if that 'credibilty' made up for the prejudices against my handle name. I guess reading the post, and judging it on it's own merits is too hard for some people - people who seem to live and die by prejudices. Many a person w/Excellent karma is a Troll/Overrated/etc, but that Bonus point is a powerful symbol for some people. Well I'll do as George Carlin says, and leave the symbols to the symbolminded...

That bonus point that comes w/Excellent Karma is a powerful Mojo, but I've found a way to neutralize it. I now express sympathy with the cancellation of the goatse.cx domain in my signature. Hey, that was my slashdot homepage!

My sig really is my opinion, Obscenity is defined well in the dictionary as merely offensive/repugnant/etc, it's a harmless word with a harmless definition. But in the US, the courts have come up with a tortured definition of the word designed to BS their way around the First Ammendment.

They define the obscene as 'that which is of little or no artistic or scientific value and is of primarily of prurient interest'.

That definition is the oxymoron for 2 reasons:

1) Our prurient interests are of immense scientific value. They teach us about our own psychology, so the artifacts of prurient interest that may exist or be created/published have scientific evidenciary value.

2)'Obscene' objects have, by definition, a large artistic value. Demonstrating that people have prurient interest in the obscene by publishing and making money from it, makes a powerful artistic statement. It demonstrates the depths of the tastes that exist in the public. It is a true insult, and no insult is more effective than a true one.

I agree wholeheartedly

[Trolling4Dollars]

I have another account which I rarely use now. It has excellent karma, but just a rather bland username. It was TOO easy to get karma that way. So I chose this name for a few reasons. The primary one being my anti-neocon stance. (I argue that the neocons are "Trolling for Dollars" in politics) But I also chose it because I wanted to see how hard it would be to gain decent karma with a name that has the word "Troll" in it. I've also had my share of URLs in my sig that were offensive while actually tryi