The Layoff Beard

I’m Not Gonna Write You A Swan Song

And to think I was done here. Oh, it was lookin’ pretty much wrapped up in a neat little bow with the previous day’s events, but sure enough SwanGate™, unlike its key players, simply will not die.

The swans who were initially thought shot by rednecks, or maybe eaten by coyotes, were in fact … hit by a car. Residents said the swans appeared to be shot, which means someone out there invented a firearm that shoots Volvos. I’d be scared if I were you.

The comments were moderated with a heavy hand, with a simple one of mine taken out:

And I thought it was swan flu.

Later a cryptic moderation message was planted afterward, saying that “we have removed three comments from this post that were either off-topic or did not further the conversation.” They then linked back to their community guidelines, which I have already read before enough times that I could probably recite it like I can the Preamble. (And without help from Schoolhouse Rock!)

In all my years of Internet tomfoolery, I don’t think I have ever had to do this before, but I’m actually going to diagram, outline, and explain my comment.

And I thought it was… — This sounds harmless enough. It is referring to a thought belonging me, one Matt Sussman, so perhaps they objected to that, but for doling out the benefit of the doubt, we’ll say it ain’t.

…swan flu — A play on words. I know! Hi, my name’s Matt. Nice to meet you.

The reference is to, of course, swine flu, an overblown disease that many people thought they had contracted when the media first started saturating their inches, minutes, and pixels with it. Swine flu was an unimportant story in the grand scheme of the news cycle. Wait a minute. Overblown news story? That sounds familiar.

So there’s the removed comment and its (hopefully) obvious meaning. In all fairness, it was one of my more favorite comments this year. The question then is, did it violate their commenting guidelines?

The best comments and posts are those that add more information to the story, express a different viewpoint or help create intelligent debate.

It didn’t add any information, but it did express a viewpoint that I was the first to mention on their website. Of course, you wouldn’t know, because that viewpoint was removed.

We welcome constructive debate on our site, but we won’t tolerate jerks.

We’ve already been over this. I am a jerk. But a useful, functional jerk.

Don’t be that guy – avoid comments or posts that are off topic, offensive, contain personal attacks or that don’t further the conversation.

Off topic? Nope. Patently on.

Offensive? Perhaps to some with extremely thin skin. It’s a very subjective word. People could take offense to viewpoints they simply don’t agree with.

Contains personal attacks? Nope, except to myself, for saying that I would truly believe it was “swan flu” that killed them. Perhaps they were protecting me … from me.

Didn’t further the conversation? This is another puzzling criterion. It assumes every comment furthers the conversation in some fashion. Perhaps some comments are made by people who just want to say their part and be done with it. It doesn’t further the discussion, but it doesn’t curb it either. Although, in the end, since my comment was discussing the overblown coverage, it was a method to discuss the unreasonable amount of coverage on this story.

My first thought to all this was, are my comments too subtle for them? Are they just gonna up and remove the comment because they don’t understand it, then point to the discussion guidelines? I realize they’re not even a month into putting this policy into practice, but if too much book theory goes into comment moderation, the discussion’s potential will be crippled and thought will be discouraged. Just like a real newspaper!

(Okay, maybe we’re done NOW. Probably not. Wait for the story about the swan love triangle.)

AnnArbor.com Comment Deletion Aftermath

In the spirit of writing too much on an insignificant topic, it’s time to update you on what’s been going on regarding the Swan Comment Tet Offensive.

Oddly enough, this morning an opinion post was made on AnnArbor.com by guest blogger Jordan Miller with the dangerous title “They’re Just Swans.” This rules out my theory about swans running the web site (for now), so this morning I put another theory to use when I mentioned over there how I had made similar points and sentiments yesterday on the website which were deleted. My theory turned out to be true, as that comment was deleted. Minutes later, I wrote “I agree with this post.” That comment? It’s in the boneyard somewhere.

Hours later I commented on a sports article, then on the swan article. Both are still standing today.

As an interesting development, AnnArbor.com staff are explaining why they are deleting certain topics. From the swan post:

Jacksmom, I unpublished your most recent comment because it didn’t contribute anything to the discussion beyond what you previously stated. Also, I don’t think Jordan was trying to make a declaration about all charitable donations, particularly since the first word in the title of her entry is “opinion.”

I wonder if this is a new policy or just one that isn’t consistently enforced. I could ask them directly, but that doesn’t allow me to WILDLY SPECULATE!

(Sidebar: I have never understood the “opinion” qualifier. You hear it all the time. “This is an ‘opinion’ article, therefore…” therefore what? The words have different meanings? If the phrase “pancakes are delicious” was in an article that was designated OPINION, does it change the context at all if the label was not there? Would any logical being have reacted differently to Miller’s words?)

So for the issue regarding comment deletion, I’ll consider the case closed with a dog-ear, in case it happens again. So far it appears questioning lopsided coverage of a story is out of bounds for AnnArbor.com, although I don’t recall seeing that as grounds for deletion in their discussion policy. Unless, of course, someone wants to pony up some reward money to find out what happened to the comment. Perhaps it was eaten by wolves.

AnnArbor.com Has Adept Comment Ninjas, Too

I’ve been keeping an eye on the suicide and rebirth of the Ann Arbor News with great interest. They may be the first large city in the country to destroy their only daily and switch to a mostly digital format. From what I saw, the website’s layout was crisp, and the ability for anyone to submit citizen-style journalism appears seamless and innovative.

And it didn’t take long for AnnArbor.com to latch onto their first sap story, a couple of dead trumpeter swans in Lodi Township. So far, there have been five stories on these swans. SWANS. Nobody’s quite sure if they were killed by humans or other animals. Fowl or mammal, you can bet that Sam Waterson is gonna prosecute the son of a bitch(es) to the full extent of the law.

In a story about a $5,000 reward leading to information that could solve SwanGate™, I had enough, and posted the following comment:

I share it as a screenshot for obvious reasons.

As of now, the other comments responding to me are still public, which sure makes for a puzzling conversation. I envision they’re beckoning to this “Mr. Sussman,” who has yet to see this article, telepathically begging me to join the debate. It happens quite often. (At, um, Thanksgiving.)

There was another comment I made, wherein I clarified that, while the murder of swans is sick, so are many other misdemeanors that include theft, threats of other human beings, and drive-by pieings. I openly wondered where their coverage was.

Someone last night (this is a guess) was the victim of a burglary. This will perhaps result in a brief on their website that will be, oh, this long. That burglary victim has lost peace of mind. But there are no vigils, reward moneys, and there will certainly not be five stories about it. Unless, of course, they find some adorable squirrels which were choked to death near his porch.

And I think keeping a keen eye on comments is a great idea. Many discussions on newspapers go unmoderated and become fetid privies teeming with monkey porn and racist statements linking a city commissioner to Hitler, and then tying him to Kevin Bacon.

And that’s why they imposed this conversation guideline:

AnnArbor.com aims to provide a lively community forum where readers can talk to us and talk to each other – in a neighborly way, of course. The best comments and posts are those that add more information to the story, express a different viewpoint or help create intelligent debate. We welcome constructive debate on our site but we won’t tolerate jerks. Don’t be that guy – avoid comments or posts that are off-topic, offensive, contain personal attacks or those that don’t further the conversation. We encourage everyone who registers on our site to use their real name, or at least a consistent screen name. We reserve the right to pre-moderate comments and delete or edit comments.

Being sensible and furthering the discourse is a noble concept, but c’mon, a “no jerks” ensures nobody but cat ladies and 13-year-olds undergoing school projects will comment on the site. Sometimes a little sass is needed. And if sass does not exist, there will be edge, zip and perhaps spunk. (But only in rare instances.)

Honestly, if they’re going to baleete every whisper that provides feedback to their lopsided coverage of a story … then I guess this is the new face of journalism! See, that’s refreshing. If newspapers began looking like trendy, interesting websites, how would we discern mainstream reporting vs. basement typing? Fact-checking? The inverted pyramid? Hah! Bloggers know about those too, and they maximize their usefulness in order to facilitate the exploitation of Erin Andrews.

So that may be what happened. Of course, I could be wrong. So it would be irresponsible to assume that AnnArbor.com is silencing my criticism of SwanGate™ because it was too saucy, because I have no proof. So let’s start brainstorming:

Alternate Theory #1: Everyone who works for AnnArbor.com was murdered by swans and the swans are wearing their skins. Any questioning of SwanGate™ will result in swift obliteration of defiance.

Evidence Supporting Alternate Theory #1: Swans have always been notorious for being the first animals to support Web 2.0. Ostriches in northern Michigan were reported to cancel their subscriptions to the Traverse City Record-Eagle all during the same calendar month. Then there’s this:

Your search – “shark week” – did not match any documents.

Alternate Theory #2: The comment moderator accidentally hit “delete this comment” button instead of “offer this man a job.” In a lapse of UI programming, they put them right next to each other.

Evidence Supporting Alternate Theory #2: I still don’t have a job yet. And I used the phrase “UI programming,” which is intelligent enough to persuade conspiracy theorists.

Pining For The Aqua Bobber

Last weekend at my parents’ cottage, we were driving around on our pontoon boat and I saw a strange contraption floating in the water, near one of the other houses’ docks. It was unlike anything I had seen before. Legend has it that you climb up to the top and tilt your weight, and the tower dips you into the water and back up, because the base is heavy enough to counteract the kinetic energy of … actually, I’ll let Bill Nye explain it for you.

But it looked fun. I was curious how much it was. A hundred bucks? Two hundred? I went online to find this piece of equipment, which my mom said was an “aqua bobber.” And let me tell ya, times have changed, but prices haven’t. Not only is it just 30 bucks, but it went from a bobbing tower to a child’s swimsuit.

So other than these photos, there wasn’t a lot of information on the Aqua Bobber. By which I mean, there was NO information in it. Until I found the April 25, 1993 issue of the Toledo Blade, just lying around in my wine cellar, next to my baccarat table. It was talking about the revival of the Centennial Quarry in Toledo:

Perhaps the most unusual devices were the Aqua Bobber and Aqua Rocker, the inventions of two Maumee businessmen who introduced them at the quarry in 1965.

[...]

If the county ever reopens the quarry, County Administrator Edward Ciecka said that only some of those fun water contraptions would be available for use.

“Hanging off cliffs and plunging down a cable would not be looked at favorably from the standpoint of liability insurance,” Mr. Ciecka said.

Well then. It’s a fun toy that just isn’t safe. Don’t you hate when that happens?

Although, look at that thing. It does appear to be only a safe toy if you’re a Deadliest Catch fisherman or the son of a fraudulent real estate developer.

I guess the world just wasn’t ready for The Aqua Bobber. Perhaps, on a whim, one day I’ll be able to try it out on that lake, late at night, with no supervised adults. And if that’s the case, then there are suddenly two ways The Layoff Beard could cease publication.

Topless Bars To Become Topless Family Restaurants

I, for one, have no idea what a topless bar is. I never learned that in school, or from my friends, or even from the boys in the grades higher than me. All I know is that they feature some kind of women dancing (like, the Mashed Potato?), and they serve alcohol.

And now all I know about them is that they might just have women dancing. Some fancy lawyer pants wants these places of business in Detroit to have their women cover up or they will not be allowed to serve fermented wheat/grape liquids.

Cover up? I guess that means the heating inside the buildings are broken down, and the girls are freezing out there as they dance. Well, hell, I am in favor of the ban then. Please think of the hypothermic dancers!

They want the dancers to also be at least six feet away from patrons at all times, which is understandable. What if one of them falls? You don’t want to risk the patrons getting touched. Especially if the dancers are cold, they might catch pneumonia. Now you’re spreading disease around!

And I guess they have “VIP Rooms,” where the dancers can spend some time with individual patrons. That’s just more disease spreading waiting to happen. Perhaps they can have baby wipes on hand so they don’t spread infection. I didn’t see this recommendation in the lawsuit anywhere. Maybe they forgot about it.

This is all so confusing. It would be easier to form an opinion on this controversy, if I knew exactly what a topless bar was.

If Only All Robberies Ended This Way

Our nation’s teenagers are far from perfect. Not every 16-year-old can build skyscrapers, or cure cancer, or lip synch with the best of them. They all need something by which to aspire. Moreover, if they try acting too adult too quick, their confidence may be smashed into little pieces, turn asunder and recycled into tote bags, or get shot by one’s own gun.

Baby’s First Robbery didn’t quite go as planned last night on Detroit’s west side, as he and a friend were lookin’ for some non-sequential money to spend on Pokémon cards or hula hoops or whatever the hell kids buy these days with their allowance:

Two teenagers, one carrying a rifle and the other a handgun, approached a man at the BPS Gas Station on Plymouth Road and the northbound Southfield Service Drive around 6:40 a.m.

The robbery victim grabbed a gun out of the teen’s hand and shot him with it.

Well, that’s too bad. But the good news, champ, is that the nightmare is finally over and you can move on, learn from your mistakes, and rebuild your confience to the point where…

The wounded teen jumped into a vehicle and attempted to drive away, but crashed into several cars on Forrer Street.

Okay, then at least you didn’t piss yourself. A small percentage of first-time robbers actually do this.

If You Can’t Spell It, You Can’t Have It

Two CVS stores in Clawson were robbed of all their Vicodin and OxyContin, according to a news report. Which means that the robber didn’t get what he wanted, according to this note. How clever of the pharmacist!

Vicodine and Oxycotine are not as potent as Vicodin and OxyContin, but the advantage to those two is that they come in many different flavors, such as strawberry, orange, and green bean. Most addicts can’t tell the difference, and even more are disinterested in the difference, primarily because they’re too busy trying to catch the purple worms flying through their living room.

The police have reason to believe he either uses the painkillers or sells them, which is very plausible. In fact, I think I saw the robber’s online store at Azamon.com. Very impressive layout. I couldn’t get past the Captcha code, though.

Now Where Will Cecil Fielder Live?

This is probably as good a time as any to admit that I never got to see a game in Tiger Stadium. But just look at that place. Isn’t it beautiful? It’ll obviously never be seen like that again, unless someone carves it out of butter or spam.

It’s been ten years since the last season on Michigan and Trumbull, and the stadium is only partially torn down. A conservationist group had been lobbying to convert the rest of the stadium into a museum.

Great idea, right? Well, you must’ve been the one who voted against the other seven, who are in favor of tearin’ that bitch DOWN.

That’s too bad, really. But then again, look at the old Yankee Stadium, built in 1923. It’s comin’ down. Memorial Stadium in Baltimore was demolished. Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, at some point, will not stand anymore. The Tower of Babel? Termites. Dr. Wily’s numerous castles? They don’t even exist anymore. (Well, they never did. Those were video games.)

But it sure seems odd that the city really wants this ballpark to come down, just because nobody is using it anymore. Heck, if that’s the criteria for demolition, half of Detroit would be leveled. So I think maybe we should think twice before we..

..wait, the Lions used to play in Tiger Stadium? BURN IT! BURN IT TO THE GROUND!

My Tax Dollars Pay Howie Long’s Salary

So now that General Motors is mostly owned by the government by way of bankruptcy, I suppose this means that the backdrop of the Red Wings’ inevitable Stanley Cup championship will continue to be economic hardship. Yay!

The whole automobile industry downfall has been pretty much alien to me, what with the Honda in the garage (what’s the problem? This car runs fine!) But it was all pretty much made clear by the PJ O’Rourke essay in the Wall Street Journal. A sampling:

In the name of safety, emissions control and fuel economy, the simple mechanical elegance of the automobile has been rendered ponderous, cumbersome and incomprehensible. One might as well pry the back off an iPod as pop the hood on a contemporary motor vehicle. An aging shade-tree mechanic like myself stares aghast and sits back down in the shade. Or would if the car weren’t squawking at me like a rehearsal for divorce. You left the key in. You left the door open. You left the lights on. You left your dirty socks in the middle of the bedroom floor.

So now that GM is bankrupt, does this mean Howie Long is done emasculating the competition, which consists of car companies that own themselves? Or is it manly to file for Chapter 11, hunt a baby deer, and watch Full Metal Jacket until dawn?

The answer? Well, let’s wait for President Obama to make a decision on that.

Strange Michigan Customs Unknown To Ohioans

In Ohio — and other areas — one christens a boat by breaking a bottle over the bow and then boarding the boat and sailing away on it. In Michigan, tradition is slightly different, so as a public service let’s explain the differences.

Port Clinton, Ohio! You’re on the air:

A Michigan man was taken to the Ottawa County Detention Facility after police say threw a flower pot at the Jet Express boat and urinated on himself.

The Battle Creek native may be confused. See, this particular Jet Express has been in service for quite some time. There is no need to wish it well, for long has it known the way to Put-In-Bay.

The flower pot was a generous touch, one must admit. Flowers brighten up rooms, and in some cases, moving boats. The urination on oneself, though, is a longstanding Michigan tradition that signifies to the local authorities that you are piss drunk.

(Via Pepperguy)