London/NYC ILM/E/FT August meet-ups!

I already said on ILE that I would be planning the entire NYC get together. BE READY FOR THE MIDORI SOURS AND THE NAME CALLING YOU BASTARDS.

Be ready to hear me call people names for shoving Midori Sours in my face.

Although I'm in Tokyo, as an arbiter of urban fashions I would strongly advise you to hold all meetings in London and New York east of Strand and south of Grand.

Just for that, Momus, I'm moving our gig to Notting Hell.

Don't be too militant, Nicholas, or when you come to London I'm not taking you to Rellick, the coolest shop in London (for our purposes anyway).

My advice was intended to be more millinery than military.

But good luck Kate et al at the Slug and Lettuce, Notting Hill Gate. Give my regards to Nathan Barley.

::rolls eyes and shuffles away::

Like the Notting HELL quip didn't give it away. The next ILM meet will be in Tooting, and all you East Side snobs can be darned to heck.

i thought nate b moved to tha east ages ago?

Oh, and for the record, Nathan Barley resides in Hoxton. Definitely East, if I'm not mistaken.

Er, for most of that time I have already planned to be in Seattle, so I will have to pass. But if the meet-up in New York runs late I can pretend it was all arranged in honor of ME since my birthday is the 12th.

Slug and Lettuce? Salt, and sharpish please!

He only knows it's there because it's on the way to Pharmacy, ;). I do so love watching the mating rituals of sales teams in cheap Burton/ Cecil Gee attire. Better than a trip to the zoo.

Of course it's going to run late, Nicole. It's a Saturday night and there'll be alcohol. :-) We will toast to your goodness at 12 am if we are at least vaguely coherent.

I agree that the people at www.tvgohome.com might be smarter, funnier and on-the-moneyier if Nathan Barley lived in Hoxton. But he doesn't. He lives in Westbourne Grove. Recent episodes have him in a Kensington gastropub, striding down Oxford Street, and shopping in Covent Garden. He likes designer bars with names like 'Diagram' and 'Unconventional', full of Soho media professionals.

We might like to imagine Barley (one of the great fictional characters of our time) with a G4 Powerbook, but in fact he writes his articles for The Idler on a Sony Viao. His parents live in Oxfordshire, and he holidays in Las Vegas. Only once, as far as I remember, has he been east of The Strand, and that was when he went to Tokyo and came home having done nothing but read a copy of Sleazenation magazine from cover to cover in his hotel room.

Why hasn't anyone suggested Kansas City?

Fucking hell ...

Change Suzy's post to refer to, say, UK garage fans and whatever clothes they wear. Send it to the Daily Telegraph. *Even they*, I think, would denounce it as tasteless and refuse to print it.

It's shit like this that sent me away from the forum in the first place. If people feel so superior that they regard those who dare to dress differently from them, go to different shops and like different music as not fully-formed humans, that they compare them to animals and imply that looking at them is like looking at captive animals in zoos, then I want nothing to do with this forum in the future, whether under my own name or a pseudonym. No, I don't much like the people she describes either, but I wouldn't dream of describing them as such.

God, what fucking smug self-serving forums these are, with a significant number of exceptions: Marcello Carlin is one such, as is David Huntsman, and sometimes (though not always) Mark Sinker, Gareth Lee and Tom Ewing. K-reg is good, as was Guy Beckett when he was here, the Pinefox is charming, Mike Jones and Stevie T are superbly smart and knowledgeable. But if people are prepared to talk about those who dare to differ from them culturally in terms easily comparable to those in which the far-right talk about people who dare to differ from them racially, and then smugly declare themselves to be "above" even the centre-right, let alone the far-right, in every possible way, I don't really want much to do with them.

All the best,

thanks for the good times,

Robin.

Robin, don't go! And please don't take what I wrote as gospel, or use it as the basis for some superiority thing. Hardly! It's just that those places are total meat markets (and marketed as such) full of drunk LAD gropers who then get on the tube and hassle me, you, and practically everyone here no matter what we look like or what's inside our heads, as if it's their right to do so. And then when we don't like it, they accuse us of having no sense of humour.

Please appreciate what it's like to be a pint-sized female in a city, faced with shitheads like that on a daily basis. You'd snap too (I mean, have you read Helen Zahavi's Dirty Weekend?). Maybe it was wrong to use the zoo analogy; I can understand why it annoys you and I'm very sorry to have done so. If you decide to leave us I'll be upset because your contributions are valuable.

Everyone else: my apologies. If you're mates with Robin off the board, talk him 'round if you can.

Robin, I am convinced that Suzy's intention was not to offend you, or others. It's a matter of where we draw the line - I call Dubya a "trained monkey". Is this the same as calling my black friend Steve a "trained monkey"? No, and I think claiming so is just spoiling for a fight, a fight you may have other, good reasons for. I dinnae. But please. Reconsider.

Thanks Tracer. Fuck, I'm so upset. Everything OK 'round your way?

Lessee: broke, no job, everything stolen, roommate moving out, & the unthinkable: bad vibes on ILM. On the other hand, I just ate a really good sandwich!

(p.s. I am LIVID that I am missing the roof party)

Tracer, it's a rough old world out there. Why do you think I decided roof party = good idea? We will definitely be raising a glass of White Russian Milkshake to you.

The morning after your laptop tragedy I awoke to find my front door open, just slightly. I was ever so lucky I didn't have similar anguish to yours.

Um. So anyway. I refuse to have any meet ever anywhere near anyplace Momus could possibly be willing to come to, incidentally, whether he's in Toyko or not. So we're going to the Bronx, people.

Hey, isn't there a zoo in the Bronx? Oh, sorry.

Robin: Yes, Suzy can be a bit kneejerk dismissive at times. She does write for a fashion magazine, after all. But I think it's a big 'if' to say 'Change the people she wrote about to 2 Step Garage fans and send it to the Torygraph...' She said it about suits, and she said on ILM. That makes all the difference in the world, surely? Even Christians, who are supposed to love everyone regardless, love some people more than others. Even on I Love Music, we all love some music more than others. Your statement could be construed as a savage attack on the Daily Telegraph -- substitute The Guardian and shout your comment on Farringdon Road and, presto, you're right wing, no?

PS: I'd just like to apologise to Nathan Barley. It has been brought to my attention that he often visits Clerkenwell, Hoxton and even the East Village. He also has, in addition to his Sony Vaio, an iMac and a G4 Cube. The fact that he and I have never been seen together is, in the light of this, odd.

LAD = ? I mean, is it an acronym? Or does it just mean... 'Lad'?

Tracer: I'm missing that party too. Like I said, Go West are playing.

Robin, don't go. ILM will be diminished without you - you have been a fantastic contributer - witty and human. Not that it matters what I think, but as a bystander it seems you extrapolated Suzy's comments a touch far.

ILM has been/is an interesting experience (my first on- line 'community' experience). It's turned my music-world on its head in fact, and its fantastic to know that so many people care. Like any community (work, the local pub, friends, neighbours) it's a complex mix of alliances, opposites, suspicion, warmth.......and on and on. I'm partly frustrated because right now I don't have the time to read thr(work pressure, other shit) and post to all the interesting threads I'd like to get involved in , yet maybe it's just as well, as there IS a certain amount of elitism and intellectual showboating which is kinda depressing at times, (and unintentionally funny at other times).

After missing the last (first?) London ILM thing I was initially looking forward to meeting everyone (especially Ned, Tom, Robin, Pinefox, Gareth, Mark S..) at this one. After reading some of the posts on this thread, I don't know if I should bother. Anyway, I didn't mean to talk about me - let me say again, Robin - COME BACK!!

What, the Doc is as frightened by Go West as I am? This is my first online community experience too, and I like, very much. Meet us, we're lovely, really, and I like a space where we're occasionally taken to task for what we write. Reactions are good, reactionariness not so good. And yeah, if the vast majority of suits were on fire I wouldn't cross the road to piss on them, but that's just me, misanthropic atheist with thrift-shop skills par excellence.

Big Idler party next Thursday, BTW. I will see if Nathan Barley turns up (he'll be the twunt with the fin hair and the twisty Levi's trying to chat up my mate Imogen) but I think that he'd rather work for Dazed or one of those yoof production companies than hang with Nick. Clueless or what? I will be doctorin' the Tardis Studios and will have recovered for Sky Picnic purposes just in time. Wheeeee!

What is this Go West thing? What/who is/are the "vast majority of suits"? Not trying to be awkward, just attempting to understand your post, Suzy.

Doc: the Go West thing is for real. The 'suits' thing is, I think, a bit out of order. We went over all this on the 'Office Workers' thread, didn't we? And I'm pretty sure that we concluded that slagging people off just cos they worked in offices was kind of Dud. (Most of us have worked in one kind of office or another.) I'm not sure what atheism has to do with it, though I'm one too. But I don't mean to start picking holes here. Most of what the Doc said was about right by me.

some things worth thinking about here i think. i do hope nobody thinks i have been guilty of elitism or showboating (if i have it is certainly unintentional), although i will admit to occasional glibness and facetiousness (mainly contained on already destroyed dp threads though).

i still think this forum is excellent, i really do (did think at one point it was in danger from trolling but seems, mostly, to have rectified itself).

the slug&lettuce thing has already been done in the office workers thread, and i think robin was justified in calling this up. (the girls i live with would probably be classed as slug&lettuce style people here, and i don't see why their outlook needs to be chastised or stereotyped). i certainly don't want robin to leave the forum (unless temporarily so he can update elidor;))

Sorry, I wasn't here when the Office Workers thread was on the run.

I know I'm generalising about suits, but I'm not really attacking anyone for the job they do, or for that matter the fact that they have to go to an office to do it. I just don't like packs of drunken yobs or the chain bars they frequent after work, that is all.

Now can we please resume talking about the people we want to spend time with, where we want to be when we do that, and what we're going to dance to on the day?

No, Gareth, I didn't mean you!

I didn't get into the office workers thread, and I can't be bothered to look for it right now, but clearly dismissing whole swathes of the population because of what they wear/where they work/where they drink is idiotic (if that's what was going on in that thread). I've met many great people in 'conventional' (office, kids, house) life, I've met many great people living the 'art life' and many great people doing neither. I hate elitism and snobbery.

...and I've never heard of Nathan Barley.

Somehow I think the "sales teams in cheap attire" will survive Suzy's savage attack. I doubt that they're some sort of endangered minority. Mind you, after that post, and her writing about clothes elsewhere, I did wonder on what side of her fence of coolness an office worker AND total slob like me would fall.

I'm curious about the elitism and showboating that Dr C is referring to, because if anything, I feel that there's less of that on here than there used to be. Or maybe I'm one of the bad guys and I just don't see it.

Yes - I wonder what the Doc was on about.

Who is 'Nathan Barley' and why do you think we should be interested in him?

I found it very distressing that Robin was willing to dismiss anyone who isn't as great a writer as Mark S., Marcello, or Tom E. as smug and self-serving. I can really only think of a couple of people on the board that occaisonally qualify as smug, so this blanket condemnation of a lot of really interesting people was a little depressing.

The elitism and intellectual one-upsmanship claims baffle me. I will admit to probably being the most terrible and sometimes terribly stupid writer on the board, so maybe it somehow flys below (or should that be above?) my radar.

Patrick: I'm a total slob, but I loves my clothes and I polish up nicely ;). I don't actually make decisions about friendships based on what's on people's outsides. If I was actually THAT shallow I wouldn't have spent a single second on trying to assuage people who get the wrong end of the stick, either. And is it me, or is it only the men here who are freaked out by fashion-talk? What's that about?

Nah, you're right Suzy, from other stuff you've written on here and ILE you don't sound like that nasty type at all. It was just my insecurity and secondary school clothes traumas talking 8-).

I wonder if I should read anything into the fact that Robin's list of non-fucking-smug-and-self-serving posters is all-British.

for the record, i don't believe anyone here is self serving and smug, certainly none of the people in this thread

Patrick, the clothes traumas in my school started in Junior High, aka the Hellmouth of every American suburb, so I know exactly what you mean. I have smartarse DNA in spades so every day was a battlefield, but basically I think we all give that shit up when we have to make our own livings (I hope) and my examples are anecdotal and relevant to particular threads, anyway. Most of my complaints about the monoculture and its minions should be taken in 'thus always to tyrants' spirit.

Now, are you and your SO coming to the nice picnic? Gareth, you've got a note from school so you're OK. And no, I wouldn't draw conclusions from who Robin has endorsed because he's backed me up loads of times when I'm being trolled, so he's fine.

Get us plane tickets to London and we're SO there !

For the record, because no one asked me, there is only one person on this entire board who still posts regularly who I find to be smug. So there you go. I love all of you, honest, and I don't understand what all this ranting was about, you guys should all group hug.

What Ally said. Now if you'll allow me to be smug, I'm thrilled you're all coming to enjoy the greatness that is me! Unless you're not, in which case I hate you. Well, not really.

So when/where IS the meet-up? I still don't understand this Go West thing. Are you going to a Go West gig, Pinefox? Why?

I think the meet-up is 21.7. I think that I can't go cos I'm going to a Go West gig. I'm going to a Go West gig cos I like Go West.

Actually it's a two-day event that I'm going to - the other headliners are Deacon Blue. I'm not sure which night which band is playing. But I am very much looking forward to seeing both these bands.

Are Climie-Fisher on the bill also?

I thought the London thing was sometime between August 3-5, according to Ned.

20th July - ILE karaoke at the King Of Corsica 21st July - ILE free jazz picnic in the sky 3/4/5 August - Triggerfest

17th July - Pro-Kate St.Claire contingent sees Lollies at Lil Backyard Club. (tomato throwers welcome so long as you pay yer admission) 13th-23rd August, Kate travels around UK visiting all her friends for pub meets and suppers and things. Oh yes, and plays some gigs maybe. [/shameless self promotion]

No, really. I will post the dates on the other board as it gets closer. If anyone wants to meet up in towns we're visiting, we should come up with pubs or restaurants near the venues we're playing, and we'll have parties. It will make a welcome break from putting up with my bandmates in a tiny bus.

Robin has posted on ILM and ILE since his angry farewell upthread, I'm delighted to be able to say. I am fond of you, Robin, as are many many here; you makes a valuable, very distinctive contribution: I would be sad and angry if you left: I do not want you to leave.

Your attack on Suzy above — which I only discovered v.late, in fact this morning — is I think a total overreaction, and, in general and in detail, bollocks. You argue, here and elsewhere, that the board is now host to with Alarmingly Many Smug Pub Bores: you do not say WHO you mean, or WHAT it is exactly that you define thus. A brief glance at the Recent Answers threads proves this to be paranoia, by any definition I can come up with. The vast majority — some boring, some not — contain NOTHING that match your apparent object of disgust.

I'm sorry, Robin: I see Zero Moral Difference between your abreaction, so vaguely stated, and Suzy's mildly catty remark: both are of course hostile generalisations ("sales teams"; "pub bores"), both would make no sense as a structure for a politics (nor was either meant as such), both are pretty much non-toxic prejudice-as-kneejerk-flinch. and so what? We all do it. Good sometimes to be called on it; good as often to ignore it.

You then extrapolate towards an analogy with Rightwing Intolerance. Well, consider this: those of us you choose to excuse from your crit — including me, sorta, which is obviously gratifying, albeit in a puzzling kind of way — are WHITE MALE UK WRITERS of an ilk. What are we supposed to read into this? Ans = nothing, obviously, except what YOU would prefer to read. What we can read into Suzy's post = which drunks she would prefer to be near, in a London bar. cf also pinefox's recent comical rudeness towards alex in mainhattan's inelegant use of english, elsewhere (or indeed Dr C's cheerful support of same). Almost all of us have been bolshy, rude, childish and inappropriate at some time or other: including you, Robin. If you have a concrete beef, say WHAT IT IS. These coded insinuations help no one — and upset everyone. I for one have no plan to change the way I post based on your implied crit of me: as I have at present NO IDEA WHAT IT IS I'M SUPPOSED TO HAVE DONE WRONG. I'm sure I'm smug sometimes: I may even be Ally's Solitary Icon of Smug; but "self- serving" = meaningless to me.

Do you owe Suzy an apology? Maybe. I don't know. Do you owe the rest of us a clear explanation of what it is that's pissing you off? You certainly do.

For the record I was out of line in supporting P'Fox's mocking of Alex.

For the record, Alex was quite rude to Pinefox who was teasingly rude back: the rudeness back Alex himself seems to have found amusing. I don't see the harm arising — tho yes of course I see the risk — and I don't actually think *any* of you were "out of line". Just in case that isn't clear.

I've only just looked at this thread, and I can't say I'm anything less than totally shocked. I didn't think wot Suzy wrote was particularly offensive, at least by my standards, but then perhaps I'm one of the faction Robin was on about? To be fair, I wouldn't know, seeing as he didn't name names, but neither was I on the 'goodie' list. All I can say is:
If Robin is reading this, then please explain, *with names*, who's been playing up recently and what they've been doing. Otherwise, you're needlessy hurting a lot of people's feelings who you might not actually be referring to.

While we're waiting for Robin's answer, I'd like to humbly submit that I may be partly to blame for his tantrum. In the last month or so quite a few people have come into ILM based on recommendations on my website and on the Momus newsgroup, alt.fan.momus, which Robin used to post to a lot, then didn't. He may be referring to some of the invading Momusian hoardes as the unnamed and culpable people who have changed the tone on ILM recently, in his view.

I know Robin feels strongly about the rural / metropolitan divide, and the snobby attitude city folk have towards people who live in the sticks. I think the double act of me and Suzy doing our urban snob act probably pushed his panic button. Taken seriously, we seemed to be saying that not only are you infra dig if you come from anywhere other than London and New York (or, of course, Tokyo) but that whole areas of these cities are beneath contempt as well.

Now, I think it's been pretty obvious that I've been turning these comments about 'above Grand' and 'east of Strand' into a silly joke, the posturings of an ultra-fop. The Momus who says these things is a fictional character, and the Suzy who responds with stuff about slug salt and zoos is just playing along. Why don't you carry on posting, Robin, and let us carry on camping?

Confession time: I've been quite hard on hippies over on ILE. On the other hand, they keep taking my parking spaces...

Will that mean you'll come along to wherever the NYC meet-up is, Momus? :-)

If you'll pick me up from Tokyo, and give me a ride home afterwards, Ned.

Mark, I love you, you aren't smug or snobby. Good heavens, we don't need to be naming names at all, I feel like this is the cold war. Just suffice to say that some of us have issues with others of us and just drop it off with that.

Hippies deserve to be treated harshly, especially angry ones who try to run people down with their vans.

Mark: I was quite depressed last week, or at least personally on edge and terribly nervous / uncertain, and it only took one post to push me over the edge. It was Suzy's line that did it, but it could have been anything, really.

I didn't principally mean the ex-afmers (my favourite contributor from the later period of that ng, Dagmar 41, actually hasn't turned up here yet), I meant people like Ally and Nicole, whose postings often *do* bore me and leave me disinterested, but that isn't actually a criticism: I'm perfectly happy for them to continue here, because the greatness of this forum is its diversity. You might see this as anti-American, but it's just my dislike for trivia and self- promotion, and there are plenty of US contributors (Ned, Mike Daddino, Fred Solinger) I'm always stimulated by. I exaggerated vastly: the overwhelming majority of people here are friendly, sympathetic and great fun. I find some people boring, but I don't actively dislike anyone.

Thanks to all those who called for me to return: DG, I've always liked you a lot, and really should have said so in my fit of pique. I would agree with Momus that him and Suzy have been portraying fictional characters here, a certain self-image, not necessarily their true selves. Hell, I've done so often enough, and probably got into a lot of trouble when I was first on afm (a great ng back then, though: I was fantastically hyped up to check back every 30 minutes as I am here now) when I was in my "aspirational urban snob" phase.

I still love you, Momus. I still love these forums, and I know that Suzy would never dream of calling So Solid Crew glorified apes, as perhaps Colonel Sanderson of the Nene Valley (my reactionary old crone who has occasionally turned up here) might if he saw them. Let's heal the wounds, shall we? I'm back in the fold.

Thank goodness that's all over. Thank you for your kind words Robin, glad to see you're not going after all.

Welcome back, Robin.

Request for clarification : afm ? ng ?

afm alt.fan.momus. ng newsgroup.

Okay, I guess it's safe to say I shouldn't be posting here now. I shall probably be over on ILE.

it's a newsgroup..

will you all just get a grip please? reading this I felt a certain despair for humanity and computers...

and have some bloody fun........

gawd..........(pronounced canadian style) eh......

hahahahaha...

Comments about posters being boring are I would suggest out of order - I appreciate the need for specifics when discussing the state of a 'community' but since a community is defined not by its individuals but their interrelation picking on specific threads rather than people is a much better idea. For what it's worth I find Nicole's contributions very entertaining: most of the regular posters here, me included, have their hobby-horses which make them occasionally boring - Nicole is one of the only ones who stays free of this.

I also think ILM has suffered recently, not from a surfeit of snobbishness but just from being forced into becoming more music- fixated following the ILE split. Translation: there are less good jokes than there used to be and more stodge. But I'm so up in the air about how one should write about music (if at all) that this is more likely a reflection of me than the board.

For what it's worth...

I think the comments about Nicole were out of order. She loves music. This forum is called 'I love music'.......

Me?

Attack me.......*dodgy charlton heston voice* ATTACK ME INSTEAD....

*arrrggghhhh*

*rips shirt off*

GET YER HANDS OFF OF ME YOU FILTHY APE......

I too deplore the naming and shaming tactics. Nicole's great. Oh, and yeah, Ally too.

And I think you meant 'uninterested'

Robin: you fly off the handle all because of a jokey generalisation concerning the kind of people who would never read this board anyway, yet you are quite willing to casually and specifically insult a regular (and interesting/entertaining) contributor to ILE/ILM??????

Tom E: I totally see what you mean, and agree with a lot of what you say. But - hm - I wouldn't overstate the brilliance of the jokes on ILE either. Both boards have their plusses and minuses, really. And sth that one person (eg. me) likes, loads of other people (eg. you) will dislike anyway.

(By the way: 'less good jokes' should read 'fewer good jokes'.)

Didn't some English professor recently debunk all this pernickety distinction between 'less' and 'fewer', pointing to examples of 'less' being used in conjunction with discrete quantities for many centuries before some Dr Johnson-type bore decided upon this arbitrary point-scoring rule?

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't give a shit if anyone calls me obnoxious - quite frankly, that's what I'm going for ever since a couple months ago when I realized a good portion of this message board was, at the time, pedantic, smug, hipper-than-thou (choose any of the above) gits and if I tried to have serious conversation I'd get annoyed. I WANT to be annoying because it amuses me during my workday. If I didn't get things done quickly and have 15 minutes here or there between things at work, I'd not read this at all. So go right ahead and call me annoying.

However, Nicole does nothing but pretty good contributions. She doesn't go out of her way to annoy people, has some funny posts, has some intelligent posts. Even if you don't find what she has to say worthwhile (which is, I say, your issue, not hers), she hasn't done anything to be called smug, boring, annoying, whatever right out like that. And coming from someone who just flew off the fucking handle over some generalized minor insult towards a huge group of unspecific people, that's really, really rich.

Quite frankly, when I sysopped on my ex's board for him back in the day when I was bored, that sort of bullshit would've gotten you kicked out of my area. Tom's way nicer than me, but I still think Nicole deserves a big fat apology.

I must admit, Ally is right.

I"ll start it:

Sorry, but I've been terribly depressed here in Norwich..

Nick: I haven't heard about this 'English professor' of whom you speak. What I did was not 'point-scoring' because it doesn't give me more 'points' than Ewing. It's not a game we're playing to win, there's no score, nobody's competing. Certainly I'm not competing with the admirable Ewing, who I have said a million times is one of the finest writers on pop music I have ever read.

To be fair, a few people asked Robin to name names, so he did.

As for the pedancy/smugness/whatever, I've made those charges myself before, but now it seems to be coming up a lot, and I wish people would say, without naming names, what kind of behaviors and postings they're referring to, 'cause I'm guessing that a lot of people (probably the wrong ones) are starting to wonder if THEY are the ones making ILM unpleasant for others. I know I do (wonder, that is).

Of course, Ally did say that Robin shouldn't name names...

...and I agree with her. Nothing has really come out of it beyond someone I like getting her feelings hurt and a whole lot of prolific posters becoming paranoid that they're insulting/annoying people.

I wanted to know names in case I was on Robin's blacklist, and I think it was perfectly fair of me to ask.

Am I on the blacklist??? come on...puhlease.......

puhlease.....

is gary glitter on the blacklist...

noooo....

: - o

I wanted to specify why I felt disillusioned with the forum and considered leaving, and also to disprove Momus's suggestion that it was the erstwhile afm-ers I mostly disliked. I had to name names, simply to explain my previous mental processes.

Rest assured that I have nothing against Ally or Nicole. I rarely reply to what they say, but I'm perfectly happy for them to post here and would be sad if either left.

Thank you o benevelont one...

You are most kind, and grant us gifts of intellect through your musings..

Bugger off Dumpertroll, don't stir up trouble.

My lord...

I have .... *wipes back tears* cause shame on this house of "I love music" .... *turns dramatically away and then quickly faces you, very solemn* How can I....

*turns to the windowsill*

*looks in horror, clenching fists and arms flailing with emotions*

Please...

Please...

DG...noo..........

Don't do this .....

I officially apologize for inadvertantly starting this mess. Sheesh.

You know very well what I'm talking about DP.

No..

*wiping tears from red shaky eyes*

*soulful look*

It was MY fault....oh god....oh no....

*running away (yet again) arms flailing with emotion*

You won't get any sympathy from me, not after your behaviour recently.

I think everyone should have a great big group hug, a rousing sing song of Phil Collin's Against all odds...

And of course a heated debate about the exact meaning of the song.

What are odds? Against...is it a force? A pressure? Did he mean the Canadian rock group...

And a quick dance to stereolab...

hello everyone!

No need to apologise, Ned. Your post was as innocent and informative as a post can be. My suggestion: you and I and others involved sort out details and we'll put them up on the site and people can turn up who want to.

Turning to Tom with my tear stained face...slowly putting down the acoustic guitar....

Even me, Tom???

No..

Oh...

*sings mournful 'Against all odds'...in a solo Richard Ashcroft mode...

Take a look at me now...

No..no...no...

I'm just a empty space....

Yes...yes..yes...

Sounds good -- include Kate, MJ and the Not-Appearing-On-This-Board Angus as well in any plans, mind.

tom/ned, are t'details going to be posted here or on FT? need to make plans and shit for that weekend pretty soon.

I'll bring my acoustic guitar and my 'No jacket required' song book...

We'll probably post them hither and yon. Just keep all three days open if you can, my guess is this will be a series of semi-connected events that people can attend as they choose.

Geez, I just came across this, and it's making me so paranoid, which is a form of self-centeredness, I understand. I didn't really come here from afm a month ago - I did find out about Freakytrigger from AFM some months ago, but I've been lurking for a while. Robin, I've always enjoyed your posts and website. I realize that I am a pretty self-conscious urbanite, self-styled, whatever. I love living in the city. I hope I have not in any way implied a disdain for rural folk, because I have none. I have elsewhere written about my distaste for "provinciality", but I've found that in the suburbs (where I grew up and attended school) *and* in certain parts of the city. Chicago is the perfect example of a pretentiously unpretentious city. It's just that for me, those types of environments were and are fairly stifling. I have lived and holiday-ed in rural America, where my grandparents lived and ran a tavern, and it has a place in my life. So yes, I am one of those annoying afm snobby cosmopolitans, but it's as much an affectation as anything else. I hope to god I haven't contributed something discouraging to the environment of ILM.

I wasn't going to contribute to this Thread Gone Terribly Awry, but Kerry just said everything I would have liked to have said--if I had posted, which I guess I am doing right now (even though I had made up my mind not to once I finally looked at this thread today), except I used to live in the country and then the city and then several other cities and now the country again, and I suppose I sometimes sound pretentious even though if you met me you'd see very little to be pretentious about, and I suppose I make a fool of myself quite a bit of the time, but I love ILM and most of you ILMers and don't want to spoil the fun and will go quietly at the first and most subtle request--and I'm sorry that I'll probably never get to meet Ned or anyone else here because I do live so far away and in reality believe it or not I'm very shy. Bye!

I've finally been able to translate Robin's countryside deal into American terms, and I understand much better now. Rough analogy to attitude of yuppies towards middle America as "flyover country" and such always gets me real pissed off. I guess I A) am less able to see it on British terrain and B) am attuned only to the more gross manifestations on American terrain. After all, local patriotism is fairly natural to foax no matter what locality they hail from. Unless, of course, they hate it, as I have hated Santa Barbara and now despise Berkeley and San Franciso.

Not so sure our thing here is that isomorphic to matters in England, Sterl. Similarities though.

No, I've always, always liked you, Kerry. In fact, it was you who gave me a lot of help when I was going through my "aspirational snob" phase, and I'm very grateful in retrospect, even though I was terribly full-on then, and tended to cut through others' arguments without thinking.

I suppose I'm culturally very self-conscious at times, but I've never let that totally dominate my actions, if you see what I mean.

You *never* struck me as a "snobby cosmopolitan" (I've always liked your open-mindedness and your ability to break through these false barriers), and I've always appreciated your contributions. The one afm-er who most irritated me as such, partially because he reminded me of a younger, gaucher Carmody, was Fizzyglist, and in fact he has never posted here.

I really must check on that ng again sooner rather than later ...

I'm so vain, I knew that was stupid. I was bummed when you took off. Thanks, Robin, but FWIW, I never saw the connection between you and that other poster. You have e-mail.

You people need to worry. Seriously.

ahahahahaha