Okay, it's not a debate, it's a monologue but I'm the one who paid $12 for the privilege of posting my rude thoughts publicly without the intrusion of ads, so I'm personally okay with that.

Before we get into today's rudeness,and since this blog thingy seems to be becoming more of a public forum than I'd anticipated, let me point out that no one has ever written to me and dissed my (fiction) writing.

It may surprise you to know that I find that sort of insulting. Many writers I know, all better than me, receive long and thoughtful posts from readers discussing their stories and pointing out problems. Even abusing them and placing retroactive curses on their ancestors. Really lousy writers have publicly cried over the number of flames they've received.

In my disclaimers, I used to invite such remarks, and even beg for outright flames, but no heat ensued. Let me assure you that not every word from my keyboard is golden. I've written some crap and by gosh I stand by my right to be told so!

(I still cherish the one flame I did receive, and can quote it verbatim. "You are so sick it isn't even funny." I wrote dozens of stories, and that's all I got. She didn't even bother to tell me which story she'd read that was so sick.)

I can only conclude that nothing I ever wrote affected anyone deeply. Clearly I fall into the 75% "mediocre majority" of writers that no one cares enough to instruct on How It Oughta' Be Done.

It's not entirely out of the question that my pissy attitude toward fandom is entirely a result of this neglect. You should have sent me hate mail when you had the chance.

Cap'n Nasty read my blog! And, as usual, came up with a pithy and amusing summary that I wish I'd written.

I humbly submit Typoid Merry: because referring to a bad writer as a typIST is an insult to real typists, and because generally such fiends are unremorseful, even gleeful, about sucking, and because their work is capable of causing spontaneous deadness.

I think I'm going to adopt this new designation.

Except that, although I think the "merry" thing is fun, I do actually know of a person on-line whose name is "Merry" and she's a pretty darned good writer, so I'm going with the more traditional "Mary" thing. We can all just think, "merry" and laugh evilly to ourselves.

People who come upon it unawares at the point when I start saying 'Typoid Mary(TM)' and then just writing 'TM' are going to be confused, but I'm okay with that, too.

I'm okay with a fair number of rude things before the caffeine hits the required level in my blood in the morning.

The same Kind Friend who inflicted so may of those rotten writing examples on me suggests that I turn my attention to The Disclaimer for my next tirade. I'm tempted to point out that she's the proud possessor of a blog herself and there's nothing stopping her from posting any number of rude thoughts about anything that annoys her, but I'm aware that not everyone shares my complete and utter indifference to some kinds of public opinion.

I ask myself, "Whose bad opinion is she afraid of incurring? The "first fist of diarrhea" person? Surely not. It would be a proud thing to be disliked by the Typoid Marys (TM) of the world."

What about the rest of you? You have nothing to lose but an in-box full of crappy fiction if you speak out.

In any case, this particular entry isn't on the subject of disclaimers, although I haven't ruled out the possibility of throwing a hissy fit on that topic at some later time or day.

Actually, this has gotten so long that I should stop now, so the Planned Actual Topic will have to show up at a later time.