Monday, March 8, 2010

Matt, Nicholas, and The Great Misunderstanding.

Gather round, children, gather round.  I have a little story that just might brighten your day. I call it: Well...you should know what I've called it based on my headline. It's a bit of what some might call, a farce.

This morning, Matt, an apparently overly-sensitive young man, set out to write about The Oscar ceremony that took place the night before. Before he did so, however, he decided to check his blog e-mail to see if anything important had been sent to him.  It was at that time that he saw an e-mail containing the following quote:

"If you want to be taken seriously as a person, you should contemplate exhibiting some human characteristics, such as tact, respect, or offering the world something other than your utterly useless criticisms.
Sincerely,
Nicholas"

Matt sat at his desk, utterly dumbfounded. 

Flashback:
In early February, a dashing young man named Nicholas decided to check out his good friend Matt's blog.  While reading a short, an ultimately, poorly written review of Stephen King's "Under The Dome", he noticed that someone felt the need to leave a comment.  That comment said:

"If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, don't make errors such as the one in this phrase: "...a thrill ride from it's start."

Now, Nicholas decided that he didn't like that comment, and that he had to stand up for his friend Matt.  So he made, what he felt, was a very good rebuttal. However, he decided that maybe it wasn't the best idea to post that...so he deleted it, with no way of knowing that Blogger sent his friend Matt an e-mail notification, anyway.

So here we are, about a month later, and we see Matt sitting at his desk very confused as to why he received the abuse that he did. He decided: "Maybe I had it coming. But for that?  Why, golly gee, I don't think anything in that little post of mine could possibly be offensive!" And so he began to write a very long and drawn-out, almost stream-of-consciousness essay, all the while thinking that maybe he was wrong, perhaps he was just not meant for the blogging universe. But he couldn't go out without first attempting to speak his mind to that dastardly offensive Nicholas. "I mean...inhuman?" Matt thought, "I think that's just a bit too far!" And Matt felt bad, because he was worried that one of his very good friends, Nick, would think that he was talking about him.

Well, as it turns out...Matt was talking about him.  Not thirty minutes went by before Matt's good friend Nick saw that Matt had posted a new blog post on his Facebook wall.  It even said 'Possibly final post'. This, of course, intrigued young Nicholas, and he immediately started to read his friend's post.  However, the innocent young Nick discovered, that somehow a terrible mistake had been made!  Matthew was upset by his almost-commented-comment! Nicholas thought he should call his friend right away, and explain himself.

Now, when Mr. Matthew saw Mr. Nicholas' name appear on his phone, he felt bad.  Nick had, unfortunately, taken Matt's blog post the wrong way. Matt picked up and immediately said: "Don't worry, my most darling Nick!  I couldn't even imagine a world in which you were the one who said such things about me!"

"Oh, but my handsome and charming and intelligent friend," said Nicholas,  "I am, in fact, the critic of which you have described!  However, i was not criticizing you, but rather that ratcatcher that had the audacity to point out that you used such a silly a-phrase in your post!"

"Well, damn damn damn!" Matt said. "i sure did make this my own little pitty-party, now didn't I?"

"You sure did, you insecure little buffoon!" Nicholas said, "But I will make up for the confusion I caused by posting several ridiculous and overly-complimentary comments on this little dissertation of yours!"


And that, my friends, is how Matt learned that he needed to slow down and analyze certain situations a bit better, and that there is never a need to write a blog denigrating yourself just because some little coward wrote a bad comment about it. And so Mr. Shea would continue to write on, and continue to say things, but maybe...just maybe, he'd let his guns cool a bit before he fired them off online.

Then again, that's what Christian Bale said about confrontation.

The End.

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