Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Hello, readers. Manic is here to answer your questions an*...

Ack!

Gah!

Gnnnnnnn!

Feel... strange sensation... normalcy... coursing through body!

Cannot... talk... or type... at normal rate.

Must... shed.... third-person.... charad*...

ARRRRRRRGH!

[silence]

Hello, readers. Ziggy is here to answer your questions a*...

Ack!

Gah!

Gnnnnnnnnnn!

ARRRRRRRGH!

[general panting and slurping noises]

[silence]

Ah.... I feel much better now.

I'd like to begin by thanking the many supporters who have emailed over the past few days (you know who you are) and pointed out that the 'third-person' gag was getting a bit old and getting in the way of the material. (Kind of like those "Thatcher is a cunt!" jokes of yore... we all knew she was a cunt.)

The watershed moment appears to have come when (as predicted here) Paul de Laire Staines insisted on being disguised and addressed as 'Guido Fawkes' on Newsnight. (A few emails had arrived before this moment, but after Newsnight they came in with machine-gun regularity.)

Praguetory spent an entire day yesterday finding out how difficult it was to satirise satire, and had this to say when he was finished wiping the white wee-wee from his (short) trousers: Blogging in the style of another blogger is fun for a day, but do it for an extended period could drive you nuts.

He's not far off the mark (for once).

As fun as it was watching supporters of Staines banging on about how moronic it was to post/comment in third-person and/or making out that doing so equated with their sock-puppet nonsense, the charade was very difficult to maintain, and I found myself wondering several times how Staines manages to keep it up so consistently without surrendering to the character and/or going completely fucking mental.

So... no more third-person, here or under comments on this blog or elsewhere.

I'm as relieved as you are... and it's not the only change to this weblog that starts from now:

Guido 2.0 will now also become a META-BLOG and will include contributions from a range of bloggers who are unimpressed with Paul Staines*, his antics, and the antics of the anonymous bullies that he hides behind.

Invites will be sent to potential contributors today.

Contributors will be expected to provide material for an upcoming 'about us' profile page, but apart from this and the necessary bits and bobs designed to stop us from treading on each other's toes, the only condition that will be laid down will be as follows:

You will need to always keep in mind that this is my weblog and it is hosted on my web space; I carry the legal risks and we're dealing with a very litigious 'libertarian', so on contentious issues I have the final say on what gets published here.

One major advantage to this arrangement; the new contributors are allowed to leave comments on Staines' website. He banned me for acting *exactly* like his gang of sock-puppeting morons... just not in his favour. If he bans people from commenting just because they contribute to this website, he's going to look a right twat (again).

Manic has....

Oops. That was a close one.

Cheers all.

[*Iain Dale? Well, he gets to keep his very own category in the short-term... but he should also keep an eye out for a prophecy fulfilled. Those who miss out on contributing to this meta-blog because of the need to keep author numbers to a manageable level need not worry... more opportunities await you in the future.]

Praguetory tries to be funny

Praguetory is back after nearly a month of nursing his bruises, and desperately dashing from blog to blog promoting his 'impersonate Manic' day under comments. Individual items may pass muster as being on-topic, but taken collectively it stinks of spam.... so in an effort to keep the blogosphere relatively spam-free, Manic will happily help Praguetory along and heartily promote this event (which is sure to reveal more about Praguetory than it will about Manic):

Praguetory - Keep Looking Watson

Not a good start. Praguetory is so lacking in self-awareness that he does not realise how stupid he looks by targeting Tom Watson to 'get at' Manic when the big-game-hunter antics he and Paul Staines play have already been rumbled.

Also, he is basing his style on 'Guido 2.0', not Bloggerheads. It is not easy to successfully find humour in mocking a writing style that satirises another... you undermine yourself from the outset by showing that you do not get the joke!

And while humour can be found in the subtle reworking of the material of your target, it does not pay to simply throw the same material back at that target verbatim unless their hypocrisy is so obvious/proven and totally inline with the original text that the audience is sure to get the joke.... and in trying to 'prove' hypocrisy, Praguetory not only fails miserably, but (again) shows his ignorance:

Not only is Tom Watson mocking David Cameron by way of a 'caught unawares at home' video blog [see: satire (use of)], but the allowance that Tom Watson and many other MPs voted for (that Manic himself thinks is a bit of a joke) cannot be used for campaigning purposes! Silly boy.

As for the 'Filipino maid' remark, Manic (in his role as full-time campaign manager for Tom Watson) criticised Tom privately at the time and is not afraid to make the content of that communication public now:

That maid remark wasn't very smart, Tom. Even if you're mocking the cheap shots Mr Nice Guy allows from his activists, you're forgetting that the Tories are such shameless liars that they will simply pick up the ball and run with it, yelling "Look! He's taking a cheap shot!"

And so it has come to pass.

UPDATE - Here comes Post #2

Praguetory - Check The Toilet Watson

Targeting Tom again? This subject has already been covered Mr Big Game Hunter. Next!

UPDATE - Here comes Post #3

Praguetory - Check The Outside Toilet Watson

Tom again. And he's not getting any funnier. That was the point of this exercise, yes?

UPDATE - Post #4

Praguetory - Have You Tried Taking Up The Drains Watson?

Tom again!? As Manic has stated under comments, he is beginning to suspect that Praguetory is using 'satire' as an excuse for publishing a series of libellous comments about Tom Watson.

UPDATE - Post #5

Praguetory - How To Win Friends & Influence People

Manic fails to see any effort, humour or point in repeating content verbatim in this way... especially when Manic produced proof of his claims of cowardice in the original post and Praguetory has not in his carbon copy of its content. It also needs to be noted that the word 'bogroll' and the childish name-calling originated at the 'Guido Fawkes' weblog and that the subsquent 'bogroll' here was intended to mock that. He is again failing to identify satire while trying to satirise it by starting his own 'bogroll'... and calling Manic a hypocrite as he does so. Does anyone have any paracetamol?

UPDATE - Post #6

Praguetory - What Watson?

Praguetory reveals that the entire stunt is designed to slag off Tom Watson, and that he already has the material prepared. The excuse he gives is delicious... Manic would have gladly been a part of this regardless of the subject matter!

UPDATE - Post #7

Praguetory - Hamer’s A Card

Ah, the muddy waters begin to clear... a 'case' is being built of sock-puppet hypocrisy! Praguetory appears to be leading up to a claim that Hamer is a sock-puppet controlled by Tom Watson, who in turn is operating under Manic's direction. Of course, Praguetory can't have any proof of this, because it simply isn't true. Not that it matters; Praguetory probably plans to delete all of today's bilge anyway... he's a big fan of retro-moderation, that boy.

UPDATE - Post #8

Praguetory - Ageism

Closest he's come to satire all day. Too bad he appears to be blissfully unaware that the terms are used in direct response to his childishness (which is revealed again in his latest response).

UPDATE - That's all for now, folks. It's just gone 5pm and Manic has places to be and things to do. Besides, Labour headquarters doesn't pay Manic enough to.... Uh-oh.

UPDATE (April 3) - Post #9

Praguetory - Try The Open Sewage Pipe, Watson

Praguetory does not want to bring up the 'Brownite coup' affair (during which his blogging hero outed himself as a total hypocrite and a bastard who will dump his sources in it as and when it suits him). And 'grudge blogging'? FFS. How many posts about Tom Watson yesterday?

UPDATE - Post #10

Praguetory - More Grudge Blogging

Tom again? Really? Oh well, Praguetory did conduct a "Should I blog more about Watson?" poll for his readers (and struggled throughout the afternoon and evening to bring in 10 measly votes).

UPDATE - Post #11

Praguetory - All Good Things Must Come To An End

Translation: "I am running away (again)." Check this post out for the shocking and eye-opening 'chez' connection.

UPDATE - Post #12

Praguetory - Blog Round Up

In which Praguetory says; "Blogging in the style of another blogger is fun for a day, but do it for an extended period could drive you nuts."

Manic has something to say on that subject and a link will appear below shortly:
[link goes here]

UPDATE - Hahahaha! And now he's 'banned' Manic and switched on comment moderation so he can have the last word. What a tool.

Manic has spoken. End communication.

Racial slur ahoy!

It would appear that 'Guido' deleted more than a few comments on his website yesterday, but here's one that he didn't delete, even after another contributor highlighted it.


How lovely.

Hey, isn't this the kind of thing that Paul Staine's anonymous-bully-in-chief Praguetory likes to get all faux-outraged about? No? Well how about this, then?

Manic has spoken. End communication.

A major victory for Guido 2.0! The 'war' is within measurable distance of its end!

Manic has been after Paul de Laire Staines (aka 'Guido Fawkes') to make one minor update to his website since waaaay back in January.

This update - the inclusion of time *and* date in comment timestamps - could have been done in minutes on the old version of Blogger that 'Guido' was on then, or the new version of Blogger that he switched to a few weeks ago.

Yesterday, 'Guido' had the builders in making a bit of a mess of his website. Major changes were made to the design template, but this simple 'switch it on' measure was still not taken... despite Paul Staines making a clear promise to do so in his Pickled Politics interview (see here and here).

So last night, Manic sent Paul an email:

----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Ireland
To: Guy Fawkes
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 8:48 PM
Subject: When you're ready II

You promised 'time and date' timestamps during your recent interview (the one where you mistook 'irony' for hypocrisy').

Where are they?

Tim

PS - They take seconds to turn on and a few minutes to propagate site-wide. It is not a template issue, but a core Blogger feature that is easy to access and enact. What exactly are you afraid of?

A few short hours later, Paul Staines finally made good on his promise and introduced comment timestamps with time *and* date (well, initially he went with the rather more clunky format of date *then* time, but cheeky beggars can't be choosers).

Manic plans to make a similar update to Guido 2.0, as there is little point satirising a state of play that no longer exists. However... with this in mind, Manic does not plan to take this measure until Iain Dale, that other major breeder of sock-puppets and anonymous bullies, makes a similar update to his website.

Manic would also appreciate Iain making a correction to his design template that allows readers to link to individual comments. It is a simple fix, and an important one, as the threads at his website are often almost as long as his record-breaking blogroll.

In fact, Manic sent an email to Iain Dale last night, too... and requested all of the above (a couple of links have been added for the benefit of newcomers):

----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Ireland
To: Iain Dale
Cc: Guy Fawkes
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 12:32 AM
Subject: Re: When you're ready II

Proper timestamps when you're ready, Iain. You jumped pretty quickly on that search function, and that was a much bigger ask than a simple 'turn it on' Blogger feature like this.

Tim

PS - And while you're tinkering, please have your webmonkey fix your comment permalinks. I'd like to be able to point to specific moments when you're a total hypocrite.

PPS - Goodbye! Forever! *gasp* *sigh*

Finally, in the interests of transparency, Manic would also like to publish the email he sent to both parties just before closing up shop for the night. For newcomers, it needs to be pointed out that this entire saga can be summed up as follows:

Manic expressed grave concern about the self-serving hypocrisy of Staines and Dale, and the impact that their reliance on anonymous bullies was having on the wider blogging community. Both responded by unwittingly confirming that they were selfish hypocrites on several fronts... but not before hiding behind their anonymous bullies, thereby pushing said bullies into the foreground for everyone to see... in action, no less!

This helped to prove Manic's point about the underhanded methods these anonymous bullies use to restrict free speech.

Dale and Staines also proved time and again that Manic was the only party central to the affair who could afford to say "Bring it on!" when push came to shove.

This helped to prove Manic's point about the importance of credibility to individual sustainability.

Here's the email:

----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Ireland
To: Iain Dale ; Guy Fawkes
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 1:04 AM
Subject: PS

In case I haven't mentioned it before, it is a mistake to let your opponent know what a coward you are. Both of you have, over the last few months, shown exactly what you are made of.

Your team of bullies have - with minor individual variations - made exactly the same error.

It's not the only mistake you've made, but there's a limit to my generosity, so I shall say no more.

Good luck in the coming months. Oh, and fuck you both.

Cheers

Tim

The shared cowardice Manic refers to is best displayed in the following manner:

Manic had this to say about Paul Staines. Did Staines have courage enough (or consideration enough for his readers) to actually link to it in his partial/misleading response? No, he did not.

Manic had this to say about Iain Dale. Did Dale have courage enough (or consideration enough for his readers) to actually link to it in his partial/misleading response? No, he did not.

Manic had this to say about 'Praguetory'. Did 'Praguetory' have courage enough (or consideration enough for his readers) to actually link to it in his partial/misleading response? No, he did not.

Manic had this to say about 'Dizzy'. Did 'Dizzy' have courage enough (or consideration enough for his readers) to actually link to it in his partial/misleading response? No, he did not.

Slam. Dunk. (x4)

PS - No, it is not good policy to interrupt your opponents when they are making a mistake... but it doesn't hurt to point the mistake out when (a) it proves educational to others (b) it is painfully obvious anyway and (c) the damage is irreversible.

:o)

Manic has spoken. End communication.