"It's how to change the mood if someone is mean."

March 23, 2005 4:40 PM

Can you never think of the right thing to say? Trouble relating in social circumstances? Maybe Taxi1010 can help. This guide to verbal self-defense is extensive, detailed, and quite clearly the work of a troubled mind. Start here, or search by insult on the "sunporch", key/codeword in the "kitchen", bridge in the "wine cellar", or response in the "nursery." Examine one of the many, many stargates(use this handy map, organized by stage of psychological development)... read one of the many, many essays... wherever you go it is an explosion of advice, comebacks, hypothetical situations, and who knows how many MSPaint masterpieces. Spend a minute, spend a day, spend your life trying to figure this site out.
posted by BlackLeotardFront (31 comments total)

I find it's useful to create a web page that's nothing more than a palette of colors — and messy, too! Then you can pick and choose from among them as you go along.

Unencumbered by the process of thought.

Yup. That's right.

Actually, it's a pretty bizarre site. There's so much stuff there and none of it makes the slightest bit of sense!
posted by 327.ca at 4:50 PM on March 23, 2005

Is this one of those sites created by a bunch of monkeys pounding on keyboards somewhere?
posted by fenriq at 4:52 PM on March 23, 2005

Fortunately, the link to this site makes Taxi1010 much easier to understand.
posted by 327.ca at 4:55 PM on March 23, 2005

It ... is the most nonsensical collection of grammarful sentences I have seen in a long time. Shades of timecube.
posted by blacklite at 4:56 PM on March 23, 2005

I wonder when he'll start talking about the body thetans...?
posted by xmod2 at 5:02 PM on March 23, 2005

Lurking and commenting on forums and filters like this have helped my "verbal self-defense" skills go up 100s of percentage points in the last six years.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 5:08 PM on March 23, 2005

I'm waiting for the decoder ring that makes this site make sense.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:10 PM on March 23, 2005

Theres no decoder ring... you have to live inside this guy's mind. I like to think he has the whole thing memorized and actually lives by the system. Give it some time, it begins to come together.... mwahahaha
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 5:37 PM on March 23, 2005

heh. wow.
posted by Toecutter at 5:39 PM on March 23, 2005

Okayyyyyyy.
posted by bdave at 6:08 PM on March 23, 2005

Is it possible that a computer program made some of this? Could this even be a clever, elaborate joke?

Please say yes, please.
posted by NickDouglas at 6:16 PM on March 23, 2005

I don't understand this at all.
posted by Veritron at 6:22 PM on March 23, 2005

Etch-a-Sketch

My friend Virginia almost sent off a business E-mail today reading, "It was nice to meet you toady ...."

We were all rolling in the isles over that one.
posted by bdave at 6:28 PM on March 23, 2005

Overview - This is the page layout for a roughly two-hundred page book you can carry around in your pocket, entitled, Mind Candy - The Field Guide to Non-escalating Verbal Self-Defence.

I could go on and on. It's kind of explained here. Still uber weird.
posted by bdave at 6:32 PM on March 23, 2005

Another page by the same author. And the PDF.

Ok, ok.

*Lowers gaze, backs away from computer*

Most enjoyable BLF, thanks.
posted by bdave at 6:41 PM on March 23, 2005

March 11, 2003
Seafarers' skies today, cumulus humilis as far as the eye can see, mixed with altocumulus castellanus, changing to stratus formations.

March 9, 2003
Maybe I'll take the stars and the clouds to the movies tonight, something to enrich their lives.
posted by foot at 7:07 PM on March 23, 2005

I spent five years writing a 400-page book on verbal self-defense, printed a hundred copies, then sold them out of my San Francisco taxicab. Another year for the second edition. Another year for the third edition. Bookstores wouldn't touch it, and people kept buying it. I knew something was fishy.

Oh yeah, I'm a fucking lunatic...
posted by c13 at 7:11 PM on March 23, 2005

I give up trying to navigate. I did find a photo of the author.
posted by NickDouglas at 7:13 PM on March 23, 2005

Please stop the ride, I want to get off.
posted by NickDouglas at 7:25 PM on March 23, 2005

One afternoon my roommate came home from work and began asking me what day of the week it was. "Is today Wednesday?" he asked. I inwardly blamed him, thinking he was being weird, stupid, or immature, until I saw my negative feelings were interfering with my understanding. He was simply relaxing and being a child.

It's not self-defense, it's defense-from-self. This makes me sad. On the other hand, my girlfriend takes a lot of taxis here in the bay area; so now it worries me.
posted by fleacircus at 7:51 PM on March 23, 2005

PDF from above:
"A prodigious sailing prodigy, winning races on the Atlantic Ocean at 12. HIS MOTHER AND STEPFATHER FAIRLY PRAYED FOr HIM TO KIND OF NOT DROWN."
(verbatim from site, CAPS not mine)

heh. That's pretty funny, though obviously not intentional. Interesting, but it reminds me not to get sucked into a creepy crazy cult.
posted by schyler523 at 8:05 PM on March 23, 2005

I found this story in the Press Coverage link. Seems like an amazing guy to actually talk to, methinks the website doesn't really do him justice.
posted by schyler523 at 8:21 PM on March 23, 2005

Snakes understand a lot. It's just hard for a tube to express itself.

It's all so clear now.
posted by Vulpyne at 9:35 PM on March 23, 2005

Thanks, BlackLeotardFront; I think this is fascinating, and would love to meet the author. Upon first looking over the site, I had a little frisson of that feeling that I think many of us sometimes experience upon waking up after dreaming — that conviction that one has managed to gain an insight, solve a dilemma, or grasp a process while in the dream state, that seems to swiftly flee the vicinity of the waking mind... a tantalizing glimpse of "Aha!".

At any rate, if any of us were able to actually physically document our thought processes, I think quite a few of us would find their tangible shape to be strange and enlightening... maybe even disturbing. But seeing this kind of rare glimpse of what is basically "unprocessed" (by which I mean not translated into a standard or typical form) internal logic is kind of exhilarating — a sort of "open-source brain dump", or single-author, mental-medium FilePile. And, in terms of the "playbook" aspect of so many of the suggested responses, I really love the idea of surrealism employed as a functional application... So, yes — altogether fascinating.
posted by taz at 5:48 AM on March 24, 2005

First thoughts: What if Larry Fischer drove a cab?
Second Thoughts: They laughed at Wolfli, too.
I, too, thought of the link to the "freeyourmind" site mentioned by 327.ca, (ARTIFICIAL SYNCHRONICITY, LANGUAGE MANIPULATION, KUNDALINI AND THE CORNERS OF REALITY) but I also go back to Deleuze & Guattari to ask if these folks' reality is any less valid than the stuff we accept, e.g. the Bush family's assault on the right to die and blatant disregard for the US constitution, burning fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow and ignoring the consequences.

Don't get me wrong--I play on "our" playing field. I just wonder sometimes, which group is truly insane?
posted by beelzbubba at 6:17 AM on March 24, 2005

In the Middle Ages, they gave people like this leeches and exorcisms. Now we give them computers. Sounds like progress.
posted by fungible at 8:13 AM on March 24, 2005

Yep.

Yeah.

Ok, um.

Definately the best blog ever.
posted by asok at 8:27 AM on March 24, 2005

I enjoyed it immensely!
posted by bukvich at 11:22 AM on March 24, 2005

Roommate issues.

But really, most of these are common complaints with shared living space arrangements:

(7.) hoards plastic containers
...
(22.) dimwitted alarm clock tricks, in absentia
...
(27.) discards toenail clippings on living room rug, injuring dogs
...
(36.) has an abiding and lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut

This is an epic kind of weird.
posted by Coda at 11:42 AM on March 24, 2005

tagline!
posted by pekar wood at 5:42 PM on March 24, 2005

I think everyone would understand this site much better if you all weren't educated singularity stupid by academic bastards.
posted by icey at 6:09 PM on March 24, 2005