46 responses to
“Closing time.”

1. michaelj said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:19 pm

   Funny you should say that, Nancy. I wrote this Sat­ur­day, when the bliz­zard had still not reached it’s height:

   Palate Cleanser:This is fas­ci­nat­ing and, I think, very well-written. To me, Wikipedia
   is sort of a guilty plea­sure and the lazy way out if you’re try­ing to find out about some­thing. But it’s a hoot, and I fig­ure I’m well-informed enough to take some of it with a grain of salt. On the other hand, some ves­tige of some sort of intelligence.

   They should prob­a­bly make this the offi­cial Wikipedia entry for Wikipedia.

2. Connie said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm

   Wasn’t that an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence? I saw your name every­where on the net over the week­end. At some point at blognet­news aggre­ga­tor forindi­ana http://​www​.blognet​news​.com/​I​n​diana/ , you were men­tioned in every sin­gle entry on the page.

   Some seri­ously nasty stuff showed up in com­ments. Did it make you think of Jane, you igno­rant slut? Does that date me?

3. nancy said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 pm

   No, Con­nie, it mainly made me won­der how long before my home address and phone num­ber appeared in some crazy-right blog, along with “CHARGE!!!!!”

4. trick said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:30 pm

   You’re the prover­bial trouper, Nancy — thanks for deftly and grace­fully han­dling all this stuff. For what it’s worth, you elicited a far higher stan­dard of com­ments these past four days, even from the nutjobs, than the drooling-mouth-breather grunts that pass as com­ment on so many other blogs. This episode has been enlight­en­ing, enter­tain­ing and sober­ing all at the same time.

5. Connie said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:36 pm

   Nancy that is a scary thought.

6. Sue said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:45 pm

   Hope­fully, all you’ll have to do is change your phone num­ber, because most of the trolls will be charg­ing around Indi­ana look­ing for you, and the rest will be afraid to come to — what was the phrase that one poster used? — the hell hole city where you actu­ally live.

7. John said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:51 pm

   Just back from Jamaica. Did I miss anything?

8. LAMary said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:58 pm

   I still keep won­der­ing why he did it. How could he pos­si­bly think he could get away with it? Once, maybe.

9. Suzi said on March 3rd, 2008 at 1:25 pm

   If the trolls show up in Fort Wayne, we can send them down to the implod­ing Repub­li­can HQ or if it rains enough we’ll have another flood and they’ll get swept away in the mud or at least get really irri­tated try­ing to nav­i­gate around all the closed streets.

10. Laura said on March 3rd, 2008 at 1:27 pm

    Hang in there, Nancy. Maybe it’s time for another iPod review. Or movies. I saw “In Bruges” last night – it was both funny and tragic. I doubt the Bruges Travel and Tourism Board will be pro­mot­ing it, though.

11. virgotex said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    so stand by for Napoleon mas­tiffs, eventually.

    There is noth­ing that can­not be diverted by exces­sive drooling.

12. Connie said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    Hey LAURA! *(the rest of you can ignore this?) Did I just see your name on the pre­lim pro­gram for the meet­ing I am attend­ing in Min­neapo­lis later this month? Any other librar­i­ans head­ing off that way?

    Not that Laura is a librarian.…..

13. brian stouder said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    At 5 p.m. today, I’m clos­ing com­ments on the orig­i­nal Goe­glein post, and maybe on the sec­ond one, as well.

    Well you know, it’s GOTTA be 5 o’clock some­where, as they say!!

    These last few days in NN.c-land have been astound­ing, really; and the pro­pri­etress has been very much more acco­mo­dat­ing to all of her vis­i­tors (sorta like the food fight scene touched off by John Belushi in Ani­mal House) than any­one had a right to expect.

    Surely, the onset and after­math of this cyber-cyclone is good for a chap­ter or two in the novel that Nancy will write

14. Jean said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    yes, let’s see some 4-legged dogs around here… (and as for the 2-legged vari­ety, what’s Bob Greene up to, anyway?)

15. Danny said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    I’ve been out of com­mis­sion since Sat­ur­day night with a 102 fever. I think I am turn­ing the cor­ner now and ready to live and love again.

    Wow. some of those hate­ful com­ments were .… awful. I’m sorry you had to endure that, Nance. It was an inter­est­ing ride, though. When do you plan on split­ting the atom again?

    And I do not think we are min­ions. More like droo­gies ala Clock­work Orange.

    I was perus­ing the last thread and saw Ash­ley say:

    In any case, I’m click­ing the fuck­ing ads. If some­body can explain to me why they got scammed 27 times or how my mem­ber can get big­ger, I’m there, babes.

    And that made me won­der how that excru­ci­at­ingly painful ejac­u­la­tion prob­lem was going. (ED: And think how I wish I did not know about that).

    Oh and Sue was will­ing to let me fall into the ocean but save Mary. Hmmph. Makes me want to take a lot of phone calls next inter­view. In fact, I just took a call while I was typ­ing this to Sue. See how impor­tant and dis­in­ter­ested I am?

16. Connie said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    Nancy, looks like as of today you are now an entry in Wikipedia! Should we all say WOW?

17. ashley said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm

    Thanks for the inquiry, Danny.

    The SFW update: the antibi­otic bar­rage didn’t work, so now they have to get invasive…from mul­ti­ple directions.

    Now, I have to go sing the “happy happy joy joy” song over and over and over.

18. nancy said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    But I don’t WANT to be in Wikipedia! Now I’m afraid to look.

    I’m so glad we’re back to dis­cussing Ashley’s painful ejac­u­la­tion prob­lems. Wel­come back, normal.

19. Sue said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    I see the non­sense con­tin­ues at the pre­vi­ous post. Can’t wait for tomor­row; sure hope they’re gone by that time. And Danny, I’m sorry that you are sick. I was won­der­ing where you were — your point of view was needed. And as for the ocean, you remem­ber it was because of a topic that gets all nan­cy­nallers’ knick­ers in a twist — the weather. As I recall, not only was I will­ing to watch you fall into the ocean, I was going to have a drink­ing party on the precipice. And since we’ve had 40 degree weather with rain that turned to sheet ice yes­ter­day, I sug­gest you behave your­self because I am seri­ously crabby about it. I spare you only because you are fever­ish and can’t defend yourself.

20. Laura said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    Con­nie:

    No meet­ings in Minn for me. I’m just a lit­tle ol’ free­lancer in Ohio. But all the cool kids I know are librarians.

21. Connie said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    Sorry Laura, I was after Laura the author who vis­its here occasionally.

    Nancy, edit­ing notes on Wiki have you tagged for um one event won­der. And the entry is all about Goeglein.

22. Danny said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    I went to the Wikipedia. Pretty sweet. We need a photo.

    Has any­one here ever posted a Wikipedia arti­cle? I often won­dered about it, but never have got­ten around to inves­ti­gat­ing. I was read­ing the edit­ing his­tory of Nancy’s entry and some­one named Orangemike had made a com­ment that the entry needed chang­ing because Nancy rep­re­sented a non-notable jour­nal­ist and a one-event wonder.

    At first, I thought he was just being mean, but then I clicked on some links that indi­cated “One-event won­der” is a cri­te­rion for whether an arti­cle is worthy.

23. Danny said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:59 pm

    Oh, yeah, what Con­nie said. So I’m not sure if the guy was being a crank or not. Any­one know if this is nor­mal on Wikipedia?

24. Danny said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    Ash­ley. Ouch. Sorry to hear that.

25. derwood said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    wait­ing for dog video.….……

    daron

26. Harl Delos said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    Ms. Der­ringer said

    But I don’t WANT to be in Wikipedia! Now I’m afraid to look.

    It won’t be long before your page is elim­i­nated. You’re a nobody, a one-event won­der, to them and the tinfoil-hat brigade is champ­ing at the bit to shred your entry to pixels.

    I’d com­ment about how champ­ing really oughta be spelled chomp­ing, but my tongue is still try­ing to wrap its way around “nan­cy­nallers’ knick­ers”, so I’m preoccupied.

    Marie, my long-haired black-and-red Ger­man Shep­herd can’t wait to see your dog show pics.

27. Laura said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Harl:

    Why so harsh?

28. Danny said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    Harl, I was ecsta­tic to see you cor­rectly use “champ,” think­ing how bright and informed you must be. A man (or woman) of let­ters, no doubt.

    But then you pulled the rug out from under me with “chomp.” I don’t know if we shall ever be able to bridge this chasm of mis­un­der­stand­ing, the two of us.

29. Danny said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Laura, reread Harl’s post. I do not think Harl meant what you think. And I am not talk­ing about champ/chomp.

30. Laura said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm

    Got it, Danny. Thanks. I can’t devote all my time to a care­ful read of these posts, lol.

31. Wally Wilson said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:42 pm

    To Nancy and all the Reg­u­lars here:

    This is a great find, and I hope you won’t mind if I hang around.

    I also would like to apol­o­gize if any­thing I said came across too harshly in the last few days.

    The weather on Tues­day is sup­posed to be nice some­where. Hope­fully some of you will find it.

    Bestest,
    Wally Wilson

32. Dorothy said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:52 pm

    The weather today here in Gam­bier is just FINE and lovely. I walked over to the book­store with­out a jacket, in short sleeves! How­ever we are being pun­ished with the arrival of freez­ing rain tomor­row. SIGH At least all the crud from the last 2 – 3 weeks is now melted and run­ning into the storm drains.

    Wel­come Wally. We’re weally gwad to have you.

33. LAMary said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    The weather here in LA is spec­tac­u­lar, and the wild­flow­ers are bloom­ing like mad. It isn’t hot and smoggy yet, and you can smell jas­mine at night.
    My older son wants to major in some tree-hugger sci­ence in col­lege and the younger one wants to be a chef. Life is good.

34. Harl Delos said on March 3rd, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    Laura said:

    Why so harsh?

    I’m not sure why Wikipedeans are that way. There are pages with glar­ing errors that you can cor­rect, and they’ll stay cor­rected for about 90 sec­onds before they are reverted. The stan­dard for Wikipedia is not that some­thing is true, but that it can be ver­i­fied with a reli­able source — but they ignore their own standards.

    A lot of peo­ple were par­tic­i­pants in one-off events. John Wilkes Booth was a nobody, except that he shot Lin­coln. Dr. Mudd was even more of a nobody, except that he set Booth’s leg. I would expect an ency­clo­pe­dia to explain who John Wilkes Booth is, and explain that “his name is mud around here” is actu­ally “his name is Mudd around here”, but.…

    Yes, I am a man of let­ters, those let­ters being B.S. and M.N.G.S.

    Amer­i­can Her­itage dic­tio­nary says that the ori­gin of the word “champ” is imi­ta­tive. The Online Ety­mol­ogy Dic­tio­nary uses the word “echoic”. Hmmm. That’s an inter­est­ing word I’ve not run across before. In any case, if you’d ever heard a horse bit­ing on the bit impa­tiently, you’d know why the word oughta be chomp.

    George Bernard Shaw notwith­stand­ing, it doesn’t take an ocean for peo­ple to be sep­a­rated by a com­mon language.

35. brian stouder said on March 3rd, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    Pre­dicted head­line for nn.c tomorrow:

    Snow job!

    or

    News Flur­ries

    or

    Snow News is Good News

    with a very nice graphic of the radar image, and/or her ter­rier in the snow

    (unless the weather ter­ror­ists have it wrong this time, which would be nice)

36. Jeff said on March 3rd, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    Dorothy — Sorry to hear about your near-campus, non-student tragedy (for those who don’t know, the sep­a­ra­tion between Gam­bier and Kenyon Col­lege is thismuch).

    I’ve done a few wiki-entries, like the one for War­ren K. Moore­head (go ahead, you know you want to), and it’s fairly pain­less; plus, i feel even more secure about say­ing that * in gen­eral * Wikipedia is as good a * start­ing point * as any place on the inter­net. Excep­tions exist, but John Seigen­thaler (for instance) got fixed and locked a long time ago.

    You get evil trolls play­ing vicious games on entries like Fred­er­ick Dou­glass’, but then there’s num­ber­less lit­tle i-pixies fix­ing them just as fast. As one of Nancy’s bosses or some of you have no doubt said, “If your mother posts a wiki-entry say­ing she loves you, check it out.”

37. Michael said on March 3rd, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    I would like to state for the record that here in Puerto Rico the weather is just fine thanks and I’m not miss­ing Indi­ana right now in the least nosir­ree bob.

    On a swel­ter­ing Octo­ber day, now — yeah. I still miss Indiana.

    I’m gonna miss mer­ri­mac. He can’t even express him­self well enough that I can tell who’s being threat­ened with a law­suit, then snaps at me I should get it right. Sheesh. He should learn to string words together.

    Well, I’m truly sorry to have missed most of the fun. Maybe next time.

38. MonkeyBoy said on March 3rd, 2008 at 8:49 pm

    Come on peeps. Wikipedia has a Tim­o­thy Goe­glein page up and it needs edit­ing — in par­tic­u­lar putting in dates and references.

    I know a lot of peo­ple here are jour­nal­ists and the page is open to anony­mous edit­ing so any­body can improve it.

    Note to the peo­ple who are intim­i­dated by the knowl­edge needed to edit a Wiki entry. Um, it is really easy:

    1) Only click on a sub-section to edit.
    2) Pre­view, Pre­view, Pre­view, and then only finally com­mit.
    3) If you need some strange Wiki syn­tax to appro­pri­ately ref­er­ence, foot­note, or for­mat some­thing don’t bother to learn it. Just find another Wiki page that that dis­plays some­thing sim­i­lar to what you want to pro­duce, click edit, search, and then you will find out how the author did it. Just copy and paste some­thing like

    [[Ernie Pyle]] [[School of Jour­nal­ism at Indi­ana University]]

    into your edit, pre­view, and it should look nice. Of course if you are past­ing in some pat­tern from an irrel­e­vant page, after it looks nice you should go into it and edit its inter­nals to make it relevant.

39. Faye Kane said on March 3rd, 2008 at 10:03 pm

    Nancy:

    Before you close this topic (and throw away about 10 min­utes of your 15), you said you would write about this experience.

    I’m a blog­ger too, and what hap­pened with/to you is every blogger’s dream. You won the blog-jackpot and touched blog-infinity.

    Would you PLEASE write about what it was like?

    – faye kane, home­less brain

    PS
    You could pub­lish it in Wired, too BTW

40. Mike said on March 4th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

    Faye, I sus­pect that Nancy’s expe­ri­ence is far from over at this moment.

    Nancy, nice reply to Kevin’s edi­to­r­ial… my jaw about dropped to the floor when I read his con­vo­luted piece this after­noon. Well done.

41. norelief said on March 5th, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    Wow, Nancy, thanks for the drool­ing hate-fest.
    I would like to add for the record:
    Tim is not a writer, a jour­nal­ist, or an essay­ist. He is a polit­i­cal aide.
    The items that Tim wrote for your pathetic lit­tle small town rag were sen­ti­men­tal mus­ings that had noth­ing to do with Bush’s White House or any other polit­i­cal wheel­ing and deal­ing.
    While pla­gia­rism is wrong, the scope of your “scoop” is extremely small. BREAKING NEWS…handful of Ft. Way­ni­ans feel ripped off by a cou­ple of guest columns!!! OMG!!!
    Writ­ing is not Tim’s job at the White House…oh, I already men­tioned that.
    HOWEVER.…you are THRILLED by the HATE you can gen­er­ate because of Tim’s reli­gion. WAY TO GO!!!!
    Tim is extremely smart (IQ 145), comes from a solidly mid­dle class back­ground, does not have lots of money (lives in mod­est town­house with his two lit­tle boys), has a won­der­ful fam­ily of very sweet peo­ple and a tough/brilliant wife, and does not deserve the HATRED you are spew­ing. He is not evil or Machi­avel­lian or self-serving or lazy. But then, you hate peo­ple who are con­ser­v­a­tive, nicht wahr? I can’t believe the deeply per­sonal, vicious attacks that I am see­ing on your blog and on Huff­in­g­ton, et al. You should be ashamed of your­self. Tim is a human being, and one of the bet­ter ones I have known. It is easy to hide behind a few mole of elec­trons and throw stones at oth­ers. May you never screw up, and may your right­eous­ness shine like the sun.
    Con­grats again on reach­ing “blog infinity.”

42. WhiteBeard said on March 5th, 2008 at 5:57 pm

    Please, nore­lief, would you crawl back under your solid, con­ser­v­a­tive rock instead of spit­ting your own vis­cious venom at the mes­sen­ger who deserves respect, not dis­re­spect.
    By the way, it wasn’t just a few columns that were pla­gia­rized, but more than two dozen at last count.
    And if he is one of the bet­ter human beings you have known, I really think you should get out more. A 145 IQ (wow!) is not a license to steal.

43. del said on March 5th, 2008 at 7:29 pm

    Nore­lief, nei­ther Nancy nor her reg­u­lar read­ers have any ill will towards Mr. Goe­glein — to the con­trary, thoughts and prayers are focused on him. It might seem dif­fer­ent look­ing at early com­ments as news unfolded that 20 (now 27) of his 38 columns were mis­ap­pro­pri­ated and he sud­denly resigned. It was stun­ning news.
    “The items that Tim wrote … were sen­ti­men­tal mus­ings that had noth­ing to do with Bush’s White House.“
    I could not dis­agree more. What Tim did had every­thing to do with Bush’s White House. He was act­ing effec­tively as a Deputy Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, try­ing to appro­pri­ate for the right wing of the Repub­li­can party all the con­tri­bu­tions of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. We see some­thing sim­i­lar occur when Chris­tians (Mus­lims and oth­ers) try to claim the uni­ver­sal val­ues of love, gen­tle­ness and kind­ness to them­selves as uniquely Chris­t­ian val­ues. They are not. Tim Goe­glein did some­thing wrong because he thought he was fight­ing the Good fight. Love is the only reli­gion. Peace.

44. norelief said on March 6th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

    White­beard:
    Learn to spell. Then, learn to read.
    Did I sug­gest that intel­li­gence is a “license to steal?” No. I was merely coun­ter­ing the sev­eral ad hominem attacks on Tim’s intel­li­gence, and indeed, on the intel­li­gence of con­ser­v­a­tives in gen­eral.
    And yes, Tim is one of the bet­ter peo­ple I have known. I vol­un­teer for an NGO that has strug­gled to save African lives and bring peace to the Sudan. Tim has played an invalu­able role in the Administration’s pol­icy towards Africa. The impact has been huge. Mil­lions of lives have been touched by the 2005 peace treaty of South Sudan alone, not to men­tion the US Aid fund­ing for treat­ment of AIDS and devel­op­ment of infra­struc­ture. So, my friend, how many lives have you saved lately?
    I under­stand that Tim sym­bol­izes every­thing that you hate, but you have erected a straw man.
    And before I crawl back under my rock, I might add that I would respect Nancy a great deal more if she had the grace to hide her glee and the decency to mod­er­ate her more offen­sive comments.

45. Harl Delos said on March 6th, 2008 at 9:22 pm

    nore­lief said:

    Did I sug­gest that intel­li­gence is a “license to steal?” No. I was merely coun­ter­ing the sev­eral ad hominem attacks on Tim’s intel­li­gence, and indeed, on the intel­li­gence of con­ser­v­a­tives in general.

    I didn’t see any ad hominem attacks on the intel­li­gence of conservatives.

    I saw attacks on neo-cons, but they always remind me of that line Jack Nichol­son gave in the movie with Helen Hunt? The recep­tion­ist says, “How do you write women so well?” and Jack’s char­ac­ter says, “I think of a man, and I take away rea­son and account­abil­ity.” To get a neo-con, you think of a con­ser­v­a­tive, and take away char­ac­ter, courage, intel­li­gence, and morality.

    Didn’t Tim take an oath to pro­tect and defend the United States against all ene­mies, for­eign AND DOMESTIC? I’m pretty sure that Sudan wasn’t men­tioned in any oath he was sworn in on, but if you tram­ple the Bill of Rights, that’s about as unamer­i­can as you can get.

46. Suzi said on March 12th, 2008 at 9:45 pm

    Tim has played an invalu­able role in the Administration’s pol­icy towards Africa. The impact has been huge. Mil­lions of lives have been touched by the 2005 peace treaty of South Sudan alone, not to men­tion the US Aid fund­ing for treat­ment of AIDS and devel­op­ment of infra­struc­ture. So, my friend, how many lives have you saved lately?

    I dare­say many more lives would have been saved if the admin­is­tra­tion had given up its churchy absti­nence preach­ing and passed out some condoms.