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[AlohaDawg]

I hope you aren't applying for anything that could affect my life, then...and maybe you should consult some job search counselors or professional resume writers. I think you'll find public message boards to be unmentioned in the world of critical employment references. I mean, did you also buy a classified ad in the paper with an essay in it? Write an epic poem in a toilet stall and put the address/location on your resume?

And if you are about to go into your first job interview as well - go easy on the pseudo-intellectual deconstruction critique. It's ponderous.

/end_curmudgeon

Oh, and best of luck in your job search. Job hunting sucks, I hope you have a job now and you're looking for a change. And if you have skills, avoid Hawaii. You'll never get paid adequately for them.

[monkey punch]

look at the first paragraph of today's nate small; note the word "Grecian."  Also note that today's two pages are the twenty-second installment in what will no doubt be a TWENTY-FOUR installment series.

[Nabubrush]

I'm sorry I missed all the interesting posts that were here that have now been removed, because this thread now makes slightly less sense. Also, I like shiny things.

[jough]

You didn't miss anything interesting - just monkey punch complaining that he had put this thread in his resume and that our juvenile antics had RUINED his chances of getting into Harvard or something...

[slink]

Ok, it's now totally OT, but I have to say it kind of seems to go against the whole idea if fora to delete posts long after they're made. If that's the case then why not flush out entire topics that are more than 30 days old.

Man I kepe just saying pointless shit now.

Gonna go back and kill more things.

[Nabubrush]

You didn't miss anything interesting - just monkey punch complaining that he had put this thread in his resume and that our juvenile antics had RUINED his chances of getting into Harvard or something...

That is straight up MADNESS!

[AugustWest]

Ok, it's now totally OT, but I have to say it kind of seems to go against the whole idea if fora to delete posts long after they're made. If that's the case then why not flush out entire topics that are more than 30 days old.

Man I kepe just saying pointless shit now.

Gonna go back and kill more things.

I agree.  Mr. and Ms. Administrator, is there a way you can limited the time in which a post may be edited?

[AlohaDawg]

I agree. No editing after 24 hours at the most.

[Nabubrush]

I am going to go back and edit my 200+ posts to say things that are witty, instead of ponderous and tiresome. When people read the threads, they will think I'm Dorothy Parker (other than the not being dead).

[monkey punch]

So I've violated your messageboard bushido.  Boo-fuck*ng-hoo.

You are, by the way, in THE STUDY.  Whether or not you think I'm a ponderous pseudo-intellectual, this is the place on your messageboard where people like me go to vent our achewood-related ideas.

The center for talented youth, to which I was applying for a job, happens to be a glorified babysitting service.  It is dumpy summer work for college students; I may as well have told you I applied for a job wiping the asses of the young and over-privileged.  But, Jough, If I do apply to Harvard, I'll be sure to let you know.

[AugustWest]

Grasshopper:

Noone has criticized the content (be it pseudo or plain ol' intellectual) of your original posts.  In fact, I believe they were quite warmly received.  It is your subsequent petulant behavior which we question.

Although you must receive credit for what I believe will be one of this message boards lasting catch phrases "To the crows with you".

In short --

Lighten up, Francis.

[monkey punch]

Petulant is a reasonable way to describe my decision to alter posts twenty days after the fact.  

I defended the content of my first post because of Jough's reference to Harvard, which seemed to suggest that I posted what I did because I consider myself a brilliant authority on all things classical and achewood-ian, and also that I ought to drop the pretention.  Such a suggestion, or perhaps only the insinuation of it, naturally irked me.

"To the crows" is not my own.  Thank the Greeks.

[jough]

So I've violated your messageboard bushido.  Boo-fuck*ng-hoo.

You know, son, posting to this message board is a privilege, not a right.  If this were my living room; if you were in my home, I'd ask you politely to leave at this point.  On the internet, people are generally given a little more latitude.  So feel free to hang out and eat the pretzels as long as you don't make too much of an ass out of yourself.

You are, by the way, in THE STUDY.  Whether or not you think I'm a ponderous pseudo-intellectual, this is the place on your messageboard where people like me go to vent our achewood-related ideas.

I don't think you're a ponderous pseudo-intellectual as much as I think you're a petulant little bitch.  But hey, that's what makes the internet so beautiful.  People think they can act like assholes because it's anonymous.

The center for talented youth, to which I was applying for a job, happens to be a glorified babysitting service.  It is dumpy summer work for college students; I may as well have told you I applied for a job wiping the asses of the young and over-privileged.

Do your peers require you to wipe their asses?

But, Jough, If I do apply to Harvard, I'll be sure to let you know.

I wait with baited breath.

[jough]

See, this is fine, and you got some good responses to it, I think.  No one was making fun of your pseudo-intellectual ramblings.  In fact, they spurred some discussion.

Has anyone noticed a number of allusions to Ancient Greece in the first forty-two pages of "Nate Small: One Tough Man?"  

The mansion is a maybe-maybe reference to the Labyrinth, and the story's central villain may be a Minotaur (he is called "Moose," after all).  

Whether or not it's an allusion to the Labyrinth, the entire mansion itself is an extended allusion to the Palace Economies of Ancient Crete and Middle Bronze Age Mycenae.  The mundane lists of Moose's and others' activities are _exactly_ like the written records that survive today from the Palace Economy era.  (Similar lists survive today from Near-East civilizations like the Assyrians and Persians)

Nate's intellectual past undeniably alludes to Pre-Socratic philosophy: Nate, with his PHYSICs teacher, investigates "things in the heavens and below the earth"--to use Aristophanes' words.  For those who aren't "in the know" Phusikoi is the ancient greek word for Pre-Socratic philosophers.  

Notice also that Nate's closest ally in the story is a Greek, one who imparts Nate with Greek wisdom.  Similarly, Dexter university's aristocracy produced most of their wealth by none other than RAISING CATTLE; how much more Ancient and Greek could that be?

Throughout the mansion episode, there are vague (note that I used the word "vague") echoes of Book I of Herodotus's "Histories."  Like Herodotus's Persians, the german girl kisses nate on the cheek in warm greeting.  Similarly, in the mansion an animal is cooked whole, which is another strange custom Herodotus describes.

There are other allusions, but these are the ones that came to mind as I wrote this post.  Anyone who sees others should speak up; Apollo commands it.

Something else: Dexter is a stylized anagram of Exeter, the name of a snooty British university.  Remove the second E, replace it with its left-handed neighbor in the alphabet (...D, E...), then reinsert it at the front of the word, and, voila, Exeter becomes Dexter.

Oddly, "Dext-," is a root meaning "right hand."  This might ironically point to the transformation of the E into a D in the anagram.  However, it's also a Latin, not Greek, root.  Either Onstad momentarily confused two classical traditions, or I haven't noticed a hell of a lot of other references.  Is there a Latinist in the house?

One wonders whether, in the end, Onstad will divide "Nate Small: One Tough Man" into twenty-four chapters (like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey)

[AlohaDawg]

I'm with August. And Jough, too, since we get to play stickball in his vacant lot. And he's nice enough to mow it for us.

If you get that big of a mental/emotional wedgie over the idea that editing a post long after the actually pretty much just screws up otherwise followable threads, take a step back. It's not about you; it's about the other hundred or so people who read this board.

I think we've exhausted the other concept about the reason for the exhaustive deconstruction of Nate Small so I won't re-comment on that...
although I do commend you for making "To the Crows with You" once again a contemporary saying. That is rad.