Tuesday 20 August 2013

Keep your voice down, I'm trying to sleep


John says that - before the heart-warming chickie post created itself this morning - he was lying in bed, formulating a post about blog etiquette. This is strange, because I was going to do something of the sort today, and here it is.

Late last night, I received yet another email from a man who is constantly sending entreaties to sign various petitions to safeguard his preferred sport of shooting which - because of misplaced concerns about the safety of the public and the welfare of wildlife (not to mention the sheer, irrational fear of any gun-owners by a small but vociferous section of the British public) - is under increasing pressure from a number of lobby-groups. Fair enough.

What pisses me off is the bullying tone of his emails, which are all prefixed with a giant, multi-coloured message in size 30 font, peppered with multiple exclamation marks, which orders the recipient to delete his email address when forwarding it on to any other concerned third-party, even though he has sent it on to possibly dozens of his own contacts, deleting their email addresses so that you don't know who else he has sent it to. He ends this prefix with, "THAT MEANS EVERYBODY!!!!!!!"

Well, I don't like being shouted at, and I tend to react badly to any form of bullying, especially after a couple of glasses of wine, so I replied to his email (in 14 point font) by politely asking him to not send any more like that, as I was getting a bit fed up with them.

He immediately responded by telling me to either sign the petition, or 'shut up and go away' if I wanted to carry on shooting. It was then that I snapped, commenting that this was precisely the gist of the message I had just sent him, and I finished by calling him a 'tosser'.

Three minutes later, I got another multi-coloured message in 40 point font telling me that if I wanted to know what a tosser looked like, I should look in the mirror. If you think I snapped before, then you should have seen me snap this time.

I decided that the gloves were off and gave him a few home truths followed with another request for him to delete me from his emailing list unless he wanted any more. Some - just some - of the truths were as follows.

He is one of the meanest men I have ever met, but is quite happy to spend thousands of pounds flying to Africa where he is given a high-powered rifle and taken to a water-hole somewhere on the plains where he can pick-off whatever animal he chooses which happens to be drinking passively there - all from a safe distance with a nice Land Rover to jump into if anything goes a bit wrong. That is NOT what I call 'sport'. He then has his picture taken, proudly standing with his foot on the beast, cradling 'his' rifle in his arms - probably with a rare, beaming smile on his stupid face. He is a bit of a Mr Bean lookalike, so you can imagine what this picture looks like on his mantlepiece, back in his little cottage in Bath.

I have never warmed to the man, and last night I made this very clear to him. Maybe I had been a bit rude in my initial response, and maybe I should have taken H.I.'s advice by ignoring him - as I do with most of the other red-necks who send me racist and/or feminist jokes about housewives, blow-jobs and President Obama - but I didn't.

Let's hope he has got the message and deleted me from his list.


16 comments:

  1. People who must be photographed with a gun and a dead animal are the gun owners who DO scare me. I feel the same way about fishing trophy shots. Good on you. Hope he goes away.

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    1. Those people show up in the Outdoor section of my local paper. Often they are twelve years old. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

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    2. Inside your head, Susie?

      The posers disgust me, but they don't scare me, Sarah.

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  2. I thoroughly dislike already....glad you tossed him aside.

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  3. Tee hee
    Well my beef was about a small minded fellow in our community, who ignores all of my emails . Not that I am bothered at all, it's just that because we HAVE to rub along within a community forum group ignoring my occasional question or comment seems incredibly childish.to me
    Now I dislike him and I know he hates me...
    Perhaps I should just call him a tosser via email
    And forget the matter

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  4. Yes, sometimes one wonders what people send as email - and as often as I follow H.I's advice, sometimes I don't. Answer politely but firm that I don't want any email here - and then again I wonder what comes back - so: H.I.'s/ and son's/ and husband's advice is right: I'll keep my mouth shut (but I swallow...hard)

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  5. The eejit inbreeding activity is escalating at an alarming pace.In the past we just hung up on rude folks, but todays technology makes it more difficult. May the Farce be with you

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    Replies
    1. Teenagers even seem to be taking advice from trolls these days, and actually killing themselves as suggested.

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  6. I thought red necks were exclusive to this country. The name, not the associated behavior. I block those sorts.

    A man who serves on one of the township boards once sent an email to me at the township account comparing the president to a monkey. I was as irate as you, and had I been aware of the word tosser I would have included it. As it is he and my fellow elected township administrators know the depth of my dislike for the fellow.

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    1. Our rednecks style themselves on yours, Joanne, and even import jokes about Presidents, etc. They are THAT uninventive.

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  7. All this rather goes over and above my e mail skills Tom - perhaps I am lucky in that I don't seem to get anything like this. If I did I would just delete it. I rather agree with H I - any response does tend to fan his flames which is probably what he enjoys.
    What I get totally irrational about is the same sort of thing on the telephone. Today I have had eight cold calls.
    I am quite deaf and also at present have a bad ankle, so if I am upstairs I have to come down carefully, take out my hearing aid and then answer - only to find some foreign voice trying to pronounce my fairly unpronouncable name. Apparently there is a device you can buy for £50 and each time you get a call you press a button on the device and it logs the number and never allows it to connect to your phone again.
    Would that there were such a device for e mails it would seem.

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    Replies
    1. Where did you hear about this device? I hope it wasn't from a cold-call salesman.

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  8. Is this man, by any chance, King Juan Carlos of Espania?

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