VMP Only Thread

@duodec

Very Mediocre Person (since 9/2014)

Can too

@Ignorant
That was cheating.
/giphy goat tongue

@RedOak “We’re doing it, man. This is it.”

@kabijj that’s a small looking shoe for such a big guy.

@G1 Hear, hear! I want no part of this association of tasteless, slovenly, illiterate… drunkards!

@G1 … now whured I put my beer.

@G1 Well you did pay the entry fee…

@Oneroundrobb In the end, we all die. What’s your point bubba?

@therealjrn the rest become more special?

@Kidsandliz
/image last man club

@Spheyr it’s a discontinued membership. It gets slightly more perks than your heart membership because we’ve been paying for it for at least a year.

@Frcal Infiltrator? Someone call the security squad!

@thisismyusername

@Knightp

Tagging
@thismyusername

@lseeber How did you get past our security systems?

@InnocuousFarmer I’m stealthy that way.

@lseeber Security, please remove the intruder.

@lseeber @narfcake

@InnocuousFarmer @lseeber @mike808 Alas, the padlock was made by Master Lock.

@mfladd Hmm is that little girl the robot for the flask people and the octopus?

@readnj But stuck the landing!

@Targaryen Don’t forget to leave the mint on my pillow, flask boy

@mfladd @Targaryen
a mint?
hell, leave me a flask of Macallan 25 Year Old Scotch

@smilingjack Hi, D’name.

@venussuz You aren’t alone. I keep thinking … why am I doing this again. That’s $60 a year I could have actually bought something for myself! lol

@Shrdlu confused

@Shrdlu Saved for some unclear future use…

@Shrdlu Sometimes photo shop just doesn’t work the way you planned

@Shrdlu @Yoda_Daenerys I am somehow disturbingly aroused by the possibilities

@mfladd haha.
/giphy perv

@Shrdlu The little girl from ‘The Exorcist’ decides on a fashion career.

@Yoda_Daenerys
/giphy badge with V

Your Vadge resembles a whot?!?!?!?

@moonhat this confirms that I’m the nobody that I feel like. Oops, I’m not supposed to post here. Fuckit

@shahnm There’s something amok with those feet.

@Kidsandliz Are you implying that there are VMP’s who are normal?

@baseba4551 At least 191 of us left.

@Barney @baseba4551 How do you know that?

@baseba4551 @shahnm There were 191 IRK’s sold during the VMP only hour. (Naturally, there are more VMP’s than that.)

@Barney @baseba4551 Ah. Make it at least 192 then. I got my I.R.K. during one of the standard sales that any old nondescript Mehtizen could access.

@baseba4551 @shahnm Make it at least 193. I got mine at the 9am EST sale.

@Barney @baseba4551 @shahnm you can make it one more because I didn’t get an IRK

@baseba4551 @shahnm @therealjrn Uh, I don’t think I can count that high.

@Barney @baseba4551 @shahnm @therealjrn Add me to the list that isn’t a part of the 191. I finally managed to get one out of the very last batch offered.

@baseba4551 I know nothing of these Irks but I totally want one…!!

@Bretterson Watch the reveal thread- you may change your mind.

@Barney @baseba4551 @shahnm @therealjrn MEh too in the not-irk-getting VMP subset.

@Enigma Yeah. :sadface: I missed my Irk too.

@PocketBrain maybe our luck will turn around in 2019.

@lakertaylor13 I am just now finding out about the Irks

@ACraigL In each hand, I see 2 Vee’s, and an Emm, Are you hallucinating the thumb into the Pee?

@olperfesser Just since Saturday. I only wish I had been a kickstarter backer and here for day zero, but I am proud of my July 2014 VMP status at least

@olperfesser Me, too.

@olperfesser @wilstev me toooooo

@DrunkCat
/giphy salutations

@cbilyak I would like to know this as well. Maybe they’ll include that figure in the Annual Meh Xmas Card/Newsletter.

@medz It seems you have unleashed an untapped market.

@pooflady Yay! Real missed opportunity with the link, however. Doesn’t go direct to this thread.

That’s right, lurking normies, we get secret emails direct from meh.
/giphy vmp dance

@smilingjack This is very sad and I’m embarrassed for you. I commend your courage for admitting it.

@sligett be sure to grab a handful of snacks on your way out.

@Ignorant @sligett
/announced departures

@Ignorant @therealjrn Like this?

https://meh.com/forum/topics/announced-departures-maybe-it-bothers-me-more-than-it-should

@Shrdlu

I can’t read the titles. : (

Have you read them all?

I have never read Pilgrim’s Progress.

@f00l @Shrdlu That’s ALL the books older than you? wow…

@f00l @therealjrn Oh, you two are the funny ones. That’s two out of five shelves, and not all of the books on those two shelves are in this photograph, either. Yes, everything on the five shelves is older than me. Many of them are from the 1700s or before. The Shakespeare (not visible; it’s on a shelf above) is a thing of beauty, with thin delicate pages, and no idiotic footnotes explaining things that intelligent and well-educated people should know.

Pilgrim’s Progress is really long, and not all that interesting, unless you’re reading it to gain a sense of the time and the world that Bunyan lived in. I have read it two or three times, although not in many years. It’s a fairly recent copy; the date is 1891.

I have perhaps 10% of the books I used to have. I kept the paperbacks I knew I would read again, or that I loved too much to give up. I kept the technical books I thought would remain useful, or that I was sentimental about.

@Shrdlu @therealjrn

I have to give away or sell thousands of books at least once a decade. My instinct for collecting interesting ones (or my love of good books, if one wants to be generous about my character motivations and my taste) just overwhelms my common sense about how many I can read - or live with.

I don’t have any really old books. My aunt & my cousin have some of the old family libraries and perhaps some of the bibles.
Many of the books from the large Masonic library were donated to my great-grandfather’s lodge, as none in the current generations are Masons now.

The really old family libraries belong elsewhere. I’ve never seen them and don’t know who has them.

One of brothers has our family Oz series, first editions purchased by my great-grandmother for her children. Some of these were published before my grandmother’s birth, and bear the marks of handling by at least 4-5 generations of children.

Many of the books I would most love to have handy - books I read on HS and college, many of the math and lit and philo books - are gone.
I no longer remember when these vanished or what happened to them - I was following one passion or another, and didn’t take care of things in storage that got stolen or damaged or lost.

A fire happened (prob set deliberately to cover a very large theft) in a garage where I had boxes and personal items. I blame self for not taking care. I know what happened, and approx who did what and why, but I let it go.

I was insufficiently attentive. I lost track of things. I, not others, failed here.

I have re-purchased some along the way, if I remembered the author/titles, or came across them in a used bookstore or in e-book format.

I cherish with great fondness the memory of some books that once seemed mind-boggling and “all and everything”, but that now seem, in retrospect, old hat or wrong-headed, or simplistic, or self-indulgent, or dated. We all go through stages, learn things, adjust as we go; as does the culture.

The appearance of e-books helps my habits a bit.
The upside is: that I can own what I want if I can afford, no storage probs.
The downside is: nothing to touch with my hands; flipping through does not work right; no bookshelves that I can ponder with my head turned sideways to read titles.

No memories induced by the seeing.

So a library becomes a bit more like a collection of data. Less intimate.

In the days before e-books, every time I visited someone’s place for the first time, I spent time with the resident bookshelf as soon as it fit into my visit. People forgave me - I suppose I must have seemed genuine or inocent in my interests.

Was it three years ago? Many family members from afar came together for my aunt’s birthday. Various gathering were held in some cousin’s houses.

At one of the final gatherings, at one of cousin’s houses, two of my in-laws from distant places viewed the books my cousin keeps (one full wall of a large room) and remarked to me, “your family and all your books!”.

I was surprised. By my lights, my cousin has a very small bookshelf. (Of course, she may be switching to e-books also).

I just take it for granted that most people want lots and lots of books, and that their libraries (now, prob, partially in the cloud, and so invisible to others) are windows into their thinking and personal history, to some degree.

Curiously, my grandparents were great readers; the “educated grandparents” had some intellectual interests; and yet my parents’ generation read only some, and rarely read deeply.

My generation seems to read quite a bit more. The next gen somewhat less. Among my generation, I and “esteemed younger brother” are the biggest readers. “Esteemed older brother” is no slouch tho.

Like you, I am winnowing. If a book is not a super fav, or specially meaningful, or rare, or something where format matters tremendously, it’s a candidate for moving out. I want to own far fewer things.

Goodwill loves me at the moment. Tho the books usually are gifted or go to Half Price Books.

I so miss (in a sentimental way) the youngish days of thinking and reading, and thinking and reading more, and then more; with some deep belief or notion that life and conflict could be decoded that way.
(I miss my faith in reading/thinking a bit as I miss the sweet-in-memory fields and creeks and forests of my youth, that are now shopping centers and housing developments.)

Well. That “faith” is hardly true.
Human life has too far too many dimensions, unexpecteds , manipulations, illusions, power or survival issues, crises, and limits within the deepest insights, for that sort of simple truth to cover the issues.

But that youthful faith was not without some small value either.

And even now, when i understand (I think, or hope I understand) the naivete, the innocent over-simplicity (not to mention the clear logical issues of necessary limitations) of that quaint faith, I still abide by it as a leisure practice that is sweetness itself.

And I find it a most worthy practice for partial illumination;
though it is not, and can never be, “all and everything”, even to members of a species with such small brains as ours.

So I salute your beautiful collection. And I salute each individual cherished work. Those are lovely and worthy. They are part of what we are.

I hope they bring you and yours great joy.

If you wish, share pix, or tell us of your favorites.

(A generic first ed pix; not the one my brother has).

@Shrdlu @therealjrn

Since.i.can.never.just.simply.shut.up …

of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh

Whoever wrote Ecclesiastes had not discovered audiobooks, poor soul.

“Another damned fat book, Mr. Gibbon?
Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?”

variously attributed to King George III or Henry, Duke of Gloucester, upon receiving a volume of Gibbon’s book.

(There are six volumes, I think.)

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats

Isn’t that the way it’s spozed to be?

@Shrdlu @therealjrn

and no idiotic footnotes explaining things that intelligent and well-educated people should know.

I hope you will forgive the footnotes in more modern copies. I personally like those (perhaps don’t like in an edition of some age.)

There is way too much to know, and a lot of distraction, and little adherence to an educational path that yields a common and profound sense of long cultural history for many or most.
(And this is no longer the fault of “new educational theories”;
now it is the consequence of limited time, lack of resources, and a focus on testing, and on basic business and tech skills)

I fear the young are more likely to learn what little they know of cultural history thru comics series and graphic novels, TV and other pop culture flows, and video games. What else are they exposed to?

Among the young, it will be a only a tiny % that will ever read Shakespeare on their own.

I did not have what advantages prep schools offer. My local school district was and is acceptable for “the usual public ed fare”, but nothing more. I fear I know nothing of our common heritage compared to the usual Oxbridge student mean, and I do try here and there.

So … I’m for giving advantage to anyone who might someday use it or be curious.

The forgiving of, or pleasure in, footnotes, included.

/image footnote

@f00l @Shrdlu Do you have any footnotes for these posts?

@Shrdlu @therealjrn

Yes! So many footnotes!

But I’m such an asshole that I won’t share! Mine, all mine!

/giphy footnotes