Random raves

I wasn't sure whether to put this on dot_poly_snark, but it's not that unusual a situation, I suppose. I have a profile on polymatchmaker.com, which I've logged onto for the first time in several months (more to stop it expiring, than anything). Anyways, I had mail, which was interesting since I haven't posted on the forums for even more months. A couple of guys wrote. The first one sounded sane, but the second... oy.

Excerpts from my profile:
Seeking: A Female , FF Couple , Group , Friends , Not Looking

BIO:
... I'm pretty left-wing in my political beliefs, so if you have a problem with that, don't bother. I'm not a Hot Bi Babe, alas - I'm not particularly girlie, but I'm quite happy if you are!

LOOKING FOR:
I initially had M/F couple ticked in the "seeking" box above, but I'm getting fairly clueless messages from people asking me to go off and be a "wife" to a man and a woman, and that concept frankly makes my hair curl. As does being a "wife" to anyone. If you're a woman and you're with a man, I don't care. If you want me to be with you, I expect one-on-one time, with you, the woman. Since I tend to prefer more feminine women, I don't usually have the same tastes in general as my lovers (since to fancy me, you need to fancy butchish women). This means the possibility of my participating in a tightly-interlinked triad/quad/whatever is pretty slim.

(Later on I explicitly say I'm a DYKE, with DYKE on top)

And here's one of the messages I got:

( reproduced in its entirety because it can't be beaten )

Methinks someone has been reading too much Heinlein. And I do confess that I actually didn't mention the fact that I have never ever had any desire, ever, to have babies. So maybe I should tell this man, honestly, that unfortunately gumption isn't quite enough, nor the fact that I might have the fabulous opportunity to correspond with a polygamist from Florida, goddammit. Alas, this probably means I won't be having his babies either, but at least he won't have to shell out for a third wife.

I'm still trying to figure out his first para, though. Is he actually saying that being a dyke doesn't matter if I'm willing to breed? How nice of him!

ETA: My reply featured terms like "breeder", "baby factory", "harem" and "underwhelmed" - well, he's a man who appreciates honesty, after all.

ETA2:
( I got a reply! )

It appears my capacity for snark is intact no matter what the state of my mood. I stuck another good'un up on dot_queer_snark - honestly, I hope the OP is under 16, because otherwise there is No Excuse.

( Cut for eyerolling and unattributed snippage from a public comm post )

I wish I could enumerate the many many ways in which that statement irked me, but for the life of me, I can't. I want to deconstruct it with heated razor-sharp skewers, over and over, protractedly painfully, but my imagination fails me. Oh well.

(And yes, I know this kind of thing abounds on teh intarwebs, and is really a mild example - I think it was the juxtaposition with a post on another comm asking how to chat up lesbian chix, because, dayum, she looks like a total redneck and thinks being "politically active is a waste of time" and us'n are all out and out liberals (paraphrased). It makes me feel nostalgic for "the personal is political, beeyotch!" (paraphrased) and all those lovely cultural feminists... Well, not so much the latter.)

You are entirely within your rights to say "All politics are fucks". But when someone points out that politics affect your life every minute of the day, and that it might be worth voting for people who aren't "fucks", your saying:

Well, I'm only really 17 so, that doesn't apply to me until... Well, never... coz aslong as I'm alive, I'll never vote.

makes you look like a complete twat.

Mind you, I was a complete twat too at 17, but your age is no excuse. Most of my friends at that age were quite sane, and very politically cluey. And your being of a non-standard sexuality makes it much worse.

Still, at least you're not 37 like one of the idiots who was going "Hear, hear" to your original remark. Her, I have no hope for.

I would post this up in the original forum (somewhat more politely), but my g/f will kill me if I scare people off. *sigh*

Actually, despite the complete fruitcakes that abound on PMM, there are some interesting people I have chats with, although more and more of them appear to be gravitating here to L/J. But I once again got a proposal from some IDIOT who obviously missed the queer, urban, IT-employed chick thing to invite me to live on their farm in the outback AGAIN. He must be doing the rounds again, since he's bothered me and I think every other female in Australia previously.

(  However, I was inspired, and sent the following missive to my g/f )

I just realised I didn't do any illiterate spelling though. Bugger.

I can't say that my English is perfect, by a long shot, but being in my line of work, I am convinced that most techies are functionally illiterate. But it's really bad when you get the synergy of technology and marketing departments.

I was just reading some of the specs for the Compaq DL380s which we're just getting in:

Q37. Why is Compaq changing the colors of its ProLiant servers and racks?
A37. Rather than changing colors, we are leveraging a portion of our color palette – which includes Graphite, Carbon and Silver¹ – across our Compaq ProLiant, AlphaServer, Himalaya and StorageWorks product lines. This new consistency is the culmination of our strategy to integrate the three heritage businesses of Compaq, Tandem and Digital Equipment Corporation in the enterprise customer space.

And the trouble is, it took a couple of reads before I registered what dribble it really is. What does leveraging a portion of our color palette ... across our ... product lines actually mean? "Leveraging" is generally a [very bad] synonym of "making use of". "Making use of" some of a colour palette across a range of products appears to be a tautology, at the very least. And if they are making use of some different colours, are they not in fact "changing" them?

If they want to say "we've decided to introduce a range of co-ordinated colours for our servers", fine. Is that what they're trying to say? Why the hell bother with all the other extremely bad words? Why not save a few trees (and some bytes of downloads)? I'm not even going to venture near the "heritage business" thing. Um, whatever.

This must have been issued pre-Carly-sacking. I wonder if this is the nadir of communications from Compaq, or if further decline is inevitable.

¹ Aren't they all just grey? Well, ok, "carbon" is probably black.

[yes, I know this is stupid to comment on -- 'tis just my rant of the day, sparked by my incredulousness at the particular direness of this particular... utterance, for want of a better word.]