The Macalope

Does the author of JackWhispers (correction: the site’s called Fix Your Thinking) really think the Macalope is George Ou? As an addendum to his list of the Goons of the Mac World, Philip writes:

George Ou started a new Mac blog on August 30th called, The Macalope: Covering the mythical Mac User – very goonish!

Now, the Macalope tried to find the irony in there, but after about three hours of sitting and staring blankly at it and shaking his be-horned head, he was unable.

So, let’s get a few things straight.

First of all, Philip, you got the subhead wrong. See above. Second, did you actually read the entry you linked to and decide George Ou is filled with self-loathing? Third, you don’t need that comma after “called.”

And finally…

Does George Ou have antlers?

No. I believe he does not.

You know, you don’t grow a rack like this overnight. So, this whole thing is kind of insulting.

UPDATE 9/5:  The author responds in comments, claiming to have fixed the post, and deletes the Macalope’s comment from his blog.

For the record, what the Macalope’s comment said was:

The Macalope is decidedly not George Ou.

Did you even read the post you linked to?

[Actually, the Macalope found a cached copy and "even" wasn't even in there.]

Not exactly Alec Baldwin’s monologue from Glengarry Glenn Ross.  The “correction” now reads:

A blog post about George Ou has been started called, The Macalope: Covering the Mythical Mac User – very goonish!

But that’s still not right.  And now it doesn’t even make any sense.

Well, the Macalope doesn’t want to make a whole “thing” about this.  On the whole, he agreed with the list, he was just flabbergasted at being mistaken for the man he just spent the better part of a week skewering.

[Edited for grammar.]

UPDATE 9/6: The Hatfields and the McCoys. Moby and Eminem. The Macalope and Fix Your Thinking.

Fix Your Thinking responds.

The Macalope responded in email thusly:

The Macalope certainly didn’t expect to start the firestorm he did with his post. It was certainly *not* intended to portray Fix Your Thinking as a “freak show.” On the contrary, he quite enjoyed the rest of the post.

There has been no effort to try to “discredit you.” The Macalope pointed out a mistake that he felt besmirched his name in the very early days of his blog. He did not want people to think he was George Ou’s sock puppet or that he was anti-Mac. First impressions are important (we can certainly see that now) and your mistake, the Macalope felt, would have given people exactly the opposite idea about his blog. In retrospect, his response may have been heavy-handed, but he thought that someone who’s been around the Mac blogosphere as long as you could take a little heat in stride. All he expected was a “Whoops! Misread the post!” correction.

As for the name of your site, your HTML title is “Jackwhispers – Fix Your Thinking”. Jackwhispers is first, leading one to believe more important and once you scroll past the banner, the HTML title is all you can see. The Macalope will correct the post, however, noting the mistake.

Finally, I fail to see why the Macalope should apologize when you haven’t apologized for your mistake. Corrected, yes. Apologized for, no.

Now, the Macalope has not *asked* for an apology. Merely an appropriate correction. As that has now been done, and you have asked for his apology, the Macalope will apologize for some specifics.

First, he regrets not mentioning that he enjoyed the rest of the “Goons” post. That could have gone a long way to softening the tone. Second, he regrets the punctuation crack. That was piling on. We *do* all make grammar mistakes and the Macalope will surely make his fair share in the future.

Sometimes he feels that if he mixes up “its” and “it’s” one more time he’s going to jump antlers-first into the venison grinder.

So, for those two things, he apologizes.

He does not, however, apologize for responding via post rather than email. The Macalope believes blog readers have a right to see our mistakes, know our flaws. Your first correction did not note any error on your part. While everyone has different styles, the Macalope believes blogs should adopt a newspaper approach – mistakes should be noted and corrected, not disappeared. But, your blog, your rules.

Hopefully this will put the issue behind us.

Regards,
The Macalope

John Gruber says the Macalope “looks to be a very promising new Mac weblog.”

Man, the Macalope sure hopes he can milk this George Ou thing for awhile…

Fortunately, George shows every sign of fully cooperating with that.