Last night, I received this message via electronic mail (excerpted):
Greetings blog.fawny [who?]
Help us out and we’ve got 1 MILLION AD IMPRESSIONS on Towleroad.com to Promote your site*
(2,000,000 if we agree on a charity!)
Yes, we have one million impressions (Throw heads back. Pinky to mouths.) to give away in a drawing among sites who change their links to our new one for Towleroad:
http://www.towleroad.comIf you’re getting this letter it means you have links to our old url that we really would appreciate if you changed and it means you’re eligible.
So how about you go change the links to the new base url http://www.towleroad.com real quick, and come right back. […]
Seriously though, as thrilling as this is with a glamorous contest and all, it’s made us think a lot about links and sites and blogrolls and such. And in the very near future we’re going to be implementing some new features on Towleroad that we hope you’ll give us feedback on and participate in. [Continues for some time. – Ed.]
Since I cannot fucking stand Andy Towle and his second-rate blog, my response was as follows: “No, assholes. Learn how to redirect your old fucking URLs. Stop being such queens and learn how the Web works.”
I was just now corrected by the mighty Michael Goff, former limerent object of Roger Black, that TypePad does not permit .htaccess-style Redirect 301s. True. I then told him to just live with his old links, because there’s nothing in it for other people to update their own sites to change links that currently work to links that somebody else prefers.
This was not, however, the end of the goffing:
Rest assured we’ll do all we can not to bother you again. It is ironic that you hit up folks visiting your site for donations so you can write “How to” manuals teaching people how to make the web more accessible.
A bit of fact-checking could be useful there, Mike. Use those skills you learned at Microsoft Sidewalk!
And not just because you’re a natural for teaching, but we would have gladly put double the ad impressions toward your effort if you had been in the drawing and won. Good luck with your important work. And we know who are the naturals to end up teaching.
I don’t do ad impressions, and I don’t teach.
Also from your site, it would seem that your reaction might actually be part of some 13-year grudge over a perceived slight when I didn’t speak to you at a party at the Gay Games in 1994?
Wait, did that happen? Drawing something of a blank here. No… no, if I were to maintain a 13-year grudge at all, it would be over Goff’s failure to greenlight an illustrated feature for an issue in the inaugural year of the magazine he edited, Out, entitled “How to Spot the Miatafag.” Would have been a classic, immediately fridge-magneted from Chelsea to Provincetown. One has other vegan fish substitutes to fry.
As it is, Goff has unwittingly reproduced a Peter Lorre moment: “You despise me, don’t you?” “If I gave you any thought, I probably would.”