Who Says Small Town Life Has to Be Dull?

[IrishAyes]

Slightly interesting (?) matter here.

There's a man in town who for at least the last couple years has been writing hateful letters to the editor of the local weekly about one person and another by name. A lot of people in town are starting to consider him downright unbalanced, as do I. He responded to one of my political letters that had nothing to do with him by a jolly little piece he titled "SCREAMING HYENAS OF SOCIALISM!" Plus a lot of other incredibly ugly things, down to and including describing me as "little". Well, I am but not the way he meant it.
He hurt so many people's feelings that I finally sent a letter advising others to follow my example of checking signatures before reading letters in order to know which ones to avoid - the ones from the (unnamed) 'town bully' who falsely imagines himself a satirist. After all, I said, there's no sharper stick you can poke in his eye.

Well, it's a miracle nobody's sued him or the paper or come to blows, it's been that bad. I don't get my feelings hurt as they do because I don't give a tinker's damn what he says about me. One guy, however, wrote in complaining that his wife had dissolved in tears. So it's not a question of if but when the lid blows somewhere.

Today I accidentally broke my promise, though, by not checking before I read what looked like an ad framed as a Western Union telegram. By the time I guessed who must've written it, I'd already gone too far to stop. Not that I'll let anyone here know I read it, especially not him.

So here for your amusement is the short text involved. No, he doesn't dare use my name anymore but he saves his special 'socialist hyena' tag just for me so everyone knows who he means. I guess after years of vomiting bile he didn't appreciate being referred to sideways as a town bully who should be ignored!

The text of his faux-telegram:

"PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT - URGENT - SITED (sic) IN (name of town) VICINITY - BULLIED, JACKASS KICKED, SKUNKBIT SOCIALIST HYENA! SERIOUSLY PISSED; POSSIBLE CAUSE - RECENT ELECTION RESULTS! BE ON THE LOOKOUT - DANGEROUS AND MEAN. CAN BE OBSERVED CONTINUOUSLY SPITTING INTO THE WIND! IF SPOTTED, APPROACH WITH CAUTION! SIGNED, PUBLIC SERVANT / HIS NAME." (paid advertisement)

So I guess the editor/publisher of the paper finally refused to print a letter, and he's infamous for printing ANYTHING. Not that he should've taken the ad either, but that's beside the point. Nothing good will ever come of letting that nut run roughshod over half the town. If I had Irish relatives anywhere around, Mr. Bully Nut would've been taken behind the woodshed long ago. The editor/publisher has already said he's been threatened with arson.

I think I'll resist writing any more letters for a few weeks to let this play itself out absent my participation. At worst in a month or so I might write a little piece about teabagger mentality, backing it up with quotes from scientific journals, and noting that one of their most notable characteristics is poor spelling, such as using 'sited' (a non-word btw) instead of 'sighted'. If I ended with the expression "Morans!" they wouldn't catch the full meaning. But they would know to whom I referred, and so would he.