/me wants crackmonkey? (in Contests)

I remember reading a thread back on CB1 with (I think it was Crackmonkey... could have been not, though) who insulted Jon, CB, and threatened to come to his house and beat him to a pulp (or something of that sort), and later in the thread somebody replied (I don't recall who, sorry) and criticized the original poster's spelling and grammar quite extensively.

I'm sure if you were around in CB1 you know exactly what I'm talking about. I don't know if it can still be found, with CB1 being long gone and all. Yes, I know about the WayBack Machine, but frankly I don't have a clue of what month of what year to look in.

In any case, if somebody does find it, or even if someone just has the content saved in a .txt file, I'll give that person $100k.
And, just for the heck of it, $20k to anybody else who shows me any other humorous Crackmonkey (or similar) threads/chat logs/etc.

It was Darkmage's post that was critiqued, and I have an HTML copy of it if you want me to email it or post it :)

post! I wanna see!

of course!

To Jonathan

Dear Jonathan,
I DarkMage have been commited for a crime that was sinful, but the punishment was unruly. So as soon as I get strong enough I will come after you and I will beat you into a pulp from which there is no return. I will train and train to where I have wore my fingers off. I have other people backing me up and I will not mention any names. So mark my words I am coming after you.
Sincerly,
DarkMage

-- DarkMage, April 4 2003 9:45 AM EST

Dear DarkMage,

I'm confused by a few aspects of your post.

1. Your subject line reads "To Jonathan." For your next revenge letter, I would like to respectfully point out you would have been more clear had you written "Punishment and Revenge" as your subject line, and reserving the name of the recipient to a dedicated TO: line (e.g., "TO: Jonathan"), or formal letter salutation (e.g., "Dear Jonathan").

2. You state "the punishment was unruly."

By this did you mean that the punishment was actually "difficult or impossible to discipline, control, or rule," or was it rather that the punishment was "unwilling to submit to authority?" In either case I'm having difficulty envisioning such a punishment. I believe your troubles stem from your attempt to use an adjective representing behaviour, to a noun which cannot behave.
May I respectfully suggest "the punishment was excessive," or "the punishment was unwarranted." Because I'm not sure exactly what your original message was intended to convey, these are merely suggestions - you will have to pick the one which best represents what you mean.

3. In formal writing, consider replacing "So" with "Therefore". This would mean your letter would read, "Therefore as soon as I get strong enough ..."

4. In your second sentence you state you are going to do to things:
1. Come after Jonathan
2. Beat him into a pulp ...
Consider putting linking words which more thoroughly convey the order and timing of the two events. For example, "... I will come after you, AND WHEN I CATCH YOU I WILL BEAT YOU INTO ...." You may find this makes that sentence rather cumbersome, so you may wish to break it into two separate sentences as: "... I will come after you. When I catch you I will beat you into ..." This may allow your readers to more easily ascertain your meaning.

The part about "... from which there is no return." does not make sense. "Pulp" is a moist spongy mass. There cannot be return from a "pulp." When you rewrite this letter (as I hope you will, as this seems to be a draft copy posted in order to solicit comments), I suggest you remove this part.

5. The following sentence is simply atrocious. You cannot "train to [you] have wore [your] fingers off." What you should have written is "I will train until I have worn off my fingers" or "I will train hard enough to wear my fingers off." In fact, you may just wish to rewrite this sentence, because exactly how are you training such that you would end up with no fingers? Are you playing Nintendo? I think you meant to imply you would train at "pulping" people - to which the nearest equivalent would likely be that you are going to train until your KNUCKLES are bare. Consequently, you may wish to use words to that effect.

6. The people backing you up should be related to something. Why are they backing you up? Are they agreeing with you? Are they going to fill in for you if you get sick? This sentence is unclear.

7. In the same sentence as #6 you talk about not mentioning any names. Integrate the two thoughts into a coherent whole. A suggestion: "Although I will not mention any names, I assure you that I have other people backing me up [mention capacity of backup here]." See how this relates the two thoughts to make a complete sentence?

8. Although the "mark my words" idea is new, you've already talked about the "coming after" in the third preceding sentence. Perhaps phrase it like a reminder, e.g. "So as you don't forget, let me reiterate: I am coming after you." This makes it clear that you intend them to remember that aspect, and haven't just mentioned it twice due to bad writing style.

9. Learn to spell "sincerely". Signing a letter with a spelling mistake in "sincerely," the last word in the letter, leaves the reader at best with the idea that you have not proofread your work and at worst with the idea you cannot spell a simple word like "sincerely." In either case they are far likely to take your letter far less seriously after seeing a spelling mistake like this. For this reason, you simply MUST take more time to look over your work (or at least spell check it) in the future.

Overall, while I believe your letter manages to get the desired impression across, it suffers from lapses in grammatical accuracy which confuse the reader and weaken the impact of the work. As well, certain phrases are either redundant and/or completely nonsensical. These also weaken the impact. You write concisely, however, and seem to certainly have a coherent thesis you wish the reader to absorb, so don't get discouraged! I believe that if you take these corrections, rewrite your letter, and with further practice in the future, you'll soon be on your way to writing threat letters you can be proud of.

Sincerely,
Pimpo The Great

p.s. Consider putting some space between the last line of text and the closing ("sincerely") line. It will make your work look cleaner.

p.p.s. Looking forward to the revised copy.

-- pimpothegreat, April 4 2003 6:52 PM EST

holy crap, I think that's the best grammar flame I've ever seen.

of course, pimpo had good material to work with. :)

-- Jonathan, April 4 2003 6:56 PM EST

I took out all the other posts from the thread, if you want those I can send them :)

laughing so hard... hard to type... oh god....
my side hurts... i can hardly see through the tears... oh lordy.
that was AWESOME.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU SO MUCH.

that made my day! I love you guys.

Here's the link to the entire thread.

Bast used to be named Pimpo?

Hehe... I remember this =D

Wow, this made my night.

Wow that's quite the humorous reading, I can't believe I haven't seen this or at least remembered seeing this before! Excellent find!

that was worth it. i think it may be a highlight of my day

/me totally remembers when this happened... it was truly hilarious

Thanks Slayer and SNK :-)

Heh, theres also a few missed admin fines in that thread, =P

And what happened to "Sir" tags? I don't even recall what they represented.

Wow, just wow.. amazing post.

Yup. This DID just make my day! Who was Pimpo? True genius!

I indeed also remembered this being on the forum of CB1, such a great time... :)

i too remember it well, it was great!

i believe the sir and lady tags were for admins? i remember stump, di, thesaint having them anyways.

The best part is in the corrections.
How many things does he state he will do? 'to' things?
And yes, I remember DM very well as well as CM :)

Didn't Saint have an EG tag?

That was built in via the Change-Your-Name-Request, Hakai. It wasn't a tag created for him, but he himself put it on his name.

An excellent read :D made my night!!

"4. In your second sentence you state you are going to do to things: "

Ironic, no? :P

awww... Zog spotted that first... My bad for replying before reading replies :P

Those were the days... *sigh*