flame

The item read out at the LASFS had its genesis in a broadside by , which became famous as "The Flame to end all flames", "The best flame in the world", "The Perfect Flame", etc. It has appeared many time since. Below is a summary of the original. I attach some variants in RTF format, for your delectation.

http://users.gurulink.com/drk/humor/flame.html

The Flame to End All Flames

The Post

The original post (whose author shall remain nameless) was a flame to a post asking a legitimate question concerning setting up a computer with huge amounts of memory and swap space:

>Subject: Re: 500M swap space

>What the optional expletive do you need so much RAM for? I believe it's not even >possible to have that much RAM, or maybe it is, but then you must have a >huge simm module of about 8GB RAM. > >THIS IS CRAZY!!!! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE F--K YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. > >Fool! > >insert a 28 line signature file here<

The Flame

And then guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) responded with the Flame to End All Flames (Used here with permission):

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas. I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.

You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselfs in recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?

Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you ckoke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted boggish foot-licking twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You churlish boil-brained clotpole ponce. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup pratting naff. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.

the only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of your of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.

---------------------------------cut here-------------------------------

(check all boxes that apply)

Dear:

[ ] Clueless Newbie [ ] Lamer [ ] Flamer [ ] Loser [ ] Spammer [ ] Troller [ ] "Me too" er [ ] Pervert [ ] Geek [ ] Freak [ ] Nerd [ ] Elvis [ ] Racist [ ] Fed [ ] Freak [ ] Fundamentalist [ ] Satanist [ ] Homeopath [ ] Unbearably self-righteous person

I took exception to your recent:

[ ] Email [ ] Post to ____________________. (newsgroup)

It was (check all that apply):

[ ] Lame [ ] Stupid [ ] Abusive [ ] Clueless [ ] Idiotic [ ] Brain-damaged [ ] Imbecilic [ ] Arrogant [ ] Malevolent [ ] Contemptible [ ] Libelous [ ] Ignorant [ ] Clueless [ ] Stupid [ ] Fundamentalist [ ] Boring [ ] Dim [ ] Cowardly [ ] Deceitful [ ] Demented [ ] Self-righteous [ ] Crazy [ ] Weird [ ] Hypocritical [ ] Loathsome [ ] Satanic [ ] Despicable [ ] Belligerent [ ] Mind-numbing [ ] Maladroit [ ] Much longer than any worthwhile thought of which you may be capable.

Your attention is drawn to the fact that:

[ ] You posted what should have been emailed [ ] You obviously don't know how to read your newsgroups line [ ] You are trying to make money on a non-commercial newsgroup [ ] You self-righteously impose your religious beliefs on others [ ] You self-righteously impose your racial beliefs on others [ ] You posted a binary in a non-binaries group [ ] You don't know which group to post in [ ] You posted something totally uninteresting [ ] You crossposted to *way* too many newsgroups [ ] I don't like your tone of voice [ ] What you posted has been done before. [ ] Not only that, it was also done better the last time. [ ] You quoted an *entire* post in your reply [ ] You started a long, stupid thread [ ] You continued spreading a long stupid thread [ ] Your post is absurdly off topic for where you posted it [ ] You posted a followup to crossposted robot-generated spam [ ] You posted a "test" in a discussion group rather than in alt.test [ ] You posted a "YOU ALL SUCK" message [ ] You posted low-IQ flamebait [ ] You posted a blatantly obvious troll [ ] You followed up to a blatantly obvious troll [ ] You said "me too" to something [ ] You make no sense [ ] Your sig/alias is dreadful [ ] You must have spent your life in a skinner box to be this clueless.

[ ] You posted a phone-sex ad [ ] You posted a stupid pyramid money making scheme [ ] You claimed a pyramid-scheme/chain letter for money was legal [ ] Your margin settings (or lack of) make your post unreadable. Each line just goes on and on, not stopping at 75 characters, making it hard to read. [ ] You posted in ELitE CaPitALs to look k0OwL [ ] You posted a message in ALL CAPS, and you don't even own a TRS-80 [ ] Your post was FULL of RANDOM CAPS for NO APPARENT REASON [ ] You have greatly misunderstood the purpose of this newsgroup. [ ] You have greatly misunderstood the purpose of the Internet. [ ] You are a loser. [ ] This has been pointed out to you before. [ ] You didn't do anything specific, but appear to be so generally worthless that you are being flamed on general principles.

It is recommended that you:

[ ] Get a clue [ ] Get a life [ ] Go away [ ] Grow up [ ] Never post again [ ] Read every newsgroup you posted to for a week [ ] stop reading Usenet news and get a life [ ] stop sending Email and get a life [ ] Bust up your modem with a hammer and eat it [ ] Have your medication adjusted [ ] Jump into a bathtub while holding your monitor [ ] find a volcano and throw yourself in [ ] get a gun and shoot yourself [ ] Actually post something relevant [ ] Read the FAQ [ ] stick to FidoNet and come back when you've grown up [ ] Apologize to everybody in this newsgroup [ ] consume excrement [ ] consume excrement and thus expire [ ] Post your tests to alt.test/misc.test [ ] Put your home phone number in your ads from now on [ ] Refrain from posting until you have a vague idea what you're doing

In Closing, I'd Like to Say:

[ ] You need to seek psychiatric help [ ] Take your gibberish somewhere else [ ] *plonk* [ ] Learn how to post or get off the usenet [ ] Most of the above [ ] All of the above [ ] Some of the above, not including All of the above [X] You are so clueless that I didn't even bother filling in this form.

------------------------end "standardized form"----------------------------

P.S.: You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, socially-retarded, puerile, clueless, and generally Not Good.

Do I Win?

The Flame to End All Flames / drk@gurulink.com

_______________________________________________

Regards, TC

-- Terry Cole BA/BSc/BE/BA(hons) (tcole@maths.otago.ac.nz) System Administrator, Dept. of Maths. & Stats., Otago Uni. PO Box 56, Dunedin, NZ.