Into the Forums: The week ending Jan. 16, 2008

After a relatively quiet month due to the holidays, the Mountain Xpress Forums are back in full swing. Here’s a sample of the topics readers are chiming in on.

With President-elect Obama’s big day just around the corner, Xpress staffer Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt posed the following question to the forum: Can’t make it to Washington for Inauguration Day? What are you doing, where are you going?

The slogan “Keep Asheville Weird” has been floating around for the past few years, but newbie forum poster escavezlopi wants to know what it is about the town that’s supposed to be so strange. The forum crew is more than happy to oblige.

On more national themes, the recent killing of unarmed, prone, nonresisting and begging-not-to-be-shot mass-transit rider Oscar Grant by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, Calif., has definitely caught the attention of the forum. Was the killing an accident or murder?

One of the more controversial threads this week was newbie user Broken’s post Does art have to be “cultural” or “odd”? And since Broken’s art is extremely sexually explicit and absolutely not safe for work, opinions were a bit less forgiving than one might expect. But does Broken have a point about artistic prejudice? This thread also launched a pair of other discussions — the sarcastic-turned-serious Why are “artists” so whiny? and the silly parody discussion Why are Vintners so Winey? — both of which are recommended.

The Music subforum has been quite active this week, with a virtual turf war between jam-loving inclusionist poster Jason Ross Martin and more-or-less everyone else. Worthy posts threads include a discussion of this week’s big local music fest in PoP AshEvIlLe? and The Most Amazing Live Music Moments. Meanwhile, poster boatrocker decided to post a collection of music jokes that took on a life of its own, and the What Song is Stuck In Your Head Today thread is still going strong at 17 pages.

Speaking of threads that won’t die, the Six Word Story photo-narration thread in the Written Word subforum is still going strong at 17 pages, as is the Words and phrases that are really fun discussion. Less amusing, but still interesting, is the discussion of poetry and netiquette in the Poetry Slam at Firestorm Cafe.

In the General Discussion forum, poster Jason Bugg asked the important question “Who’s BOARDIN’?”, which saw forum regular brebro create several memorable pieces of Xpress forum in-joke art, and a classic image of MX Boardin’ that must be seen to be believed (see a small version of it above).

Owing to a long-standing policy of closing threads that veer wildly off-topic, the Official Off-Topic Thread has been quite the hotbed of non-sequitors and random references in the last several weeks. And if you like that one, be sure to visit the shorter, but certainly more challenging, Rhyming Thread.

For all of you who simply love a good “greatest hits” collection, the Let’s Play Resurrect-A-Thread post has a few highlights from the past year. Who can forget this classic, for instance?

And the Asheville on Twitter thread is still going strong, making it an increasingly useful resource for keeping up with your favorite local microbloggers.

Of course, all this is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are plenty of additional discussions on all manner of topics on the Mountain Xpress Forums. Why, you can even drop by and introduce yourself.

Steve Shanafelt, Forums administrator

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8 thoughts on “Into the Forums: The week ending Jan. 16, 2008

  1. The bitter cold drove me into the forums and a mild case of recurring OCD kept me going back. There is certainly a raucous bunch of characters swimming in those waters. I think I’ll go back.

  2. It’s not so bad. I can personally guarantee it is way less frustrating to post on than some other forums hosted by local media outlets. They know who they are.

  3. Mills River

    My favorite internet forum saying … arguing with someone on the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics …. you may win, but you are both still retarded.

  4. we shall persevere.

    we shall rise again.

    we are not the ones who can be silenced.

    we will rise.

    we shall rise.

    we shall become.

    we are aware.

    we are watching. we can be more than this.

    this shiny thing you call your existence is a myth.

    we explode that myth.

    we take what we want.

    what we want is nothing short of everything that there is.

    we will consume all.

    we are all.

    we are you.

    we are ourselves.

    we are nothing.

    nothing is a complete negation.

    completion is totality.

    totality is everything.

    we are. everything.

    #OneNothingness

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