On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:10:35 GMT, "RJM" <scratch.pad@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>
>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>news:0s4rd31h51fi5p48gvn5f9dj4h9mnr77b2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>> Ray's braggadocio seems mild at worst . . ..
>
>Oh? Empty boasting about multiple acts of bravery
>in a military career of extraordinary diversity that
>took place in three (four? I've lost count) separate
>theatres of war is hardly mild. Extravagant claims
>about concurrent high flying careers as a magician,
>businessman, media expert, computing innovater
>and secondhand bookshop mogul are merely sad.
>If only I hadn't overdone it last week in "The flying
>lying Haddadian reverse loop" I might have got him
>claiming to be the world's fattest trapeze artist.
>
>You're a dear old stick, Josh, and a wide eyed gull.
>I recommend you make use of Sylvia's Googling, cut
>out her schtick and read Ray's own words cold. I'm
>sure you'll find that your new friend is the same old
>fantastical lying turd you thought he was and accused
>him of being before your conversion.
>
>Goodnight.
Everyone has a real life, Robert, even Sylvia. Ray is a professional
magician: I've seen him perform tricks, and I doubt that he would be
offering his services on a website if he didn't do it professionally.
Ray has a bookstore, as well, if the fairly pedestrian mention of
moving its stock that he made when we spoke on the phone a few months
back is to be believed -- why would he bluster about something that
can't remotely be construed to involve self-aggrandizement? That he
served in the Navy I have no doubt, and, I see, neither do you. And I
can attest professionally to the fact that he has at least some
knowledge of electrical engineering, and so presumably worked in the
field.
Which pretty much accounts for the essence of his claims, doesn't it?
Beyond that, I can't say, and don't much care. I mean, did he do a
Rambo in the jungle, or did he spend his entire hitch at a bench
replacing bad transistors? Methinks something in-between, but who the
hell knows.
I do know this: Ray is a troll, and his technique involves frustrating
those with whom he argues. As you've pointed out, I called him a liar
many times before I got fed up and plonked him; when I met him, I
learned that it was just a game for him. Which is to say that if you
ever try to get a straight answer out of Ray, you're probably going to
go home empty-handed: as someone else here pointed out, his replies
are the Usenet equivalent of prestidigitation.
OTOH, as a real person with a real life, there are times when he does
respond seriously. One such was when he responded to a fellow veteran,
forget his name, who asked him some questions on MW.
So in the end it would probably be accurate to say that most of what
he's said about himself here is true, if a bit blarneyfied in the
Klingon tradition, and that he's trolling some of those who are trying
to troll him. But those banal truths wouldn't be much fun, would they?
Much more amusing to accuse him of claiming to have flown over Hanoi,
riding an H-bomb like Slim Pickens while eating the heart of a
Vietcong guerrilla..
--
Josh
"This keeps out the stalkers, the obsessed, the dysfunctional, the
abusive, and
the general, all-around jerks who get off on turning a group so toxic that
nobody's
left after a while but the person and some of his associates or
collaborators.
It's the slow poisoning of a group." - J. Michael Straczynski
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