Concerned Blogger,

If you’re going to try to make a point and take a stand, be sure to plant your feet firmly in the ground. Ending with an unnecessary apology negated the 202 words that preceded said apology. Rather than dismiss your effort, though, I’ll indulge. I enjoy debating and consider myself a cunning linguist.

You should already know, when I walk in the do’, that it ain’t no use in frontin’ on me.

T. Pain, “Hustler’s Anthem ‘09″

I must say, I had a hearty laugh when you called me condescending considering you were immediately supercilious with your subject. “Your ‘Blog’”? Nice. “Small attempt at being clever”? “Egocentric cyber babble”? Pot? Kettle? Black. To put it colloquially, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself.

But let’s continue with this whole “blog” business. This site makes absolutely no claim at being a blog. Far from it, it’s an advice column with topics ranging from the prepuce to pop music, sprinkled with elements of an editorial. You made a horribly grand assumption and that is entirely your own fault. As a good friend of mine likes to say, “expectations are the building blocks to resentment.” Or, as they say on Sesame Street, “that fish is not gonna bring that stick back to you.”

Comments are, indeed, disabled and done so with intent. You’re not the first person to notice or ask about it, so I figure I’ll take this opportunity to reference a recent conversation I had over instant message.

Them: Any reason why you close comments?
Me: Because it’s _my_ fucking column.
Them: :D

Once again, we revisit the fact that this is an advice column, a place for my opinions. Amazingly enough, this concept is not far-fetched. There are quite a few websites that I read on a regular basis which offer no mechanism for commenting directly on each post, notably John Gruber’s Daring Fireball. There is no difficultly in communicating with Gruber, for example. I’ve written to him on a few occasions, sometimes receiving a reply and other times not. Avenues exist and comments are not the only road. By disabling comments, I have not made it difficult for people to communicate with me. Case in point? You. You wrote this letter and I received it with little effort.

I find it difficult to believe that I leave “the reader even more suffocated in [my] thoughts and ideas, giving them no room to formulate their own”. You seem to have done well enough on your own—or are you implying that you’re of a class greater than my current readership, people who do seem to enjoy my “egocentric cyber babble”, an increasingly growing group. Why, this week alone, visits have gone up 515.38% on this website according to Google Analytics. That’s not including people who read the RSS feed or view the posts on the Hail Pleasar Facebook Fan Page.

This is not a public forum. An advice column works like this:

1. Someone finds themself in a predicament.
2. Said person is unable to make sense of this predicament.
3. This person then decides to seek assistance.
4. They write an e-mail to asking me for my opinion.
5. I read their e-mail and give it some thought.
6. I publish my reply on this website, which gets syndicated to the Hail Pleasar Facebook Fan Page and notices go out on Twitter.
7. I send an e-mail to the person, thanking them and letting them know that I’ve published my response and that they are more than welcome to ask any follow-up questions should they have any.

Contrary to what you would like to believe, it is not all about me. At the end of the day, though, it’s juliuspleasar.com and not letsallholdhandsandshareourfeelingsinapublicforum.com/emocorner. Your understanding of what’s going on here can only be described with one word^[1].

Excelsior,
Julius Pleasar