The votes are in and the winner of the highly coveted Man Boobz Troll of the Year Award for 2012 is … MRAL!
Wait, you say, he wasn’t even on the ballot?
Well, no. The troll that got the most votes from you, my dear readers, was the verbose anti-Man Boobz crusader known as Steele — also known as Mikhael Varpole and, briefly, as Torvus Butthorn. Indeed, Steele cruised to victory, getting 47% of the vote, as compared with the 33% received by Tom Martin, his only real competitor. (Dr. Pell came in third, with a mere 6% of the total.)
But as it turns out we’ve been played, big time. The troll we know and love as Steele turns out to have been MRAL all along.
Yes, that MRAL – the long banned commenter who cannot seem to walk away from this blog. We’ve uncovered and banned many of his previous sockpuppets, but somehow he managed to slip his boldest sockpuppet right by us.
Oh, sure. I and others here often wondered if Steele was for real; it seemed pretty clear to me that he couldn’t possibly believe everything he said. But it wasn’t until I went back to some of “Steele’s” earliest comments here, in preparation for this post, that I discovered how justified these suspicions had been. Turns out that one of “Mikhael Varpole’s” IP addresses matched one used by an earlier troll, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, who had been outed as MRAL a couple of months earlier.
D’OH!
“Torvus Butthorn” really should have been a dead giveaway. But otherwise the highly dedicated MRAL did a masterful job of keeping his troll character consistently ridiculous yet plausible enough to not be an obvious phony, and of hiding his particular obsessions in such a way that he didn’t give himself away.
So, congrats, MRAL, and you’re banned again.
After this, the rest of the results are a bit of an anticlimax.
Sunshine Mary wins the Special-est Snowflake award for Female MRA Trolls, with 52% of the vote. Driversuz comes in second with 32%.
Tom Martin easily wins the Worst Human Being award with a stunning 73% to David K Meller’s 22%.
Some Guy Bored With Your Schtick wins Most Tiresome with 58% of the vote; Diogenes is a distant second with 24%.
And JudgyBitch wins Most Pathetic Vote Beggar.
I hope they’re not all MRAL too.
Oo, looking forward to hearing your reviews, Nat. I find it interesting you find tea so flavourless generally.
Re: bulldogs. I’m the same wrt purebreds… I’d love a proper wee pit bull or a staffy but I will always get rescue dogs. My partner’s got his American Bulldog who’s getting on now, and I have my two pittie mongrels. 🙂
EBT are wonderful dogs but have soooo many health issues, and they have strong personalities. People underestimate them greatly and they do tend to be domineering so you have to be a strong personality to keep them in line. If you DO they are the sweetest things ever.
I just can’t abide creating dogs that can’t mate naturally and can’t give birth. AI and cesareans are the rule for EBT. Hip dyplasia, elbow dysplasia, skin infections, cherry eye, breathing difficulties, enlarged hearts. Not cool. Our boy was incredibly healthy but still died at 11 and that is pretty good for a bulldog. 🙁
There are people in Australia breeding Aussie Bulldogs, which are basically people trying to make functional EBT. That’s pretty awesome. And what creating a new breed looks like, not just crossing two purebreds and making up a name for it. -_-
/rant
There is a David’s tea which just opened (ok, nine months back?) near my work. I got some keemun and lapsang from them. The genmai cha smelled good too.
I loved that the Frontier Psychiatry had serpentines, even if it wasn’t really my sort of music.
Probably my favourite “tea” of theirs (it doesn’t actually have any tea in it) is Forever Nuts. 1) delicious 2) bright pink. Best enjoyed in a white tea cup or mug.
I am not in any way trying to derail the discussions of tea, or bulldogs, or even (gasp!) the original post — but I needed to share this image from my new favorite tumblr: Capybaras that look like Rafael Nadal.
Thank you.
Pitties are wonderful dogs! And it’s super easy to find nice rescue pits (even purebreeds) because shelter are always full of them.
I wish I could have a pitty, but they are too strong for me to handle.
I had an american standard bulldog (not purebred, I think. He had an overbite, so he was DQd from breed standard for any of the three types). Amazingly well tempered dog. Huge, but thought he should be allowed to put all 97 lbs in your lap.
Oliver (because I found him, abandoned, so I named him for Oliver Twist).
Will report back Hrovitnir 🙂
I’ve only ever drunk tea the English way, brewed to hell with milk and at least two sugars, and it’s partly a psychological thing – nothing I’ve ever drunk makes everything *better* like tea does. I am very, very British in that respect.
People saying they don’t like Earl Grey reminds me of the time when I was about 13 and my sister’s father accused me of attempting to poison him because I’d made him a cuppa using an Earl Grey bag; I hadn’t realised they were different, I thought it was a brand of tea, not a type! He genuinely thought I’d slipped something into his drink :S
Katz – have you seen some of the other videos of that pittie and family? They are just adorable together. And the one where the cat’s riding the roomba and smacking the poor pittie when zie goes past is hysterical.
thenat – I just read your Poison Earl Grey story out at work and we all laughed! 😀
It was really horrible, my mum sat me down when she got back from work and was all like “Nat… I need you to be completely honest with me here – what did you use to make TinyFantastic’s Dad’s tea today?”, I was really confused and said “there were no bags in the pot so I used the ones from the black box”, and she just fell about in hysterics, laughing her head off while she explained he thought I was trying to kill him! I mean I was a sulky kid but give me some credit haha 🙂
ROFLMAO!
Oliver is a handsome boy.
Oliver is adorable.
OMG, capybaras! Or, if you’re at all familiar with the midway of the NY State Fair, it’s “the rat, the world’s biggest rat.”
Hi Viscaria!
Freitag, at last someone drinks their hot drinks the right way: black, strong coffee with chicory in it. That’s how I’ve been drinking it since I was 15. If you pour half a cup and can see the bottom, it’s too weak.
I never could get into black and green tea. I finally figured out the tannins upset my stomach a tiny bit. If the tea is really good quality, it’s okay, but drinking the cheap stuff has turned me off the flavor. I do love a pitcher of iced flor de jamaica herbal tea, though (similar to Celestial Seasonings Red Zinger.) The classic recipe adds lots of sugar, but I like to make a mix of 3 parts strongly brewed tea to 1 part fruit juice. And chai masala is great, especially homemade. I hardly put any tea in mine though, maybe a single tea bag for 3 cups of chai – but I love lots and lots of ginger and cardamom.
I pretty much live on iced black tea. Unsweet, which gets me looks like I must be some sort of heathen here in TX when I order it out.
I love strong coffee, but I have to have my real cream in it.
I hit a cultural divide a couple of years ago when visiting the US. I made the mistake of asking for an iced coffee, which here always means cold milk coffee with ice or ice cream in it. There, it means other things too, and the shop assistant didn’t ask what I meant and gave me what is presumably the most-requested at her shop – cold black coffee with ice in it. Which I couldn’t drink.
Absolute to-die-for drink is Spanish sipping chocolate, cold. OMG chocolate orgasm …
@clairedammit, damn straight! Coffee is a test of character. If you can drink it, you pass. Chickory makes it worth living.
Bullies have heath problems, to be sure. Even loving Sibling A and Sibling-In-Law admit it, but they love their bulldogs so much. And they are heartbreakers!
@hellkell, with you on the unsweet tea. Sweet tea is the drink of choice, but I can’t stand it. So, yes. Fellow heathen, drink it just as it’s brewed.
Kitteh’s, um, cold iced coffee…black…bitter…stronger than an iron rod…mmmmmmmm…….
How to survive a Texas summer. Black iced coffee. It’s a cultural thing, I think.
Ooh, I forgot about hot chocolate. I like it best with soy milk, although any kind of milk is fine. A pinch of cinnamon makes it.
Kitteh, I’m thinking the thing to ask for over here would be an iced latte. My mom used to drink iced black coffee sometimes, which I always thought was gross. Hellkell, I always liked unsweet tea too at one time, but given my tea adversion, water’s better.
“Stronger than an iron rod”
Freitag, stop channelling MRAs! Stop it or you’ll go blind!
(Though that could be the coffee.)
Speaking of surviving summer, I’m downing a lot of (TRIGGER WARNING FOR INSTANT COFFEE) cold coffee this morning. It’s going up to 41C / 105.8F today.
Yuck
Yuck
Yuck
Gimme winter
I mentioned it to you before Freitag, but if you stumble upon a Dunn Bros. coffeehouse, get the Cold Pressed Iced Coffee. Holy shit, it is good, and will keep your ass going through the day. It should be a controlled substance. And you can buy growlers of it to take home.
Heathen fist-bump on the unsweet tea!
Kitterh’s, come to Austin. It’s a balmy 46 degrees right now.
Clairedammit, yeah, I’ll be asking for iced latte in future. Strong latte is my usual coffee anyway when I’m out. Though you wouldn’t want to ask for a latte rather than a cafe latte in Italy like some Aussies do, and are surprised when they get a glass of milk. 😀
It was funny going to work on Wednesday. If you’d had no other way of knowing what time of year it was, the little groups of office workers homing in on anyone with a takeaway coffee and asking plaintively “Where did you get that?” would have told you it’s holiday season.
Hellkell, I’m taking it that’s 46F not 46C at this time of year! Brrr, 7.7C. That’s overnight temps in the depth of winter for Melbourne.
BUT I’LL TAKE IT I’LL TAKE IT.
Only good thing about today’s temps here is that Mr K has gone overboard in summer dressing and come in sans tee shirt. Eye candy to make one feel better while slowly expiring.
Yes, that was 46F, sorry! We’re supposed to get a “wintry mix” of sleet and rain, I’m like a little kid who wants it to be more sleet so I can work from home. I don’t feel like dealing with pants tomorrow.