Atomictumor

So, the Oak Ridger today is running an article about how one of the candidates for school board has a MySpace page with an allusion to being bitch-slapped, as well as just kinda generally being a myspace page.

Now, this seems to reflect an interesting generational divide that we might be seeing a bit more of in the next few years, in that the ways that folks my age (and this guy’s about 5 years younger than me, but for the sake of argument, lets just say that I’m young too, OK?) have expressed themselves.

With Myspace.

Now, the candidate, Aaron Wells, set his profile to private after it got out that he had one, bearing a mighty banner saying something about being “bitch-slapped”, but some enterprising young go getter apparently managed to cache a copy or some such technical nonsense and post it on a photo-sharing website, and some other weirdo on the forums managed to find it. Looking it over, I really don’t know what the big deal is.

I mean, who hasn’t been bitchslapped? I’ve been bitchslapped a time or two in my life, both before and after I was 24, and lemme tell ya, its something you put on your website. You tell everybody about it, because its a singular incident. Its one of those things that defines who you are.

For this reason, I don’t see any problem with the boy’s website. Its a good, solid, myspace page. Not a crappy, non-updated one like this one. No, its straight up myspace.

And therein lies the generational gap. For folks born either at the ass end of the Generation X thing, like yours truly, or folks born in the following generation, like Aaron, Myspace is a bit of an institution. Its a society, with social norms and values that may appear odd, or even boorish to the uninitiated.

The “bitch slap” area was a comment left by a friend on the front page. The section of the page that Aaron would write did not mention a penchant for bitch slapping, or anything else that would lead one to have an opinion either way on the boy’s leadership capabilities. Bad taste in music, maybe, but hell, thats never stopped a president from getting elected, right? In fact, I think the only president I’ve seen in my life with any kind of decent taste in music was Jimmy Carter, who had the Allman Bro’s rock a fundraiser for him, and had Bob Dylan as a frequent visitor to the pad. Now, thats a president I can get behind. He’s screwed if theres an oil or hostage crisis, but damn, he’ll throw down and party.

I digress.

Now, the thing with this bitchslap thing, and where I think, subconciously we’re all finding fault here, is with the poor grammar of the bitchslapper. Now, if you notice:

I think this is a lesson to all those running for school board. Remember, even if you don’t post it on your own myspace account, keep in mind that good grammar is always important. Doubly so if you are somebody’s bitch.