I am surprised to see that my latest post, intended to be no more than a whimsical, lighthearted farce, has unexpectedly rubbed some of you the wrong way. This unprecedented school spirit on your part comes as a bit of a surprise, but perhaps you just needed a cause to rally around. You can thank me later.
I will, however, apologize now to those who felt slighted. As I have already apologized to #25, and am publicly on the record as stating, essentially, that the Paly basketball team is the greatest thing to happen in sports since Dirk stripped the Heat of their collective manhood, I don't think I need to address the basketball team. Though I will say, in response to the one anonymous commenter, that I suspected the alley-oop was intentional but was trying to put a Gunn-favoring spin on things.
Anyhow, as for the girls soccer team, I regret calling you "crappy." What I should have said was, "The girls soccer team, which happens to have lost 3-1 to Gunn today but perhaps had a bad performance or just couldn't handle Gunn's soccer brilliance, vented their frustration by attempting to reenact Stomp the Yard during the basketball game." That would have been more appropriate.
As for the cheer team, I am not sure saying they suck is completely unfair since they were appallingly out of sync and dropped a girl during the lift part of the routine, but I guess it is reading too far into a sample size of one. Perhaps if I saw them more often, the average quality of performance would even out at a much higher level (statistics, by the way. You'll get there).
Finally, I cannot comprehend taking real offense at the academics jokes, but if you did, lighten up. I'm not even going to fake-apologize for those. By the way, if you have made it this far, you are reading way above the expected difficulty level for your Paly English class. You may wish to request honors placement.
Anyway, the moral of this story is that you should chill out. I am thrilled that you know my identity, since certain people I previously believed to be my friends are throwing names around random Facebook threads, but I caution you that beating me up would not be very fulfilling. I don't put up much of a fight.
Just remember that everyone excels at different things: I am good at writing and making harmless (I thought) fun of things; Gunn is good at badminton and the SAT; Paly is good at basketball and
Love,
The Optimist
As a critic of your previous post, let me clarify my position - I enjoy a good rivalry as much as anyone, especially Paly vs. Gunn, but just felt some of the comments pushed the envelope a bit (but only slightly). Maybe I am overly sensitive or I did not read it with the correct tone in my mind. Nonetheless, as I said to a friend of yours today, it was very well written, as is this post, so that does make it interesting to read - and I've been thoroughly impressed having now had a chance to scour your blog a bit.
ReplyDeleteOn a different sports note: Any thoughts on Stanford basketball and a run at the Pac-12 tournament this season?
your a joke you have no life. your blog sucks
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between poking fun in a humorous way and being pretentious. Being the genius that you are, I'm sure you can figure out which one describes you.
ReplyDeleteyou should have the courage to say who you really are before you try to roast, optimist, instead of hiding behind your pussy ass blog. your sarcastic apology, by the way, is THE CLEVEREST THING IN THE F***ING WORLD
ReplyDeletep.s. Paly did better than gunn on the sat last year. roasted.
To the Optomist,
ReplyDeleteI am a Paly student and I think that this is one of the the greatest things that I have ever read. It is too bad that some kids at my school can't take a joke and recognize that it is things like this that keep the rivalry. You are a great writer and I encourage you to keep writing.
i never asked you to join my fantasy baseball league ahahahah were did you even get that from. pathetic
ReplyDeleteyou must have alot of time writing all these blogs about shit. your life must suck sorry
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, you did. Second of all, good one. Your already terrible insult worked much better the second time. Please, for your own sake, stop.
ReplyDeleteI don't see the "optimism" in this blog... and why can you not leave all of this on the court? Why do Gunn kids always--and I mean ALWAYS--have to refer back to SAT scores and academic statistics? Can "The Optimist" never accept defeat and look forward to the future? This whole blog is an exquisite example of why "The Optimist" is a great misnomer--in the sense that you, my friend, are "The Pessimist". Is that vocabulary good enough for your royal highness? We won, you lost. Get over it. And now to address your attempt at using beguiling mannerisms to boost yours and Gunn's self-esteem. Not working too well, now is it? Try to be humble sometimes, it has proven advantageous to an innumerable amount of people.
ReplyDelete1. "yours and Gunn's self-esteem"!?
Delete2. "Try to be humble sometimes, it has proven advantageous to an innumerable amount of people."
Perhaps you should focus more on your own writing skills, especially the grammar (hint: 1. grammar error, 2. punctuation error. Since this one is a bit more tricky, probably 6th grade level, try typing the phrase "uses of a semicolon" into the most convenient search browser)
Now, here's a Gunn student who didn't need academic statistics or SAT scores! I guess that makes you even more wrong.
Great comeback. I would give you credit for citing my lack of punctuation as you are correct, except for the fact that I wrote this in about 3-5 minutes, and your pathetic insult took 4 days for you to write. I'm truly sorry if the last sentence was too much of a run-on for you.
Delete"PALY": Congratulations! After fifteen minutes of frantically flipping through a thesaurus and ten minutes of incalculably difficult logic, you have stumbled upon the irony in the title of this blog. Again, truly well done.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note, I really think no one read the original post from top to bottom. Am I wrong here? This clearly is not about me being upset about us losing the game. But if that's what helps you wake up in the morning, by all means, continue thinking it.
Well, I again have stumped you. Firstly, you have said that PALY students are not enrolled in difficult courses, and yet you discern my logic "difficult to comprehend." Secondly, I did read your original post from top to bottom, and my opinion is that you are much too focused on this ongoing hatred between PALY and Gunn students. This hatred is a myth, as many PALY and Gunn students go to parties together, and are quite good friends. Why do you continue to support this myth of there being this so called "hatred"? And I do believe you are upset about the game, or you would have not written this sarcastic, and what I would call a rather poor attempt at a comeback, blog. And now that you have cleared the air for me, I am beginning to notice that there is quite a bit of irony at Gunn. Many of its students party in abundance, and have gotten into great deals of trouble. After all of this, you still deem it necessary to rub in our faces that you are the perfect, great SAT scores, little angels, when you are obviously sore loosing, arrogant, cynics.
ReplyDeleteThank You For Your Time
I can't respond to this because you again have stumped me. Please take your infallible argumentation prowess somewhere it could really prosper, like a Republican primary debate.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't use a thesaurus, it took me about 3-4 minutes to write, and I suggest you stop aiming your pointless little comebacks at my thoughts and please try to understand that I don't enjoy writing, and that my first reply to your "blog" was purely based off of the interest of trying to stop this pointless game of Dumb and Dumber between our schools.
ReplyDeleteBeginning your comment with "also" so as to seem as if you were simply adding on to your previous comment rather than writing a "pointless little comeback" was a brilliant touch. Game, set, match, you win. I imagine that you could find employment with the Paly Voice as an opinion columnist.
ReplyDeleteMay i repeat my previous statement that "I do not enjoy writing". Why do you continue these desperate comebacks? Are you upset that I have in fact beat your pointless mind game, as I would call it. As many would say, "you mad bro?"
ReplyDeleteDear David Oyer,
ReplyDeleteYour posts about the Gunn-Paly basketball games have brought a little bit of flair to a relatively docile rivalry. I imagine your blog has received more hits in these past two nights than it has in its history, and I'm glad to see you've found a creative way to vent about Gunn's athletic inferiority. I'm pretty sure we both went to Escondido Elementary School, and although you were a grade older, I remember you were a pretty smart kid. Unfortunately, you appear to be wasting your time on a petty rivalry instead of using it to learn grammar and sentence structure techniques that would greatly improve your SAT Writing score.
You criticize Paly athletes and insult their academic proficiency, yet you adorn your shitty blog posts with sentence fragments, several misused words, a lack of proper punctuation, and a incredibly asinine tone. On behalf of all student-athletes who somehow maintain a healthy balance between honors classes and competitive athletics (yes, it is possible, but no, your NFL fantasy draft doesn't count), I'd like to apologize for evolution; "survival of the fittest" isn't for everyone (that's what I learned in biology, right after our semester-long unit on how to grow peas in a styrofoam cup).
My condolences,
Paly StudentYou criticize Paly athletes and insult their academic proficiency, yet you adorn your shitty blog posts with sentence fragments, several misused words, a lack of proper punctuation, and a incredibly asinine tone. On behalf of all student-athletes who somehow maintain a healthy balance between honors classes and competitive athletics (yes, it is possible, but no, your NFL fantasy draft doesn't count), I'd like to apologize for evolution; "survival of the fittest" isn't for everyone (that's what I learned in biology, right after our semester-long unit on how to grow peas in a styrofoam cup).
My condolences,
Paly Student
Anonymous,
DeleteWe at Gunn all know that we're not as good at sports as Paly, or should I say "athletically inferior". Well if you want to say it that way, the academic environment is emphasized at Gunn so much more and cannot even be compared to Paly. Not saying Paly isn't a great academic score, as making in the Top 100 rankings in the U.S a few times in the last decade is extremely admirable (but as always, Gunn was ranked higher and stays on the list).
There's no need to criticize David's writing SAT score, as I am sure it is higher than at least 90% or even 95% of those at Paly, no exaggeration.
Our "criticism" should, once again, be taken lightly, and if Paly athletes really think that we at Gunn actually think they're stupid, they're actually being stupid. Paly has many great student-athletes, we ALL know, so David's post NEVER had that intention. This has to be clear. And what was the last paragraph about? You kind of repeated everything that you said in the second paragraph...
But if you really wanted to compare Gunn athletes' GPA and difficulty of classes to those at Paly....I'm not even going to go into that. #4.0squadrepresent.
Anyway, just wanted to (hopefully) clear things up a bit better. No hard feelings please. Don't mean to continue this trend, but if this actually continues, I cannot not think that Paly is seriously butthurt...and wants to, as many Facebook statuses say, "F*** Gunn kids up!" When will Gunn kids say that?
But we're all behind the Optimist. At least at Gunn. As one of the genius Paly students said, party at the Optimist's house once second semester starts.
I can't keep doing this because each additional commenter ignores what I told the previous one. This is the last time.
ReplyDelete"PALY," I can't reply to you anymore because you clearly hate to write--which does not surprise me given your lack of knowledge regarding basic grammar conventions--and enjoy alerting me to this fact each time you return here to write something else. To answer your question, no, I am not mad, I am actually excredingly pleased. Perhaps you should address that question to the incomprehensibly volatile Paly student body instead.
"Anonymous," say, we went to school together? You mean to imply I may know--and even like--plenty of Paly students? That can't be right. Also, thank you for assuming you know what my SAT score is. You and Aris should make a Facebook group or something. By the way, it's "an" incredibly asinine tone, not "a." You guys can't keep setting me up with the low-hanging fruit.
I don't recall "setting [you] up with the low-hanging fruit," but on another note you are quite the lier. Your little game of insulting collegiate athletes is beginning to annoy some of us more physically "in tuned" athletes. How can you say that the pac 12 is not good. Have you ever played any sport against any type of collegiate athlete? I 100% guarantee you that the worst football player in the pac 12 would be physically able to outmatch you, and 3 of your friends that categorize themselves as "athletically inferior" in any sport of your so choosing, maybe with the exception of chess. So, please do not try to instigate hatred between our schools (PALY being the more athletic of the two, and Gunn being the more academically rigorous) by insulting our ability as intellectuals, then furthermore insulting our, and any collegiate level school's ability to excel at athletics. Oh yes, now to address my reasoning for declaring you a lier. Upon further inspection from two (yes, two) psychologists--both with doctorates--you are in fact mad. So, unless you are in denial--of which I would recommend seeing your local psychologist about--then I will have the nerve to in fact ordain (with the highest regard of course) you a lier. But this may not be a bad thing for you yet. Did we not get quite a nice chunk of land from winning the Spanish American War, which in fact was caused by yellow journalism (as to which I am referring your blog). I agree the blogs are almost completely opinionated, but on the contrary, you seem to ignore that and disregard any and all opinions of which you are entrusted with. This, in retrospect, was not very wise of you, as you have turned your fairly decent blog into a flurry of insults and yellow journalism. "Let's go back to the good old days," as someone famous once said.
ReplyDeletehttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lier
ReplyDeleteThat, friend, is the definition of "low-hanging fruit." (Actually, it is the definition of "lier." But you see what I was trying to do there, I'm sure.)
ReplyDeleteThat is actually quite clever of you. Well played. Did you read the first line, then decide to scan the rest for spelling errors? That is respectable, but quite hypocritical, as you said yourself that "uneducated Paly students couldn't read your entire [tedious] blog." And since we are criticizing each other's grammar, what were you referring to when you wrote "you may want to spend a little more time doing something else (studying?) and [*]a little less caring[*] about what a random teenager thinks" in the phrase "a little less caring"? Having read the previous part of this sentence, do you realize that you are in fact referring to "a little less [studying] caring." This correction may not be perfectly clear to you, as most writers of your nature tend to typecast themselves with the near perfect writer, but you need to be clear about your ideas. Especially if those ideas are intended to insult. (Just one of many examples). Now, if you will excuse me, I must study for my final exams. Ah, one last thought of mine. Are you upset that Wikipedia is protesting and does not work, as you are known to get numerous facts from it?
ReplyDeleteAnd by "facts", I mean "falsified ideas", as your assistant grammar checker may not understand my meaning and attempt to correct me.
ReplyDeleteThe Pac-12 IS awful in basketball this year...
ReplyDeletePALY, for the sake of your own high school, stop posting. Hopefully you don't actually represent your school in any way.
ReplyDeleteGreat advice. "thelonious," you are trying to criticize me when you probably can't even understand half of the vocabulary that I have used. Also, when you are trying to insult me by openly "hoping" that I don't represent my school, can you please, for the sake of Gunn's good name, use proper grammar (as I have also failed to do--but that is besides the point). You and your "cohorts" or peers as I would call them constantly use improper grammar even though you so highly pride yourselves (Gunn) for being the more intellectual of the two schools. Please bring a valid argument for me not to post, other than your pathetic hopes and dreams. I say this purely because I don't care about your "feelings" towards me, however jaundiced they may be. AP, good luck making it onto any of the Pac-12 teams this year, or in the near future, as you seem to be quite a prospect.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, I think you're confusing me with someone like yourself, a person who doesn't actually know how to write "liar." Name one vocabulary word you have used that I might not know.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your embarrassment doesn't have to do with grammar anymore, it's about overall tact. Did anyone from your school elect you to hold the name "PALY"? If not, I suggest you find someone normal to write on this blog.
I found it interesting that you were able to get two psychologists to read this blog, but as they are actually your personal therapists, it's not very surprising.
"PALY," your eloquence is unrivaled and your rhetoric unmatched. What you have done with a few simple words to AP and thelonious has likely crippled their self esteem. In any case, I have a proposal for you: email me at dfodavid@gmail.com. You can air your grievances about the merits of our two schools and whatever else strikes your fancy, and when we've concluded, I'll post it here to my blog and add a poll asking who won the argument. Since you can't let the point drop otherwise, and you are clearly a master debater, I imagine you'll find this a suitable way to settle things once and for all. I'll look forward to hearing from you.
ReplyDeleteI guess I should give up on my Pac-12 basketball dreams...
ReplyDeleteOptimist, please don't post that email chain. Every additional post he makes causes me to lose faith in humanity.
ReplyDelete