So, I stopped by Scanner’s on Sunday afternoon to see how his wife was doing, and there was a hell of a fight goin’ on.  People knee deep on his porch, mad as hell. Some had laptops, using up all his bandwith pouring over his stories, trying to bust him for something. But then, there were folks on computers on the swing, checking out other writers stories and accusin’ and acussin’ and acryin’, man, it was a sight.

Something went flyin’ across the porch and I thought i’d just duck down under the porch to avoid the missiles ‘n’ shit, and see if I could at least hear, so i could figger out what was going on. I went through all the comments, some were loud, some were a little mean, some were kind of cool, like I did see Clark and SageMerlin trying to get the crowds to calm down with what I thought were some good sayins’.  And Ms. Raptor, she was there for awhile, tryin’ to reason, but then, she said something about Judy and some other people chased her  off the porch.   I guess she went home. I didn’t see her again.

I started thinking about how this is an important day and all, what with Congress trying to vote the right way on pending health care reform legislation, and about these folks fighting it out for what really looks like a buncha nuthin’ and how I have been reading them all for years, long before i decided to start writing myself . I read most all of the people involved in this fight on the porch, and am sad to see that the discourse has fallen away to preachin’ and screamin’ and cross checkin’ everyones past postings.

I don’t feel like I should  sit in judgement, and really, I don’t think any of us should. I think we owe it to this community of writers to just stick to our writin’ and try to keep ourselves honest. Now, I always read Scanner’s posts and so I remember reading the Garden Party one. I remember that he told me he researched on Wikipedia, and thought that took care of the attribution part. I also thought the tone of the article, aside from his ranting ones, was pretty consistent. I don’t know what started this, I mean, I do know what started this, but I am not sure why anyone would run someone else’s work through any plagarism tool. I mean, who has the time?

Anyway, I didn’t get to talk to Scanner. After listening to the cussin for awhile, then realizin’ it had escalated again, I decided to go on back home, and check on Terri later.

Crap, it’s rainin’ here on Friendly Road.