Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for December 18, 2008

As anyone who has ever tried it can attest to.

Never go hiking with this guy on a windy day.

Is Mark Trail somebody’s avatar on GoComics?

Trying to have a meaningful conversation with ‘Mark Trail’ is like p!ssing into the wind.

Olivefoote, if you ever want to be totally exasperated, go to State of the Union and say something nice about Obama, pro-choice, the environment, or anything else that is remotely progressive. You’ll find out pretty quickly how rabid a personna MarkTrail is. If he posts a comment on any other page, he is quite human, but Mr. Hyde comes out on that right-wing page.

Sigh, trying to find a comic strip where the posts don’t turn political is like having a peeing for distance competition in a strong headwind - dissapointing and messy.

This is nothing compared to the dreaded “forked-stream” of doom.

Windward and leeward, boys and girls. Windward and leeward.

I visited State of the Union. Are you guys sure this is an actual exasperating individual… or Carl Moore pulling a Stephen Colbert on you? Mark Trail seems unusually motivated. And way too knowledgeable when it comes to wrongheaded facts and stats.

mark is hilarious! a battle of wits with an unarmed man. i just wish he could come up with some new material. he’s the carrottop of republicans. matter of fact from now on, i’m calling him carrottop, wonder if he’ll catch on….

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, You don’t pee into the wind, You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger And you don’t dis the Republicans in front of MarkTrail. (OK, sorry, I just couldn’t get that last line to rhyme with ‘Jim’)

How does a (insert your favorite college rivalry or whatever here) take a shower? They pee in the wind.

Let me get this straight: You guys took a totally non-political comic strip on a non-political site, and turned it into an ad-hominen tirade against someone who seems like a pretty decent guy when he posts here. Can you not face him, fact against fact, in the forum where it’s appropriate? I don’t know what the argument is, but my dad used to say, “When the other guy starts the ad hominem attacks, you know you’ve won.”

Never do it standing on your head, either.

The one time a hunter would want to stay upwind.

farleftside says: Mr. Trail is the greatest purveyor of ad hominem attacks on this whole dang web site. You seem to be pretty good at it yourself. “The sound which emanates from a raccoon’s nether regions after eating a rancid fudgesicle” I doubt anyone could beat that one.

Ray C says:

Let me get this straight: You guys took a totally non-political comic strip on a non-political site, and turned it into an ad-hominen tirade against someone who seems like a pretty decent guy when he posts here. Can you not face him, fact against fact, in the forum where it’s appropriate? I don’t know what the argument is, but my dad used to say, “When the other guy starts the ad hominem attacks, you know you’ve won.”

Ray, I’ve tried talking to this man. You can’t. He will not have a discussion. He puts his rhetoric in front of him like a wall. You cannot get over it, under it, or around it to reach the actual man, and I would like to. He’s made comments on ‘Annie’ about how hard it is to be lonely, and I feel that he’s speaking from experience. Someone has drilled that rhetoric into his head, and he doesn’t seem to be able to get past it.

Margueritem: No matter if he’s a complete jerk. That does not excuse bringing his name into this comic out of thin air and attacking him. I’m not defending Mark, whom I barely know from a few comments here and there. You say you can’t argue with him, so forget about him. Who can argue with being called a rude sound made by a raccoon? Is that any better than what he’s accused of doing?

Sigh.. Ray, you suffer from an abundance of common sense.

Farleftside: You persist in missing my point. By calling him meaningless names, you bring yourself down to the same grade-school/kindergarten level that you accuse him of. I can’t change my mind about him, because I had no opinion of him to start with. I will take your and Marguerite’s word for it that he is a jerk. My opinion of you, however (which is very high, incidentally), fell when you introduced him into a comic that had nothing to do with him, only to ridicule him. And as far as my being on the short side of the intelligence stick…that’s the story of my life. I’m not mad about it, only resigned. (I think you may have meant “intelligence” in the CIA sense rather than in the IQ sense. Either way, I plead guilty.)

doctortoon says: “Ray C - I would usually agree with you about bringing MarkTrail up here in this way if it was anyone else. However, …”

He deserves some gratuitous name-calling. He’s rude to us on SOTU, so it’s okay for us to be rude to him here. Others don’t like him either, so it’s okay for us to call him names. I think I understand.

NoFearPup: You are so right. I feel really bad that your father felt that way about us. Please give him my apology. That’s all from me.

Actually, you are the only one making sense. Don’t mind my dad he says “what a waste of time” then he’s the first one who wants to know what we’re talking about. I was just being a trouble-maker for the marky-bashers.

Doctortoon: In turn, I apologize for the sarcasm in my reply to you. No hard feelings, I hope.

I prefer a tail win.