Toecutter 2.0

Three posts today, I'm outdoing myself. As part of my self-appointed role as the Toecutter Of Web 2.0, I keep an eye on Nick Carr's blog, and spent a bit of time yesterday flaming him and his supporters in one of his regular Wikipedia bashing sessions. The tennis match between myself and censorware crusader Seth Finkelstein got so long that Nick promptly reprinted it as a separate post, with some snide asides inserted by Nick.

For those of you wondering what a toecutter is, Wikipedia won't help you. Neither will Google, surprisingly, without knowing what you're looking for already as I did. This is a good toecutter definition:

The term toe cutter is Australian slang for a person who lives by torturing other criminals, then robbing them. As the name implies the torture usually involves painful removal of the digits or in some cases the complete foot. Few victims ever inform since their loss has been acquired illegally. An infamous toe cutter was "Jimmie the Pom". His gang operated in the Sydney area during the seventies. They prayed on fellow criminals threatening bodily harm, till they disclosed the whereabouts of their ill begotten gains. Their modis operandi was to cut people's toes off, with bolt cutters. By day, the leader of the extorionists, ran a dress shop. He emigrated to Australia in 1967 and claimed to be a member of the notorious Kray Brothers Gang from East London where he picked up the idea. His technique seemed to work because over the years it is reputed the Toe Cutter Gang were able to amass considerable loot from their fiendish toe fetish. Less adept copycats used blowtorches applied to the soles of the feet to achieve the same end. Tablillas were pillories used by the Spanish Inquisition and immobilised the toes when the victim was bound to the rack. Sharp wedges were hammered head-on into the toes one by one to obliterate the phalanx.

The most famous toecutter was Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read, from the movie of the same name. Now, I don't actually go around to Nick Carr's house and apply an arc welder to his extremities, but I have taken it upon myself to do so in a figurative manner. I snark the snarkers. My reward is not wads of drug money, as it was for Chopper and Jimmy the Pom, but the satisfaction of seeing a sniper get a taste of his own medicine. Well worth the effort.

They can rarely take it as well as they give it.