Re: AsciiGangstein

Pete Casso <pet...@sympatico.ca> writes:

>> Stein is a Jewish name and you attach it specifically to names like
>> Bird Stein and Frogstein, why did you choose it for your cartoons?
>
> Well, Stein may or may not be a Jewish name, I can not comment on
> that, I am not familiar with the Jewish culture.
>
> Stein is for me a German name, and a common German word, it means
> stone, read my previous article.

Hi; the goal of this long post is to explain to you, Pete, why people
keep asking you about your use of "stein".  I apologize to everyone
for its lack of ascii-art.  (Well, ok, I'll throw in a little story's
title from a figlet font I've been trying to make.)

I've noticed that you like assigning new last names to people on
alt.ascii-art; for example, "Joan Stark" ==> "Joan Starkstein".  I'm
not sure why you like doing it, but apparantly you do.  Hopefully that
odd hobby of yours will make this example more clear.
              _____ __ ,__ .  ,   ,__ __ ,__    ,__ ,_____,__
       /\    (_  | /  \|__) \/    |__/  \|__)   |__)|__ | |__ .
      /--\   __) | \__/| `\ /     |  \__/| `\   |   |__ | |__ .

Pretend that none of us on alt.ascii-art had last names but that the
government thought we should all have them.  After all, if we didn't
have last names, how could they sort our tax returns or notify next of
kin after traffic accidents?  You, Pete Casso, have been chosen to
assign us last names because you like doing it so much.

You could turn everyone's last name of "" into "Stein", but that would
just confuse the government even more; you'd need to be original.  You
could name us all after your friends or after movie stars, but then
that would get confusing, too.  ("Joris Clinton?  Are you related to
President Clinton?"  "No.  I just got this name."  "Oh.")  I'm sure
you'd have no trouble coming up with something cute and possibly even
polite for most of the common posters.  However, eventually you'd have
to name lurkers like me whom you know nothing about.  There are far
more of us than you think, and you'd get really bored with the whole
naming thing far to soon.

Fortunately, as a speaker of English, Pete, chances are you know
dozens of common words, many of which aren't used as last names
anywhere in the world.  "Desk" for example, or "Bookcase".  Why,
common nouns would soon be coming fast and furious; you wouldn't have
to ask us a thing about ourselves or check out our former posts for
information about us-- you could just say, "You, you're Mary
Lunchbox."

Eventually, with our new names, we could go and live productive lives.
Other neighbors of ours might think to themselves, "Hmm, I bet that
Veronica Drywall got his name from Pete Casso during that
alt.ascii-art fiasco.  Although `smith' is a normal noun, I still have
this feeling that John Smith didn't get his his name from
alt.ascii-art; it seems like such a good, American name.  Not at all
like Veronica Drywall."  But soon, there'd be enough stupid names in
the world that not many would think twice about it.
                    ___ .  . ,__     ,__ .  . ,__
                     |  |__| |__     |__ |\ | |  \
                     |  |  | |__     |__ | \| |__/

Wasn't that a pleasant little story?  Ok, on we go...

Communities of Jews often lived in the same quarters of towns
throughout Europe during much of this millenium.  Most of them didn't
have family names like "<FIRST> <LAST>" but instead stuck to the
age-old tradition of being referred to as "<FIRST> son of <FATHER'S
NAME>".  Late in the millenium, German officials felt they needed to
assign last names to these Jewish families, and assigned names
somewhat randomly.

"Stein" is a common German word, but hardly one you'd've found in
German last names before this happened.  And, yes, because German
nouns are the way they are, names were often created that meant "gold
stone" or "big stone" or "colored stone", or sometimes bizarre
nonsense phrases like "frog stone".  These names were soon used
throughout European literature of the time to immediately connote
ridiculous, stereotypical Jews, and the more nonsensical the name, the
better.

The names "Frogstein" and "Birdstein" sound like these sorts of
fictional, over-the-top "Jewish" names.  By having these characters
star in comic strips, you probably lead a lot of people to believe
that you support the stereotype-- after all, it appears you think that
both the characters and the names themselves are inherently funny.
You give a worse impression when you add "-stein" to the end of an
alt.ascii-art personality whom you're trying to argue with: there it
seems that you're adding "-stein" to the person's name to demean them,
that you are somehow "Jewifying" them as a personal attack.

Does that help?

--brian

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