[Phil_the_Author]

RJ, you asked, "Does anyone out there have a secret word for Mike?"

Yes, and in the words of the great Sherlock Holmes it can only be... "Moriarity..."

[Joe Hancock]

Hugh Damnright.....

You know Hugh, don't ya?.....

Joe

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Mike,
After careful thought, I took it upon myself to get into your business and call Dr. Katz. The Good Doctor, who was on holiday in
Villefranche-sur-Mer, Alpes-Maritimes, France was so kind to return the phone call. His prescription was simple:

Go to your local drug store and pick-up an Antidepressant.

As in Lloyd Cole's excellent, Antidepressant!

Doc says that multiple listenings of I'm Not Willing and How Wrong Can You Be? are perfect tools for release and identiifcation in recovery from compulsive posting.

Do it Mike. You loved ones want you back. So does Doctor Katz....

[Mike_Cirba]

17 hours, 16 minutes of being Merionthread-free.  

(It helps that I had the last word over there and think maybe...just maybe...I finally got my point through)  

But, no matter..

It's a new day and despite a few withdrawal pangs, I'm on my way to being clean!!  

[James Bennett]

Hey Mike - I think Hugh's on first.



Who's on first?

Hugh is.

Well who's on second?

No, no, Hugh's on first.



Reminds me of a Merion thread.

James B

[Mike_Cirba]

Hey Mike - I think Hugh's on first.

Who's on first?

Hugh is.

Well who's on second?

No, no, Hugh's on first.

Reminds me of a Merion thread.

James B

James,

Very, very funny.  

Hey Guys,

C'mon...where's the props for my admirable restraint...going on two days and counting?  

No Cape, No Alps, No Redan for me,
I'm Merion free as you can see,
No pounding pulse, no intense frustration,
Think I'll go out and eat a crustracean.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Mike since you've never been to my lost discovery, this would make you perfectly qualified to issue an opinion on my latest quest to prove that the Merion threads, as well as the Rees Jones threads are nothing but fodder.

Get with it......

[Jordan Wall]

You guys are gonna love this one.
I was reading through Bombsquad today, and there was a thread on GCA..
Somebody wanted to join as a member, and another person gave him some nice advice.
This is what he said, word for word.

Stay away from the Merion threads! The threads are a pissing contest with no end.

[Mike_Cirba]

Bill,

It's like entering another dimension, I tell you.

One moment you're safe, and sane, and relatively happy.   You have your health, whatever looks you brought with you, and general peace of mind.

Then, in a whisk, you're swept into a swirling whirlpool of neverending split infinitives, cascading quotes catapulting atop each other, historical histrionics headed headlong hither and yon, and not since the One Hundred Years War has such entrenchment and attrition been attributed to such a miniscule cause.  

Will anyone recall exactly what started it?   When the last body is retrieved from the fray, in a muttering, stultifying stupor of stupendous silliness, what will have been won?

It's a black hole, I tell you.   A sucking, vacuous void of vociferous proclamations and hyperbolic historical hysteria!

I've been there and back and it's not pretty.

To the rest of you;  stick to the OT stuff and wondering about Michelle Wie's next round.

The world of golf course archeology is not for the faint of heart.  Indiana Jones had an easier time searching for the Ark than some us did trying to unravel the circuitous, circular, contrary quotes of the men who witnessed the birth of Merion.

I'm one of the lucky ones who escaped, albeit likely scarred for life.   Say a prayer for the others who are still engaged.

[paul cowley]

Mike ....welcome back!
I know your ordeal has been an emotional one and I really don't want to ask for anything that might set back your healing process...but, as you are one of the few who have been there and returned, I still have to ask ....where you able to bring back anything tangible that you might be able to share with those of us who, for whatever reason, have to vicariously sit by the sidelines? Not a lot, even just a thought or thread or mental shard would be appreciated.

I would understand fully if you felt you could not respond to my request and I hope you don't find me too insensitive by my having made it.

All the best in health and healing,

paul.

[TEPaul]

Mike and Paul:

Mike, you're post #35 pretty much outlines the danger of some of these threads.

Paul, I think my quick impression or summation of all these never ending Merion threads and such is that too many on here just make WAY TOO much of a name or even of a type.

This multi-page thread about what is and what isn't a "cape" hole and from whence did it emanate, and all the hairspitting of names and the diagonals of fairways and green orientations and such is really just unnecessary.

I truly feel if the architects who made them could read these threads they would just sit there in wonderment at all the things we've determined and resolved about them and about those holes they never had any idea about.  

Why do we do this?

That's a good question and my answer would be in the form of a rather odd analogy.

The other day I was watching an unbelievably good program on the entire length and breadth of the Kennedy assasination and all the conspiracy theories that have Hydra-headed out of it over all these years.

Unlike back then, today we have technogical (computer applications) they did not have back then to analyze that event and given a few really lucky investigative assets such as the Zapruder film and some sound recordings and computer analysis of it and around it, as well as some information previously not looked at enough there seems no question at all that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

But in the end of the program a few very prominent historians were asked why they thought all these conspiracy theories have proliferated all these years despite lack of supporting evidence.

The best of them simply said it is because it is essentially nonsensical to the human mind that a man of such import as the president of the United States could be cut down in his prime like that by such a nobody just acting alone. That in the mind of most the total lack of consequence of the perpetrator just doesn't remotely balance with the consequence of the victim and the act and that most people have to instinctively make it far more consequential somehow.

In other words, for a president of the United States to be assasinated like that there needs to be more of a balance of the consequence of the opposition to him to make that shocking event make any sense at all to most.

I think these threads on the consequence of a type of hole, the consequence of the name of a hole, whatever, is just something we feel we need to make so much more important today than it probably ever was with those men who thought of them and made them.

[paul cowley]

Tom....agreed, and coming from the design side these discussions have a passing relevance as I am rarely trying to create or match anything....... it is good to understand what design has preceded us, but its application can be quite different than the inspiration.

I think Tom Doak will illustrate this when Old Macdonald opens.....or maybe not....not that it matters anyway.

[Mike_Cirba]

Mike ....welcome back!
I know your ordeal has been an emotional one and I really don't want to ask for anything that might set back your healing process...but, as you are one of the few who have been there and returned, I still have to ask ....where you able to bring back anything tangible that you might be able to share with those of us who, for whatever reason, have to vicariously sit by the sidelines? Not a lot, even just a thought or thread or mental shard would be appreciated.

I would understand fully if you felt you could not respond to my request and I hope you don't find me too insensitive by my having made it.

All the best in health and healing,

paul.

Paul,

Thanks for the best wishes.

What did I learn on the Meri*n threads?

Never make the same argument more than three times.  

[ForkaB]

Mike

My antidote to any Meri*n thread is to read the poem written by their locker room attendant, Archie MacLeish, in 1925.

Ars Merion

Merion should be palpable and mute as a globed fruit
Dumb as old medallions to the thumb
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone or casement ledges where the moss has grown......

Merion should be wordless as the flight of birds

Merion should be motionless in time as the moon climbs
Leaving, as the moon releases twig by twigfthe night-entangled trees
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, memory by memory the mind.......

Merion should be motionless in time as the moon climbs

Merion should be equal to:  not true

For all the history of grief, an empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love the leaning grasses and two light above the sea

Merion should not mean, but be.


Hope this helps

Rich

[Phil_the_Author]

Dateline January 26, 2007, 03:06:37 pm »  

Mike Cirba proudly announces to the world that he was now, "17 hours, 16 minutes of being Merionthread-free."

Dateline January 29, 2007, 09:45:18 pm >>

A spokesman for the website GolfClubAtlas.com speaking with a promise of anonymity stated that, "It is with DEEPEST REGRET that we must announce that less than fifteen minutes ago Mike Cirba once again posted on a Merion thread." There are rumors that as news of this shocking development spread, the great horse Barbaro turned and said to his team of veterinarians, "Cirba gave in? What's the point of going on? Give me the needle..."

On an unrelated note, shares in the Betty ford Clinic have taken a sharp dive in price on the Dow Jones Futures market...
 

[Mike_Cirba]

Dateline January 26, 2007, 03:06:37 pm »  

Mike Cirba proudly announces to the world that he was now, "17 hours, 16 minutes of being Merionthread-free."

Dateline January 29, 2007, 09:45:18 pm >>

A spokesman for the website GolfClubAtlas.com speaking with a promise of anonymity stated that, "It is with DEEPEST REGRET that we must announce that less than fifteen minutes ago Mike Cirba once again posted on a Merion thread." There are rumors that as news of this shocking development spread, the great horse Barbaro turned and said to his team of veterinarians, "Cirba gave in? What's the point of going on? Give me the needle..."

On an unrelated note, shares in the Betty ford Clinic have taken a sharp dive in price on the Dow Jones Futures market...
 

Philip,

Way too funny!!!  Thanks for adding some light.  

For those of you who missed the post where I fell off the wagon, and are rightly scared to wade into the Merion threads, I'll reproduce it below;

So...this horse walks into a bar.

The bartender says to the horse, "Why the long face?"

The horse replies, "they put down my friend Barbaro today"

The bartender ponders things for a bit, and offers the horse his deepest sympathies.

The horse says, "no, you have it all wrong.  I'm not really sad about that; I was just stating facts.  Given the situation, I'm actually relieved they've put him out of his misery, God rest his equine soul"

The bartender, who obviously isn't used to serving a fast drinking horse slurping multiple pints of Yuengling Lager simultaneously tries again in his best "Martini" voice.  "Why ya drinking so much, my friend, you should be at home with your family?"

The horse looks up and says, "Ya know, I'm sitting here asking myself the same question.  And do you know what I've finally figured out?"

"I've been following the threads about the history of Merion for over three months now, reading hundreds of posts and thousands of words, and I feel kinda stupid."

Perplexed, the bartender raises one eyebrow, and asks the obvious question, "What's there to feel stupid about?  Nobody knew that Wilson travelled to Europe in 1912?"

Shaking his head with a loud whinny, the horse narrows his beady eyes on the bartender and sadly replies, "No, that's not it...I didn't know the 10th hole was an Alps!"

[TEPaul]

I think it is very safe to say that for whatever reason Merion has evoked far and away the most emotion on this website that any other golf course ever has----and by that I mean about ten times over and around the corner from any other golf course.

I don't just mean these Moriarty Merion threads, I mean the otherworldly contentious Merion Bunker Project threads a few years ago. That got so intense it actually made the newspapers.

I think Rick Goodale is right----Merion should just BE and not necessarily BE DISCUSSED. And furthermore if it ever is discussed it probably should not be discussed in depth by people from California or Ohio who don't know it very well and who have some chip on their shoulder about Philadelphia and Philadelphians.

One of the things they don't seem to appreciate is that Merion is about "as Philadelphia" as the Liberty Bell is.

[JESII]

I think Merion is a treasure to the golf world and should be available for discussion to anyone...that being said, asking questions is my preferred method of discussing something I don't know much about...

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