Week Thirty: In Which I Get Schnorrered!
You know, I am a Bar-Mitzvahed Jew who went to school with Sacha Baron-Cohen. So I can be numbered in the Minyan which can really be valued when people you know need to sit Shivah. (Jewish stuff about life and death). Yet unlike AliG/Borat, I am pretty irreligious. So I am Jewish mostly by food. God, who doesn’t love a Bacon Bagel? I am about as Jewish as a gammon and prawn sarnie with dairy butter on puffy white bread at Easter-time-ish, (Pesach) which breaks every single possible rule of Kosher food that exists.
But I do find Yiddish funny, I like that part of the culture. And here’s a couple of words, Chutzpah and Schnorrer. Chutzpah is a cheek that is brazen, bare faced and usually achieved with a degree of guile that prevents real anger but leaves you a bit breathless and a Schnorrer..well, here’s Wikipedia’s definition: ‘Schnorrer (×©× ×ָרער; also spelled shnorrer) is a Yiddish term … A schnorrer is distinguished from an ordinary beggar by dint of his boundless chutzpah. The term, which is used in a pejorative or ironic sense, can also be used as a backhanded compliment to someone’s perseverance, cleverness, or thrift.’
So, it’s half-past Saturday and I find by Blackberry E-mail notification that I have been added to a car audio Facebook group by an importer dude who sells US ice direct. One of the one-man-band operations. I have brands like SNG, Knu-Koncepts, Earthquake and Hybrid Audio Technologies as examples I have happily dealt with in the past from OMBs. But this one was different. He’s been told off for ‘˜pimping’ on the TA boards in the past and now happily has a coterie of fans who love his stuff as it is potent, who do it anyway. But the group was set up so all members got every single utterance from every single member and he added over ninety of us before one in the afternoon, without asking. At 3pm comes the ‘˜special deals’ post. So, unsolicited, he had added me then spammed me to bitsand I did see a couple of others who posted that they’d found it vexatious.
So, we had one of those conversations this morning and he said ‘˜sorry’ like he meant it and that he hadn’t realised how his group had been set up thus to spam every member and told me that he’s going in to fix it. Ooh but it was a bit of a cheeky way to use FB.
And talking of cheeky, (well, cheeks, anyway) I realised that my story about the MyMod Summer Madness show had nothing about the car side at all in it, so I have added that this morning. All that and even some reviews this weekit’ll be getting a bit subwoofery, I think.
Adam Rayner Online Editor