Things continue to pop on the real-life superhero front.
A few days ago, I posted an update to an earlier post about real-life people who don costumes, fight crime, have secret identities and sometimes superpowers, and so on. In that first post, from January, I featured (among other crusaders) one Entomo, a “Crime-fighting/Environmentalist/Detective” who “patrols the streets of Naples and promotes environmental awareness.”
So anyhow, earlier this week I got a comment to that January post, beginning, “This is Entomo. Please do not make fun of me.” Its author asserted that he takes very seriously the business of patrolling the streets, etc., is very sexy, and appeals to “the ladies… despite my bug size man proportions.” The comment ended with Entomo’s signature phrase: I inject justice.
Well, who was I to doubt? Accordingly, that comment was the focus of the news-update post from earlier this week. (You’re keeping the chain of events straight, right?)
Now I am in receipt of yet another comment… to the update! This one says:
Hi,
The very first excerpt you issued [JES: this would be the one which quoted the earlier comment] isn’t FROM ME. Please, I would like to know the source. And if you can, just remove it from your blog.
Of course, he’s a troll posing as me.Thanks for your support. And yes, I’m the REAL Entomo. If you write on my MySpace profile page, I will confirm.
E.
So now I had a dilemma. (As though I needed another.) To resolve it, sorta, here’s what I’ve done:
- Using both RAMH‘s site-metering facilities and WordPress’s built-in record of where comments are coming from, I tracked down the points of origin for the two comments — we’ll call them E1 and E22. E1, as it happens, claimed the email address “Entomo@hotmail.it” — HotMail’s Italian service; more importantly, it originated from a geographic point in… Arkansas. (Hmm.) E2, claiming the same email address, originated in… Europe. This seems to confirm E2′s authenticity.
- So, at E2′s request, I have “deleted” from this week’s earlier post the quote from the spurious E1. More exactly, I formatted it as strike-through text, and added a clarification.
- I also edited the E1 comment itself, to add a clarification.
- Despite all my resistance to the garish monster that is MySpace, I created an account there and started the process (befriending, etc. etc.) of posting a comment on Entomo’s published page. (If this works out to have been wasted effort, I’ll update this post accordingly.)
The management here at RAMH hopes that this resolution satisfactorily addresses both E2′s grievance and the implicit “keep everything! discard nothing!” ideals of Internet permanence.
Alas, no one seems to have resumed — for real or fraudulent purposes — the identity of the retired Angle-Grinder Man.
It’s in Italian, but Italian television recently did a feature on Entomo, nearly 10 minutes long. YouTube to the rescue:
It’s like a real live superhero episode, complete with the Evil Entomo pretending to be the hero? But which is the real superhero and which is the devious villain? “You’ll have to shoot us both, Spock!”
Tara: LOL at the Trek reference!
Yeah, it’s like one of those Superman comic-book episodes where he goes into Mirrorworld or something and has to fight himself. (My guess is that the real-life tussle wouldn’t be quite so photogenic, however, and meaning no disrespect to the parties involved. Just referring to, like, gravity and other inconvenient forces.)