I am bubbling with pride today.

The notoriously affable Edwin Tufte called me an asshole yesterday and has blocked my home IP from his Graphics Press site. (My dynamic IP, you know, the one that changes when I power cycle my modem.)

I ordered a copy of his heavily anticipated new book, Beautiful Evidence, which ships, according to his site, in May (i.e. two+ months from now). Graphics Press, his company, charged my credit card without telling me they would do so. This is a sort of no-no in the credit card business — to charge someone for product that isn’t available yet / hasn’t shipped. If they would have told me they were going to bill for it or required a payment to ‘hold’ a copy for me, OK, no real problem, but this was a bit of a minor surprise.

I posted the note, seen above, and now missing from the discussion on the topic.

A few hours later, I received the following —

    From:   edward.tufte@yahoo.com

Subject: Message from edward tufte (sent through edwardtufte.com)

Date: March 1, 2006 11:09:12 PM EST

To:   flip@skidmore.edu

Dear Flip,

We'd be delighted if you would cancel your order with

Graphics Press. Your [sic] are a whiny sanctimonious asshole.

Over and out,

ET

“Over and out”?  Aye aye! Cap’n! The ‘From’ address is bogus/non-existent but the message was sent through Tufte’s hosting service, and, well, there is the IP blockade mentioned above.

I was very impressed with his assessment of my personality from that posting — ‘whiny’, OK, I am complaining not whining, my two-year old whines, ‘sanctimonious’, well, maybe a thesaurus might help refine that thought a little, ‘asshole’, hello sailor!

So, I sent the following via their email contact form —

Yesterday, I received a fabulous response to a posting I made to your site re: pre-charging credit cards. It was, ostensibly, from Mr. Tufte, but it has a bogus return address. Surely someone as famed and respected as Mr. Tufte wouldn't feel the need to resort to such an immature tactic.

I noticed, however, that my home IP address is now 'redirected' in a hilariously naive attempt to restrict my access to the Graphics Press site.

I call this to your attention for two reasons- 1) if someone is impersonating Mr. Tufte I'd assume you'd want to know about it, and 2) if the reply was, in fact, from you/Mr. Tufte I'd like to urge him to consider altering the dosage of his medication.

The content of the message is reproduced below- have a great day!

[content above omitted]

I checked my American Express charge history and, lo and behold —

I suppose that they have cancelled my order, though I have yet to receive any confirmation. It could be that they are deciding to not charge my card until the order ships, bets?

And, no, the purchases from BJ’s isn’t what you think it is.