Buck Dharma is the blog-onym of Daniel Rooney. Acerbic, insightful, esoteric, and fatally witty, Buck regularly contributes to discussions on the WSO Blogs. His name is taken from the lead singer of Blue Oyster Cult.
Buck's posts to the blogs usually make everyone laugh or piss everyone off, or both. One of his best-loved passages, written in February 2005, was in response to someone who said she owned a cell phone and an iPod even though she didn't consider herself to be wealthy. Buck wrote:
"I, on the other hand, don't own an iPod or a cell phone, and I am FUCKING LOADED. You all heard of Daniel Rooney, the guy who owns the Steelers? Yeah, that's my dad. Let's just say my trust fund makes the Williams Endowment look like a welfare check. Anyway, I'm really rich, and when I lose my shit, I don't post on the blogs. That would make me look stingy. Instead, I buy a new one, and try to find a worse price if at all possible. Like, I had this really sweet Beemer with tricked-out gold rims, and I got really trashed one night, drove a bunch of chicks home from a party, smoked a joint while listening to this never-released Yani LP I got from this record exec my dad knows on the Bose 10-disc changer I'd just got installed, and then parked somewhere and went back to my room (well, I thought it was my room, but it was actually Morty's house -- I think I might have puked on Mrs. S, but they know which side their bread is buttered on, and didn't say a word). So anyway, I woke up the next evening and couldn't remember where the hell I left my goddamn ride. So did I go to the Lost and Found forums? Fuck no. I got Morty to give my ass a ride to the dealership in Albany and bought the new 7 series, and while I was at it I grabbed myself a Motorrad. So anyway, the moral of the story is, you don't need a cell phone or an iPod if you drive everywhere, cause my car's got this like GPS satellite/communication system and a badazz stereo with an inboard computer. So suck on that. Yeah, does that make me a bad person? Well, the more important question is, DO YOU ACTUALLY THINK I GIVE A FUCK? No, shitface, my watch costs more than your house.
"So, yeah, if anybody has lost shit they care about, you can come kiss my ass for awhile and I might buy you a new one. Or I might give you a couple hundred and tell you to buy a decent pair of clothes. If your idea of designer is PoloSport like half you plebians on this campus, you might as well be fucking naked and homeless. Peace."
Despite his reputation as a comic, Buck occasionally weighs in seriously and thoughtfully on matters of philosophic or political importance. Here is one such reflection, taken from a May 3 response to a blog deriding evangelical Christians:
"It all depends on the postulates of your system. Any view of the world is ultimately founded on unprovable assumptions or arbitrary founding principles. All of mathematics is ultimately an arbitrary construct that has some very useful applications. Natural science, somewhat similarly, is grounded on certain founding assumptions regarding the reliability of sensory data and the existence of a world of objects beyond the realm of our ideas. Admittedly, these are not particularly ambitious assumptions, but they are assumptions nonetheless. I do not believe, at least in terms of reason a priori, these principles are any more grounded than say the postulate than an all-knowing God communicates directly with me in my head. Nor, if you posit human happiness as the ultimate end of practical reason, is such an assumption necessarily less practical."
Although Buck is one of the most prolific commenters on the blogs, he has never started a blog of his own.