Why, you can’t blame me, I’m heaven’s child
I’m the second son of Mary mild
I’m twice removed from Oscar Wilde
hell, he didn’t mind, why, he just smiled
Yes and the ocean parts when I walk through
and the clouds dissolve and the skies turn blue
and I’m held in very great value
by everyone I meet but you

With my face on every coin engraved
the anarchists are all enslaved
my own flag is forever waved
by grateful people I have saved

The angels guard my every tread
my enemies are sick or dead
but all the victories I’ve led
haven’t brought you to my bed
you see that everybody loves me, baby
what’s the matter with you?
won’t you tell me what did I do
to offend you?

Thursday, February 12, 2004

UPDATED very early Friday, February 13, 2004 (about 5:40 a.m.)

The three men I admire most

Slow day.

Bad one at work… my second call was a woman who wanted Sprint Complete Sense. Got her past the two big choke points… the credit check and getting her address validated… and then a system error came up that is, apparently, simply endemic to Joliet, IL addresses when Sprint tries to install them. I had to tell her we couldn’t install her, and lost the sale.

Bad omen.

It didn’t get any better. I took two more calls over the course of the morning from people who wanted Sprint Complete Sense. They weren’t in service areas for SCS, so I couldn’t help them.

Here’s part of the madness of working for Accent… if we’re taking calls too slowly, and the queue builds up too much, Sprint will bitch at us because people aren’t getting helped fast enough. On the other hand, when calls are slow coming in and we’re sitting around with minutes in between calls, Sprint will bitch at us, because they’re paying for reps they obviously don’t need. Were I high up in the Accent hierarchy I suspect I would spend a large part of my day battling the near overwhelming impulse to grab the nearest Sprint exec and choke the living shit out of him or her, banging his/her head repeatedly against the closest solid partition or floor until their little eyes bugged right out of their aggravating heads.

As the lowest of the low at Accent, I can only scratch my head in wonder and be grateful I’m not in management.

Anyway, when things get slow they offer people VTO, or Voluntary Time Off. I’d been turning it down, but today sucked, and it didn’t look like it was going to get any better, so when the e-pop (this is like email, but it pops up on your screen, usually when you’re right in the middle of some complex procedure, and you can’t reply to it unless they want you to) came up today offering VTO, I damned well took it. And here I am at home, not getting paid. Ah, well.

Minor, hardly worth mentioning good news on the Chewie front: one of the girls I work with offered to take him temporarily, if we had no other recourse except to send him to the pound, because she loves animals so much. It’s certainly not a full blown solution, but it’s so overwhelmingly pleasant to get any kind of response besides “OH GOD NO NEVER!”

I don’t know. I doubt I’ll be able to find a new place at ALL by the end of the month... all the landlords I've called so far want INSANE amounts to move in to a new place (essentially, three months rent) making me wonder if they all drank too much cough syrup this morning and are suffering from a shared narcotic induced hallucination that they are renting loft space in downtown Manhattan.

Don McLean’s American Pie has some essential tracks on it for the discerning pop music listener, but holy shit there’s some real crap on it too.

Anyway, it looks like I may be here yet ANOTHER month saving up the usurious deposits these Undead ghoul rental agents are demanding, and even if I could get out of here by the end of the month, I doubt I could find a place that would let me have Chewie… but, well, it would be nice if we could keep him in the family… but… no. Right now, I’m just dreading the confrontation we’ll have if the landlord rolls up tomorrow and discovers Chewie is still here.

But I don’t want to dwell on the Chewie mess this time around. Instead, I want to muse on some other weird shit I’ve become aware of today, like, well, Barbie dumped Ken! I mean, what the hell is THAT? Sure, she’s a vapid blonde who can’t hold a job for three straight weeks and she has to have had about forty seven different face lifts, boob jobs, and tummy tucks by now to still look that good, but Ken was always there for her, man. That guy stuck with her through thick and thin; he didn’t even say a word when she went black or Asian for a week or two at a time, and let’s not even talk about all the different hairstyles and wardrobes. That guy must have worked his fingers to the bone keeping that chick in clothes, and now, after 40+ years, she kicks him to the curb like a worn out shoe.

And for who? Some Australian surfer.

Chicks, man.

On a more personal note, I was somewhat bemused this morning to note that I’ve been banned from TampaTantrum.com. It probably happened last year, after Insane Screaming Harpy Robyn Pollman, the webmistress at that happy URL, and I had a minor email spat which culminated in her threatening to turn me over to the FBI cyber crimes division if I ever dared to darken her email box again… and no, I’m not kidding, and yes, she is clearly mental. (Her favorite movie? THE BREAKFAST CLUB. She and her husband consider it to be some sort of cinematic anthem for their generation, and, sadly, they may be right, and if that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what will.)

Anyway, dear sweet Mrs. Pollman is local, and she’s got a dog, so, in desperation, as I sent out emails to everyone I could think of locally who might know someone who could take Chewie, I decided I’d try her… what the hell, I have a lot of email addresses, she didn’t need to know it was me writing, right? But I didn’t have her e-address any longer, because I don’t tend to keep the email addresses of total psychoes in my address book, so I headed out to TampaTantrum.com, and… hmmm. Forbidden 403: I am not worthy to access this page on that server.

That’s kind of startling.

I eventually got what I wanted, and, well, the Appalling Mrs. Pollman is pretty stupid, because, first, Google caches every page that its search engine can read on the Web, so if someone blocks you from accessing their page, but doesn’t block search engines (and Robyn is far far too vain to block search engines from her blog) you can always read the latest page in Google’s cache. You can’t post comments (I don’t think) but only a kiss-ass or a masochist would choose to interact with the deeply sociopathic Mrs. Pollman anyway. So I could easily have gotten Robyn’s email address off the copy of her page in Google’s cache.

I could also easily have switched to using AOL’s 800 number for a log on, which scrambles the IPS code and thus beats the page block. And perhaps I did that, too. Whichever way I did it, I discovered, much to my probably unenlightened and childish pleasure, that Tampa’s Whiniest Distaff Pinhead has discontinued her blogging ways. She did it recently, for reasons she didn’t trouble herself to disclose, and I doubt it had much to do with me, but given how easily Robyn can be provoked into volcanic outbursts of utterly deranged and psychotic rage by anyone who dares to disagree with or criticize her in any manner whatsoever, however slight, well, I suspect the stress of interacting with so many people who have actual minds of their own just became too much for the dear sweet balmy little girl.

And, good riddance. The blogosphere has far, far too many strident, sulky, shrieking, nutjob contributors whose mamas did not raise them right, and who do not understand that it is not appropriate to scream personal abuse at people and then threaten them with the FBI when they do not prostrate themselves and plant their puckered lips fast enough. Robyn’s absence will not make a discernible difference… there are plenty of immature badly behaved ill tempered children of all ages out there to take up her slack… but I myself am deeply pleased to see her fuming fat ass stalk petulantly out the door, even if I hadn’t bothered to access her psychotically self orbital drivel for nearly a year.

It’s impossible for Robyn to survive without some continuing attention from total strangers, of course, so she still has a photoblog, which I am similarly banned from, but which… yes, yes… if I really wanted to, I could also access via 800 number dial ups and/or the Google cache. Dear dimwitted little Robyn. Why anyone would want to look at pictures of her corpulent corpus smiling smugly while cradling her little rat dog in her arms and standing next to an artificial Christmas tree that doubtless cost more money than an entire Ethiopian family makes in a year, I do not know, but, well, if you just gotta do it, Robyn is happy to let you.

I’ve spent way more time than I wanted to on the Queen of Mean. All I really wanted to do was note my bemusement at finding myself banned from a blog that pretty much everyone else in the world has free access too, and my further amusement at discovering how easy it is to override that kind of lock out. It’s a kind of disturbing feeling, finding yourself excluded like that from something you know damned well any random websurfer in, say, Gonwandaland, can get access to after a simple Google search… and that disturbing feeling is one reason I don’t lightly ban people from my own comment threads.

I don’t ban anyone from my blog, mind you; I don’t have that capacity, for one thing. And you’d have to really do something horrible to me to get me to take steps to keep you from READING this thing. I mean, I’ll ban comments from people I simply find too annoying to want to deal with, and I’ll even delete their email unread if they’ve really pushed my buttons, but someone would have to actually be a threat to my health, safety, and/or wellbeing before I’d ban them from reading what I wrote on a public document.

Now, mind you, I have taken my blog ‘private’ in the past by changing the URL and being very careful not to post any links to the new page, so it stayed out of search engines, and being even more careful who I gave the URL to. However, deciding I’ll only blog for a very select group I trust absolutely seems to me to be a very different psychological phenomena from doing a blog for the entire world, except, you know, My Enemies List. The first seems… well, sad, but, if your supervisor just found out about your blog and got unpleasant with you over it at work, probably necessary. The second… anyone who actually has an Enemies List strikes me as rather psychotic… a word I find myself repeating far too often when I discuss the Non-Esteemed Mrs. Pollman. And given how easy it is to beat such a lock out anyway, that particular psychotic behavior also strikes me as rather stupid, as well.

Okay, what else do we got…? After three days of disappointment, I called Demolition Comics today and asked where the fuck was my box of comics and clix? I called them last Friday and told them to put it in the mail, at which point I was told it would most likely go out on Saturday. (I would rather it had gone out Friday night, but, well, if a customer who spends a hundred dollars or so in your store every two months or so isn’t worth driving to Tampa’s 24 hour post office over, then, well, what can I say?) Had it gone out Saturday Priority Mail, which is how they mailed the last three boxes to me, we should have had it Tuesday. But, no. And no again on Wednesday. So I was really really expecting it today, and on the way home I saw the mail truck pull out of the back alley where it usually parks to bring us packages, so, filled with hope, I came striding up and… nothing.

So, pissed off and fuming, I hurled myself inside, called Demolition, and asked, with my voice under rigid self control, where the FUCK my package was?

Um… ah… let me check… errr… well, that package went out Monday, actually.

And, I asked, how did you send it? Priority Mail?

Um… er… no… Media Mail.

So, Demolition Comics does not have my business any more; I’ll find some subscription service on the Internet to order my comics and clix from, by God. I order my stuff Friday and they mail it MONDAY? Fuck that, fuck them, and fuck the horses they were dragged in behind with one ankle caught in a stirrup.

I hope the box gets here tomorrow, but with Media Mail, you just never know. I think they used to actually strap Media Mail to non-migratory African Swallows and hope for the best, but delivery technology has improved so much in the last decade or so that they may well now launch the stuff out of working replicas of medieval catapults… after delivering it to the catapult sites via authentic Roman-style chariots.

No, no, you’d have to pay more for chariots. I mean, palanquins.

More seriously, Media Mail translates as “This has no priority at all; sort it when you absolutely have nothing else to do”. Which means, if the coffee pot is empty at the local post office, the people sorting packages in the back room will run out for new filters before they bother going through the stack of Media Mail that’s been sitting there all goddam week.

Now, if you’re a friend of mine and you’re sending me a present in the mail that I have absolutely no Earthly claim to and that you are simply whacky for sending to me because I’ve done nothing that any sane being would recognize as worthy of you going to all that effort and expense, by all means, save money on postage. I got no bitches. People sending me stuff for free, just because something I wrote has in some bizarre manner incited them to take complete and utter leave of their senses, is a very nice, if utterly inexplicable, phenomena. Send it Media Mail. Send it Conestoga Wagon Mail, I don’t care. Strap it to a friendly tortoise pointed roughly in my direction. Whatever. If it gets here, fine; if it doesn’t, I’m grateful for the thought.

But if I’m PAYING you to send me goods I’ve PURCHASED from you, then (a) for Christ’s sake ASK ME IF I’M WILLING TO PAY FOR PRIORITY MAIL, YOU CHEESE-FELLATING SPROUT MOLESTER, and (b) MAIL IT THE NEXT DAY AT THE VERY LATEST, TWIT.

Paul is off paying the water bill, running down a bag o’ stuff, and maybe heading over to the tiny Zephyrhills comics shop to get him some clix. And I’m sitting here typing this nonsense to y’all. What you’re doing right now, I venture to guess, is wondering “why the FUCK do I waste so much of my TIME reading this stupid crap, anyway? He never DOES anything but whine, I mean, Jesus.”

And, honestly, I’ve often wondered that, too.

Hey, I’ve got a minute or two. Maybe I’ll type up a review of the new Heinlein novel to placate my JoeBobBriggs editor with. After all, I need to keep him sweet so he’ll have someone review UM, if and when it ever actually gets ‘published’.

Good idea, O Lord!

Okay, let’s add a little:

Just checked my email. PublishAmerica very intelligently just dumped a PDF file over a meg in size into my free Juno mailbox, causing Juno to have hysterical hissy fits. Making this worse, I can’t read a modern PDF file; my computer is antiquated, as is my version of Acrobat, and I can’t upgrade either. So I tried to respond to the woman at PublishAmerica who sent me this file, requesting that they resend it in ASCII or Microsoft Word format, and Juno refused to let me. Why? Because my mailbox was full; I had to delete something before I could send out any responses.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

This took much dancing around, but finally I not only got the fucking file deleted, I got it deleted from my trash too, and could send a response. By this time I’d tried two different times, so for all I know, the editor at PublishAmerica just got three emails from me saying the same thing, and now she thinks I’m a moron. Yay.

People need to understand: not all of us have cutting edge computers or the very latest software, not all of us are paying for premium email services, and not all of us can simply have 1.3 meg of unnecessary formatting in a stupid Adobe Acrobat file dumped on us out of nowhere without it seriously fucking up our programs.

I personally loathe Adobe Acrobat, anyway… it mostly seems to be used by people who want to send me my own writing back in a format I can’t easily edit or manipulate. In other words, it’s an editor/publisher’s dream, because if I want to make changes, it’s really really hard. I hate that.

Anyway, now I’m done, and I’m tired of typing this shit, so I guess I won’t do that Heinlein review after all. I’m a bad, bad man.

Update: 5:40 a.m. Friday 2/13/04

After I posted this, a few more noteworthy events occurred yesterday.

First, and most disturbingly, my missing Vision piece turned up again… in pieces.

I was in working at the computer when I heard a knock on the door. Answering it, I found our neighbor Jeff standing there. “I found this on the ground out here,” he said, and handed me two separate items… the small green plastic figure of what had obviously once been a Vision click (probably mine), although it had been badly defaced (the head cut off, notches cut in the sides of the body and cape) and the round, upper surface of the Vision’s dial.

“Oh, he’s got to be kidding,” I snorted. “You know what’s going on here, right?” Even Jeff, who is officially ‘neutral’ on the subject of Scott’s theft (cowardly fuck that he is) nodded ruefully at that. “Well, it certainly wasn’t there before or we’d have seen it,” he admitted.

“Plus,” I pointed out, “look at it. It’s not even remotely dirty.” Given that our ‘yard’ is basically dirt, and we’ve had a lot of rain in the last few weeks, the fact that Jeff found these pieces out in plain sight on the surface of a much walked area and they were completely clean has to mean that they were simply placed there, probably no more than an hour before Jeff found them.

So, Scott’s been by.

Now I’m once more wondering about this Media Mail package that hasn’t shown up, but hey. If it was mailed Monday and sent Fourth Class, it really shouldn’t be here until today, tomorrow, or even Monday. So I’ll put that off, although if I do run into our postal carrier today or tomorrow, I’ll ask her if she delivered a package to me on Thursday, assuming it hasn’t shown up yet. She knows me pretty well by sight, she’ll probably remember.

Leaving that aside (although putting Scott in jail for mail theft would be interesting), I find it difficult to analyze this latest move on Scott’s part. It seems fairly obvious that he did, indeed, have my Vision piece in his pocket that long ago Thursday when he got out of his truck and I blew up on him, and he was indeed planning to replace it, or, if I’d noticed it was missing, plant it. What I can’t figure out at this late date is, is this simply an (extremely stupid) attempt to clear himself, or is it, more disturbingly, a particularly gutless gesture of rage and defiance?

If the damage to the piece was done in an attempt to convince us that Chewie had been, well, chewing on it, outside for a while, that’s one thing… I don’t mind having stupid enemies. I’ve seen stuff like this that’s been dog chewed; it doesn’t look like this piece, which appears to have been mutilated with a knife.

On the other hand, if this is a calculatedly deniable gesture of hatred by Scott, well, defacing a humanoid figure is considered a psychotic act by most trained professionals in mental health, and given that Scott strongly associates that Vision piece with me, well… it’s troublesome.

There’s nothing to be done about it, of course… the cops can’t be expected to take an interest in something so abstract that involves such geeky details and so little actual property damage. I suppose we’ll simply have to wait and see whether or not Scott contacts Paul soon and drops leading questions into the conversation as to whether or not we’ve found anything lately… “so, did you find that missing Vision click of Darren’s yet” would, I guess, be a good way to initiate that.

Paul swears that if/when Scott does come around or call him and ask that, he’ll just deny having found the piece, to pre-empt the whole chain of denials… which seems unwise to me, but, well, Paul’s not about confrontation.

Leaving that aside… although it is troubling… Paul went out and blew a lot of money yesterday on HeroClix. His pulls were startling in their fortuity; out of six boxes he bought for himself, he drew three Uniques… a Captain Marvel, a Nova, and the Dark Knight figure wearing Green Kryptonite gloves.

Were that Dark Knight figure mine, it would already be on its way to Mike Norton, since Mike had indicated to me that it was one of the few pieces he hadn’t managed to acquire yet. Paul at first told me to go ahead and send it to Mike, but then demurred a little later… he most likely won’t play the piece much because it’s an inferior version of Batman (lacking the Batman T.A.), but it’s one of very few Uniques he’s drawn from a box (always a more satisfying feeling than having them simply sent to you by someone, or trading for one) and it’s the only Unique he has that is Unique to him in our gaming group… no one else has a Dark Knight with Kryptonite gloves down here, and Paul wants to bask in the envy and the “wow, that’s cool, are you gonna trade it?” remarks for a while.

Hopefully I will be able to secure it in a little while and then I’ll just send it off to Mike, but for now, Paul has it and doesn’t want to part with it.

Paul bought me two boosters, as well, and while the DC one was mostly a waste (I got a rookie Hawk, a rookie Plastic Man, a Gotham Police Officer, and a Criminal, whoo hoo), the Marvel box yielded a veteran Ulik. Jeff had been bragging that he himself had gotten a Unique Desaad in his own boxes from that trip, and we’d been desultorily trying to work out a trade, since he had no idea who Desaad was and I wanted the piece as a companion to my Darkseid. Upon seeing the Vet Ulik Jeff’s eyes lit up and he said “I’ll trade you my Desaad for him!” Eventually he threw in his Rookie Ulik so I did it… probably not a great trade, but I’m happy to have another Unique, and Jeff is happy to have the group’s best version of Ulik to date.

I also got an Experienced Calypso, an Experienced Daredevil (pointless, since I have the Veteran rev of that same design) and… something else, I don’t remember what, but it couldn’t have been that impressive. Still, I wound up with a Unique Desaad out of the two boosters Paul gave me; that ain’t not bad.

Paul and Dawn were having a good time on the couch last night, and every time I’d come out into the kitchen to get something to eat, there was much rapid readjustment of posture and clothing, so ::sigh:: Once more, I reiterate that I need to get out of here ASAP, but with landlords demanding three months rent to move in, it’s not looking like I’ll be able to do it by the end of February, which is a bit stressful. Being subject to the Bathrick Theater of Self Destructive Relationships for yet another six weeks isn’t going to be good for my morale.

Paul and Dawn also, somehow, contrived to stupidly and near-unforgivably let Chewie out last night. Both of them know how vital it is to keep Chewie from running around loose in the neighborhood right now, and yet, somehow, both of them managed to let him bolt out the door when they were, apparently, leaving to take Paul to work. I'm extremely angry with them about it, but what can you do? It is, on the one hand, a simple mistake anyone can make, and that everyone who goes in and out of here has, at one time or another. From another point of view, both of them are absolutely aware of the absolute necessity of not doing that right now and I, at least, have been extremely careful not to let it happen… and I have little doubt that both of them were higher than weather satellites when it happened, since Paul scored a bag yesterday during his shopping spree, too.

I need so badly to get out of here.

Chewie was back when I woke up around 3 a.m. and went to the door to look, so probably no real harm is done… but I am sick of watching my baby brother behave in a stupid and irresponsible fashion and I am especially sick of finding myself cast in the role of nagging adult caregiver. I want OUT of this fucking place.

Unfortunately, ‘out of this fucking place’ is now looking as if it’s at least two paychecks away.

I have little doubt our new landlord will roll up on us at some point today to demand an update on the Chewie situation and I have little idea what I’m going to tell him. After a week there is virtually no progress at all in finding Chewie anything like a permanent placement, and if any of our neighbors are aware that Chewie got out late last night and they reported it to him, it takes my legs right out from under me when it comes to negotiating for more time. God DAMN Paul and Dawn.

Aaaaaaaand today’s Friday the 13th, just to make my life complete.

I want to note that I started to type a sentence, up above, about how nice it would be if there was something, anything, just one thing in my life right now that was good for my morale, to offset all the enormous and irritatingly unnecessary stress I’m feeling in my personal life from Paul’s completely fucking idiotic and irresponsible behavior, in combination with the very real stress I feel at this job every day I go in. But I realized that wouldn’t be very appreciative of the people on this blog who have gone so far out of their way to do things for me recently. All the CARE packages of clix and other stuff are very appreciated here.

At risk of sounding self pitying, though, it’s just not the same as, I don’t know, asking someone attractive out and having them say ‘yes’… a feeling I’ve pretty much forgotten. Or getting a hug from someone who genuinely means it. (I can get a hug from Krystal at work any time I want to ask, but asking kind of makes it less meaningful, and anyway, she’s just working me like she does everyone else, keeping up rapport in case she ever needs a favor.) Or, really, any kind of genuine intimacy… something that’s been missing from my life for a long, long time.

Those who think I’m just talking about sex here are wrong, but I can understand the misapprehension and if you choose to disbelieve me, well, fine, I don’t blame you. But there’s more to it.

However, I vastly appreciate the support that’s come my way through this blog, and, well, a lot of my problems will go away if I can just GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.

Unfortunately, that looks to be at least another $500 to $800 away… sigh.

Money sucks.

I should note that Trinity (who is now going under the nom de cyber of ‘Trinity Powers’, apparently) responded to my pleading letter about Chewie with yet more helpful links regarding animal shelters. And I appreciate it. I’d appreciate it more, however, if someone would simply, at some point, say “sure, I’ll take Chewie” or “I have a friend who will take Chewie, here’s his/her phone number, they’re waiting for your call”.

I had two people at work yesterday ask me what was wrong, and I told them, and both of them launched into “Well, you have to understand how hard it is to take a dog” speeches, which I cut off with a near demonically snarled “NO I DON’T HAVE TO UNDERSTAND”.

And, frankly, I do not. I am sick and tired of everybody in the world expecting me to be empathic about their complete unwillingness to save a family member’s life from ridiculous and absurd circumstances, when they are willfully refusing to in any way be empathic about Chewie’s situation, because then they might have to do something about it.

Fuck this. I have to go to work.

I almost hope I find out that my package from Demolition was delivered yesterday. I doubt it, because I saw the mail truck go by minutes before I got home, so Scott’s window of opportunity would have been small… but if he did indeed steal mail from me, I will do everything in my power to see him in prison for it.

And frankly, right now, unenlightened though it is, I’d enjoy that.

---

Did you write the Book of Love?
and do you have faith in God above?
if the Bible tells you so…
Do you believe in rock ‘n’ roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance reeeeeeeal slow?

---

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

(a) seem smarter than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(b) be funnier than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(c) be a better writer than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(d) be correct when you point out some manner in which the person writing the blog you are posting comments to was wrong, and/or

(e) Upset The Wimmenfolk On The Blog.

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

(a) seem smarter than I am, I like people who are smarter than I am, as long as they’re not jerks about it;

(b) are funnier than I am, then I get to laugh at your witty remarks, and hey, that’s all good;

(c) are a better writer than I am. Although I’m in a peculiar place as regards writing skills; good enough to be better than nearly all the amateurs out there, not good or lucky enough to be a professional at it. So if you are a better writer than I am, you are probably a professional writer and therefore do not have time to post comments on other people’s blogs, so this probably doesn’t matter, as relates to this blog;

(d) correct my mistakes; unlike apparently 95% of the remainder of the human race, I am under no illusions as to my own infallibility and simply don’t care if someone points out that I am wrong about something. Being wrong about things does not strike me as either a character flaw or a shameful embarrassment; we are all wrong about a lot of things every day of our lives, and that’s just how that works;

(e) Upset My Wimmenfolk. Well, actually, I shouldn’t say I don’t care if you upset my wimmenfolk, I do, the very thought deeply offends me. However, it’s just that the wimmenfolk at this point on this blog are my mom, my cuz in law, and my sister in law, and if you do something to upset them, I strongly doubt the authorities finding what’s left of you will be able to identify you without a DNA comparison. My mom, and any woman who marries any of the males in this family and stays married to him for any length of time, are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. So offend them all you want; it’s a self correcting problem.

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

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THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

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