Thursday January 15 2003

I got your permanent record right down here

I never do this. By this, I mean, type straight into the web shell. Why? Because if I type straight into the web shell, and we lose power or the computer freezes up, I lose everything I've typed. So normally I type blog entries into a word processor with an auto back up feature. But I'm in a hurry tonight; Paul is getting off work at six and I'd like to play some HeroClix before my new daytime schedule renders me comatose somewhere about ten or eleven tonight. So here I am, tempting fate:

Tammy, bless her heart, keeps writing me and nudzing me for more details on Accent, but honest to God, there isn't much to say. It's pretty much been more of the same. A few salient details from today: we had our first test, which was open-notebook, open-computer, and which Vivienne (our teacher) covered the questions and answers of in its entirety yesterday. Despite this, several people in my class failed it entirely and only one person in the class got a 100 on it. That one person was me, but honestly, it's not much of an accomplishment, given the givens. It's more just shameful that nobody else in my class wanted to be bothered to do a little work looking up stuff.

Apparently I look stuff up faster than everybody else, though, since I finished my test faster than anyone else, as well.

Cousin Chad has been tasked over to the local Call Center to kick ass and take names for the next couple of weeks, so I'm glad I'm not out on the floor right now. I'm sure Chad will do a good job, but I wouldn't want to subject him to a conflict of interest, since I'm sure he, I, and all of you know I'll be the biggest fuck off in the Center once I'm out there actually taking calls.

And that's all I got on Accent, really.

Well, okay, the stuff I really do find delightful and want to type in to this blog is kind of Accent related, which is to say, I got my high school transcript today, and would never have remotely thought of sending for it if Accent hadn't demanded to see proof I'd graduated. I hadn't realized until I just looked at it that in addition to my grades, each year would have some comment on my general performance and demeanor by whoever my homeroom teacher was. I find the comments to be, well, brilliantly observant and apt, and I strongly suspect all of you will be astonished by how true to my own nature I have remained over a quarter of a century of apparent non-maturation... which is to say, when you see these comments, you'll realize I haven't changed a goddam bit in twenty five years, and yes, I really WAS always just as much a pain in the ass as I am now:

During my freshman year, in school year 1975-1976, I was ranked 71st out of a class of 151, and my overall average was 79.60, which would be about a C+/B-. According to Mr. Hardy (who wasn't my home room teacher, so I don't know why he's writing the comments, but still):

"Darren has certain problems within his peer group. A very capable student, he shirks tasks of an academic nature at times. He has many interests and is highly talented."

In my sophomore year, I moved up to 32nd in a class of 143 with an 85.1 GPA (a solid B+), and according to someone named Mr. Brown, whom I do not remember at all and don't think I took any classes from, I

"Came through with better than average results on his final exams although he never worked up to his ability. Will not be listed in the top ten of all time favorites by his peers due to his frequent cynical and sarcastic ways."

Before I go on, let me say I absolutely fucking LOVE that comment. I'm utterly sincere. "Will not be listed in the top ten of all time favorites by his peers due to his frequent cynical and sarcastic ways." Robert A. Heinlein himself could not have more accurately summed up my entire life in a handful of dryly ironic words than Mr. Brown did there... whoever the hell he was.

For my junior year, when I again moved up, this time to 25th in a class of 140 with an 86.8 GPA, Mr. Buono rather tersely describes me as

"Very glib and flippant. Excellent ability but resists developing it. Very poor peer relationships. Extensive reader."

And lastly, in my senior year, where I fell back down to 49th out of 126 with a well rounded 85, my homeroom teacher Miss Chassin states that I am

"More literary than scientific; likes rock music and reading; would make a good journalist."

My respect for teachers throughout my adulthood has been high, but believe me, it just got higher. Did these guys call it or what?

Still, it's worth noting that while I am consistently described as having problems with my peer relationships, I must have done something to entertain people, because I was voted my Class Comic. It shocked me at the time, too, but apparently, while hardly any of the kids I wen to school with liked me but maybe Heather Dougan and Mike Mahiques, a lot of people still found me funny. (And, in retrospect, I think Heather more just barely tolerated me than actually liked me. But Mike was a good friend all through high school.)

Just to finish up, I graduated 37th in a class of 124, with an overall high school GPA of 84.2%. My degree was a New York State Regents with Distinction (I was a 1979 NY State Regents Scholarship winner, which sounds a lot more illustrious than it actually was), and I received a Principal's Recommendation for College Admission. I was on the Honor Roll all of once during my academic career, whereas the aforementioned Heather Dougan, one of my few peers who was remotely pleasant to me in high school (it balanced out, though, she also hurt me very badly, but, well, that's just how it goes when geeks fall in love, at least, that's how it goes with me) was on Honor Roll every semester like clockwork, and not only that, Heather also got Perfect Attendance every year she'd attended Holland. (I faked sick two days a year every year so I wouldn't have to get up in front of the idiot Assembly and get a certificate just for showing up.)

Ah, nostalgia.

God, I hated high school. Nice to know somebody noticed it, although it's also notable that all these brilliantly observant teachers never did one single goddam thing to help with my peer relationship problems or the manner in which I resisted developing my abilities. Aren't I supposed to be a special case? Shouldn't some brilliantly gifted young, non-conformist teacher have made a point out of bucking the system and taking me under his wing to guide and and nurture my innate gifts and talents?

I guess teachers don't do that much when they're not on TV shows. Oh, well.

If any of my high school teachers are reading this, I didn't mean that to sound so harsh... but is kind of surprising to me to see, twenty five years later, that apparently everybody noticed how horrible my high school experience was (and those dry sentences regarding my poor peer relationships paint over a burning constellation of embarrassment, humiliation, alienation, self-loathing, and utter emotional agony), but no one felt it was their place to try and help me with any of that.

Or, at least, if any of my teachers ever tried to reach out to me in any way out of the ordinary (and clearly, they all saw that I was an extraordinary individual), I don't remember it.

I do remember having several excellent teachers... my freshman English teacher Mrs. Chassin, my art teacher Mr. Wiseman, my sophomore homeroom teacher Mr. Meader, my sophomore and junior English teacher Mr. Moran, my chemistry and homeroom teacher Miss Chassin, my senior English teacher (and major babe) Miss Keefe... but, still. It's just a little saddening to see that they all saw how hard it was for me to get along with other kids, and none of them tried to help.

I don't know. Maybe real world teachers just don't regard that as part of their jobs... or maybe that's changed now, since Columbine. If so, well, all I have to say is, it's too bad a buncha sociopathic misfits had to go on a homicidal rampage to point out that school really sucks for a lot of kids, and maybe something should be done about that.

Okay, end of lecture. Paul is only working until six tonight, and as I say, I'm hoping to play a game of clix before I crash.

I owe email to a few people and of course you all know who you are, and I'll get to it, but maybe not before this weekend, I don't know. Oh, yes, and I had a comment on the last page by someone totally new to me... Tony Collett, I think his name is... so, welcome, Tony, thanks for commenting, and I hope you continue to enjoy the blog and interact here.

Oh, yeah, and I've seen OFFICE SPACE. Much of it is apt and quite funny, but I disliked pretty much every character in it, and about halfway through the film seems to pretty obviously run completely out of ideas. Beyond that, if you're going to have Jennifer Aniston in a movie where she's pretty much just there to give us something soft n' pretty to look at (and other than that, her character was simply a waste of protein), you should at least give us a shower scene or two.

Okay, I'm outta here.

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

(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.

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.

A Brown Eyed Handsome Man