Month: December 2017

190719, but a few weeks earlier:  “Do you like living here?” should have been my first and only clue.  Had I simply stood up at that moment and started packing and begun the tedious process of teasing comic books apart, rather than agonizing over it for the last two years, this trauma would be all over by now and I may well be gainfully employed at the QuikkStopp-by-the-Interstate® somewhere in Texas instead.  But I remain trapped by my own optimism, as I keep giving people time to come to their senses.

about 24 months past 19 July 2019:  I will not be moving in with my beloveds (formerly known as “Ojuxit” and “Klint”) after this house is sold.  They no longer wish to be thought of as my beloveds, and I remain unable to pretend that I don’t still love them and that I am not still heartbroken.  Lately, Ojuxit has been starting conversations with “What are your plans?” and she sweetly offers suggestions of employment nearer their new home where I am only intermittently welcome now.  Apparently, they don’t want me or my opinions too close (and grabby?) but still desire enough proximity that I can help out with the heavy lifting now and then.
Texas keeps looking better all the time.
Plus, my Best Girl lives there now.

31 March 2002      Letting It Be Over vs “Getting Over It”
(or “How can we get past this if you won’t dwell on it?”)

I guess I’m not the adversary that Drama Queen craves.

When things are pleasant, I want them to remain pleasant.  And when things are unpleasant, I want them to stop being unpleasant.  So, when I am upset, I want to be less upset, but “talking it out” just tends to aggravate the mood.  I want it to be distant and past, but “discussing issues” keeps it near and present.

Diva Dearest had spent most of the afternoon laying it on, or “getting it off her chest.”  She was fine afterwards, but all she got “off her chest” was dumped all over me and I’m still dripping with it.  Nevertheless, after L’Historienne got home from school, we shelved it and I pouted.  Or sulked.  I’m often not certain.  At dinner, I was still not yet recovered, so rather than risking bringing it up during dinner, I simply remained cordial and polite and mostly quiet.  I thought that by not saying the wrong thing, I couldn’t get any flack for it.

How little I know.  My reserve became the new problem.
“Will you lighten up?  Why the fuck can’t you just get over it?”
“I was trying to.  I thought you had, but it seems we’re back in it now.”
“That’s because YOU won’t get over it!”
“I’m sorry I brought it up again.”

Then she storms off, leaving me and L’Historienne to awkwardly finish our meals, whereupon the young one quietly asks to be excused, leaving me to clean up.  But probably not well.  Or at least not “good enough.”  After all, if I’m cleaning the kitchen, I’m not scrubbing the toilet or folding the laundry.  I expect my new crimes will be revealed in the morning.

update 210715:  correspondent RD offers up the best relationship advice, id est, “Make sure you’re the crazy one.”
That’s clearly where I screwed up.
Earlie Riser left me for Jesus,
Diva Dearest for a successful lawyer,
and Ojuxit for the masked.
But I’m still the common factor and therefore the likeliest suspect.
And not a flattering trend, either.

update 210716:  Okeh… so they never got the generator for Themyscira, but at least they’re getting a new water heater for the Northern Exclave.  That’s gotta count for something, doesn’t it?
update 221009:  Silly optimist!  Forgiveness is for kids!

210928 — additional post mortem
“Silly” may be a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one.

210929 — unassailable logistics
Insofar as Ojuxit is old, and tired, and sick to death of taking care of everybody else, she only has the energy anymore to tend to one of us, and it’s certainly less complicated to shed Lethargy Lad than Klint.  How could I quibble?  I’ve always respected practicality and I have little trouble understanding arithmetic.
220707 — probable logistics:  Ceteris parabis, post-menopause, reliable sex-toys (living or otherwise) are apt to be less interesting.

211001 — The Bullies’ Rewards — There wasn’t a whole lot I could do to prevent the regular beatings, beyond struggling to keep my “smart mouth” shut.  Even then, my eyes might betray my contempt.  What I could control a little more reliably were my own tears.  Realizing that tears and cries of anguish are the rewards most craved by cowards and bullies and sadists, I would deny them that.  During beatings (both actual and metaphorical) I retreat to my peaceful interior and let the body or outer mind absorb the buffeting.  “I can’t tell if you’re devastated or relieved.”  Which is the point.  It boils down to basic economics.
If you reward something, you get more of it.
If you reward something, you get more of it.
If you reward something, you get more of it.

“Nobodie can hold a grudje leic hillbillies.” — Martie Stuart

abstract 221229:  on huei it mai have been nesessarie for the sanitie and peass of mind of Earlie Riser, Diva Dearest, and the Acsies, that I be detatjed, dismissed, distrusted, resinded and redjected.  Peass be upon them.

28 April 2018 — If I could onlie have tolerated the inevitable fecal aftertaste, I might have cissed mei wai up the corporate ladder bei nou.
update 190719, or, “No More Fun” — I am sorrie that I do not ecspress meiself uell in speetj, and I am sorrie to learn that I am not muyj better as a hriter.  A historie of failure might be a good reason to give up on something, but I am more comfortable thinking of meiself as a fool or a failure than as a cuitter.
Since the subject arose out of a sitation of an ecsample of a difficult discussion gone good, and blossomed into an issue of temporarilie sentral urdjensir, I am led to believe that it actuallie never uas resolved.
To address the strongly stated belief that “[I] think all [successful professionals] eat shit!  Even those people who have GIVEN [me] MONEY!” — actually, I do not.  I might speak over broadly of a certain type of martinet who tends to top out in middle management and seems to exult in exercising his arbitrary authority.  So again, I apologize for choosing words that suggested that by “coaches” I meant “ALL coaches, without exception, but especially YOU!”  I did not.  I will try to be more careful about choosing qualifying adjectives.
Or perhaps the perception comes from my comments about lying through interviews, or my inability or disinclination to do so.  I believe that the truth that many successful people tell in job interviews exposes the hot properties that they are — competent, accomplished, well-rounded, and socially gracious.  I believe that the truth I tell during job interviews reveals what a monumental prick I am —  uncertain, unconfident, awkward, arrogant, supercilious, and condescending.  And no fun whatsoever in the break room.  For me to fake it, to superficially emulate the nature of the successful interviewee, would be, to me, to use the perilous metaphor, “Eating shit.”  I would be the fraud if I PRETENDED to be the kind of person who is genuinely desirable.  I would be the fraud if I lied about my talents or weaknesses or accomplishments, and I would be the one stuck with the “fecal aftertaste.”
I might be able to lie myself into a position, but eventually the lies are exposed.  One may fool (SOME!) managers, but one cannot fool the job itself.  Fortunately, my failings are not so severe that managers will not tolerate them, as long as I continue to show up on time, not boost the till, and do my job as best I can until the end of my shift.  So I’ve found my niche in the market, and it’s loads better than stealing the dough.
As far as “Klint‘s propertie” or “Ojuxit‘s propertie” or “jour propertie” or “their propertie” — I may have used all of those expressions, depending on to whom I spoke, or the emphasis I was intending.  However, I realize that, as a female chauvinist, I might lean more toward women’s interests.  I view a husband’s accomplishments usually as being a part of the wife’s accomplishments*.  And, in an ideal marriage, vice versa, of course.  (*Thereby expressing the wisdom of Earlie Riser‘s and Diva Dearest‘s throwing me out.)  Nevertheless, because the slight was brought to my attention, I will try harder to use such terms as “HIS property” and “HIS equity.”
And with regard to protecting YOUR equity and YOUR property, I will CONTINUE to believe that if the problem was doing too little, then doing more should be (AT LEAST PART OF) the solution.
How it might have gone:
“What are you doing?”
“Abstracting!  I also like it here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve watched what you and Sugar have done, observed similarities, and now try to do more of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“You seemed to have been dissatisfied with the work I’d been doing, so I figured the solution to having done too little would be to do more.”
“What do you mean, ‘dissatisfied?'”
“We were out weeding the front.  Out of a sullen funk you asked if I liked living there.  I remember muttering something to the effect that I liked having a place to live and that there was comfortable.  Later, upon reflection, I realized that the question was either a prelude to an eviction, or rhetorical pouting.  Either way, it was not intended kindly, nor likely was it a sincere enquiry after useful data.”
“You’re right.  I was pouting like a punk.  I was upset by what you hadn’t done and what I hadn’t asked you to do and what you hadn’t agreed to do.”
“If you’d like to go over what else you expect in the way of rent, I’d be [happy?  delighted?  willing?] to entertain these thoughts.  Meanwhile, I’m still following the shade out here.  Why don’t you go back in and draw up a list of what you think would be reasonable while I spend the next half hour or so killing weeds?”
“Good idea.  Maybe after Ojuxit has woken up we can discuss it peacefully.”
“Rightio!”  (Sure, it could have.  “But where’s the self-righteousness in that?“)

190719 — variant definition of “Bully:”
One who speaks English to ‘Mericans.
(yet somehow exerts no power and inflicts no injury)

190811 — “I’m not interested in fixing anything right now;
I just wanted you to cry with me over how broken it WAS.”

190830 —  A sullen funk? If sullen means “morose, sulkie, or showing ill-humor,” and a sulk is “a depressed state,” then YEAH!  We were witnessing a sullen funk indeed.  How was that ever an issue?  And yet it was, because… because…  oh right!  Being right is the WORST possible defense.  How dare I?  And while going from pouting like a punk to barking like a bitch may well constitute an improvement, in CLARITY, ALWAYS helpful, it does little to lift the mood otherwise.

190901 —  “What if I said that I could never be an engineer because I know I could never kiss ass that much?”  I’d wonder what that had to do with me.  Egregious sycophancy has never been a stereotypical complaint about engineers so I would wonder what you meant.  Most folks’ complaints have to do with engineer types being too cold, too objective, too unfeeling, too concerned with facts and figures, and insufficiently obsessed with everybody’s emotional state.
Now, if you’d said you could never be an engineer because you are too nice, too well-adjusted, and too socially adept, I would have no objection.  That’s what I have observed as being CONSISTENT with technical types; we’re all work and no play, unless the boss agrees to pay us to play.
As I have said SO MANY times, to SO MANY apparently willfully deaf ears, if I were to pretend to be something I’m not (affable, garrulous, a team player, or a master of making pleasant noises with my face) then I would be the shit-eating lying scumbag weasel.  ME!  So I don’t fake it.  For me.  Because of MY feelings.
Not that I wouldn’t fake it, under exigent circumstances.  It’s just that, as a policy, fakery doesn’t appeal to me.
So I’ll continue to be the real me:  a condescending, superficial, obsessively honest jerk, and not a lying scumbag weasel pretending to be a socially competent charming team player.

190929 — The Squandered Summer ( — or — Instead of a Good Time )
For such a short trip down Anger Road, it seems an awfully long way back.
Practical solutions are the worst.
Problem 1:  Diva Dearest isn’t getting enough sleep.  How I learn about it:  Lying in bed next to her almost drifting off when she starts sniveling about how little sleep she’s getting.  My clearly simple-minded attempt at a solution:  “Shut up and go to sleep.”  Her response:  if you’re about average (or otherwise less retarded than I am) I probably don’t need to spell it out.
Problem 2:  This next one’s trickier.  Klint doesn’t like to do yard work.  Neither do I, but it’s my job.  And I’ve been doing it, at least according to Ojuxit.  Apparently, he had some expectations he hadn’t shared with us, and when they were not met, he sulked.  When it finally occurred to me what the problem might have been, after some hints, a brilliant notion struck me.  If the problem was my having done too little, maybe the solution was for me to do more.

What a naive fool I am.  I expected logic and clarity to win the day.  Apparently, doing MORE work was NOT the solution.  In fact, upon reflection, it seems mainly to have been an excuse to revisit old insults and make sure they’re still offensive.  Some people are just fans, I guess, of ripping off scabs to make sure old injuries still hurt.

Practical solutions?  Just like courtesy — strictly for chumps.  

191130 —  I don’t talk ‘Merican good.  “Prolly ‘cuz” I’m too credulous, and it sounds so much like English.  I assume that it’s English and I try to make sense out of it, then I respond clearly and coherently.  As a consequence, I don’t talk ‘Merican good.  Know whum sane?

191212 — When the honest answer is the WRONG ANSWER, you are talking to… Sales… Management… HR… Your Spouse…?   
191220 — Puttin it in ‘Merican terms, instead of clearly:
thank you for learnin’ me to talk ‘Merican gooder.

200705 — Sarcasm is the gift of non-violence, and silence is the gift of non-sarcasm.  Unfortunately, many customers, colleagues, and “friends” will not accept silence.

200724 —   Hinters hint, while staters state.
That’s why the hinters hate the staters.

210509 – The Gift of Absence
Klint asks if I no longer wish to “hang out” with them.  I didn’t back away, I was pushed.  When every contact becomes just another opportunity for conflict, I am less motivated to submit to interrogation.
I don’t DISLIKE their company, I FEAR IT.
To quote the unknown sage: “Give the gift of your absence to those who don’t appreciate your presence.”

210727 ( revisiting 190719 — or — Don’t Say “Kilobuck” )
It seems I can get into hot water even without any hot water.  While I brace myself for the issues of the day, I remind myself to avoid saying such provocative things like “playing in the mud” or “Ah seen him on teevee” and, most recently, “kilobuck.”  I know, from bitter experience, that silence will never work, and now, armed with additional knowledge of what not to say, I still dread dredging up acceptable explanations for my latest “crimes.”

210109 reflections on:
Stay away from us; your social skills are horrible.
“Okeh… I’ll just stay at home and practice alone.”

230531 — The Issue with Issues
I’m sorry this never occurred to me before.  (“Well, why DIDN’T you think of it sooner?” sounds so much like “Well, why DIDN’T you know what you didn’t know you didn’t know before you knew you didn’t know it?”  So be it.  That’s where I stand, still not recanting, but sharing new thoughts and possible insights.  (And of course, continuing the general policy of leaving my errors naked and exposed.)  I don’t know.
Anyway, the thing with ISSUES, and this was etched VERY deeply, fairly early on, is that the purpose is two-fold.  First, and probably most important, the goal is to humiliate and debase the accused.  Then of course the other purpose is to determine just how severe the beating to follow will be.
No wonder I dive into them with such gleeful anticipation!

210118.6:  When… your best friend was upset because of [your] talking shit about [spokemodels], he talked with you about it.  Instead of caring that your hurt him, your [sic] had to write things about calling him a whiny bitch &c, and then [posted?] it publicly.  When I talked to you about both saying it and saying it publicly, you took it down in English, but needed to repeat it in your secret language, so that he would know you really still meant it.  Why would you treat him like that?
210122.6:  I’m having trouble following you here.  “Instead of” strongly suggests that I do not care, thus precluding the notion that one cares about more than one thing at a time.  So I’m not sure that’s precisely the case, or would ever be relevant if it were.  Aren’t we all often beset by conflicting cares?  Anyway, I don’t remember how “talking shit about [spokesmodels or spokesmodelling] led to his “barking like a bitch.”  I believe the “pouting like a punk” event was precipitated by my unsatisfactory attention to weeding and other aspects of “curb appeal.”  That’s still my failure, of course, just not the one cited, but still good enough to hang me.  As I recall it, the “barking like a bitch” comment was lauding a step TOWARD clarity, which I would hope we’d all prefer.  Since I assiduously couch identities in super-heroic garb, there is little risk of “public” exposure, but I still attempted to bury the frank commentary in cipher (that being how “little” I care.)  I’m afraid I never understood the concept of “you take that back” as if a thing could be unsaid.  Why do I try to express myself clearly and candidly?  Because pretense should be confined to the stage or the page.  Or maybe I’m squeamish.  Or incompetent!  There we go, that gives me less credit!  Incompetent — I’m not very good at casual lies.  It has nothing to do with character.  (This has not been a very good answer, even aside from the rambling.  In my defense, though, I think it was also not a very good question.  I can see that I’ve missed the point, but I’m still not sure what that point actually is.  This may have been one of those “rhetorical questions” that Earth people like to play with instead of actually communicating.)
221006.6:  This is a curious assumption.  Do “best friends” NOT allow each other to have contrary opinions?  Do “best friends” lose their shit over bad jokes?  Do “best friends” predicate their relationships on lies?  I was clearly deluded in my belief that I actually HAD “best friends.”  I guess I know better now.  Thanks for that revelation, at least.

 210118.7:  Have you decided you want to end your relationship with us, but are too afraid to talk to us about it or discuss issues, so you decide to do things to [make so (sic)] that we will end it with you, and you can say it was our doing?  Why is that important to you?
210329.7:  I have not (consciously) decided to end these relationships, but I AM afraid to discuss anything that either of you might find contentious, or even that I might find amusing.  I used to be able to discuss concepts and archetypes and stereotypes and airplanes falling out of the sky.  Now I’m just mean or condescending.  After all, I only vote the way I do, and write what I write, so I have an excuse to look down on other people (who have very loudly “GIVEN [ME] MONEY.”)  That’s probably also the reason I say stupid shit about retarded techs and sedentary clerks and middle management martinets.  My disagreements with you apparently have nothing to do with sober analysis; they are all personal attacks.  Maybe I’m resigned to making people mad so I can avoid the pain of deciding to end something I’ve cherished.  I’m not sure why I would want to end something I cherish, but what do I know about what I feel?  Maybe I don’t want to see that I don’t cherish it as much as I dread it.  Maybe I’m stupid and don’t know when to shut up.  Maybe I’m a self-absorbed and selfish bully who delights in manipulating your emotions.  (Amazingly, bullying no longer requires an imbalance of power, so I’ve learned to “bully” people with tactical advantages over me.)  I don’t know that it is important to me.  I don’t know how I conveyed that it is important to me.  Maybe I don’t want to see how important it is that I never achieve the type of relationship I’ve allegedly pursued all my life.  Maybe I don’t believe I deserve to be happy.  Maybe I don’t value reason and coherence and patience and tolerance as much as I think.  Maybe I thought we shared a common regard for honesty and clarity and decency and… yay sports…
220918.7:  I’m still not certain how it was established that hurting, belittling, befuddling people, or otherwise manipulating their emotions, was “important to [me].”  It hurts that you’d believe that but based on the weight and concentration of the invective since 7/19, and the well-known principles of projection, it should not have been a surprise.
230113.7:  I can say, clearly, and in English (even if that’s just another way of my looking down on people), that all of my offenses, and the consequences thereof, were my doing.  If it was absolution you sought, you have it; all sins are mine.

210118.8:  Are you [“willing?” -or- “able?”] to examine yourself and your motives, and look at yourself honestly?  210421.8:  I’m definitely willing.  In fact, I think I’ve generally been pretty harsh with me, but I’m still not certain that it’s really possible.

210118.9:  Are there issues you had with us and should have discussed with us that you have been suppressing?  If so, what?
210421.9:  Probably, but I dasn’t.  When things are nice, I would like them to remain nice.  When people are upset, I want them to be nicer.  Complaints are conflict, and conflict begets anger, and anger begets violence.  I bear what I can bear.

210118.T:  How do you think we should/can go on from here?
210421.T:  Boy shit howdy!  You got me on that one!  My “go to” on events like these is generally to be as conciliatory, cooperative, and compliant as I can manage (if that’s not a poor choice of a word), as often as necessary, or until I’m completely spent.  Like hysteresis in spring steel, though, push me away enough and eventually I’ll stay pushed.

When desire collides with reality, I experience frustration.
And when expectation collides with reality, disappointment.
But when disappointment colludes with frustration,
I experience marriage.

“When a chick says you need to talk,
you might as well start punching yourself in the balls.”
— Eric Cartman

210118.1:  In what manner do you put serious thought into decisions affecting your work, financial stability, or the future for yourself, or your friendship with us?
210121.1:  I’m not convinced that I ever put much “serious thought” into my decisions.  It seems that most of my decisions have been impulsive and emotional.  When employed I would do the best that I could, and watched the rewards go to those who knew how to do less while impressing more.  I’d given up any expectations of “financial stability” long ago when my employment track record became unmistakably clear.  I would have no financial security.  I would just have to work very hard for as long as they would let me, and then they would replace me with someone nicer.  In the meantime, I would try to be careful about my expenses while being attentive to my personal and social desires.  It’s been a precarious balancing act for a long time, but finally Social Security and the VA have promised to catch me if I fall too hard.  The plans I had for my future involved space travel and exploration and building grand structures in orbit where people could pursue lives of health, beauty, prosperity, and longevity, and a supportive multi-faceted family with redundant support for infants and the infirm.  My current plans are to keep writing and to see if I can ever figure out how to sell any of it without debasing myself.  I once yearned for and expected that your friendship would be a part of all that.  It could be that you have other plans.  I have backed off on the masonry and other presumptions that seem to have engendered resentment.  I don’t know whether I should keep backing away from anticipated new offenses, or just “rip off the band-aid” and run.  As ever, I am in the grip of paralysis as my desires collide with reality.

210118.2: Why did you not tell us you quit your job for 1½ months, and then do it through “FascBuch?”
210119.2:  Isolation has compromised my communications skills, but not my counting skills.  I believed (accurately, as it turns out) that that would be provocative and would merit a more thorough discussion and meticulous analysis than telephone communication could afford.  Realizing that the logistics really didn’t permit that kind of luxury, I composed what I thought was a detailed description of my circumstance, and, deeming it the second best approach, put that up on my ‘b log.  Then of course, awaited the inevitable, and, clinging desperately as ever to optimism, hoped that it could come at the most opportune of moments, when we could drop the filters and speak.  It was, I believe, the end of August when I was dismissed, and checking the time stamp on the ‘b log, I read, “2 September 2020,” which makes about a week, I guess. I don’t know when or whether (I guess I must have) I might have echoed it to FascBuch, or when you might have seen it.  So I guess the short answer is I’m clumsy, and cowardly, and optimistic, and stupid.

 210118.3: Why did you stop masking, etc when you knew how important it was to us, and then double down by posting all sorts of stuff on Facebook and your blog showing disdain for those who think masks are important?
210120.3:  I “stop masking” every time I exit a private property confinement that requires masking for occupancy.  I have followed, and will continue to follow, the prudent masking and distancing protocols that you’ve requested prior to visiting.  I have not discontinued my practice of “singling down” on the differences between “important” and “urgent” and “everything.”  My disdain is not for those who consider provisional masking to be prudent, or even important, but for those whose posture and rhetoric and highly charged emotional response reveal that, to them, masking is everything, and any deviation therefrom is tantamount to reckless endangerment or depraved indifference to human life or safety.  I am not killing anyone’s Grandma by breathing freely (except, of course, in the sense that I threaten innocent strangers every time I take my car onto the road or dislodge a rock from an elevated hiking trail), though arguably Frau Braun did kill L’Historienne‘s and Stargazer’s and The Enumerator‘s and all their cousins’ Grandma through her cruel and oppressive “quarantine of terror.”
210327.3:  It is clear now that my isolation has rather less to do with any actual dangers from an aggressive virus than it does with my disgracefully offensive attitude.  It is not enough to PRACTICE the protocol; one must take pains to avoid discerning any of the costs or disadvantages of the single-minded pursuit of security.  The “invitation [wa]s rescinded” NOT because I wasn’t assiduously masking and distancing, but because, while I WAS assiduously masking and distancing, I was also expressing honest (albeit game and sarcastic) skepticism of its efficacy, AND celebrating instances of enlightened (or selfish and stupid and potentially murderous) masklessness.  It’s like adhering to the Dicta of the Christ without acknowledging His Divinity.  Gods (Hebrews 11:6) are not alone in their jealousy.  Obedience without faith is empty.

210118.4:  Were you purposely posting the anti-mask stuff on Facebook in order to communicate with me without [talking to me?]  Is this a way of telling me, I’m not going to “tell” you what to do?
210121.4:  I was purposely posting skeptical and sarcastic comments and images regarding universal masking protocols as a way of evoking emotional responses from the righteously confident.  I have learned over the decades that logic has no power over faith, but that shock, surprise, anger, and humor have.  I oppose wide scale masking because it is wasteful, cruel, and counterproductive.  I would no more mask every healthy being, particularly children (!), than I would issue every GI his own personal nuke.  There is a common thread binding hypervigilants of all sects.  They act as if they believe in one overriding and all-consuming threat.  Maybe I WAS talking to you.  I didn’t think so at the time, but I am now saddened to realize it.  So, on the second question of this section, maybe “Yeah.”  This does appear to echo my previously stated intention to never mask unless… blah blah blah… private property, and… blah blah blah… compromised immune or pulmonary system, or… blah blah blah… the neonatal or infirm…
220801:  I would never presume to “tell” anyone that they may not establish conditions for access to their own property, and as a guest on yours I have usually attempted to subordinate my immediate inclinations to your requirements.  Whether it is smoking tobacco in the house, or burning leaves outside of it, I have tried to honor your wishes and to follow both the letter and spirit of cited conditions.

210118.5:  Did you follow our requirements for you isolating before coming down here for your last few visits, or did you decide we were over-reacting and you were willing to take the chance of infecting us?
210121.5:  Knowing the nature of viral infections, I have risked your lives and health since 1981.  I did follow your requirements prior to the last few visits, but only because I am not comfortable with casual lies.  I thought that I’d made it clear that I believed that you were over-reacting when you’d asked, and I have, since the re-emphasis of your… concerns… practiced both the letter AND spirit of the protocol prior to visits.  And IF a virally laden droplet were to land on the wet welcoming membrane of your eye, or Bud‘s, or mine, completely bypassing the arguably effective facial mask just below its entryway, and was later exhaled into common space, and then taken up by the more vulnerable, and one were to sicken and die… it would be MY fault and I could never be forgiven.  Even if we practiced assiduous scrubbing and masking and distancing, as long as none of us wears goggles, we are vulnerable to a very real (if vanishingly small) chance of infection.  Being so distrusted as I am, how could it be OTHER than my fault?  No denial could have any weight coming from a convicted liar.

25 February 2023 — to be continuing… when I’m up for the next wave…
Neither the Irish, nor Russians, nor Hillbillies are inclined to put down a perfectly good grudge. (Slaps roof.)  “This baby’s got decades on it, yet!”  And while I’m only part Irish, and not Russian at all, I was immersed in hillbilly culture growing up — forced on me by an angry little step-father with an exaggerated Napoleonic complex.

29 April 2023 — Q1:  Okeh… so no questions at all, just sadness and scorn.  And a tantalizing reference to a “book,” with or without a message.  Big talk or procrastination?  Hawthorne, Huxley, or Nourse?  And that’s just assuming it is one of my lost treasures, rather than an overdue(?) retaliation on behalf of tribe, alliance, or ideology.  Maybe that IS the “message.”  “Book” has been used as a metaphor before, and I am not sure that’s not the case now.  Or the even more obvious possibility of taunting.  But most likely, it is the benign and innocent act of procrastination, so I will neither offer nor request more anon until persuaded otherwise.  And while my faith remains insignificantly tiny, my hopes remain great.   Hope may be a poor plan, but it’s an effective palliative, on a par almost with laughter itself.

26 October 2021

As a lifelong asshole I think it is very important to tell as much of the truth as I can bear (which is generally more than is advisable, but I’m retarded, so I err on the side of caution) and to put the highest hurdles in the front.  By “hurdles” I mean my personality flaws that most people interpret as “looking down” or “acting superior.”  Like most of my favorite literary characters (Sherlock Holmes, Mark Duquesne, Stringer Bell, or Brainiac 5), I have a very hard time sustaining the pretense that people are not fools.  That usually filters out the most of humanity from giving a shit about what I might be all about, but still allows the very finest people to get through and actually talk to me.  I also don’t pretend that I’m not a fool, either, but that seems to be of little help.  It’s no guarantee that they’ll still put up with my crap, and of course it’s always going to be my fault, but I still feel a lot less guilty about tricking anyone.  I’ve managed to convince a couple of brilliant and talented women to bear my children, but eventually, they’d had enough, too.

For a while it is very rewarding.  I never made any conscious effort to “meet people.”  I just did what I loved, and I met people who loved what I loved.  I guess that was the first and highest hurdle they cleared.  Still, common interests can make for a firm foundation for a relationship.  Telling the truth (but not too much) can also help, but that’s trickier.

But most people are awful, and I can do without them, though a rarefied minority are well worth the effort.  Eventually they realize that I am not.  But when they bail on me, it is generally for smaller causes than larger.  It often turns out I’m not as funny as they thought, and sometimes they wonder why they ever thought I was worth their time in the first place.

But at least I don’t feel guilty about lying to anyone.
I feel badly about telling them the truth.

(Just in case this escaped you, let me repeat:  I also don’t pretend that I’m not a fool, but that seems to be of little help.)

211026 – After the Refuge
“With their hearts they turned to each other’s hearts for refuge.”

Diva Dearest may have had a point, and I was not blind to it at the time, but I didn’t think that that was the case.  She had begun to regret her agreement to the open basis of our marriage, and violently at times, when Sugar and I were still in the throes of fresh infatuation.  This of course like Early Riser‘s objections before her, was after her own presumably satisfying (or embarrassing) trysts.  As long as it worked for them, it was a good idea, but once it showed signs of working for me, it wasn’t.

Anyway, at the time, as I struggled to balance my desires and adhere to my commitments, she began to insist that I was “exchanging love’s bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge” of disappointment.   Sugar has since had her fill of me, and neither Early Riser nor Diva Dearest are clamoring to take me back.  Diva Dearest has remarried, and even died, and Early Riser is content to dandle her grand-babies and to bask in the glory of her lord Christ Jesus.

And me?  I’m left with “the glitter and the rouge.”

Thanks to Jackson Browne for the stolen lyric (“Before the Deluge.”)
He said it best already, so I shan’t attempt to improve on it.

in re illustration by Gene Gonzales:  Tinya Wazzo (Phantom Girl, ®WarnerCom) & Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat, ®MausenKorp) demonstrate why “Tag” never caught on on Bgtzl,
home world of Tinya‘s phantom race.

180703 — Does Donald Trump use the Federal Reserve and the United States Treasury Department to funnel funds to his friends in the Kremlin to support their shared anti-woman, anti-trans, anti-gay, anti-worker, anti-environmental, white supremacist agenda?

We may never know until we conduct a thorough and complete
audit of the F’eral Reserve, find out how they framed Hillary,
who’s funding Russian Collusion,  what happened to America’s gold,
and why the frogs are turning gay!

a correspondent [enquires after my intent and sincerity]…
… wants to know: “What… are you talking about?  Is this supposed to be sarcastic?”  It was intended to be both sincere AND sarcastic.  Sincere insofar as yearning for an audit of the F’eral Reserve (at least!) and sarcastic in the I-stick-my-thumb-in-your-eye kind of way to lefties who reflexively suspect all things Trump.
I’m sorry when I’m neither as clear nor as funny as I intend.

190106 — Why do fools say, “I know, right,” immediately after I’ve corrected them? They clearly DIDN’T know before their correction, and now they’re trying to take credit for it (or even to deny their error.)
But if they didn’t know in the first place, how do they know now?
And how do they know now that I’m not fucking with them?

190924 — Earth People (meter stolen from Randy Newman)

Earth people got… no reason.
Earth people got… no common sense.
Earth people got… no logic at all.

They got… whims and wishes and biases,
They act as if “Give me!” is the same as “please.”
They got… little minds that squirm in delight
When the weaker and the smaller are given a fright.
I can’t take you Earth people!
What’s wrong with you Earth people?
There’s no tellin’ with Earth people down here!

You are seldom abashed and you’re rarely ashamed
As you wallow in your misery and compound jour pain.
You got… little souls that cower in fright
And run from the purifying power of light.
I don’t get you Earth people.
What’s up with you Earth people?
I can’t figure out Earth people at all!

Things that Hep Dudes do that Groovy Chicks must Dig     200412
Gunning your motorcycle for twenty minutes in the driveway. Driving fast!  Braking hard!  Burning rubber! Subwoofers!  Wolf Whistles!  Cat calls! Bar fights.  Soy muffins.  Dressing like a prison hooker?  (The faces may tell us it is “more comfortable” to wear saggy trousers.  The hands tell the truth.  They are constantly pulling them back up.  One does NOT adjust a comfortable fit.  Once again, when the face and the hands tell different stories, believe the hands; faces lie.)

200614 — Anger Therapy 
As a relentless optimist I find good news in unusual places.  After a couple of weeks (the alleged outside incubation period) of angry and courageous demonstrations against “systemic racist bigotry” (an issue upon which you are likely to find agreement among about 99% of Americans), we find no significant new outbreaks of Wuhan Flu™.
Apparently, extreme unction (or “woakness”) is as toxic, noxious, and destructive to the CoronaVirusMark19™ as it is to civil society.

210316 — If Only…
If I only managed to contract Wuhan Flu™ months ago, AND given it to Sugar and Bud, we’d all likely be over it by now. Okeh… maybe Bud, with his compromised lungs, might have suffered mightily, and maybe even succumbed to it. At any rate, it would likely be all over, and I would be forgiven, or ejected, or forgotten.
But it would be over.

210317 — Now, if she’ll only take “yes” for an answer…
Tad stopped over yesterday, so I reflexively stepped out and talked to him for a bit, inadvertently resetting my to-the-letter microbial mitigation protocol back to day zero (and AFTER hitting the new local ChowMart™ for a gallon of cow juice all properly muzzled up, too!) 
Anyway, he’d come over to request that I feed his cats for the ten days or so that he and the other Fredericks were in Florida.  He hit me with a big bag of kitty kibble, a scoop, and sufficiently detailed instructions, because, of course, I agreed.  They’ll be gone, he says, until Saturday, the twenty-seventh, after which time I shall be free again for casual delivery of your accumulated mail.  Unless something of a more urgent nature arises, at which time I can, if it is judged needful, do a BonzaiExpress™.
Having finally gotten accustomed to the strange new lighting patterns spilling in through the front door, I figured some more disorientation is in order.  I removed most of the cardboard from the bedroom windows, since my metabolism has finally synced up with the daylight.  So now there’s light spilling down the hallway from the bedroom and I frequently find myself stepping that way to shut off the damned lights until I realize…
I managed to get that dead bush ratted out, mostly burned up, and the hole backfilled and levelled, but it is still (mostly) too wet and cold to be outside chasing weeds just yet… but their days (like mine) are numbered!

31 July 2021
I suppose it makes sense for people to assume that I don’t care, or that I’m not hurt when they would otherwise think that I should be. I don’t react right.
I remember carrying a hot and heavy vessel while calmly stating:
“Ow, it’s hot. Ow, it’s hot.” Then I put it down.
“Was it hot?”
“Yes. Very hot.” I had said it was hot so people would not be in my way as I carried it. Other than that useful transmission of information, I didn’t see any point in making any more fuss than that. It wouldn’t have made it burn any less.

4 September 2021
Pushy people don’t like it when you stay pushed
“Can’t you take a joke?”
If it’s actually funny.
“I was just givin’ you a hard time!”
Did I ask for a hard time? Or is my irreplaceable time so valueless that it should be squandered for your amusement?
“Lighten up, dude! It’s just a saying.”
If that means to stop taking you seriously, then thank you.
That would probably be best. Go away now, please.