In response to a lovely, generous email my gorgeous and wonderful cuz in law Mel sent out to everyone she knows last night, she got that response, which she forwarded to me.

Imagine my feelings of tentative relief, even joy.

So I called this person, whose name I’ve deleted so I won’t humiliate him/her too much as I vent here about this most recent travesty. This person was very enthusiastic about taking Chewie. This person has several children and a dog who needs a canine companion. This person lives in a big house with a big yard. This person especially wants a dog of Chewie’s description, because years back, this person lost a dog of that description.

I answered some questions about Chewie for this person, and this person indicated to me that the next step was to arrange a meeting between Chewie and his/her dog, Adrienne, to make sure they’d get along. As Mel had kindly volunteered to transport Chewie if necessary, and since Chewie is a very sweet, good tempered dog, I was very hopeful that this problem was finally finding some good resolution.

A few hours later, this person called me back.

This person, it seems, had not checked with his/her spouse before sending off that first e-mail. Having consulted said spouse, well... taking Chewie was now out of the question.

SO sorry. Best of luck with that whole not having him murdered at the pound thing. Gotta go.

Imagine my feelings of chagrin, anger, exasperation, disappointment, even rage.

The word ‘thoughtless’ figures prominently in my mind at the moment.

Look. I’ve talked to this person. And I’m trying not to overreact here. This person is kind and warm hearted and obviously wanted to help us, and I’m trying very hard not to just go completely insane with rage right here in this column and denounce this person as a witless idiotic brainless moronic twit who has, through their extremely thoughtless actions, managed to inflict on me and my brother one of the greater and more excruciating disappointments I’ve experienced in my life.

Especially, you know, after I got so exasperated with various other people for so quickly rushing to deny and refuse any help in what is, to Paul and I, a very serious crisis. I realize I owe those people an apology, that they’re only behaving in a perfectly natural fashion, that their response… “this is not our problem, and don’t you dare try to make it our problem”… is perfectly normal. Hell, if I weren’t living here, I’d be doing the same thing… “Sorry, wish I could help, but I can’t have a dog, best of luck”.

So I’m trying… I’m really really TRYING… not to just go totally ballistic and berserk, at least, in a verbal sense, over this FUCKING GODDAM CHRISTLY PIECE OF SHIT DUMBASS who just fucking TORTURED Paul and I with misplaced hope, only to snatch it away again because they were too frickin STUPID to ASK THEIR FUCKING SPOUSE before they offered to save Chewie’s life.

::deep breath::

Work yesterday sucked… bad calls all day, including one hour long session with an Iranian man who had five different Sprint accounts, wanted to question charges on all of them, and then wanted me to put them all on one bill, which is one of the most complex procedures you can do. And of course, he didn’t BUY anything. That was just one of several awful, non productive calls I took. I wound up with six sales, which covered my sales quota but didn’t net me anything in the daily sales contest… something I shouldn’t let bother me, but, sue me, I’m competitive.

Today was slightly better, I wound up with seven sales. It was a horribly hard day for everyone and seven sales nearly won the day’s prize, but one other rep got two sales on her last call and pulled ahead of me at the last minute. I wound up with a coffee cup, which is okay, I guess. At least I’m covering my quota, which is something.

Everyone who reads my blog is being wonderful on this Chewie thing, and I realize there’s just nothing that can be done at the distances this thing is reaching people. And it’s only Tuesday; who knows? Someone might step up tomorrow.

And, who knows, they might actually be smart enough to TALK TO THEIR FUCKING SPOUSE before they get in touch with me, too.

Ahhhh, I’m in a pissy mood. I need to especially single out Monica Kazinski for praise and appreciation, as she has actually offered to pay to board Chewie at a kennel for a week or so, if it comes down to that. She even said she’d ask everyone else who reads this blog to chip in if it was too expensive for her, since she was sure I wouldn’t. And she’s right, I wouldn’t and won’t and can’t let people do that, that’s just deranged and extravagant. If it’s necessary, I’ll dig my heels in with our landlord and tell him to take us to court… he’ll have a hard time, since we paid a full month’s rent on the first, Chewie has never bitten anyone, and Paul has never signed any kind of agreement forbidding large pets.

Hopefully it won’t come to that… hopefully this will get resolved soon. But do me a favor?

Don’t offer to take Chewie and then call me back and retract the offer a few hours later.

I mean it. I’ll just go nuts.

Paul and I were hoping my box of comics and clix would arrive today from Demolition, but no luck there. Maybe tomorrow. We played a really enjoyable game last night where I had a large team of Avengers and Paul assembled a large team of genuine Marvel Comics supervillains, many of which had fought the Avengers in the past, and we battled it out on a map depicting the exterior of Avengers Mansion. I won, but I would have enjoyed the battle even if I'd lost. Earlier tonight, in fact, we played again, this time with Paul running a heroic team against my assembled villains, and he won, but not by much. That was a fun game, too. And it's appropriate that the good guys won both times.

Note to those who play clix... Thanos goes down easy when you have the Black Panther outwit his invulnerability, then get Captain Marvel, Iron Man, and Quicksilver to hammer the living crap out of him immediately afterward. The coup de grace, however, was administered from a distance by Hawkeye the Archer, whose three clicks of Ranged Combat Expert damage tipped the mad god off this mortal coil... at least, temporarily. You know Thanos, you just can't keep him dead. I imagine he'll be resurrected in time for Paul to use him again soon.

It also helps a lot to put the Scarlet Witch up someplace high where she can see everything that's going on, and use her hex powers to the maximum benefit of your team.

All right. I'm going away.

Would somebody PLEASE give our dog a good home? C'mon. This isn't that hard. He's a really nice dog. Somebody PLEASE take him. You'll enjoy him, honest, you will.

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:

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:

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.