Here's a wish list I prepared for Christmas several years ago. I found it on my C: drive and thought it was still funny and interesting. Your mileage, as always, may vary.

Current comments are annotated in italics.

So. I want:

• Better TV reception. Since I can’t get cable from the local monopoly, and can’t afford a satellite dish, this would add up to a TV antenna, or a roommate who can get cable in the apt under their name.

• A new computer, or hardware upgrades on my existing computer that will make it Internet friendly so I can do more work on my website. Also, a scanner.

• A new TV.

• A DVD player.

• To run my RPG again for at least 5 enthusiastic, intelligent, interested players who will show up on time every week.

• A time travel device that would work according to my own specifications.

• The Cosmic Cube.

• Nice leather slippers.

• Superpowers of my choice.

• Immortality.

• PROMETHEA #1 and/or LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN #3.

• My comics out of Kenny’s basement.

• Broad spectrum genius level intellect.

• Wealth.

• Total dominance.

• Nicer furniture.

• To move to a different neighborhood.

• To be biologically about 19 again.

• A versatile and well programmed android concubine that looks like Sarah Michelle Gellar or Marina Sirtis.

• A cutting edge personal computer from 2072.

• A versatile and well programmed android concubine that looks like Heather Graham would also be acceptable.

• A magic cell phone that will let me call anyone in the world for free just by requesting them, either by name or description, and they have to answer and they can’t hang up. For example "Get me Drew Barrymore on the line" or "I want to talk to whatever idiot it was who decided to put off NYPD BLUE’s season premiere until January so ONCE AND AGAIN could keep a good timeslot".

• A godlike physique. (I pick the god.)

• A photonic pistol that lets me shoot the images of people on TV, and they fall over dead or collapse wounded to the ground with the appropriate special effects.

• A remote control that lets me cancel commercials I don’t like, and which keeps those commercials from ever displaying again on my TV. The remote would also store a memory of commercials I really do like, and play one of those on my TV instead when a forbidden commercial comes on.

• The same remote should also have a ‘nudity’ button. This ‘nudity’ button should be programmable either per specific image on TV or across broad spectrums, like ‘female’, or even ‘network’ (The WB Network, for example, would be constantly set on ‘full nudity for all females’).

• On further thought, just build the photonic pistol into the remote.

• A hypno-coin that really works.

• Space Ghost’s wristbands.

• A little machine that changes the denomination of any currency fed into it, depending on how you set it.

• A phaser. You know, from Star Trek. One of the cool ones from the first series, not those wimpy looking ones from Star Trek Jr. that look like remote controls.

• A little machine that makes people in my immediate area suddenly remember they have something urgent to do somewhere else, that I could use whenever I was waiting in line somewhere.

• A machine that will mulch up old unwanted clothes and create new ones in any style, color, or material I like.

• A magic oven that makes Boston Market food whenever I want some.

• A soft drink delivery service.

• The email addresses of everyone who works for any company that has ever shut off my service for any reason.

• Back door passwords into my data files at every credit bureau in the world.

• A closet that leads to Narnia. Or into virtually any porn film. I’m not picky.

• A little device that I could point at anything making excessive or irritating noise and that would create a ‘cone of silence’ around that object which would last for an adjustable duration, from a few seconds to forever.

• Actually, a closet with a built in holodeck would be even better than the one leading into Narnia.

• A year’s supply of Scooby Snacks.

• An automated robot doctor from the 24^th Century.

• A pill I can take to transform fat into muscle while I’m asleep.

• A CD with every TV show and movie ever made on it, and a vocally programmed DVD player compatible with it.

• Another CD with every piece of music ever recorded on it, and a vocally programmed CD player.

• Nice speakers.

• World peace, but only if everyone in America gives me a dollar first. (Otherwise, someone else can waste a wish on it.)

Having come to the end, I'd add, at this point, 'the ability to go without sleep forever without ill effects', because honestly, I'm tired of this insomnia horseshit... I seem to be cursed lately to nearly go without sleep forever, but it's really really uncomfortable. If I can't have the ability to do without sleep, then that ability all the Heinlein characters seem to have, where they can lay down and go to sleep at will whenever and wherever they are, would be just wonderful, too.

Oh, yeah, and:

• President Nader.

Retroactive, of course.

PARANOIA STRIKES DEEP

This chick I know, that I was nominally friends with for years after moving to Tampa (I’ll call her ‘Jill’ for purposes of this entry) was extremely gun shy about giving out her home address and phone number. Or, at least, that’s what she told me, and I have some reason to believe she wasn’t just making that up because she didn’t want to tell them to ME… I knew her awhile, and she did seem to be pretty protective of her privacy with everyone, not just Yr. Humble Narrator.

Anyway, one time she called me on the phone and I wasn’t home. I star 69ed her (don’t be crude) and she got extremely upset when she took the call, because she supposedly was paying all kinds of money to the phone company to have a number that was completely unlisted and could not under any circumstances be star 69ed or caller ID’ed. (Now I don’t know about that. Maybe the phone company would sell you that service, but since there’s a phone code anyone can punch in… I can’t remember what it is right now, maybe star 67… to prevent Caller ID or star 69 from working, it would seem idiotic to pay extra just so you wouldn’t have to remember to do that.)

Anyway, one of the first real wake up calls I had that this chick was not really my friend was when she refused to give me her snailmail address so I could send her a Christmas card. This is just not something friends do, not real world, offline friends, anyway. (And here’s a freebie that doesn’t have anything to do with ‘Jill’… if you’ve progressed to a point in an Internet relationship where your partner is telling you she loves you, but she still won’t give you her phone number or snailmail address, back away quickly. There’s something extremely wrong with this picture. If the person who says they love you doesn’t realize how inappropriate that is when they don’t trust you with their goddam phone number or street address, you shouldn’t be messing with them. They are reality-challenged and it will not end well for you.)

However, I ignored that wake up call and stayed ‘friends’ with this woman for years after she bluntly refused to give me her phone number or street address, and it did end badly for me, but that’s not the point of this. The point is, her paranoia is kind of stupid, as I recently discovered. Because, while for years I did not know her home phone number or address because she would not give it to me despite the fact that we were ‘friends’ and she told me I could count on her for anything, well… I recently discovered, pretty much by accident, that trying to keep this information private is sort of pointless, if you’re married (as Jill is) and you tell people your husband’s name (which she does, a lot) and he has a goddam resume on the Internet.

The concatenation of weird Google searches I did without really even thinking much about Jill or her husband, starting with trying to see if maybe there was still any mention of my name in the City of Tampa personnel directories, and branching out from there, isn’t important (and I couldn’t remember them all, anyway). But at one point, something I put in came up with [not their real names] “Edward and Jill Shaver”, and THAT link pointed to Edward’s resume, and Edward’s resume has his home address and home phone number on it. And. Well.

Now, I haven’t called the number (if Jill recognized my voice she would call the cops on me, I have no doubt) but Google obliged me with a map showing the exact location of the address, and since “Jill” had told me many times how nice it was to be living close to a particular mall in a particular neighborhood of Tampa, well, obviously, this is her current address, and, I imagine, her current home phone number.

So.

If you’re going to be paranoid about giving out your tracking information in the modern age (and I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, I’m just not sure you should extend that paranoia to people you insist are your friends), you need to be really hypersensitive about it, and if you’re sharing a residence with someone, you need to make THEM be hypersensitive about it, too. Otherwise, you’re just going to end up offending your ‘friends’ for no reason.

And, by the way, anyone who hasn’t tried punching their phone number into Google to see what happens just isn’t living in the modern world. Trust me, this annoying little Google feature may be the best argument for getting a cell phone that has ever existed.

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

Ellen Metzger, a complete babe that every guy I went to high school with had a major case of the hots for, and who was also, in addition to being drop dead gorgeous, a smart, funny, extremely sweet and pleasant person, wrote the above in my high school yearbook, most likely because she had no idea what else to say to me when I asked her to sign it, since I was the most obnoxious guy who ever went to Holland Central School and she and I weren’t exactly close.

Or I may be wrong, it may have been Cheri Bohadlo who wrote that. Cheri was also a complete babe. Not quite as nice or smart as Ellen, but Ellen always seemed like rather an inaccessible goddess to me, and because of that, I had a big crush on Cheri Bohadlo, but never had one on Ellen, for much of my sophomore year.

Anyway, none of this is about either of those two girls, who are, like me, in their 40s by now and very happy with their lives (I sincerely hope, on both counts). No, this is about my continuing puzzlement at the way some people seem to take umbrage to my attitude and general demeanor, at least, as it is reflected on this weblog and in my email that relates to this weblog.

Look, it’s not that I’m not an asshole. That’s not what I’m saying. I know I’m an asshole. I’m not surprised when people respond to me as if I’m one; in fact, I’m more surprised when people seem to actually like me after reading this crap.

What surprises me, though, is, well, I pretty much admit to being an asshole on this blog, not simply explicitly in the disclaimers below that are on every page, but implicitly a great many other places, as well.

And yet, some people seem to be startled and appalled when they interact with me on this blog and, lo and behold, I behave in a manner that they regard as obnoxious.

Now… I’ve written quite a lot about this in the past two days, and I keep meandering and not managing to get to my point, so instead of addressing underlying principles in some grandiloquent way, I think I’m going to try to put this as simply as possible.

Somebody… we’ll call him Dopey, because that seems appropriate… comes to my blog and reads, presumably, at least a few of my blog’s entries, hopefully including the various disclaimers below. That somebody posts a comment, and in that comment, they post a link to their own blog, and an email address.

This seems to me… and call me a starry eyed optimist if you like… to be an invitation, on their part, to go and review their posted work, and then comment on it.

Which I did.

And now, I’m a bad person, and not someone they would ever want to grow up to be, and I’m being reprimanded for, basically, following a link posted on my blog and taking the time to offer honest feedback to what I found on someone else’s blog, after being invited explicitly to do so.

Personally, I don’t think anyone even needs that kind of explicit invitation. You post stuff, or display stuff, and you invite feedback, and it’s a big world and some people aren’t going to like your work, and if you don’t understand that, you should damned well not come out and play.

However, in this case, I was explicitly invited to review certain work and express an opinion, I took the time to do so, and for that time and effort, I’ve been publicly reprimanded, because my opinion was not the sort of opinion that the person who solicited it found desirable or optimum.

Don’t get me wrong. I have been bitch slapped from one end of the Internet to the other in the past by various morons, idiots, and emotional retardates who stumbled across something I’d posted somewhere, decided they didn’t like it, and decided that because they didn’t like it, that meant that somehow, I was at fault and a truly horrible person. I have had my mother insulted over opinions I have published. I have been assured that I am so full of shit that three more of me could be fairly easily sculptured from the excess. I have seen utter strangers who do not know me opine that I am dangerously, violently insane because I enjoy the music of Carole King, and I have seen one particular textual extremist declare rather extravagantly that the sun should go nova and wipe out in its entirety the culture that brought into existence such a vile blot upon reality as am I.

And I have, recently, seen someone say, in effect, “hey, take a look at my shit and tell me what you think”, and then been told I’m a bad person, and no role model, and Just Not Very Nice At All, because my honest, truthful, straightforward to the best of my ability response, annoyed them.

Look, I don’t care. There are a lot of people like this in the world, I find them vaguely irritating, but to date I have only rarely found myself to be the recipient of the negative opinion of anyone I regarded as being remotely worthwhile (and it turned out those people were troubled, to say the least). As a general rule, everyone who has come after me on the Internet has done so in a manner that demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were beneath my contempt, although, as I’m unenlightened, most of them have my contempt regardless.

What I am writing this to say is simply this:

Others may tell you only what you want to hear, and that’s their thing, and I have no doubt you will just adore them, and they you, and everyone will have a wonderful mutual masturbation festival in your and their email box and/or comment threads, and, well, that’s just skippy.

I, on the other hand, will give you my honest opinion, if you ask for it. And if you post stuff in a public place, you are asking for it.

If you come to my blog, post a comment, a link to your work, and your email address, you are not only asking for my feedback, you are absolutely begging for it, and chances are, you’re going to get it.

So… I don’t know. I guess that’s about it. Except to say, you know… you don’t poke the mask on the ol’ Lone Ranger. Or if you do, you shouldn’t get all whiney when the doctor has to dig a couple of silver bullets out of your ass.

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.