Disgruntlement

I’m not in a good mood.

People who have read my blog for a while will have gotten by now that I’m a pretty surly and grumpy guy, and according to Jillian Who Is Only Jillian, this is the secret of my lack of success with… well, anyone, not merely women… because people like to hang around with someone who is FUN, who makes them LAUGH, who provides GOOD TIMES.

Whatever the case may be, while I am a funny guy and I often do make people laugh, I am certainly not social in any conventional sense, and it will show you just how unconventional and asocial I am when I say that honestly, I don’t think it’s my job, my duty, or my responsibility to provide GOOD TIMES for everyone around me. Furthermore, I don’t WANT a LOT of other people to hang around with me, for the good and simple reason that most people I’ve known are (by my standards and to my perceptions) annoying.

I would simply like the boon companionship of a few kindred spirits, and if one of those kindred spirits could be female, and attractive on the physical, intellectual, emotional, and psychological levels, and occasionally want to make out with me, that would just be skippy.

Now, of course, there are no kindred spirits to me, because honest to God (and you all know this) I really am THAT weird, so, yes, my life is barren and empty and it is going to remain that way, but you know what?

Despite the fact that I am who I am, and my life is what it is, largely due to life choices I have made and take full responsibility for, having a barren and empty life still SUCKS, and furthermore, other people CHOOSE not to enjoy my company, and they can take some responsibility for THAT.

Beyond that, this blog has many purposes, one of them is venting, and therefore, I will continue to be surly and grumpy here until circumstances dictate I have less negative crap to vent.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that at the moment.

However, on another subject, let me say I’ve been getting email from a porn star lately.

Not under my real name. Under the pseudonym I write porn under. A few months ago, I found this porn star’s site and liked a lot of her stuff… she’s pretty kinky and likes a lot of the same stuff I do. Now, I know that porn stars are vacuous, shallow twits (you pretty much have to be a vacuous, shallow twit to have anonymous sex with several thousand people in your life, especially when you don’t even choose them, a director just points and says ‘do him/her/them’) but, still, this chick was hot, and she was pretty bold in some of the stuff she stated about her sexual preferences, and she has many of the same kinks I do, so I wrote her a note, from, as I say, my porn writing persona.

I didn’t expect an answer, are you kidding? Hot chicks with their own websites get a million emails from fat horny porn geeks a day. And an answer I did not get.

What I did get, a few weeks later, was a mass mailing she was sending out inviting all her ‘fans’ to a big party in Denver at a strip club. And after that, I started getting mass mailings from her imploring all her fans to go to certain websites and vote for her for, you know, Best Blowjob on Film and things like that. I also got mass mailings telling me about her girlfriends’ new websites, mass mailings in which she explored her thoughts on polyamory, incest, pedophilia, homosexuality, infidelity, and just plain sluttiness, and mass mailings in which she told Dr. Laura to go fuck herself with her very own church steeple.

Now, the email account I wrote her from originally is one supplied by the porn site that I write porn for, and until I wrote away to this actress (whom I’ll call Brittany), all I ever got at that address was fan letters (I get fan letters from fellow pervs who enjoy my stories, it’s strange but true) and the occasional site related communication from the site manager, as well as death threats from some of my fellow authors, who do not seem to enjoy having someone who can actually write competing with them on the site.

So, getting these for the most part commercially oriented mass mailings in response to a more or less personal note I’d written annoyed me.

Still, I just rolled with it, until I started getting non Brittany related spam, generally trying to sell me Viagra or cosmetic surgery, and I realized that the site administrator who worked for Brittany had not only put my email address on her personal newsletter mailing list without my permission, but they’d obviously made a few extra bucks selling their mailing list to a spammer.

THIS annoyed me. So next newsletter I got, I hit REPLY and wrote back. In my letter, I specified that I assumed I was speaking to a site administrator, because Brittany obviously didn’t have time to read all her email, given that I’d sent her a nice email months before and she hadn’t responded to it. I then cursed out this hypothetical site administrator (without using actual vulgarity; I’m perfectly capable of using civil language to textually flay someone) and demanded I be taken off their mass mailing list and that they contact whoever they’d sold my name to and make THEM take me off their mailing lists, too.

Now, here is a thing that I have learned in my life: when you are nice to people, if you do not matter to them and there is nothing they particularly want or need from you, they will, quite often, ignore you. Jess used to do this to me back before she started working for the City. I would send her very pleasant chatty hilariously funny and entertaining emails, and weeks would go by without me hearing from her, and when I eventually followed up with short ‘are you dead’ emails, days would go by and then she’d send me a terse ‘I’m okay, very busy, long email in the works, I promise, talk to you later’ thing.

And then (this was years ago) I finally got sick of this shit, so I sent her a very civil and polite email saying that for my own emotional welfare I had to disengage because clearly she didn’t currently have the time to pay as much attention to me as I was willing to pay to her and that didn’t make me feel good.

It was a very civil email; I wasn’t mad, I didn’t call her names, I just said ‘obviously this isn’t working for you right now and I need more attention than you can give so I’m going to disengage rather than continue to feel bad when I don’t hear from you’.

Something like that.

I got a return email within two hours. It was, no lie, 30K in length. It started off by calling me a bastard and worked its way up (or down) from there. At great length, without once repeating itself. Or so I assume. I have a policy that I avoid hurtful shit as much as I can, so I only read the first paragraph, then skimmed the rest, then deleted it.

Now, obviously, eventually Jess and I patched up the miserable façade that was our ‘friendship’ or she wouldn’t have been able to reject me so stunningly a little over a year ago, but that’s not the point. The point is one I discovered then in that email to Jess, and that I have rediscovered now in my dealings with ‘Brittany’ --

If you’re nice to people and they don’t want or need anything from you, they’ll ignore you, because (they probably honestly feel) they are too busy and have no time in their lives for one more person who wants to pay positive attention to them that they don’t need.

On the other hand, if you do something to piss someone off, who has heretofore completely ignored you when you were being nice to them, they will suddenly rearrange their busy schedule and find the time to scream abuse at you.

This is the world we live in, and it’s depressing but true. ‘I really like you’ or ‘I find you admirable’ or ‘You’re really cool’ or similar expressions of admiration will be met with… nothing. And honestly, is there anything worse than… nothing?

No ‘thank you’. No ‘that was sweet’. No ‘it was nice of you to take the time to write me’. No. Nothing. If you’re being pleasant, you can be safely ignored.

No, if you want a response from a busy person, you have to press their ASSHOLE button. Press someone’s ASSHOLE button and they will find the time for you… if only to attempt to kick the shit out of you long distance.

I have, since the 9th of this month, been told that ‘first I was a nice guy, then I launched a fierce personal attack’. Which I did not.

I have been told that my assumption that ‘Brittany’ did not read every single piece of her own email was insulting. Then I was told that my implication that Brittany’s little newsletters and position papers were ‘mass email’ or ‘spam’ was insulting. THEN I was told, in response to a final, despairing attempt to once more clarify exactly what my original complaining email had said, that if I wanted to apologize, I should try it without all the other stuff where I attempted to blame ‘Brittany’ for various things (like sending me unsolicited mass mailings in exchange for a personal email, and, you know, yelling at me pretty promptly in response to the complaint after ignoring my initial fan letter).

None of this matters, except to once again illustrate that people will not respond to compliments or courtesy or affection or friendship. They WILL respond, in a heartbeat, to something that pisses them off.

I think that’s kind of sad, but, well, that’s life.

DON’T HATE THE PLAYER, HATE THE GAME

Moving on to other stuff, everyone is next door at Jeff’s playing video games on Jeff’s large TV. This is not me being deliberately excluded, they just play at Jeff’s when they’re doing a four player game and Jeff wants to play, again, because he has a larger TV.

And, to be fair, they’re playing some truly appalling and disgraceful shoot ‘em up wargame called DESERT STORM II in which American special forces invade some Middle Eastern city and shoot a lot of towelheads, and honestly, I think that’s just disgusting. This is a phosphor dot representation of a real life, ongoing, grim and grisly tragedy, being created and marketed for profit to… well, people I know… who are playing it for pleasure.

I honestly think this is sick and degrading, and I also think that anyone related to anyone, American or otherwise, who died or was injured in Desert Storm or in the current completely immoral invasion should be able to sue the asses off the gaming company that makes this travesty and win.

Yeah, yeah. I play fighting games in which various animated humanoid icons beat the living shit out of each other and I do that for fun. But those animated humanoid icons don’t represent real, contemporary people or real, contemporary suffering. And I think that makes a significant difference.

Stuff like this troubles me because I can’t really figure out my morality on it. Before I knew about this game, I was very aware of Grand Theft Auto, which pretty much models and validates the most immoral behavior imaginable, and does it for kids. And I don’t even want to get into the whole ‘kids’ thing, because I don’t feel Grand Theft Auto should be played by adults, either. Yet wouldn’t suppressing the manufacture and distribution of Grand Theft Auto and Desert Storm II be, well, tyrannical? What about freedom of expression? If I only believe in the freedom to express or create stuff that doesn’t offend me, how am I different from Ann Coulter (other than being much less good looking, I mean)?

These, as I say, are questions that trouble me. At what point do we say that appropriately socialized behavior and the survival of a generally civil culture is more important than, well, someone’s ‘right’ to make a lot of money pandering to our worst instincts? GTA, at least, has been directly linked to several crimes of violence committed by avid players, some of those crimes having been very horrific. At one point does society have a right to say ‘okay, this is just plain goddam sick and it’s making the individuals who are the fabric of our social order sick, so we need to do something’?

I may have put my finger on it when I zeroed in on the ‘right’ to make money off this shit, rather than worrying about the ‘rights’ of people to consume the crap.

People, after all, have a ‘right’ to buy airplane glue, take it home, and sniff it in a plastic bag. I think they have a right to drink entire bottles of cough syrup in one sitting. They certainly have a ‘right’ to drink alcohol until they die, or become very very sick. So, yes, people have a right to consume products, even unsafely or incorrectly or abusively.

Yet, is making a profit a ‘right’? Is putting a harmful product on the market a ‘right’? Put that way… well, I don’t know. Nobody claims there is any useful or healthy or positive purpose to cigarettes, yet tobacco companies claim a ‘right’ to manufacture and market the toxic goddam things.

You know, I have a copy of the Constitution on disc, and I’ve just skimmed through the Amendments again (alas, I do not have them memorized) and there is nothing… not one word in there… about capitalism, free trade, free markets, etc, etc. Not one single damned word.

I don’t think the ‘right’ to make a profit exists. Nor do I think the ‘right’ to manufacture and market a product that the manufacturer knows, or that the government (which derives its power from the people governed) knows, to be harmful or deleterious to the public good, exists.

I think that if a lawmaking body governed by the Constitution wanted to simply say Grand Theft Auto is a harmful product and may not be marketed in our area of authority, and those who have been harmed in ways that can be traced to Grand Theft Auto may sue its manufacturers for damages, such a law would be Constitutional.

Of course, it’s not going to happen. The manufacturers of GTA make a lot of money, and I have no doubt they make campaign contributions. Still. I think I have now resolved my own moral dilemma, at least to the extent that I have realized that there is no ‘right’ to make a profit by creating and selling a harmful product.

Now, if somebody wants to create a video game called Grand Theft Auto for their own personal use, that’s fine. If they want to give it away to people for nothing for their own personal use, that’s fine, too. But mass marketing something for a profit requires the use of the infrastructure of our civilization, and it is not a ‘right’ to make use of that infrastructure to sell something that damages it.

Okay. So, yes, people have a right to play GTA and they have a right to create GTA. They simply don’t have a right to profit from it.

Okay, that works for me.

Oh, the quote I opened this entry with is one I’ve heard various characters use in various movies. I thought it was appropriate, but in the context it is generally used (as I understand it, meaning men or women who get people to give them sex by pretending to feel greater emotional intimacy for their partner than they actually do) I don’t agree with it. Nobody is making anyone PLAY the game. If the game sucks, you should find another one, or, here’s an idea… don’t play ‘games’ with other people’s feelings. It’s demeaning to everyone involved (although, as far as I can see, most if not all ‘playas’ deserve as much degradation, not to mention disrespect, as they can get).

LITTLE JOY IN MUDVILLE

Yes. A LITTLE joy. As in, the Bucs won BIG, and not only did they win, they just plain whipped up on the poor hapless Redskins.

Even better, after spending the entire first half giving handjobs to everyone remotely involved with the Washington Redskins, the profusely embarrassed FOX broadcasting team came back in the second half and seeing clearly which way the game was quickly going, began slobbering all over the Buccaneers’ collective backsides… which is pretty nauseating, actually, but while they were polishing the Bucs athletic shoes with their tongues, they finally, and I mean FINALLY, AT LONG FUCKING LAST, gave some props to Brad Johnson.

I swear to God, every game for the last two years, at least, regardless of what astonishing and amazing thing the Bux offense might be doing on the field at that moment, in EVERY game, even the SUPER BOWL, some sportscaster, at some point, simply had to note that ‘Brad Johnson really isn’t a very talented quarterback’.

‘Brad Johnson is a journeyman quarterback.’

‘Brad Johnson has found a way to energize the Bux defense and they make him look far, far better than he is, for Brad Johnson is at best a mediocre quarterback.’

I have heard this shit until I want to puke, and I heard the exact same shit three years or so ago, when Trent Dilfer led the Ravens to victory in the Super Bowl. What it seems to come down to is, if you’re a quarterback in the modern NFL and you cannot run like a running back, you will never get any respect. It doesn’t matter if you lead a team into the Super Bowl and win, it doesn’t matter if you go to the Pro Bowl three times, it doesn’t matter if you are currently, by every stat that is measured and a few that aren’t (like the number of times a QB avoided being sacked by tossing the ball away quickly, which Brad Johnson also leads the league in) the Number One Quarterback in the League. If you can’t run the ball like a goddam running back, in today’s NFL, you are a mediocre quarterback.

Oh, I know, that isn’t entirely true. Peyton Manning, as far as I know, is not famed for his running ability, nor is Jake Plummer, nor, for all that, is Brett Favre or Kurt Warner. There seems to be more to it than that. There also seems to be the question of age. If you don’t start winning (which in the NFL can simply be a matter of what teams you play with, and have nothing to do with your quality as a player) until your 30s, AND you can’t run like a running back, well, then, it seems you will always be just a ‘journeyman’ quarterback.

Brad Johnson, until this year, was apparently simply keeping the huddle warm for Shaun King, who, any season now, will suddenly get cybernetic implants and become capable of actually leading the Bucs to a significant series of victories.

I shouldn’t rag on King, I know; he’s obviously a competent quarterback and he could probably do very well with some other team… I’ll bet the Chicago Bears or the Detroit Lions would love to sign him and he might do very well there. The Saints probably wouldn’t mind giving him a tryout, either, and the San Diego Chargers would most likely jump at the chance. Hell, the Oakland Raider might roll out some color of carpet for him after this season, if Rich Gannon keeps throwing passes to the other side.

But he does not seem to be able to do anything with the current Bucs roster, from what little we have seen of him during primetime lately.

Anyway, the good news was, this season Brad was no longer keeping things warm for Shaun King; instead, Brad was the caretaker regime here to hold the reins until Chris Simms was ready to take over. Yay.

Finally, though, towards the end of today’s game (well, yesterday’s game, now) the FOX sportscasting team (Chris Collingsworth, Troy Aikman, and someone else) started to grudgingly give Brad Johnson his props. “We should take note of what an impressive job Brad Johnson is doing out there today,” one of them said at one point, and then, indeed, he rattled off some very impressive stats. Then they even added, “And actually, Brad Johnson did even better last week against Indianapolis. He’s actually an excellent quarterback.”

Yes. Brad Johnson IS an excellent quarterback. He’s the starting quarterback of the defending Super Bowl champions; he led the team to the Super Bowl and won the Super Bowl and when the Bucs went two games without him last season due to a back strain they very nearly got destroyed. Brad is the starting quarterback not because the Bucs don’t have anyone who is very good to play for them; he’s the starting quarterback because, even when Gruden initially wanted to get rid of him and put in Shaun King (who ::sigh:: can run), Brad just hung in there winning games until even Gruden, the King of the West Coast Offense, had to admit that there is more to being quarterback than being able to occasionally play running back.

Brad may well have found a perfect fit, and I would not dispute that Brad playing for the Bucs is a union that is much more than merely the sum of its parts. Perhaps if by some grave misfortune Brad wound up being traded to some other team, he might not do as well there (or he might, I couldn’t definitively tell you and neither could anyone else). And I’m absolutely certain that the coaches of the Falcons and the Eagles would laugh in Jim McKay’s face if he offered to trade quarterbacks with them (and, sadly, I suspect Jon Gruden, undeniably classy though he is, would probably be tempted to make that trade if he was offered it).

Nonetheless, Brad Johnson can take hits all day long, Brad Johnson has a laser sighter on his arm, Brad Johnson can throw downfield as far as he needs to throw, Brad Johnson can read a defense at a glance and run a very complex offense with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind him, Brad Johnson is a natural leader and the Bux offense… currently the Number Three Offense in the NFL as well as the League’s championship attacking array… trusts Brad Johnson implicitly.

Brad Johnson is a GREAT quarterback, and it’s about time someone started noticing it and mentioning it somewhere other than in the local papers.

Now, having said all that, and yes, it was a lovely game once the Bucs got rolling, I have to say this: the rest of the day in football SUCKED.

First, the Bills lost, but I only know that because I checked Yahoo; we didn’t get the game down here (and I’d have just screamed and thrown things if I could have watched it anyway). And they lost HUGE, and they lost to the NEW YORK JETS, and, well, that just blows.

However, what absolutely pisses me off is how utterly obnoxiously offensively worthless the fucking Indianapolis Colts are.

I mean, Jesus Fucking Christ. They can beat the defending World Champions in overtime, after a spectacular 21 point comeback in the last five minutes of regulation, and yet, they can’t take the lousy goddam miserable piece of shit Carolina Panthers?

I ask Peyton’s Pansies to do one thing for me. Just one solid. Swear to God, after today’s game, they could have lost every single one for the rest of the season, I’d have been fine with it. All I needed from them was that they BEAT THE FUCKING PANTHERS.

Ohhhhhh noooooooooooo. WE couldn’t do THAT, Darren. THAT would have made you HAPPY.

Having said all that, I’m going to take the time to note once more something I stated previously in last Monday’s comment threads… the Bucs two losses this year, especially the last one to Indianapolis, were ugly and humiliating and embarrassing, and made me, and doubtless many other Tampa fans, long for an old fashioned lynching party. (I mean, seriously. How can a defense self destruct that spectacularly in the last five minutes of a game?)

But, having given it some thought… and without in any way admitting that my chagrin and mortification and utter exasperated fury with the Bucs defense last week was in any way unreasonable (because it wasn’t) it occurred to me afterwards that, well, the Bucs haven’t exactly lost to pushovers yet this season. And they haven’t lost by much in either game.

In fact, both losses came in overtime, by a field goal, to two of the best teams playing this season, by the numbers.

Now, I grant you, the Bucs WINS haven’t been that impressive. Beating the Eagles at home after they’d schemed for vengeance for eight months or so… yeah, that was a genuine accomplishment. Beating the Vick-free Falcons? Please. And beating the Redskins today? Once the second half started, those guys didn’t have a chance.

Tampa’s next four games, though, are against tough opponents: San Francisco, Dallas, New Orleans, and the fucking Panthers again. Oh, yeah, I think the Bux can take SF and Dallas. New Orleans has sucked this season but they always whip up on Tampa so they’ll be a bitch. And the Panthers… geez. If they’re still undefeated going into that game, well, it would be nice if Tampa was the one to knock them off, but I’m not counting on it; teams get very protective of streaks like that.

So now we’re going to see. Can the Bucs actually beat opponents playing on their level?

They haven’t yet. But at least they haven’t lost by much. In fact, it’s safe to say that in each game the Bucs have lost, the winners barely got out of the stadium alive.

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.