She thinks she’s tough
she ain’t no English Rose
the blind singer, he’s seen enough that he knows
sing a song about a long lost Irish girl
but I got one for you… my Portobello Belle

Saturday November 8 2003

And the barrow boys are gawking

Sometimes the smallest act of kindness can make you feel good.

It’s not that today’s been bad. Our landlady dropped by (Paul was still in bed, of course, but he’d given me the money we could spare this week) along with her supposedly ogre-like son who is due to take over the rent collecting soon, and I apologetically pressed $75 on her. Ogre-like son was wearing a Jonny Quest t-shirt and responded amiably enough to my geekish overtures regarding my fond memories of JQ, so, I don’t think we’re going to have any problems with him, which is a relief.

The landlady complained about Chewie digging vast trenches in the yard and asked that I fill them back up again, which I’ve long been intending to do, but, we have no shovel. She allowed as to how she might drop one off. If not, I’m sure Paul’s friend Chad has one.

I don’t know why Chewie digs vast trenches in the yard. Perhaps the soil underneath the topsoil is cooler. He likes to lay in them when he’s outside and its very hot. But I’m going to have to fill them in.

Anyway, so today hasn’t been bad. But when I went out on the Internet to mostly waste time in unsavory activities you will hopefully never know the details of (adult chat rooms, for God’s sake, don’t start thinking about that big Microsoft reward for hackers, look at this page, I can barely write HTML code, I mean, Jesus), I discovered as I did some desultory blogging around that long lost Irish girl Tess (she got the turn up on her boots, now) has quite kindly linked to my blog, without me even sniveling at her about it. What a doll. So I have linked to hers, above at her name and to the right (it’s called “Bored and Broke”). So go over there and say something nice to her; she’s a lovely gal.

Now, speaking of unsavory Internet activities, last night I had an odd experience. I was, you know, interacting with this other person, and again, specific details are none of your business, and we were both having a good time, and then, at the end, she seemed to find some sort of pleasure or satisfaction in revealing her real name, and address, and phone number, to me.

I mean, it was odd. It troubles me. I can see how this could be seen as exciting… we basically get aroused, when we get aroused by anything other than a direct reproductive signal, by social taboos. And the latest and most profound social taboo for any thinking person, especially any thinking female, is against giving total strangers you meet and play with on the Internet your real name, your address, or your phone number. She seemed to find this exciting, and, well, she assures me I’m the only one she’s ever done this with and that the info is real (she insisted at the end that I delete it all, and all the photos she sent me, seeming quite worried, once the moment had passed) and given the context, I’m inclined to believe that she actually gave me the real goods… and that profoundly disturbs me.

I mean, she’s safe with me. First, pragmatically, I’m so non-mobile as to be nearly paralytic, and the address she gave me is far, far away. Second, alas, I am genuinely a nice guy and would never try to hurt anyone. (I say ‘alas’ because really appallingly mean men seem to be much more attractive to women than us entirely pleasant fellows.)

It had occurred to me that she simply gave me false information as part of her particular fantasy (it has occurred to me, it always occurs to me, that ‘she’ might not even be female; on the Internet, you can never really be sure of anything). But first, going against a taboo this recent in our society, it doesn’t seem to me that using simulated information would get you there. (She wasn’t doing it to please ME; I was mostly perplexed at her insistence I ask her who she was and where she lived; most people stop talking to you if you do that.) To get any kind of thrill out of that, you’d have to really BREAK the taboo, not just simulate it. I mean, it’s an entirely data oriented, completely potential situation. It seemed to me that faking it wouldn’t be adequate.

Beyond that, I think this person, at the very least, was real to the extent that she was who she said she was (a married woman around my age whose husband did not know of her extracurricular interests, who had a reasonably high up executive position in a local branch of government). She sent me several photos of herself, both mundane and erotic, which I found very convincing. (Fakes can generally send you either one or two ‘normal’ photos, but nothing nude or explicit, or as many nude or explicit photos as you want, but nothing of the person they are pretending to be standing around in street clothes. It’s easy to find normal photos of someone on the ‘net, and it’s easy to find nudes and erotic photos of various strangers on the ‘net, but finding photos of the same person in clothes and then out of their clothes is difficult.) The details she gave me… well, I’m an excellent writer and I could make up a detailed fantasy background like that if I wanted to flesh out a convincing female roleplaying persona, but not many other people would. (Most guys wouldn’t come up with details like that, anyway. They’d make their female fantasy persona a topless dancer or something.)

Leaving aside how genuine she seemed to me (and I’ve dealt with probably thousands of personas on the Internet; rarely does anyone seem as persuasively authentic as she did) the information she gave me checks out, at least to some extent, on Google. The phone number won’t come up, but that just means it’s unlisted. The address is real. And her name comes up in a few references in the local papers near where she lives (apparently she writes letters to the editor).

So, I’m left with the idea that this woman is real, and she really does get a sexual kick out of giving her personal information to strangers on the Internet, and that frightens me, for her sake. Even if I was actually the first guy she did this with, if she liked it, she’s going to do it again (no one knows better than I do the power of sexual compulsion), and eventually, she’s going to do it with someone genuinely scary. The chat room she and I met in, and the fantasies she and I both enjoy, are, well, scary ones. Her meeting an honest to Ted Bundy psycho online, while hanging out in chat rooms like that, and giving out her personal information to any stranger she finds exciting… I don’t want to think about it. The odds are a lot better than I want to consider.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do. She’s an adult, she can do what she wants. All I could think of is to send her an email cautioning her about the possible consequences of this behavior (which I’ve done, but hey, I was right there with her last night, so why would she listen to me?), and… well, get in touch with her husband and let HIM know, and that would trade a potential danger for a very real mess… no, not going to do that.

And, hey, she may be making it all up. Or she may, at least, be giving real details of, say, an old address she no longer lives at, and an old job. I suppose she might even be a guy giving details on some woman he knows, but if so, he’s being REALLY irresponsible… but, again… nothing I can do about that.

But… wow. That was freaky.

Passing on from that, I’m going to do something I hardly ever do here… talk about politics.

When I started my first blog, um… last August, I think… it was very derivative of Tom Tomorrow’s political blog. Nobody paid any attention to it, and there was no reason they should. I don’t know much about politics, my opinions aren’t worth very much, and there are a lot of much better qualified people than me out there running much better political blogs (as well as a lot of people just as unqualified as me running their keyboards about crap they are nearly completely ignorant regarding, but never mind).

Anyway, I decided to just start blogging about me and my life and my experiences, because, well, that’s the only thing in the world that I know more about than anyone else. But, still, there have been a couple of things lately that have troubled me, so I’m going to talk about them.

I’m sure both these things are being blogged about a lot on the poli blogs, as well, but, since freedom of speech is a big concern of mine, I’m going to throw my two cents in.

I’m sure most of you know that CBS had a very controversial mini-series on the Reagans planned for this month’s sweeps, and they recently announced that, in response to an enormous conservative uproar regarding the way dear ol’ Ronnie and Nancy were portrayed in it (apparently, somewhat realistically), they’ve decided to dump it off to Showtime instead, thus dropping its potential audience from twenty million to two million.

I haven’t been out on the poli blogs… I find them horribly depressing, no matter how far left or right they are… but I’d imagine my liberal comrades are screaming bloody murder about conservative ideological repression and such like, while the conservatives are partying and declaring a great victory over the ‘liberal media’.

Honestly, it just makes me tired.

But, anyway. What most of you may not know (it passed me by quickly as a Yahoo news headline that was gone next time I went back to reinforce its details in my memory), some California newspaper recently banned its reporters from using the term ‘resistance fighters’ to describe the Iraqis who are fighting against the occupying American military forces in their country. I can’t remember the name of the paper (I want to say it was the Los Angeles Times, but I can’t be sure), but their position was, ‘resistance fighters’ conjures up romantic images of the French Resistance, and they don’t want to glorify enemy partisans who are killing American soldiers with such a term.

Both these things trouble me, but, honestly, one far more than the other, and I’m going to tell you why.

In the case of CBS deciding to dump The Reagans to cable, regardless of what my fellow liberals may think, that’s not ‘conservative repression’. That’s a commercial, for profit corporate broadcasting entity making a decision, based on marketing considerations. (For what it’s worth, I think it’s a stupid decision… you can’t BUY publicity like that for a project; ratings would have been through the roof on the thing and advertisers would have known that and would have been very happy to buy ad time; they don’t care about ideology).

But, stupid or not, CBS’ decision wasn’t in any way repressive. They don’t broadcast things for free, nor are they sponsored by tax dollars. They’re a private industry and a private corporation and as long as they adhere to the government’s broadcasting guidelines, they’re free to offer or not offer any programming they want. And, frankly, anyone who wants to watch The Reagans still can; just subscribe to Showtime. (Watch the ads right and you can check it out for free, if you get one of those ‘first three months free’ deals and then cancel your subscription before they start charging you.)

Now, mind you, the conservative agenda in this case, as it nearly always is, is entirely pernicious and vile. The majority of conservatives (poor, blue collar, Bible Belt conservatives) are simply pig ignorant fools; they believe what they are told to believe by a well organized right wing conservative network that does its best to manipulate the media with any dirty trick it can (I’m not making this up; it’s fairly well known). The wealthy conservatives do what they do for one simple reason… they have a lot of money, and they want conditions to either stay as they are, or to change in such a way as benefits them and those few people they regard as being members of their tribe (other prosperous, influential conservatives).

This means that poor and ‘middle class’ (in real world terms, less poor) conservatives (the populist masses making up most of the Republican Party) revere Ronald Reagan because there has been a lot of money poured into shaping their perceptions of Reagan by the wealthy elite of their particular political party. The wealthy elite doesn’t really revere Reagan, but they love leaders like Reagan… charismatic figureheads who care about nothing except their place in history, and who will sit back and keep their hands off while skilled conservative political operatives erect a structure of rules, guidelines, and laws that removes as much government oversight from the wealthy as possible, while also redirecting as much of the government’s tax expenditures into wealthy pockets as they can get away with.

The last thing wealthy conservatives want is for a sham like Reagan (or Dubya, who is very much a commander in chief in the ‘hands off’ charismatic ventriloquist's dummy Reagan mode) to be exposed as what he actually was. Poor conservatives (who do most of the voting for Republican candidates) are ignorant or actively misguided, but they aren’t necessarily stupid. Let them once manage to get it through their heads that leaders like Reagan and Dubya do not in any significant way benefit the poor of any political stripe, and those guys will stop voting Republican no matter how much they can’t stand homersexuals, because good jobs and decent education for their kids are more important than the narrow-minded inbred biases the Republicans normally quite deliberately play on to get their idiotic opportunistic figureheads elected.

So, yes… the conservative blitz aimed at keeping The Reagans off the air was, indeed, evil in pretty much every sense. But the conservative organizations didn’t make the final decision, they simply applied pressure. CBS’ decision to more or less capitulate to the conservatives to an extent… and they didn’t knuckle under entirely… while regrettable, isn’t repression. It’s just, well, silly. The mini series would have made a lot of money for CBS; who cares if Bill O’Reilly has an aneurysm over it? (Sane people, in fact, would regard that possibility as an inducement to broadcast the thing to the largest audience possible.)

Now, on the other hand, when we have a publisher and a bunch of editors telling their reporters not to use a perfectly valid and accurate phrase to describe, well, resistance fighters, that’s an entirely different thing. That’s idealogical. That shows us a member of what is supposed to be a free press… one of the most important bastions a free society has… basically taking a stance against, not only free expression, but actual truthful reporting.

Look, folks… the American troops occupying Iraq may be many things (above all others, not morally responsible for being there, they didn’t make the decision to invade, they wouldn’t have if they weren’t ordered to, they would have gone to jail if they hadn’t obeyed their orders, and pretty much all of them would leave right this minute if they could), but, well, they are an invading and occupying army. They did depose the more or less legitimate ruling government and they are attempting, in an utterly half assed and completely clueless way, to set up a governmental structure that is more to the liking of the invading government (Haliburton) than to the people actually living in Iraq. We have not yet held free elections in Iraq, and don’t hold your breath waiting… Dubya’s boys are very aware that the instant we do, the crazy Muslim ‘death to the Great Satan’ freaks will be washed into power on a populist tidal wave, and they don’t want that, and honestly, I don’t blame them.

Now, I don’t like armed Islamic men (and some women, and, tragically, some kids) running around blowing up American soldiers any more than anyone else, but for God’s sake. The American troops are an occupying army that got where they are by illegally invading a sovereign nation in flagrant violation of international law and the expressed wish of a majority of the planet’s population. The Iraqi partisans fighting against them are, well, by definition, fighters, and they are, certainly, resisting the American occupation, so ‘resistance fighters’ is a perfectly valid and accurate and truthful term with which to describe them.

This stuff about ‘not wanting to associate them with the French Resistance’ isn’t crap, it’s just stopping short. What they’re trying not to say, but they very much mean, is that if American newspaper accounts describe the Iraqi resistance fighters in terms that cause readers to associate them with the French Resistance… then what does that make the invading & occupying American army?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Himmler used to instruct his officers not to refer to partisan forces in occupied countries as ‘resistance fighters’. Such groups were to be called ‘terrorist forces’.

A rose by any other name would smell entirely different. And the people whose business it is to influence if not outright manipulate our perceptions and our feelings know that very well.

Now, I have to say, if I were a reporter and my editor instructed me not to use the perfectly valid phrase ‘resistance fighters’ to describe, well, resistance fighters, I’d have a pretty big problem. I’d have to at the very least think hard about quitting my job, and even if I didn’t do that, I would have to, as a gesture of conscience, continue using ‘resistance fighters’ wherever it was appropriate to do so, and at the very least force my editor to change it to… whatever… the politically approved phrase of the day was.

But, then, I’m not a reporter, and I may be talking out my ass… if I had a job and someone was actually paying me to write (a lifelong dream of mine), I might very well just tuck my chin in and ride it out. After all, it’s not like it hurts my conscience to call suicide bombers ‘terrorists’. Not to mention ‘crazy ass deranged homicidal maniacs’.

Now, having doubtless enraged readers at every point of the political spectrum with the above several paragraphs (hey, we aim to please here at A Brown Eyed Handsome Man) let me say some stuff about TV.

Skin and Tarzan are both cancelled. The former I enjoyed; the latter I didn’t, but honestly, the brutal velocity with which shows are put on and pulled off these days is just dizzying. When I was a kid (back in the days of gas lights and dumbwaiters, yes, indeed), a new show always lasted at least a season… even if nobody watched the damned thing but me, you could be pretty sure you’d get at least 22 episodes of it before it vanished.

Nowadays, though, shows seem to have all of three or four weeks to find an audience. And FOX seems especially stupid about their programming; they put Skin, for example, up against Monday Night Football, and when it failed to pull a substantial young male demographic, they cancelled it. I mean, come on, even I know you have to pick your spots better than that. Trying to pull young males away from Monday Night Football is simply futile, or at least, you aren’t going to get there with a teen angst soap opera loosely patterned on Romeo & Juliet with somewhat more adult subject matter tossed in at various random intervals.

If FOX were serious about being the edgy network, and they were serious about pulling young males away from MNF, they’d put on something about three hot young co-eds sharing an apartment in New York City, wandering around in as little as they can possibly get away with nearly all the time, sleeping with a lot of male geeks who get all the memorable dialogue, and, when they don’t have one of those handy, making out with each other.

Or, they’d do a futuristic Charlie’s Angels with some kind of occult background that would let them work in vampires and werewolves (think Dark Angel meets Buffy meets VIP, with maybe a little Highlander thrown in) and, again, at least twice a month (more in Sweeps months) they’d have two of the hotties mackin’ on each other on screen.

Plenty of t&a, lots of action, guns, swords, vampires being CGI’ed into dust before our very eyes, and lesbian kissing scenes. That’s what’s going to put a stake in MNF.

Skin on the other hand, just wasn’t going to get there. But it was a pretty good show, and FOX shouldn’t have been dumb enough to put it up against MNF. They should have waited to put it in that Monday night timeslot after football season.

I can’t remotely regret the cancellation of Tarzan, it was alternately boring and dreadful, and ERB’s most famous character simply deserves better than that. But, again, you can hardly say the WB gave it a fair chance.

I’m deeply afraid that Eliza Dushku’s Tru Calling will be the next FOX show on the chopping block, and, again, FOX has only itself to blame. They seem to be determined to suicide anything they have that’s remotely original or above average in quality against competition they cannot beat in time slots they cannot win. Tru Calling, for reasons that only be described as demented, has been shoved into a Thursday night 8 p.m. timeslot, and it’s just doomed. I mean, I adore Eliza Dushku beyond all sense or reason and still I watch Survivor and tape Tru Calling. Those few people out there not watching Survivor are watching Friends (and taping Survivor) so you may as well start an office pool on how many more days it will be before FOX announces Tru Calling has been terminated with extreme prejudice. And if I were you, I’d pick low.

Tru Calling isn’t that great so far, mind you… I haven’t been impressed… but it is, at least, unlike anything else on the air, and besides that, well, ELIZA. I’d like to see FOX have the good sense to move it to some other timeslot (say, Tuesdays at 8, when I don’t watch anything, or even Mondays at 8, when apparently no one watches anything) but I suspect they’ll just shitcan it instead. Very shortly.

I’m torn. This Sunday FOX has The Simpsons Series Premiere, but CBS is showing something on Britney Spears recent decision to cultivate a bad girl image, which of course will be nothing but an excuse to show the french kiss with Madonna footage over and over again, but as I don’t have cable I missed it the first time, so I’m entirely cool with that. Given that The Simpsons ep will be rerun forever, in syndication if nowhere else, I’ll probably watch CBS. I mean, jesus. Vanessa can call me anything she likes, but I could watch Britney and Madonna make out all day long.

If the Bucs manage to beat Carolina tomorrow, they will, according to something I read in the paper, become the most consistently inconsistent team in NFL history… their win/lose cycle will have gone on longer than any other team’s (for 9 weeks). Obviously I have to hope they win tomorrow, and it is their WEEK to win, yes it is… but Carolina… ::shudder:: They’re just meanies. I don’t LIKE those guys.

The problem is, winning tomorrow (if the Bucs manage it, no lock there) proves nothing. It keeps the season alive, but just barely (cannot BELIEVE the Bucs lost against the fucking Saints last week, rashen frashen fricken fracken) and then, pretty much, the Bucs have to win every single other game left this season, and Carolina will have to drop at least one. Can the Bucs beat… well… Green Bay, fucking New Orleans AGAIN (at their stadium) and the goddam Tennessee Titans? Magic Eightball says ‘things look bleak for our heroes’.

Yes, I’m assuming the Bucs CAN beat the Giants, the Jaguars, the Texans, and the Falcons. That may be unwise, but the Bucs haven’t lost to a mediocre team yet… oh, well, yeah, the Saints, but they have this hoodoo thing going on with Tampa Bay (it may well be actual hoodoo, they are from New Orleans) so they don’t count.

What gives me a tiny smidgen of hope is that, well, the Bucs did not actually lose against Indiana, and are, in fact, 5-3, not 4-4. I realize that specific objective fact is not reflected in the official stats in this particular facet of the time/space continuum, but still. Without two goddam two minute warnings and a completely illegal onside kick recovery, the Colts would not have overcome a 21 point deficit. The Bucs did not lose that game. They just didn’t.

But, basically, the boys in brigantine have to get their heads out of their asses and show up to actually play for every remaining game on their schedule. Can they? Sure… every other week. 8-8 ain’t gonna get there, though, and so far, there is no sign at all they can do any better.

If Carolina wins tomorrow, though, it’s pretty much over. And there’s part of me…

No, no, no. That tiny little voice crying out for the respite of sweet surrender to utter despair must still, at this point, be resolutely extinguished. The Bucs still have a chance. Hell, the Bills still have a chance. And if the Bucs win tomorrow, they’ll continue to have a chance…

Until next weekend, when they get to play Green Bay, on an even week.

God help us all.

And now, the end is near.

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And in the roaring of the diesel
I stood and watched her walk away
I could have caught up to her easy enough
But something must have made me stay
And the big wheel keep on turnin’
Neon burnin’ up above
Well I’m just high on this world
Take a slow ride with me, girl
On the tunnel of love

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RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

(a) seem smarter than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(b) be funnier than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(c) be a better writer than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(d) be correct when you point out some manner in which the person writing the blog you are posting comments to was wrong, and/or

(e) Upset The Wimmenfolk On The Blog.

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

(a) seem smarter than I am, I like people who are smarter than I am, as long as they’re not jerks about it;

(b) are funnier than I am, then I get to laugh at your witty remarks, and hey, that’s all good;

(c) are a better writer than I am. Although I’m in a peculiar place as regards writing skills; good enough to be better than nearly all the amateurs out there, not good or lucky enough to be a professional at it. So if you are a better writer than I am, you are probably a professional writer and therefore do not have time to post comments on other people’s blogs, so this probably doesn’t matter, as relates to this blog;

(d) correct my mistakes; unlike apparently 95% of the remainder of the human race, I am under no illusions as to my own infallibility and simply don’t care if someone points out that I am wrong about something. Being wrong about things does not strike me as either a character flaw or a shameful embarrassment; we are all wrong about a lot of things every day of our lives, and that’s just how that works;

(e) Upset My Wimmenfolk. Well, actually, I shouldn’t say I don’t care if you upset my wimmenfolk, I do, the very thought deeply offends me. However, it’s just that the wimmenfolk at this point on this blog are my mom, my cuz in law, and my sister in law, and if you do something to upset them, I strongly doubt the authorities finding what’s left of you will be able to identify you without a DNA comparison. My mom, and any woman who marries any of the males in this family and stays married to him for any length of time, are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. So offend them all you want; it’s a self correcting problem.

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

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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.

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