I wrote it a while ago, but it’s still worth reading! Check out Unlucky 7 … my review of Buffy’s final season, and why I wasn’t sorry to see the Slayer go.

Wednesday November 12 2003

This is what I’m talking about

People bitch at me… you know who you are… about not breaking my long posts up by topic and giving each separate entry its own comment thread. So I do that, and what happens? My brilliant analysis comparing Smallville to Buffy draws no feedback at all. And sure, that’s MY problem, but when it has me thinking those two magic words, ‘private weblog’ again, it becomes YOUR problem.

Hey, I know people who read this thing watch Smallville and used to watch Buffy. And I know I’m still obnoxiously opinionated. That thing should have drawn some responses. Since it didn’t, I feel much like I wasted my time writing it and posting it. I don’t like feeling that way, so, this is why I don’t break stuff up and give it its own comment threads. Now you know.

On that subject, people aren’t nice enough to me, and they don’t appreciate me enough.

Yeah, I know, that sounds really whiney, but admit it, you all feel that way too. We’re just not supposed to say it, because when we say it, we’re coming out and admitting to feeling the way all of us DO feel… that we ARE the center of the universe, and goddam it, people should pay more attention to us. Positive attention. Nurturing, supportive attention. Flowers. Baked goods. Money. Sex. I can’t remember the last time anyone offered me any of those things, and by God, I deserve ALL of them. Probably many of you do, too.

The reason we’re not supposed to just come out and say ‘people need to be nicer to me’ is that, well, everyone ELSE resents the living shit out of it when someone says that. I know I do. I don’t feel like I need to be any nicer to anyone than I’m being. I’m DAMNED nice to the people I feel like being nice to. I don’t need ANYone telling me I should be nicer to them than I’ve already been. If someone feels I’m not paying enough attention to them, obviously, they haven’t paid enough attention to me first. That’s how I feel about it.

Now, whiney though saying ‘people aren’t being nice enough to me’ seems, it’s still more or less acceptable as long as I leave it at that. I mean, since I’ve mentioned it, most people will probably, grudgingly, cut me a little slack for the general statement, since I’ve reminded you all that YOU feel that way, too. (And you do.) But I’d really be crossing the line and alienating people even more than I normally do if I started pointing fingers and naming names… “YOU didn’t respond when I sent you that nice birthday card last month” and “YOU don’t appreciate me coming around and visiting when you were feeling shitty last week” and “YOU haven’t fallen obsessively in love with me long distance based on my wonderfully brilliant and funny novels, short stories, articles, and cartoons yet, you stubborn, mean-ass bitch”.

I should point out here that those specific examples are all ones I made up that are not, in fact, anything I specifically resent anyone for. I knew if I started talking about the ACTUAL things I find annoying about real people in my life (without naming names, which I wouldn’t do) and how they don’t pay enough attention to me, various members of my audience would get mad thinking I was talking about them. Which would be fine if I was, but, you know, I’m not going to name names because I’m not THAT demented, and the wrong people would think I was talking shit about them, and that would make me sad. It always seems like the people you like most think you mean them when you say something unpleasant about someone else entirely, and the people you really wish would just get the message and FUCK OFF always have all your little hints go right over their heads.

Anyway. If you start getting into specific ‘people aren’t nice enough to me and this is what I mean’ delineations, then you pretty quickly start looking utterly childish and petulant. Because, let’s face it, nobody gets treated by anyone else exactly the way they’d LIKE to be treated, and that’s just the human condition.

But, hell. Even my sniveling above about how nobody posted a response to my utterly brainy and beautifully lucid Smallville entry last time is going to seem pretty childish. It’s perfectly legitimate, of course. I didn’t write that thing for me. I thought, given the obvious audience I have and their previously stated interests, that might generate some interesting discussion. I like generating interesting discussion; I hardly ever get to participate in any such thing in real life these days. But… nooooooo. Apparently it was ‘not interested in Smallville and Buffy Day’ yesterday on the entire frickin’ Internet.

So, people aren’t nice enough to me. In fact, I suppose in general, people aren’t nice enough to anyone. But it’s profoundly counter-intuitive, and a real effort, for me to constantly be civil and reasonable and say ‘well, you know, Darren, you’re really not that important to anyone else in the world but yourself, and you just have to accept that and not resent it’. I mean, yes, I do accept it, but not RESENTing it… well, it’s an effort of maturity that I can usually make, but occasionally, I just get fucking TIRED of it.

Hey, look around at my blog. Check out that scroll to the right. Do y’all SEE all that work that I’ve done? I’m pretty frickin’ outstanding at the very few things I’m outstanding at, or at least, I’m rather more productive than most of YOU lot and all your stinking friends you pay more attention to than you pay to ME. And I’m nice to EVERYone. Where’s my props, goddam it?

All right. That’s enough sniveling for now.

I had a horrible dream about Jeff last night. The dream itself was pleasant… it was one of those I have from time to time, where Jeff shows up and he’s actually still alive and his being dead was all some horrible misunderstanding that it’s taken him a long time to get around to being able to correct, but no, he didn’t actually die and now we’re in touch again.

What’s horrible about these dreams is waking up and realizing ‘fuck, Jeff’s still dead’ all over again.

I suppose this all sounds really dreadfully gay, or something. I’m not sure I care. Jeff was very important to me, and I still miss him. I suppose these dreams are all about some part of me still not accepting that I’ll never get an email from him (Jeff died before email really became prevalent, so I never did get an email from him, but he would love email and ohmyGOD would he have the greatest weblog in the world if he were still alive? I think so), I’ll never pick up the phone again and hear his voice, he’ll never drive a few hundred or a few thousand miles on a suspended license to spend a three day weekend crashing on my couch and showing me bad movies he loves on videotape again, we’ll never work on a story or a comics project or argue about whether the She-Hulk belongs in the Avengers again, we’ll never go to a titty bar together again, and I’ll never get the chance to apologize to him for screwing up our shot with Steve Jackson or to tell him that he really is my best friend and I really do appreciate him, and to thank him for sticking with me when all our other worthless college buddies left us both behind.

It was a very lucid dream. I can’t remember exactly what we were talking about, but I enjoyed the conversation very much. And then I woke up and he wasn’t actually here and he never will be and I really hate that.

I’ve given thought to the notion that when I have these occasional dreams in which Jeff is still alive, maybe it’s him trying to speak to me from wherever he is now. I suppose that would be vaguely comforting. But I don’t want him there, I want him here… somewhere I can talk to him on the phone, somewhere I can send him an email, somewhere I can read his weblog and post comments to it on how much we both liked The Fellowship of the Ring movie and who was hotter, Dark Willow or Faith.

Jeff died before Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can’t believe that sometimes. Jeff would have been a HUGE Buffy fan. And he would have positively swooned for Dark Willow; he always liked bad girls.

Anyway, enough of that. Let’s see, what else…?

Oh, I was touring around a few blogs I don’t visit much any more, and it’s a bit scary. Maybe the world DOES revolve around me, after all. Some of these blogs, if I don’t show up and post comments, apparently nobody does. It’s a heavy responsibility. And shows that other bloggers, some of whom have much better blogs than I do, are doing far worse than I am as far as getting any response from folks. Which should, I suppose, provide me with perspective, but as I said above, I’m not really feeling all that reasonable today.

Actually, I’m feeling downright goddam grumpy.

You know what it might be? My Titan game. It’s actually Jeff’s old Titan game. A mutual friend of ours rescued it from Jeff’s effects and sent it to me after Jeff died. I’ve been playing it a lot lately with Paul (and last night, we started a game with Scott) and that’s probably why Jeff’s on my mind a lot… well, more than usual. I don’t think a day goes by I don’t think of him at least once, wondering what he would have thought of some movie, or some TV show, or some book, or some actress. But lately I suppose playing with the Titan game so much has just permeated my subconscious with Jeff references, and so I’m dreaming about him.

And now, since it works like a charm every time, I’m going to note that neither Jillian Who Is Herself Alone nor The Lovely Allisson have sent me any email in a very long time, and I know they both owe me some. I wouldn’t be a bitch about it, honestly, but every time I mention either of them owing me email, they both send me some within a day or so, and I like getting email from both of them, so hey, if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.

The weird thing is, I don’t think Alli even reads this blog, so I don’t know WHY this works on her. If I seriously thought I could do weird cybernetic voodoo and make beautiful women obey me just by mentioning their names on this blog (Alli is indeed a beautiful woman), believe me, that is not a power I would waste on email.

It probably won’t work this time, but still: Jillian and Alli Officially Owe Me Email. There. Now let’s sit back and see.

Oh, and let me close by noting that Vanessa is doing something very strange and enigmatic with her blog right now, and being rather old, I just can't be expected to put up with daft nonsense like that. I'll comment on her stuff again when I can once more figure out what the hell she's up to. But she's a good poppet, regardless.

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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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