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.

Sunday, really early, November 16, 2003

I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused

Buncha stuff, most of it good, but let’s start with some surreality:

To: martianmanhunter2@juno.com
From: admin@keoz4.com
Reply-To: admin@keoz4.com

Hello,

I am creating a web directory, Keoz4.com and would like to include your website javapadawan.com under the "babies" category. f you'd like to be added, please follow this url:

http://keoz4.com/babies/submit.shtml

Thank you and best wishes,
Freddy K. Peterson
webmaster

Now, first, I don’t have anything to do with the ownership or administration of javapadawan.com. It’s owned and operated by a very nice woman named Chris who is a friend of a very nice man named Steven Tice who for some insane reason likes my writing and therefore publishes my Martian Vision column at that site, when I bother to turn one out, which I haven’t in quite some time.

Second… babies?

I could write and ask ‘what the FUCK, dude’, but I’d rather just be bemused by the bizarrity.

I’m also feeling vaguely guilty. Paul, who was the young good looking blogger belittling his gorgeous girlfriend that I went off on so thoroughly and in such detail on my last page, apparently hasn’t read my last page, nor have any of our common readers narked me out yet. I suppose I should have sent him a link… anyway, he sent me a friendly email and now, like, I have to tell him I don’t like him and totally went off on him yesterday. I kind of did in my response to his first email of over a week ago, in fact, I said pretty much everything I said yesterday on the blog page to him, only in slightly less harsh terms, and I assumed, since he hadn’t responded, that he loathed me entirely. I guess I should not have.

I can’t apologize because I really do think it’s just plain rude to complain about a woman who is deeply in love with you and who gives you head whenever you want her to, especially behind her back, more especially while flirting outrageously with many other women on the same page. I suspect I’m being somewhat childish because Paul is better looking and far more popular with chicks than I am, but, well, there are things about him that I feel legitimately rub me the wrong way.

Anyway, I suppose I should send Paul a link to the last page, but I’m exhausted right now and I’m not gonna do it at the moment, damn it.

Why am I exhausted? Because you’re reading the blog of the newest dishwasher at the Zephyrhills Village Inn. I just finished my first shift. It ran from 4 p.m. until 1:11 a.m., and everyone else who works there at some point told me that it was a horrible, horrible night for me to start, because we had some biker convention in town and the place was just slammed with business from about six o’clock onward. The dirty dishes came constantly, in mountainous heaps, and oh my god, if you’ve never washed dishes in a busy restaurant with a reasonably varied menu, you would not BELIEVE the way some people turn their dishes over to the bus cart. I mean, my God, what possesses someone to pile every scrap of paper and plastic they can find within a quarter mile of their table into a half empty ice tea pitcher, and then dump a clot of mashed potatoes and gravy on top of it? (Or maybe that was the bus boy. I don’t know.)

It’s a nasty, filthy job, and as with any job on your first day at it, I was terribly inefficient and slow and because it was such a horribly busy night, I had about half a dozen people pitching in to help me… and a good thing too, or I’d have been there until 8 a.m.

There’s ups and downs regarding this job. An up is that no one cares what I wear; a down is that I had to shave off my beard and I look fairly stupid without it. There’s a glass is half full/half empty thing going on with my wages; I’m making $2 less an hour than what I was making at the City Clerk’s office in Tampa (where I was severely underpaid), but I’m making $2 more an hour than the minimum wage I expected (and I’m still severely underpaid, but, well, I expected to be more severely underpaid). If I stick around long enough eventually I get benefits, but they’re the last thing on my mind right now.

I have to keep telling myself that (a) it was my first night and those are always terrible, it WILL get better, and (b) this was a really really horrible night, and not at all typical.

Another bad thing… pay is every two weeks and payday was yesterday. I get my first check on the 28th. Of course, it will be a lot larger than it would have been if I’d gotten paid next Friday; in fact, when I finally get paid, I should get about $300, which will be very welcome at that point. (It would be welcome NOW, but, still.)

Anyway. I’m employed. Hate my job, grateful to have it, very VERY tired right now. Oh, yes, my hours are 4 pm to closing (somewhere after midnight) Wednesday through Sunday. However, Village Inn is closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and closes early Christmas Eve, so this won’t mess with any family holiday stuff… although no one in the fam has mentioned Thanksgiving to me as yet, so Paul and I may be on our own there.

Back to work tomorrow, so I really need to finish this and post it and GO TO SLEEP. And thank God the Bucs suck; now I don’t mind the fact that I will not see another game of theirs this season.

However, I may as well tell you this now:

A while back, I mentioned good news I didn’t want to jinx by providing details at that point. I’d thought I’d hold off telling anyone until much further in the process, and if I mange to screw this up (as I’ve screwed up stuff with other people in the past) it will be especially humiliating for me, which is another big reason I didn’t want to prematurely announce it. However, being a lifelong loser with virtually no socially recognized accomplishments, I’m busting to tell people this, so goddam it, here it is:

From: "Melissa Crook, PublishAmerica"
To:
Subject: Universal Maintenance
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 16:13:40 –0500

Dear : Mr. Madigan,

I am happy to inform you that PublishAmerica has decided to give "Universal Maintenance" the chance it deserves. Attached you will find a sample copy of our contract for your careful review. Upon receiving your e-mail in acceptance with the terms, we will forward the final contract documents to you via regular mail for your signature. Along with your e-mail please include your legal name, current address, telephone number and title of work as you would like it to appear on the final contract.

The main terms of the contract are that we will pay you climbing royalties starting at 8%, you retain the copyright, and we will begin production on the book within 365 days of the date we receive the signed contract. A symbolic $1 advance underlines that all financial risk is carried by the Publisher, as we firmly believe it should be.

After both parties have signed the contract, you will be contacted by our production department with a list of questions and suggestions. Please feel free to e-mail any concerns or questions dealing with the terms of the contract to ___________ . Also, please visit our web site at www.PublishAmerica.com.

Welcome to PublishAmerica, and congratulations on what promises to be an exciting time ahead.

Sincerely,

Melissa Crook
Acquisitions Department
PublishAmerica

Now, as I said, I was going to hold off. My plan was to wait until I actually had a professionally bound copy of the book in my hands, suitable to put on my shelf right between my Keith Laumer and my Daniel Keyes Moran (and, while I’d like it if UM sold a million copies, if I actually simply end up with one professionally bound hard copy I don’t have to pay a cent for, I’ll consider the experience worth it). However, today I got the contract in the mail, signed it, had Paul witness it, and put it back in the mail, and here I am, telling all you about this.

Now, don’t think any of you are getting off easy. The time will come when I’ll be doing some necessary networking, trailblazing, and word of mouth marketing for the book (PublishAmerica requires it of their authors, and I think it’s a good idea) and I’ll be asking/begging/pleading/whining for all of you to mention the book on your blogs and to all your family, friends, co-workers, fellow shoppers at the supermarket, family, enemies, and random passersby within eyeshot. I won’t importune you to BUY a copy; that’s beneath me, you can or not, as you wish. (I will mention that the electronic copy that has been available for free on my Doc Nebula website for the past three years has now been taken down. I won’t go ‘nah nah nah boo boo’, but, well, it was there and I begged people to read it for nothing for years, now it’s too late.) But PublishAmerica is a Publish On Demand outfit (although they dance all around trying hard to deny it) and it’s largely up to the authors to generate some demand, so, well, prepare for the electronic equivalent of puppy dog eyes… but when, I don’t know. Maybe in as little as three or four months. There’s stuff I can’t control that has to happen first.

All right. That’s all my goddam news and I AM TIRED. I am going to post this and GO TO BED.

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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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