I woke up in mid afternoon because that's when it all hurts the most
I dream I never know anyone at the party and I'm always the host
If dream are like movies then memories are films about ghosts
You can never escape you can only move south down the coast...

Sunday Nov 30 2003

Fretful things:

Work in a few hours. It's still really hard on my feet... in fact, where in the past I've found I've gotten used to being on my feet all day rather quickly, on this one it seems like my feet have started to hurt worse at the end of the night. I find that distressing. I suppose I really am getting old.

The email I sent off to PublishAmerica containing my finished manuscript, along with a few other attachments they asked for, got mailer-daemoned back to me. This is highly troubling. I imagine what happened is that the unmentionably stupid bitches at PublishAmerica, or at least the one who was supposed to process my email, took the entire week of Thanksgiving off (hence my insulting terminology towards her/them; I have NO SYMPATHY at this moment for anyone who even had Thanksgiving Day free from work, much less THE ENTIRE FUCKING WEEK). However, like many, whoever it was doubtless did not reflect on the limited space of their email server, nor did they take precautions to make certain that someone would monitor the account and clean it out periodically. I imagine several authors other than me snuck their own manuscripts in before mine got there, and so the email box was crammed to capacity, and my stuff got bounced.

Still, it's highly fretful, all the worse because realistically I can't expect my follow up email, sent Friday (when I got the bounce mail back) to be answered prior to tomorrow at the earliest. Right now all I can do is try not to worry that suddenly, this amazing opportunity, this astonishing window into a possibly far better life, has inexplicably closed.

If it's as I surmise, they'd better apologize. You DON'T fuck with the aspirations and ambitions of unpublished authors like this. Especially simply because you wanted to take a shameful amount of time off from work while your goddam author is washing dishes at a Village Inn.

Pardon my truculence, but I truly loathe my job, and I'm heading back there again in two hours, while the rest of you loll about in a post holiday daze, or put up Christmas decorations.

Other fretful things:

I went out and spent an enormous amount of money Friday night after work. I spoiled myself with a cab ride home from Village Inn, then took cabs two and from Wal-mart, all because it had been SO GODDAM LONG since I spent money on myself. I'd only planned to spend maybe $50 on myself... perhaps pick up Angel Season 2... but I wound up picking up various odds and ends (soda, some inserts for my shoes that are supposed to relieve physical stress and don't, much) and, well, Angel Season 2, plus, West Wing Season 1, plus The Terminator, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, It's A Wonderful Life, and Point of No Return.

Total bill: A LOT.

Oh, we're still okay; I sat down and ran some numbers last night and with Paul and I both working, we're well over our monthly budget. It's just, you know, with Christmas coming up this month, that kind of insane expenditure simply on me is rather untimely and ill judged.

I'm considering banning Mike Sawin from my blog comments, for reasons none of the rest of you will understand. The only reason I've hesitated this long is that I don't want to be that kind of person... an Aaron Hawkins kind of person, I suppose, or a Robyn Pollman... and being who I am, if I do it, I'll announce it here, and, well, it would just be troubling. Sawin's been on his best behavior here, but... well... I just intensely dislike him. There are reasons for that, some of them rooted in our mutual history, but I don't think I'm quite that petty. Judging even from his extremely sycophantic comments here, and also from his own blog entries (which I check out from time to time) he hasn't changed at all over the years, he's simply behaving here in a manner he calculates will win him positive attention/approval. I intensely dislike being manipulated by false civility into becoming an attention/approval provider to someone I despise, and Sawin refuses to respond to either hints (as when I ignore his comments entirely) or direct indications I want him gone (as with an email I sent him recently)... so, as I say, I'm considering banning him.

I just, you know, don't want to be That Guy. But honestly, I hate the jerk.

I could go into endless justifications as to why I dislike Sawin so much, but I don't think it's appropriate. Ultimately, in any social continuum, our views of other people and their behavior are entirely subjective, and there's no reason why my opinion of anyone should have any weight... other than in how much attention I pay to them, which is, of course, entirely my decision. I really do not want to interact with Sawin in any way, or pay any attention to him at all, and oddly, that is not so much in spite of how determinedly pleasant he's been to me in my comment threads, but in part because of it... and again, I'm not going to explain that, because my opinion of Sawin isn't important, except in how it impacts my eventual decision on whether or not I'll continue to allow him the privilege of textual interaction here.

However, that last isn't entirely a private decision. Oh, I'll make it when I feel really moved to do it, which may well be the next time he posts something, because he truly aggravates me. Still, the rest of you read Sawin's comments too, and for all I know, some of you may enjoy them. And while I don't believe that posting in comment threads I am currently paying for is a 'right', I do think banning someone from that method of expression is a profound and troubling decision to undertake, and I want to continue to ruminate on it.

Nonetheless, I'd like it more if I didn't have comments from this asshole on my blog, so I'll probably do this sometime soon.

Last entry on the fretful things index at the moment: Diane, my supervisor, took me aside last night and warned me (it seemed like a genuinely friendly warning, rather than an actual reprimand from the boss) that a few of the waitresses had come to her to play the Sexual Harrassment card as regards me. She told me that she felt the accusations were ridiculous, and that the waitresses were mostly testing her to see exactly what she was going to tolerate, and she was aware that everyone said provocative things in the dish room... waitresses, cooks, everyone who goes in and out is constantly flirting and talking shit to each other.

Regardless of Diane's supportive attitude, however, I have to wonder if this isn't the death knell for my job at Village Inn. I've worked in predominantly female environments for the past fifteen years; as a general rule, when female co-workers start accusing a male of sexual harrassment to female supervisors, he's history.

People tend to be horribly cowardly in this kind of environment, of course... no one ever comes to you and tells you they have a problem and gives you a chance to fix it, they simply knife you behind your back to your supervisor. And of course, Diane wouldn't tell me who'd complained about me, which is simply horrifyingly unfair if you think about it. In nearly any work place, anyone can, basically, lodge an anonymous complaint about anyone else, and there's nothing you can do about it. I can't simply decide, 'okay, I'll be more careful when I talk to these specific people', because I don't know who they are. Nor do I know what it was I said that aggravated them, or even if there was anything I said. (I don't mean to disillusion anyone, but occasionally women simply use the sexual harrassment charge to get rid of male co-workers they don't like much. I've never thought someone should be fired from a job for the grievous sin of being unpopular, but, well, been there, done that, far too many times.)

As most men do in these situations, I'm finding this whole 'sexual harrassment' thing to be wildly, I mean, insanely, out of control. Just as any member of any racial minority can now play the racism card to score points against any white person they don't like, so too can women now play the sexual harrassment card similarly against any man they're not wild about. I'm not saying sexual harrassment doesn't exist; I'm not that naive. I am saying, however, that this nonsense about how 'anything any man does that makes any woman uncomfortable in a work environment is sexual harrassment' has got to go. As I understand it, the term 'sexual harrassment' actually means 'using workplace authority to extort sexual favors from a subordinate'. That's a pretty specific (and heinous) form of misbehavior, and obviously, not one I'm guilty of. Making a slightly provocative wisecrack to a waitress who has made many such herself is not 'sexual harrassment'.

But, anyway, my days may be numbered at Village Inn, since it's my experience that women do not go behind one's back to a supervisor if they want your behavior corrected; they do this when they want you gone... and if they want me gone, well, I'll be gone soon enough. I can't fight this shit.

Still, I can always go work for Accent, and at this point, terrible though the things I hear about Accent are, I have to say, they'll pay me better, and let me sit down, and I won't have to wash dirty dishes, sooooo...

Not entirely fretful things:

I got the most astonishing email from someone in Israel, responding at length to one of my articles on Heinlein. It was one of those really wonderful missives that professional authors occasionally get from some fan and they they print in the foreword of some book and go into great detail about how much this kind of unsolicited missive from a total stranger means to them. I keep meaning to print it here and then discuss it at length, as getting it really moved me... the evidence that something I'd written had had such a profound effect on some utter stranger on the other side of the world was, honestly, heart warming, and I don't get much of that these days. So I probably will print that note, sometime soon, but somehow, I'm more moved to catch up on stupid trivia with this entry.

As with most holiday weekends, I've had virtually no email since Thanksgiving, and that's annoying, too. The mailer-daemon with my ms. attached filled up my mailbox, though, and some of you may have gotten notes to me bounced back to you because of that, which is something else I find completely aggravating.

And Diane gave me a French silk pie, I guess as a bonus for working Thanksgiving Day. It's still sitting in the fridge; Paul and I have been working our way through our two Thanksgiving apple pies and a gallon of vanilla ice cream. But we'll get to it soon enough.

I'd better get some email tomorrow, goddamit. And PublishAmerica better straighten this nonsense with my ms. out. They insist they prefer to have things sent to them electronically, and then they bounce them back! Pricks.

If you've never stared off into the distance then your life is a shame.

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.