Thursday December 25, 2003 Christmas day

Temporal fugue

Merry Christmas, one and all.

Okay. What’s below the asterisks was written previously this week. I’m going to pick up again regarding today down at the bottom, under another set of asterisks. No one should feel obligated to read all this rubbish all the way through, obviously.

* * * *

A lot of this was written yesterday. I may or may not edit it. Or I may leave it here. Whatever the case, I don’t plan on putting this up until Christmas or the day after. However, for now, I’m going to put the stuff I wrote yesterday into italics, and the stuff I’m writing today I’ll leave in normal text.

I’ve never understood this, but a lot of people simply do not seem to regard keeping a promise to a friend as a priority.
Now, Christmas is a busy season, and yes, I understand it’s very annoying to have a friend who, unlike nearly everyone else in the world, doesn’t drive, and therefore asks to be driven places reasonably often.
Nonetheless, if you make a promise to such a friend, and your friend is depending on that promise to make their Christmas happen the way they want it to happen, it seems to me that you should prioritize keeping that promise.
I would, at least.
For the last two weeks, Paul has been trying to get a ride to a bookstore so he can finish buying the Christmas present he has half bought for me. (It’s some kind of superhero card game. He has some booster packs of the cards, but he hasn’t bought the starter set yet, making the booster packs, apparently, pretty much useless. He can apparently only get this starter set at, well, some store that isn’t in Zephyrhills.) Various of his friends, most notably Scott, have promised multiple times to take him in, and every time, they’ve failed to come through. Our family is all very busy doing other shit that is far more important than, you know, helping Paul buy a Christmas present this week, so none of them can drive him anywhere, and since I don’t drive, there isn’t much I can do except come up with various other suggestions for people who might do it, all of whom either can’t do it, or won’t do it, or worst of all, say they’ll do it and then forget about it and dodge Paul when he knocks on their door and don’t pick up the phone when he calls.
That last is Paul’s friend Chad, who wandered over Sunday night and promised he’d run Paul up to Lakeland, which is slightly closer than Tampa and has a Barnes & Nobles, after work the next day. We haven’t heard from Chad since, which isn’t unusual, but he lives right around the corner, and Paul has gone to his house twice, Monday and today, and although all the cars were parked outside, no one answered his door, and no one answers the phone there when we call, either.
Actually, I suppose there is something worse than promising to do something and then flatly welshing, there’s what Scott has been doing for the last week and a half… promising to do it, and putting it off, with assurances that ‘tomorrow is a possibility’. In fact, after Paul waited all day for Scott to show up and run him into Tampa tonight, Scott finally just showed up, said Paul was crazy if he thought he was going into Tampa on the night before Christmas Eve, but allowed that ‘tomorrow is a possibility’.
I just walked into my room, because if I get started on that, I’ll never stop. I mean, seriously, Scott will never come over here again while I’m living here if I so much as say one word, because if I let myself say one word, even if it’s simply to point out the illogic of stating that he won’t go into Tampa the night before Christmas Eve because of traffic, but he might be willing to do it ON Christmas Eve, well, I’ll just start going off on him and it’s going to be ugly.
Anyway, I’m rather fucking annoyed with everyone in the world who has a car right now and who is too goddam busy to drive Paul to a bookstore, but I’m especially furious with those who have promised to do so and welshed.
This has nothing to do with me getting this ridiculous present, which Paul actually intends to be a stocking stuffer. I honestly don’t care if I ever get some dumbass superhero card game that I’ll most likely hate. In fact, if Paul CAN’T get into Tampa to get the rest of it, then hopefully he’ll go to Wal-mart or Dollar General or something sometime tomorrow and get me real stocking stuffers, which apparently he hadn’t intended to do. I mean, a superhero card game is all well and good, but it’s no substitute for chocolate, for Christ’s sake.
But still, I’m angry on Paul’s behalf because he’s sat around for a week now waiting for someone to keep a promise made to him, and those making the promise, and those we’ve tried to ask for help when those promises were broken, have all been just too fucking busy to prioritize helping Paul out this week.
Well, enough of that nonsense.
I’ll take the time to note here, a bit after 3 in the afternoon on Wednesday, Christmas Eve, that this still isn’t resolved. Paul went into work a bit early so he could stop off at a dollar store and hopefully get some conventional stocking stuffers for me, but there’s a small chance Scott may dart into Tampa and pick up the starter set for this card game for him today… at least, that’s what Scott said last night when he left, so Paul gave him money to do it. Whether Scott will come through or not is anyone’s guess.

Continuing in the present day, last night I created and sent out this year’s electronic Christmas card, which should also be reproduced above, for any of you who aren’t in my electronic address book but would like to see it.

Beyond that, email’s been slow and comments on blog entries nearly non-existent, but I’m gonna let people slide on that for now. I did get one email today, first one in a couple of days, from one of my regular female correspondents who was outraged and offended (as I predicted) by my blog entry of last weekend about Women Who Say They’d Sleep With Me If Only Things Were Different. She was, apparently, very hurt by my comments on the blog, and feels that she has offended me and her correspondence is no longer welcome and she isn’t going to write to me any more.

Let me say a couple of things about that. First, I didn’t intend to offend anyone specifically with that entry, nor was that entry written (as she and one of my other regular female correspondents, who WASN’T offended by it, seem to assume) for her specifically. I have a few women in my life who present themselves to me in a sexual context while either never intending, or being too far away, to consummate the presentation. I was writing about that behavior in specific. The women I’ve met who do this to me fairly often are fairly dear to me, I just find that particular behavior aggravating as shit. The two women who were writing to me, and who both assumed I wrote that column specifically to and about THEM, are people whose correspondence I enjoy, except when it turns to sex and how attracted they are to me and their sexual fantasies and how If Only Things Were Different… that stuff I find annoying, and that’s what I meant to say.

I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, and I regret that I did. However, I knew I might going into it, and chose to express myself on that topic anyway, so I take responsibility for it. I knew I might anger and offend some people writing about it. I’m aware that I take a fairly steep risk of angering and offending people with EVERYthing I write, and I go ahead and write the shit anyway.

It’s always interesting to me, though, how people who write to me and tell me they admire my honesty and straightforwardness and even find it sexy suddenly don’t like it so much when I’m writing in an honest and straightforward fashion about their behavior, and the result isn’t flattering. But… and I say this with a sigh of regret, because the woman in question really does strike me as a pleasant person and I’m sorry she doesn’t want to talk to me any more… people like that really shouldn’t interact with me; I’m not childproofed. In fact, I have a lot of rough edges. People who admire honesty only when it’s directed elsewhere, or pleasing to them, shouldn’t come around and play here.

If that sounds sarcastic, well, look, folks… I’m not big on pretense. I’m pretty up front about what you’re getting in me. If you read this blog page, I think it becomes apparent pretty quickly what you can expect, and if you choose to start writing to me after reading this blog page, well, again, I’m not trying to fool anyone about my personality or how I’m going to act towards you. If I like you, I’ll tell you. If I respect and admire you, I’ll tell you that. Often I’ll do it in public. But if you aggravate me, well, the Truth Spigot doesn’t turn off just because someone else wants it to, and honest to God I do not understand why people expect it to, when the reason they write me in the first place is because they ‘admire my honesty’.

Okay, enough of that nonsense. Let’s dive back into the past for a moment:

Let’s see. In my last entry I said something about setting up a new website for Jeff’s artwork, since the MSN Community one can find a link to over on my sidebar is rather difficult to access (you have to get yourself an MSN Passport, and they’re free, but the sign up process is tedious and it’s just not the same as being able to hit a link and go right there). Now, one of the reasons I haven’t set up an Angelfire site specifically for Jeff’s artwork to date is that Angelfire’s TOS, like most web providers, prohibits adult material, and while there are a great many Geocities and Angelfire sites out there with adult material on them, all it will take is one tight assed blue nosed busybody finding something they don’t like and sending an email to Angelfire and such a site will be immediately shut down. This happened recently to the Yahoo Adult Community I set up for my own pornographic cartoons, and since I’d spent hours and hours uploading stuff to that community only to see all that work vanish in a heartbeat, I’ve never been wild about the idea of doing it all over again with Jeff’s enormously superior artwork.
Still, Jeff’s work deserves greater exposure and getting into the MSN Community really is a pain, so I’d decided to go ahead and do it anyway, and I was in the process of starting to when it struck me that last summer, at the behest of one of the many many worthless wannabe editors and publishers I’ve worked for over the years for little or nothing, I edited an electronic book called The Fantasy Worlds of Jeff Webb featuring a lot of Jeff’s better artwork that wouldn’t violate copyright considerations. There’s also some really insipid editorial commentary by me on the pages, but readers can and really should just ignore that nonsense and stare slackjawed at the gorgeous pictures instead.
So, what I’ve done is, set up a website where the various pages from that book are displayed, and you can hit that link up above and go check it out if you want to, and you really should want to, unless you’re just plain nuts.
I may, in the future, upload more of Jeff’s artwork to that site as well, but that would take a very long time.

I am, in fact, in the process of uploading more of Jeff’s art to that site, but the page isn’t ready yet, and it is taking a very long time.

Now here’s an email exchange from a few days back which I find enormously depressing:

----- Original Message -----
From: docnebula01@juno.com
To: various people @publishamerica.com
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 1:33 AM
Subject: Universal Maintenance by D.A. Madigan

I apologize if I'm being a nuisance. However, as more and more people become aware that my first novel is being published, I get more and more questions directed to me, and I know the answer to very few of them, so I thought I'd see if anyone there could give me some more information. If this is an imposition, I'm very sorry.
The most common question I'm asked is "when is it coming out?" The only answer I can give at this point is 'sometime within the next year, but I hope for a lot sooner'. Is there a better, more definite answer than this? Is there a general timeline or projected publication date as yet? Is there anything I can do to help or otherwise expedite matters from my end?
Other questions I'm getting often:
**Where will it be available?
I remember reading on your site that your company has an arrangement with Borders/Waldenbooks. Does that mean my book will be in every Borders/Waldenbooks? Or in any of them? How many copies to each store? And on that subject...
***What's the projected print run? Is there a projected print run at all, or will this strictly be Publish On Demand? And, again, is there anything I can do to help at this point?
****What format will the book be in?
Right now, I'm assuming it will be trade paperback. If not, what will it be? paperback? hardcover?
****Any idea what cover price will be? (This question I get A LOT.)
If it's trade paperback, I'm assuming a cover price of anywhere from $12.99 to $15.99, but friends and family would like to know what to plan on spending.
Again, I'm sorry to take up your time, and I've tried to be quiet and patient, but I really don't know anything that's going on, and I'm anxious and eager to know what I can, and to do what I can to expedite the process. Please believe I am your very willing collaborator in this endeavor, and I am at your disposal. Just tell me what I need to do to help.
> Thank you for your time,
> Darren Madigan
> author, UNIVERSAL MAINTENANCE

And then, a few days later, I got this:

Hi Darren,
I'm not sure if Heather or Audra returned your email yet. I've been out for a couple of days. Right now I can't give you a more exact time as to when the book will be published. That is really a question for our Production Department.
We do send information to sites such as Borders, Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Your book will be available online. You may also contact your local bookstores to see if they can carry the book in their stores.
We use digital technology that prints the books as they are ordered. Because of that, we do not have an initial print run and all your books will be first editions. Yes, the book will be in trade paperback. I can't give you an exact price yet, that is determined pretty late in the process and is based on the size of the book and the market at that time.
Please let me know if you have any further questions. Have a great Holiday.
Thanks,

Melissa

If you seem to be hearing millions of voices crying out in terror, and then abruptly falling silent… that was the sound of my hopes and dreams dying.

The key paragraph in their demise, above, is:

We use digital technology that prints the books as they are ordered. Because of that, we do not have an initial print run and all your books will be first editions.

This is what I was afraid of. It means, well, exactly what you’re all thinking it means… these books will not come into actual corporeal existence until someone out there orders one.

This means that I’ll sell a copy of these books to, well, a couple of people in my family and the dozen or so of you who read this blog and who are interested enough to go to a website and put in an order. But my book will not be on the shelf in any bookstores for interested browsers to see, pick up, glance through, and decide to buy.

In other words, PublishAmerica invests the time of their editorial staff and their production department in getting these things set up and ready to be digitally printed. They invest no paper, no ink, no goodwill with the various bookstores (although, as they generously note, I can call any bookstore I like and plead with them to please carry my book; that’s perfectly acceptable to them) and do absolutely nothing towards seeing to it that this book actually makes any sort of impact in the marketplace or actually has a chance of selling reasonably well.

Okay. I had a feeling this was what was going on even before I started this process, so I’m really not shocked. I’m deeply disappointed… I’d hoped my work merited at least the investment of a small initial print run and an effort to get at least a few stores to stock it and see if it moved… but I do think analytically, and I had looked at PublishAmerica, and realized that the niche they are filling is one in which profits are very small, and they can accept that by keeping their investment and financial risk equally small. They don’t pay advances; the only money they pay out for a book is royalties, and all they invest is the time and labor of their staff… so if they accept a book and it only sells 30 copies, to friends and relatives of the author, well, that’s (I’m guessing) around $500 for them. You wouldn’t think that would be much profit, but assuming they do this with, say, a few thousand books a year…

I said at the start of this that if all I ended up with was a single professionally printed copy of a book I’d written to put on my shelf, I’d be happy, and I guess that’s what I’m going to end up with… along with a royalty check for about $30 sometime this summer, maybe.

So I guess I’ll be happy.

But, as I’ve been saying all along, I appreciate the congratulations from everyone, but really, this is not a big deal. I’ll still be working for a living in 2004. And 2005. And 2006…

Okay. I’m going to hold off on putting this up, as mentioned, until I get to or past Christmas. And more stuff may have happened by then… well… I’ll at least know if Scott got the rest of my stocking stuffer for Paul, and what graphic album Paul got for me for Christmas.

* * * * *

Okay, and here we are, on Christmas Day, and jesus christ, if anyone out there actually READ all that nonsense, please post a comment telling me WHY.

The new Jeff site is more or less finished. The second page loads VERY slowly on my computer due to the overwhelming number of thumbnails on it (something like 140) but each of those thumbnails (I hope, I haven’t had the patience to test them all) leads to a full rendition of one of Jeff’s lovelier drawings. You should go out there quick, before someone narks it to Angelfire’s TOS committee and they pull it.

As to Scott, he did make an effort to get into Tampa on Christmas Eve, but the stuff he was looking for was all sold out. And he’s pissed off at me now, although he didn’t say anything about it, because he came over last night (Christmas Eve; I’d thought we might get some peace from the usual drop by’s due to the holiday, but no, Pat and Kyle showed up around 1 a.m. and Scott came around a little after 2) and got bored watching me and Paul play TITAN, so he wandered over to the TV and turned it on… which wouldn’t have been a problem, except the TV is now hooked up to Paul’s stereo system, as is the X-Box, whose jukebox feature Paul and I were using at the moment to listen to music. So suddenly the song I’m listening to as I play cuts out and TV blather comes on.

Now, I know, none of you would dream of going over to someone else’s house, even your best friend in the world’s, and without so much as a word, turning off the music they were playing and turning on their TV because you were bored, while they were obviously listening to the music. It’s just rude. I mean, I’D never do that. I’d have at least asked, and then only if I were very good friends with my host. But in Scott’s defense, this home has always been a very relaxed atmosphere where people tend to do whatever they want, and Paul is a very mellow guy, and if you think that means Paul’s friends have become accustomed to treating Paul as a doormat when they’re in his house, well, that’s how I look at it.

However, I live here too and not as a guest… I’ve been paying my share of the bills around here for a while now. And I’m NOT a doormat, at least, not to someone of Scott’s gender and general lack of attractiveness to me. So I glared at Scott and said “What the hell are you doing, don’t turn my music off, I was listening to that.”

Scott gave me this absolutely incredulous look, and said “Aw, man, you’re kidding!” and he and I went around a little, and Paul, having finally realized I was serious, said “Okay, put the music back on”, and Scott did, and then left very shortly thereafter, fairly obviously in a high state of piss off.

I have to get my own place. But it won’t be too soon; I need to start saving money after I begin working at Accent.

Anyway, leaving that aside, Christmas finally rolled around. I insisted that Paul and I go to sleep on Christmas Eve before opening presents or getting into our stockings, but I found after I’d slept a couple of hours I couldn’t get back to sleep, so much earlier than planned… around 9:30 this morning… I woke him up and we did the Christmas thing.

I’d expected Christmas to be an anti-climax after the family Christmas last Saturday, with my real pleasure coming from watching Paul open his gifts from me (my old leather jacket from Kristy that Paul has coveted for months and that doesn’t fit me any more, and a Marvel Masterworks edition reprinting the first ten issues of the Silver Age X-Men) and get into his stocking (I do a good stocking, but hardly ever get the chance to put one together; Paul’s had a Tobler chocolate orange in the toe, little chocolate Santas, little peppermint patties, little Starburst fruit chews, and little caramel cups, a Star Wars figurine, a Christmas tube of miniature Reese’s peanut butter cups with a plastic Santa at the top, a gaming magazine rolled up around the tube, and a little leather jacket keychain charm dangling out the top, meant to misdirect him from what was in the package under the tree).

But to my surprise, what I’d thought was a superhero card game I might or might not like turned out to be this Marvel Superheroes game featuring these amazing little miniature statues that have little stat numbers on their bases that you put on various different maps and have fight each other. I find this completely delightful. Paul had actually gotten me a starter set with 8 figures in it, and two game maps, and all the rules, which I haven’t really read yet. However, the figures are totally cool even if the game sucks; so far I have: a Thug, a Skrull Warrior, the Vulture, Mr. Hyde, the Puppet Master, Rogue, Daredevil, and the Black Panther. Which are all utterly awesome.

What Scott was trying to get to ‘complete’ the gift was two booster packs, so I’d have four or five more characters, and Paul would have some too, and we could play against each other. We can probably play a little with this set, and it should be fun. But even if the game is a loser, I just love these little statues, and apparently, they’re cheap… the starter set cost $15, while the booster packs cost $5.

Under the tree, I had a Marvel Masterworks edition featuring the first ten issues of the Fantastic Four, of which I’ve only read #1, so that’s very cool, too.

My stocking wasn’t much other than the game… Paul basically raided Dollar General at the last minute and got me a lot of hard candy and no chocolate… but I don’t care, I’ll just steal some of his. ::grin::

Paul loves the jacket. At first he tried to protest he couldn’t accept it because it had too much sentimental value to me (and it does, but, hey, the value doesn’t diminish by giving it to my baby brother; in fact, for me, it increases, and I couldn’t zipper the thing closed any more), but when I explained that it didn’t fit any more and I wanted him to have it (it does look really good on him) he said “Okay, I can accept this” and was obviously very pleased.

He was totally snookered by it, because a few weeks ago I staged a big ‘where’s my jacket’ fuss, and finally concluded aloud to him, after a few days ‘fruitless searching’, that I must have left it at work and someone had stolen it. At that point it went into a box under my bed and didn’t reappear until today.

Okay. One of the things I didn’t mention in this huge fargin’ entry is that last Monday I took a cab over to Wal-mart and picked up fixins for our Christmas feast, including a vastly large turkey (which we got effective free due to a Butterball coupon/check thing Paul got from someone at work) and all the traditional trimmings. Paul is, of course, working 3 to 11 today (he loves that holiday overtime) so I have to go start cooking in about an hour and a half. And I have stuff to do before that as well, like, you know, take a shower, put on some clothes, clear off the table, and maybe read some Silver Age Fantastic Four.

So, Happy Holidays to all, even those of you dissin’ me on Christmas greetings in my email box, you rats. ::grin::

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

(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.

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.

A Brown Eyed Handsome Man