Yelling

Sometimes this whole blogging business gets me angry. Sometimes people who blog, or comment on other people's blogs, or email people who have blogs, piss me off the point where I'd like to commit acts of physical violence. I don't, and won't, of course, because I'll never know who these people are, or where they live, and anyway, by the time I'd manage to find them, I'd likely forget what the problem was in the first place, at which point I'd be offered a drink and a puff on a joint, which I'd promptly turn down in favor of an elevated concentration on drinking. I'm a binge drinker. Not much for the weed, though.

What do I oppose? I oppose comment hostility. Email hostility. People with a 'bone to pick.' Note the absence of comments on this blog. They're gone because of the glaring distinction between "people who comment," and "people who email." Most of the commenters on this blog were okay, but a select few were douchebags. I hated them. I spent precious minutes of my life -- time I'll never get back -- chasing down their IP addresses with this magical tool, which invariably led to frustration because the narrowing-down process tantalized me. I know where you live, vaguely, but I still can't get you. All the good shit came in via email, anyway. Agents and publishers tend not to comment on blogs.

Occasionally, this great comment smoke-out was akin to playing Whack-a-Mole under the wild-eyed scrutiny of carnies. I'd ban one of the fuckers, and he'd pop back up an hour later to insult me from a new IP address. Figuring most people have one of these contraptions for home use, and another for work, totaling a maximum of two, I'd ban the second, turn off the computer, and go about my life. What the fuck do I know? I'm sure someone will read this and advise me as to how there exist a thousand-and-one different methods of logging on from a dozen different IP addresses, all originating from one's home office, but I don't particularly give a shit. All I know is that the Moles would continue to show me I couldn't win, and I don't very patiently tolerate not winning.

And so it goes when you've got a blog that people read. You write something you think is completely innocuous. A throwaway line, in a throwaway post. You never thought you'd get a book deal when you started blogging. That's what you write. You speak the truth, or whatever subjective truth is true, to you, at the moment you're writing it. What's true right now, today, could've been a lie on some other day six months ago, and if it is, God help you, because they'll surely find it. They'll go back in your archives and let you know they've been looking, and they'll quote you, verbatim. Gotcha!

What do you know? You've caught that bastard Rob in an inconsistency. Hypocritically playing the humble card, when -- wouldn't you know it? -- the prick claimed on July 12, 2004 that he hoped someone would notice his blog and turn it into a book. How typically disingenuous of one of these calculating, shamelessly self-promoting blogger bastards to revise history when they catch their break! The nerve! The goddamned motherfucking nerve of that sonovabitch! These pompous pricks need to be shown.

What all this made me realize is that I'm not the brightest guy on the planet. Well, maybe not that, so much, because I actually am pretty fucking smart, but I'm often not much for the intellectual discourse necessary to deflect the majority of this shit. Like the Guidos about whom I write, my first instinct is to lash out. To play internet-hero and explain to the offending party how I'd prefer, above all things, to render my remodeling talents about the region slightly below his left eye socket.

Being a seasoned veteran of two of the internet's prime repositories for cyber-threats -- online poker rooms and weightlifting/martial arts sites -- I know better than to proceed down that road. It leads nowhere. Once, after inducing one fellow PokerStars degenerate to donate more than $50 of his money to the communal pot, I proceeded to make my flush on the river, and was promptly threatened, but this gentleman, with a brutal "beating," administered at the hands of his "crew." I was obviously quite frightened -- who wouldn't be? -- but somehow managed to regain my composure and continue my session at the table. The damage, however, was done, and I've played the game looking over my shoulder ever since, lest 'CockDiesel1985' and his "crew" eventually decide to seek their final vengeance for my thoughtless slight.

I do want to threaten people, though. It's my first instinct, and it's one for which I'll offer no apology. Would that I could, through an unfaltering fusillade of barbed witticisms, banish the jealous, the bored and the malicious, but I can't. Who can?

"Your blog sucks, you're stupid, you can't write, you use too many adverbs, your stories are repetitive, you're lying, you're amoral, and now, for the next five paragraphs, I will proceed to tell you of what the content of your blog should consist."

"Fuck you."

"I see. I was right about you. You're too stupid to respond with anything other than profane personal attacks."

"Go eat a dick."

"Ah, yes. The last resort of the stupid: to impugn the sexuality of one's nemesis. Are you a homophobe, Rob (if that's your real name)? Do you live in perpetual fear of those unlike yourself? You're likely a racist, and a misogynist, as well. I'm certain you harbor a distinct hatred for the world's indigenous peoples, because your limited understanding of other cultures has formed, for you, a boilerplate impression of those of us who aren't like you. I pity you, Rob the Bouncer. I've nothing but pity for you and your kind."

"I should kick your ass."

"Yes, Rob. Let it out. The next step in the progression of hostilities from the Great Unwashed. You cannot match my literary repartee, so you resort to things physical. How predictable. You are a tiresome, tedious, pitiable soul, Rob the Bouncer, and I mourn my existence in a world where oxygen must be shared, by me, with the likes of you."

There's always a moral high ground that the physically defenseless are able to attain -- an act that I'm not capable, mentally or emotionally, of carrying off. Goad someone into getting angry enough to threaten you, or grab you, or even vigorously kick your ass, and then point out, afterward, what a Neanderthal they are for resorting to the visceral. You'll always win that way. The man who swings first will always assume the mantle of culprit. Retreat! Retreat! Retreat to your refuge, a harborage readily available only to those who can't pass muster in the physical sense.

Prod. Prod. Prod. Prod. Prod. Prod. Prod. Prod. Prod. Prod. Prod. Prod. Prod.

Fuck off.

How typical of your sort!

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If this was online back in 2004, perhaps I wouldn't have had to blog about this shit for the past nineteen months. Thank God for Myspace.