I mean, she okay, but she ain't all that.

[compared2what?]

I'm sorry. I've been a really shitty hostess.

But tomorrow I am going to do nothing but throw garlands at the incredible and glorious members of the RI forum every single moment that I'm online. Wait! I can even wear a 1950s hostess aprom when I do the garland-throwing, it just occurred to me. I just knew that purchase would turn out to be more practical than it's seemed like it was for years sooner or later, if I lived long enough. Praise the lord. Epic win. I'll try to take a picture after I've ironed it.

Although I would definitely wear these 1940s hostess pajamas if I owned them. As opposed to: Saw them for the first time five seconds ago when searching for "vintage hostess apron":



And also a hat. For Nordic. I mean, it's not like anyone can see me.

Anyway. I am grimly determined to do that. Or at least to post something approximating the loving appreciation was intending to when JackRr's post cracked my heart open, thus causing said loving appreciation to overflow. I don't know where I went wrong, really. I guess that -- chance being a fine thing -- it turned out that I was both busier and, oh, I don't know...maybe just a little bit more pissed off than I'd anticipated. Fancy that.

I do realize that's not really an acceptable excuse, btw. In fact, it's not really any kind of excuse. However, it is a true reason, however not proud of it I might be.

Which does NOT count as self-disparagement. I just aspire to being better, that's all.





I found the Dumpster of Awesome on my way home this evening, btw. If it weren't for my New-York-Times-induced and totally irrational fear that there are bedbugs in, for example, the pretty etched-glass finger bowls that I know for a fact were bedbug-free when I picked them up and examined them in broad daylight only a few hours ago, I'd be in thrifter's paradise. Because nothing's thriftier than free, you have to admit.

[compared2what?]

Or maybe:

[chiggerbit]

I guess that -- chance being a fine thing -- it turned out that I was both busier and, oh, I don't know...maybe just a little bit more pissed off than I'd anticipated.

Maybe we should talk about that, because i have a feeling that I'm the one who pissed you off.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I thought maybe I'd pissed you off too. But that was a while back, and I was probably just imagining it. Hopefully I don't post often enough to piss anyone off in any deep or lasting way. It often happens, through no fault of my own, that I become drunken and speak wrongness unto the peoples.

I doubt it's me that's annoying you. If it is, though, let me know, and I'll... try to change a bit. I'm not given to changing much though.

Chiggerbit is a fine person - one of the finest - like yourself;- so do not fall out with each other. Just don't. It would be foolish.

I've no idea what's been goin' on in the hood, though. But I know that bad things are bad, and an outcome like that would be a bad thing.

I have read and will reply to your posts in Nordic's guns thread, but have been off in Malta for a week researching the Knights Hospitaliers, which was great, but the internet access was shit, so I only read. But yes, I did read 'em all through, even if I often give the appearance of never having read anyone's replies or posts to the end ever.

Anyways, you are indeed all that, C2W. You may even be all that and more.

If I never thank you for anything else, let me thank you at least for making me know that GuideStar exists. It is a priceless resource.

Anyways, all the best for your reboot and remodel, should you choose to enact one!

[chiggerbit]

so do not fall out with each other.

Pfffttt, I don't mean that kind of talk, I mean, you know, talk, like discuss it.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

do not fall out with each other.

Pfffttt, I don't mean that kind of talk, I mean, you know, talk, like discuss it.

Good. That's good. I don't know what you's are talking about anyway - just felt compelled to be all patriarchal for a moment and hand down an arbitrary edict from on high.

[chiggerbit]

Fear not, c2w and I have disagreed on one or two occasions, and not found the need to resort to any kind of hair-pulling. I don't want her to go, so I thought it would be good to talk it out.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Ach.... So no fighting? What a dissy.

I'm off to Willow's Pub then. There's usually something starting in the car park round about this time.

Malta was a severe shock to the system, for me. Never heard a voice raised in anger, or saw an unsmiling face, or heard a drunken yell that was anything other than friendly all week long.

There's something wrong with those people.

.

[compared2what?]

I guess that -- chance being a fine thing -- it turned out that I was both busier and, oh, I don't know...maybe just a little bit more pissed off than I'd anticipated.

Maybe we should talk about that, because i have a feeling that I'm the one who pissed you off.

WHAT???



I adore you, chig. There is no possible response to you in my heart other than adoration. There never has been and never will be. Why the fuck on god's green earth would you think that? And please feel free to regard that as a rhetorical question, if you'd prefer. But weren't we just having an amiable PM chat, like, a week or so ago? And didn't we just have a really fun romp through the fields of Herbalife and sundry adjacent pastures? Because as I recall it, we were and we did.
_______________________________

FOR GENERAL PURPOSES, PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY

Honest to god and swear by all I hold dear, when I'm pissed off at somebody, I say so. But -- believe it or not -- I'm very, very rarely pissed off at anybody. By and large, I don't really get angry at people. I get angry at actions. And even then, I've only ever gotten angry enough to feel....Not quite sure how to put it.

But roughly speaking: I at least make a best-faith effort to pull my punches ninety-nine percent of the time when fighting, even when in a blind rage. Because people are very easily hurt, and hurting them deeply, where they live, never does anyone any good.

Therefore, barring the very, very few-and-far-between occasions when some stimulus transiently turns me into a great big warped version of the terrified tiny child I once was, long, long ago -- in which case, I shoot to kill, figuratively speaking, immediately after which, I wish I could die on the spot -- I try to express whatever anger I have that happens to need expressing in a form that leaves the actor whose action pissed me the fuck off with his or her ego strengths intact. Or, when possible, fortified. Which is a good-hearted impulse, albeit both an extremely unreliable and somewhat self-defeating one. But whatever. People aren't rational, and I'm one of them.

In any event, I've never been so angry at anyone or anything here that I've summoned every resource I've got and unloaded with the intent of damaging them to the full extent of my capacity to do so before I could stop myself. And although I may be forgetting a time or two, off the top of my head, I can only think of three times that's ever happened at all in the last twenty years.

I mean, obviously, I'm a very imperfect, foolish and flawed human being, just like everyone else. So I misjudge others and myself, both separately and together, all the goddamn time, as a result of which, I err, I fuck up, I do wrong by others and myself, and....I don't know. Here at RI, in practice, I think that mostly means that I regularly inadvertently tromp equally on both people whom I cherish and people whom I don't much care for when posting under the deluded impression that my blunt plain-speaking will have the salutary effect of preventing them from being tromped on by others.

Which is a mistake I'm chronically prone to in this medium. Because that's what blunt plain-speaking would do for me if I were the recipient of it. And one's own default settings tend to assume more of a behavioral-guideline function online than any one person's default settings can reliably handle. In one's own limited experience of such things, anyway. Absent all the behavioral and environmental cues whereby one gauges such things in real life, one often doesn't have a whole lot else to go by. One finds.

Hey, have you noticed that I've suddenly turned into a member of the British royal family, wrt pronoun usage? WTF is up with that? I mean, I'm not no LaRouchie or nothing. But it's not like I'm exactly hereditary monarchy's biggest fan, either. And even if I were, I seriously doubt I'd be looking to members of the Royal House formerly known as Saxe-Coburg and Gotha for my linguistic role-modeling needs. I don't know what came over me.
_______________________________


Anyway. As I was saying: Have you lost your fucking mind? I'm not pissed off at you at all. And what's more, I can't even recall ever having been pissed off at you at all one single blessed time in the entire two-and-a-bit years that I've been posting here.

Please know yourself to have my respect and affection in quantities much too large and for reasons much too well-merited for there to be a snowball's chance in hell that there's anything you could say, do or think that would piss me off enough to be worth describing in those terms, chig.

Seriously. What can I do to make you feel the truth of that? Or, alternately, what did I do that stopped you from knowing the truth of that? If anything? And how can I undo it? Please advise.

Yours truly,

c2w

[chiggerbit]

Aw, well, I was scratching my head, wondering what had happened recently that could have gotten you pissed, and then, because of the timing, a lightbulb went off, and I thought sure as shit it had to be me and what I'd said on that Head of the Octopus thread, that's all. Whew, glad it wasn't me.

[chiggerbit]

And what's more, I can't even recall ever having been pissed off at you at all one single blessed time in the entire two-and-a-bit years that I've been posting here.

And yes, I know. Even when we've disagreed, it's been fun arguing with you. Just remembering that one about "New York intellectuals", which I lost.

[compared2what?]

I thought maybe I'd pissed you off too. But that was a while back, and I was probably just imagining it. Hopefully I don't post often enough to piss anyone off in any deep or lasting way. It often happens, through no fault of my own, that I become drunken and speak wrongness unto the peoples.

I doubt it's me that's annoying you. If it is, though, let me know, and I'll... try to change a bit. I'm not given to changing much though.

Chiggerbit is a fine person - one of the finest - like yourself;- so do not fall out with each other. Just don't. It would be foolish.

I've no idea what's been goin' on in the hood, though. But I know that bad things are bad, and an outcome like that would be a bad thing.

I have read and will reply to your posts in Nordic's guns thread, but have been off in Malta for a week researching the Knights Hospitaliers, which was great, but the internet access was shit, so I only read. But yes, I did read 'em all through, even if I often give the appearance of never having read anyone's replies or posts to the end ever.

Anyways, you are indeed all that, C2W. You may even be all that and more.

If I never thank you for anything else, let me thank you at least for making me know that GuideStar exists. It is a priceless resource.

Anyways, all the best for your reboot and remodel, should you choose to enact one!

Are you FUCKING NUTS????

I'm crazy about you. Plus I love and envy your range as a writer, which I should probably have made more of a point of mentioning a little earlier in the game.

I'll tell you what. For everyone's convenience and comfort, I will now write up a full-disclosure list of all RI posters, past and present, with whom I am now or ever have been personally pissed off, along with their current status as objects of my not very deeply felt wrath.

Everyone who's not on it can take it on faith that I'm not and never have been pissed off with them and in all likelihood am fonder of them than they have any way of knowing.*** And even everyone who is on it can take it on faith that I don't actually dislike them. I do think that their conduct is mean and/or unsporting and/or so irresponsible that it makes them a danger to themselves and/or others for reasons I've frankly stated to their faces.

Okay?

***With the not very significant potential partial exception of the very, very few posters to whom I've never shown the slightest sign, either publicly or privately, that as a matter of information and conviction, I firmly believe them to be totally fraudulent and possibly ill-intentioned trolls. Toward whom I feel neither animosity nor fondness because, you know: They're not real in any way that's knowable to me.

Though I'd probably like them if they were. FWIW.

[barracuda]

I'll tell you what. For everyone's convenience and comfort, I will now write up a full-disclosure list of all RI posters, past and present, with whom I am now or ever have been personally pissed off, along with their current status as objects of my not very deeply felt wrath.

Now we're talkin'! Scratch that itch.

[compared2what?]

I have read and will reply to your posts in Nordic's guns thread, but have been off in Malta for a week researching the Knights Hospitaliers, which was great, but the internet access was shit, so I only read.

You lucky. I die of pure envy at the thought.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I went to the Hypogeum of Hal-Salflieni. Aye, I did. Half way round the world, to visit this prehistoric armpit. And you know what I saw? The entrance, with a huge concrete slab declaring it a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the lobby, where an English family sat. They were very nice to me - but then I were told by the attendants, in the politest possible terms, to bugger off.

A visit to the hypogeum has to be booked at least a month in advance, just in case you ever head over there. It's a lovely place, Malta, as a whole. I saw lots of other neolithic temples, and of course the Hospitalier's planned city (it's a grid - like New York, in fact, and also like Glasgow).

There is a thread to be made of the stuff I did see. But I never got into the Hypogeum. There were only two attendants, but I'd been walking a long time, and I reckoned I shouldn't just take them out Jason Bourne style in front of them civillians. I totally could've though.

Anyways, I am glad you are not filled with a burning and unquenchable hatred of me! Hehehe. For the record, I have always admired your writing too. Don't make any lists on my account, or on anyone's account - probably best not to make any at all, and certainly best not to post them. But that's just my opinion.