And the end—an end—feels near.

A hundred thousand people (or more) are over in the Castro celebrating something the vast majority of them had no hand in. In a very local sense, I suppose the word for this is “entitled”: a wish, a hope and out of the blue falls same-sex marriage and they celebrate. Now, not that I've contributed much to the cause of same-sex marriage, but I've always had a profound respect for the institution. I suppose this is the contrapositive of the argument that marriage is a sacred institution whose boundaries are rigid, whose boundaries would snap rather than bend and those who believe that's always for the worse.

So I respect the fact of it. The fact that my parents have been together for very close to 47 years. I don't know if they've been completely happy overall. I suspect they would tell you quite earnestly that they are, that they have been. That overall, it was the right thing to stay together rather than seek greener pastures. This is one topic I don't think I could ever broach with my parents adult to adult; I don't know if that's because of who I am, who they are, or if that's just a preserved attribute of my family's history.

On the flip side, I tend to agree with a friend of mine who put it, “In my book, you don't get points just for staying together.” Meaning that if two people are miserable together, after trying everything, or after not caring enough to try anything, just dissolve the union, at least in a civil sense: and do it civilly, as adults, ok?

Life is complicated, which makes life difficult, especially for the emotionally-retarded. You can spot the emotionally-retarded quite easily: they're the ones who sit back and expect things. They're the ones who ignore consequences. They're the ones who surrendered to their ids a long, long time ago. Much as I hate Freud, his framework is helpful here: the only way to give complete power to the id is to murder the super-ego and keep the ego distracted. Distract it with neediness, distract it by depending on an external view for its own robustness (which is to say, it lacks robustness entirely). Notches on a bedpost, avoidance of commitment—and I'm not talking about marriage or relationship here, I'm taking about fear of choice and fear of results of a choice, fear of missing out on something the capricious id would have liked, fear of the obsessive id driving a truck through the ego's home when it doesn't get what it wants.

In general, well, just Fear. Fear is a consumer. Fear conflates. Fear chooses all of it, which is to say it makes no choice at all.

The emotionally retarded are afraid, as are we all. The difference is just that they expect their fears to be allayed without having to lift a finger. How? By avoidance again. Avoidance of conflict, avoidance of the hard metal of reality, avoidance of the Outside (and you know I don't mean out of doors). By the alchemical short-sightedness that feeds the id that spins the artifice of no-dissent, no-challenge. Monoclonal individualism as a social construct.

The sequacious lot huddle together to protect themselves from interlopers who vary from the larger lot, because that's the only way to maintain the prevention of maturation: there's no such thing as a mature id. So they pile paralogism on top of paralogism, keeping the whole mess intact with spit and barbed-wire, bound up in a thick, glaucous layer of self-imposed ignorance.

Is it time yet or time past where I should put up a circle of orange traffic cones warning people that I am opinionated and that these are my opinions? Strongly so, but not out of order or out of turn. Opinions do not come easily to me. Where possible, they are backed by fact, simple or—where they dare not venture for fear of exposure to strange elements—subtle fact. Where not, they are formed by personality spinning out a reticulum of relationships between and among fact. Defensible, always defensible, except where they cannot be, and then it comes down to disagreement, difference of opinion. Set up a situation like that and see who runs away or attempts to preempt and there you'll find the emotionally retarded.

Am I one of that lot? Well, challenge me and see if I stay around for the argument, and not argument in the sense of raised voices and emotional outbursts, but rather argument as presentation of fact and informed opinion. Argument, whose function is nothing more and nothing less that to change the nature of truth.

This population are some of the people who've been handed marriage. For real. Loathe as I would ever be to discriminate or deny two consenting, chronologically-adult people from entering into a marriage, I do allow myself opinion. In case you hadn't noticed.

What will change in the short-term? Relationships will go to Marriages and the State is both empowered and required to recognize such Unions. Perhaps for a little while some might look to all the examples of marriage they have before them, good ones and bad ones, successful ones and those which divorce, and perhaps believe it means something more than what they had before.

But none of the people I've described are likely to change. There will be no evidence of a relationship cum marriage, there will be no example to others of what a marriage looks like, because it won't look like anything new: couples entering bars and their body language never gives it away that they're together as they close in on whatever their respective ids want. Off, off they go without regard for anyone but themselves. Collectively—and I've watched this happen—the open door policy breathes out contagion to this world in the form of expecting less. Those who are single by fiat must be let into the relationship and become subject to its rules, must expect that the only valid fantasy allowed is the one that the married person permits to happen, which is usually the fantasy that his id plays out, paving over the id and ego of the single person whose super-ego was ignored.

Am I not allowed an exegesis on this happy day of the advent of state-recognized same-sex marriages?

In the longer term—for those who contemplate or simple recognize that there is longer term—marriage is marriage is marriage, and while same-sex couples will bring something positive to the marriage table, it won't be anytime soon. Not soon enough for those of us achingly ready for all those longer term, more mature things like deep commitment without fear, being exemplary at least to some extent and being able to truly depend on the other sticking around to fight for the relationship instead of running out to burn off all that icky negativity elsewhere and with someone else. I happen to think that's a shitty way to expend energy when it could be better spent maintaining or enriching a marriage.

It's all about showing up. Simply showing up. My friend, a doctor, told me that once: set aside all the majesty, mystery, vauntedness of a job/relationship/person and it all comes down to the same thing. Showing up.

It's been a long time since that kind of dependability, comfort, trust, expectation have been there in my life. And going back to where those things weren't there to catch me when I was falling as I truly expected them to be, I don't think revising history by slapping a capital M on any of those relationships would have changed anything even one mote.

Marriage is ours now, at least until November. I wonder how many of those celebrating its arrival today will see it through November, working to earn it, to appreciate it, to keep the nay-sayers and the closed-minded voters at bay.

If you appreciate someone, you fight to keep him close to you. You let him know it every day in deed and not just in word. You carve out a private space, a somewhere-only-we-know and you let no one else even know such a spot exists. When he needs you, you're there. When you need him, he should be there and if he's not? Well, learn. When you have conflict, you stick around to resolve it, knowing that it might be difficult, knowing it might have consequences, but in the end trusting that the other will still love and respect you when the conflict recedes. Think I'm rigid or provincial? Stick around and convince me of it. Feel threatened by such words? Challenge it. At least acknowledge that there is a world of people who don't feel and believe every little thing you do. If that's unsettling to you to the point of seeking safe ground, well, you know how I'll interpret that.

Anyway, that's the kind of marriage I'd want. And I've learned not to settle for anything less. Better to be alone and know you're about to make a hard landing than to settle for being with someone you know won't bother catching you, that someone who's wearing a scarlet M and a matching ring.

So contratulations all, whether you understand it or not.

Eh.

The movie spent a third of its time expositing a comic-book-obvious character reversal, then spent another half of it documenting the trials and refinements of the suit. The suit! Not the character, the suit!

Spoilers after the break.

The difficult word in that sentence by the way, is ‘remember’ and not ‘resplendent’ as you vocabulary Nazi's out there might have presumed. Apologies. When splendor evaporates it leaves a vacuum that nature, it turns out, does not abhor. Instead it uses the open spaces to store the world's bitterness. Randomly chosen. And not being a perfect container, it leaks out of me.

‘Remember’ is a word that's more than a word, or rather, functions more than just a word: it's a pose, a posture, an historical contrast and context. It's looking back, it's revisiting a place that is no more, a thing that is gone, a person or persons dead. And not being a perfect rememberer, the remembering misshapes the past and reassembles it into something where not all the pieces fit.

In lacking splendor, the shadows become the brighter spots, relatively, and having had splendor, there was too much color and light to bother with the shadows. In comparing the then-colors with the now-shadows, it turns out I was right: there are only dregs to be found in the shadows. Dregs and lesser mysteries, the ones that drain instead of sustain, the ones to be afraid of and not in awe of, the ones that weaken you into fear put you behind a gun rather than strengthen you to take a chance on peace.

There's a difference, you know, between being aimless and merely being untethered, and I bet you might guess which one belongs to shadows and which to color and light, and there are very few things which can disturb the stability of one's current state of mind and therein lies the rub: those things and times and people who worked so very hard to drag you down leave an equally difficult job for you and for other things and times and people to return you to the sunny side of the equivalence point.

Difficulties aside, did the drain of splendor happen with a single word? deed? silence? inaction? Do these things threshold or is my tendency to accumulate gravity what makes each and every stab and pinch and tweak pile upon me?

Should I rethink and re-remember the past in a way that transforms my psychological and historical baggage into balloons to lift me back into the light? Should I invest my time from now forward only in things and places and people who share energies with me instead of demanding them from me? And which is the biggest drain, a person, a place or things?

Perhaps it's a combination of all three: people of a certain kind change the place they live in by how they treat each other and which aspects of each other they consider merely things. Or perhaps it's the horrifying amount of energy people devote to the retardation of time itself to approach something approaching an eternal-now where contentedness is settled for because gray is better than black, and white is just too much to risk anything on.

Sometimes I look at the world and see it bounded on one side by a punch line and on the other side by a whole joke:

1. “No soap, radio.”
2. Patient: “Doc, it hurts when I do that.” Doctor: “Well, don't do that.”

Don't worry. If you don't get what I'm saying then either you're stupid or I am.

Here beneath the shadows I'm always being told I'm stupid. So I guess that settles it.

To give you a the smallest part of an idea about Ted, here's a bit from his website, admonitions to his potential audience:

Qualification: Do not read this site of you are:

• a small child
• easily offended
• confused by big words
• litigious
• prone to psychotic splits

In other words, my kinda guy. Sharp wit, off-the-charts smart, well-spoken, and perhaps most importantly, a warm and decent man.

Why does life have to be any more political or obfuscated than that? Even the Golden Rule holds hostage: do unto others as you would have them do unto you? There are a lot of self-esteemless people out there who actually want to be treated badly, beaten up, insulted, denigrated, etc. I prefer this one: be nice. Period. And the worthwhile people will show up in your life.

Please, just take that small chance.

But back to last weekend. It was as terrific a few days as I've had in a long time. Parts of my brain were exercised that had gone to flab a long time ago, pale and shutdown for lack of opportunity around others.

I hope he comes back soon. And I hope he brings his partner Rob with him next time.

So thanks for a great weekend, Ted.

I TiVo'd The Fountainhead a few days ago. Well, you didn't expect me to actually read Ayn Rand, did you? Good lord. Read that dialog.

I stopped watching. But then I decided to rubberneck (the only way to describe watching and listening to something like this). This scene dissolves to a friend telling him to compromise, then dissolves to an architectural firm where he gets put down, etc.

“Oh my God, Ayn!” God of Biscuits rages. “Could you be any less subtle?” (GoB has been known to channel Chandler Bing).

But seriously, Ms. Rand wrote the screenplay of her novel. Can't you picture her salivating at the chance to push her religion of Faith in Existence—a tarted up philosophy of Everyone For Him/Herself—to the masses? To get everyone to think just like her?

I've written about her before (did I just masturblog in public?), but to see it up there on the silver screen (it's a black and white movie from 1949)? Yeah, she's just as tedious on film, as you can see by the opening dialog. But picture this: picture her sitting at a typewriter salivating and thinking "me! me! me! It's all me! I've done everything myself and owe no one else my success! I'll make millions from this film—and without anyone's help! Because if anyone ever helped me, they'd be hurting me! My senses tell me what exists, as I clatter away at the keys, bringing my story into existence and—oh, wait, it existed before! It did! In my mind, which any one of the five only senses will confirm—oh, wait. Millions! I'll make millions! And it will all be because of me and no one else. I'll make more money than I can ever spend! The extra can go to feed the poor because—wait, no! I'd never be so cruel as to feed a man a meal he didn't earn himself! ...”

Blah blah blah. God, what a heartless bitch she was.

Historically I've considered being disappointed in others an indulgence, a crude luxury. Bad taste that comes back to bite you on the ass. I was wrong: sometimes that which is must be spoken of. In pure and simple terms.

But it's also the surest way to get you into a trouble you don't deserve, surest way to get myself into trouble. Trouble deflected, trouble no one took the trouble to create invective much less hurl it themselves. Too much effort: it's trouble deflected. The trespasses of others made into mine.

Perhaps that's where all this extra gravity is coming from: ceramic hearts deflecting cold stabs where I was expecting the warmth of a beating human one.

Never say “it can't get any worse” unless you're on the last breath or two from an expected death.

I'm going to blanket this entry with tags in hopes of attracting who might want to have some off-line email dialogs about current-day life in the Netherlands, perhaps some common folklore taught to children, etc.

Why? I do write more than just this blog, and a few story ideas would be better for having some details which I, humbly, do not have at my disposal. Longer-term readers already know of my...predisposition...to anything Dutch, but this is one step further.

Those who can help me out with this, please email me.

Thanks in advance!

But where can warp drive take us, except away from here...?

A bit of a geeky reference, yes (it's from Star Trek: Insurrection), but serves as a fairly equivalent statement to all those things I feel about San Francisco. It's not a Dorothy's-back-yard thing nor fear of itinerancy, not even xenophobia, but if you so love the place in which you live what purpose is there to travel, what impetus to improve means of travel?

To outsiders this particular bent in my geographical sensibilities would conflate xenophobia and agoraphobia to the point where the Dome of the Sky is so obvious as to require no belief system in place at all.

Still, the jewels adhered and embedded in the Dome of Sky are the same that all see except domeless, wide open; no context. And no context = no story and no story means no magic.

And we all have to have at least some magic in our lives. It's everywhere, in everything. Some people assign all things magical to one true source, others find magic to be oddities of nature and the beautiful light cast upon the walls by a candle being filtered by irregular weaving within the fabric of Nature. Still some others find the unexplainable to be sinister, dark, evil, no good. Spirits here! And magic for them is just a gateway to paranoia. Piteous, yes, but those deserving of the most sympathy are the ones who refuse magic. Refuse its benefits, its entertainment value, its very existence!!! Those are the dry and rational, staid and stolid individuals who must explain away every waveform, every molecule, every action, reaction, cause, effect, correlative and causal in order to exorcise magic any given day.

Magic is not easy to find, until you find it and realize you've known all along that it was right there in front of your face. “Right there”; “RIGHT there”; “Right. There.”

It's getting harder and harder for me to find magic here in San Francisco, fewer and fewer reasons to leave the warp drives dismantled. More and more refusers of magic spinning their wheels more and more feverishly to get away from the magic they don't believe in anyway. More and more refusers finding less and less interesting ways to distract themselves from the demanding presence of magic. The magic of an orgasm as a cheap substitute and as a relentless way to contrive a society which expects less magic, expects less in others and in themselves.

For myself, I have found that paths to the best, most powerful magicks follow deep roots and deep fault lines to inhospitable places requiring work you can't outsource, strength you can't employ machines for, and commitment so deep and pensive and single-minded it sparks the first lights of honor and good will. Sparks which then fund a hearth, a hearth which eventually ascends to light the skies: the sunlight by which these best magicks can be seen.

But for a while now, the furrows and cracks in the earth, the places where oddity and life might have found purchase are paved over with the even, non-porous surface of acculturated sameness and so there is less and less access to the kinds of magicks my life requires. Dissent, conflict, even ridicule are unnaturally ineffective, as the sameness has lost the ability to adapt, to learn, to abide.

Yes, an arable for magic is no longer in this place. At least not in my traditional potreros.

So the piece of the puzzle that can't be moved must now be moved. Towards, away, forwards, backwards, down or up, near or far. Or surrender to cacophony of the denial of greater things and welcome in the death of hope.]]> http://www.godofbiscuits.com/blog/archives/2008/05/buitenlands.html http://www.godofbiscuits.com/blog/archives/2008/05/buitenlands.html Sun, 04 May 2008 17:46:14 -0800 Lord God of Biscuits. I just got comment spam from:

Commenter name: Jizz Download Commenter email address: jizz_covered_love_holes@gmail.com Commenter URL: http://google.com/group/jizz-clips/web/jizz-xxx Commenter IP address: 203.162.2.134

“Jizz Covered Love Holes”

And they say romance is dead.

I'm up against Choices. What started as a tactical “let's see” has on its own volition inflated to include most of the space around me and inside my head and has become a choice of strategic importance to my life going one way or t'other.

For reasons I can't yet fathom, a quote by Maya Angelou hit me like a ton of bricks, yet it didn't knock me off balance, it gave me grounding. It didn't settle a thing, but I was more settled. It didn't provoke, but I felt as if the words demanded something of me. It didn't comfort me, but it pointed me in some direction. All in the midst of these Choices.

Maya Angelou and her wisdom:

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer,
it sings because it has a song.

Only those far from my personal realm will find pretense, not only in the quote, but perhaps in me as well. Oh well.

Life is song, all rhythm to keep it going, all words to keep it interacting, all music to carry it to places neither rhythm nor words can reach.

Angelou knows why the caged bird sings. Choice is my cage right now; Decision is the key which will unlock it.

Anyway, watch at your own peril. Because not only will you see and hear field sales sloganeering going on, but late night infomercials for penis-enlargement, acne medication and fat loss pills have better production values and even better pitches.

Watch at your own peril. Yes, peril!!!!

For my own efforts, I couldn't make it through the entire thing, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they got the UI guys to produce it. It's not like they're sequestered in their offices sweating the details on the Vista UE.

Oh, and one more thing: in the verse that addresses the ‘wait and see’ IT professionals' attitude towards Vista deployment, the song's answer to that attitude is “SP1!”. Pardon me for sweating the details myself on their behalf, but if those IT professionals have already waited until SP1, how does that combat ‘wait and see’ since, like I said, they've already waited. Already seen. And the adoption rates post-SP1 aren't anything to write home about.

Meanwhile, IBM—yes, IBM—is giving their employees the option of having a Mac for their main computer. Early results of the trial? 86% of them wanted to keep the Mac they were given for the testing period.

I'm not sayin'...I'm just sayin'.

As for the video, are you embarrassed for them? You should be. Are you ready to shoot the messenger? You should be.

They should have called the video “Two Girls and One Cup of Vista”.

P.S. Bruce's butt is much hotter.

P.P.S. He's flagging right, red. Some of you will know what that means. I do, but ew. But it's apropros imagery for Vista. Double ew.

So now it's called the “Open Computer”, which, if you believe the people for whom this computer is for, is redundant; these are the people that hate the fact and solid justification of being able to run Mac OS X only on Apple hardware. Boo hoo.

So then this company is specious in comparing it price/performance wise to a Mac mini. The mini is specific to two different audiences: those that want to dip their toe into the Mac world and those that want a small, silent, capable Mac, where size, loudness and narrow capability are the key factors. Like the Mac mini I have running as media server and media source in my home theater setup.

This thing is a clunky box: much bigger than the mini and most likely much louder than the mini. So for the latter audience (which would include me) this box might as well be a Dell desktop box.

So let's say that those Apple-hardware-restrictions haters want the “freedom” of “openness” and “choice” of running Mac OS X on commodity hardware (which none of Apple's is, for reasons of enhanced usability, not just to be different for no reason) end up with Mac OS X on their desktop.

Hurray! They've finally gotten the OS and UI they've hated on so long! Huh? Now we've eliminated the first group, too.

But it's all about choice now, right? Mac OS X is superior for many reasons, one of which is look-and-feel consistency across all applications—except for Adobe and their stupid AMP application. “But why can't I skin the windows to look like I want them to? Why can't I have mouse-focus on the windows and auto-raise and...and...and...everything I can choose to do on my linux commodity, loud-as-the-devil's-own-noise, ugly as sin, boring as fuck, built-it-myself-while-wearing-a-tin-foil-hat-just-because-that's-how-I-roll in Mac OS X? I can do all that on Linux, so why shouldn't I be able to do that on Mac OS X?

So whoever the market is for the OpenMac OpenComputer will end up with an ugly beige box runnning Linux anyway, because Mac OS X is too restricted by Apple's insistence.

So explain to me again? Hate Apple hardware's restrictions, hate Mac OS X's restrictions people who just plain hate anything Apple makes because they're not “open” going out and buying a beige box with non-Apple-standard configurations, ending up with the problems of finding drivers for the stuff they themselves add to the Open Computer—remember, these people don't ever settle for off-the-shelf configurations—ending up stuck with an OS that doesn't let them configure the software to look like some teen angst nightmare that makes them feel in control of their computing world.

The only way the presence of this stillbirth (by all reckoning) of a machine makes any sense is as an attempt to hate on Apple's valuation and to attempt to lend an honest credence to their irrational attempts to humiliate humble Apple.

There's how to build a successful business, eh?

So if it's not intended to successfully sell machines, why does it exist? More to the point, who's funding it? That's where you'll find the real answers.

Microsoft, cold-blooded reptilian that's dying from the changing climate, goes after the small mammal that, while tiny and cute and stuffed [graphical] toy-like, has managed to thrive with aplomb.

We've seen this before.

Oh, and did I mention that Psystar warns that it's not 100% compatible with Apple's Software Update system? By their own admission and in their own words, there are “non-safe” and “not non-safe” updates for the OpenComputer running Leopard. In my book, that directly violates their claim that it runs Leopard “off the shelf”, because a significant feature of Leopard-off-the-shelf is that updates (security and improvement updates) work as advertised.

Let's see how far they get; then we'll have some real numbers of the stupidity of consumers and how some things are cliché for a good reason.

Adobe AIR enables developers to create [Rich Internet Applications] on the desktop using the skills and Web technologies — such as HTML, Ajax, PDF, Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex — they already employ.

What that all means is that, well, you know all those spiffier web apps like, say, Google Maps or MyYahoo! that behave more like a typical application than a web page? Well, Adobe AIR basically brings all the web-side crap and packs it into a library that lets you develop a web-type application, but it runs without need of a web browser or even a connection to the internet. Good idea, right? Well, their first shot at using it for a “real” application is the new Adobe Media Player (or AMP. clev'). And here's what it looks like:

Looks great, like a Mac application, doesn't it? Oh, wait, it looks like a Windows app. Oh, wait, it doesn't look like one of those, either.

Multiple steps backwards in usability, but hey, at least it gives the web app developers a shot at joining the rest of us on the desktop. Gooooo, you.

Wait, wasn't Java supposed to do that?

I guarantee you that cross-platform technology is good for no one but developers, to the detriment of users. And that's not how it's supposed to play: developers are supposed to do the hard work to allow users to make easy work of their....work!

Biggest example is....Adobe! They have this enormous cross-platform back-end library for Photoshop and most other CS applications, but because they wanted to cut costs. Result: CS4 (upcoming version) apps like Photoshop that would benefit from 64-bit technology (more efficient and faster with large dataset manipulation like 20GB files) won't be getting it for the Mac because their back-end has to also work with Windows.

So Adobe promises CS5 will be 64-bit, which means they'll have to dismantle the cross-platform back-end and build separate applications for Mac and for Windows.

And now we get a media player that has a huge (like .NET) download in order to play videos. A video player whose usability is familiar to neither Mac folks nor Windows folks.

This is nothing but a ploy to lock developers into inferior technologies that they control: didn't I mention it's all based on Flash?

Microsoft did this same thing with ActiveX, COM, DCOM and a whole bunch of other crap that the web's taken forever to supplant.

Thanks, big corporations!

And before you start on Apple, Objective-C is available to everyone via gcc, the most popular, most famous compiler in the world. Everyone uses it. Except Microsoft.

I'm biased, of course, but there's art in a truly usable application. And least common denominator isn't a healthy way to start to build one.

And here's some Facebook-generated esoterica:

• Which Greek God am I? Zeus:

You are Zeus, the king of the gods. Zeus is a mighty and powerful ruler, who likes to be in charge. He doesn't let anyone mess with him, or he brings out his thunderbolt.

• What is the color of my aura? Purple:

Your aura is purple. You're eccentric with your style and do not like to conform. You seek great things and significance in life and are a natural born leader.

• A Theoretical: Is He Your Soulmate? (more on this later)

Earlier in the day, TiVo offered up an episode of SNL to satisfy Sam's “FEY, TINA” Wish List. All well and good, but a land mine was planted right in front of the sofa: SNL’s musical guest? Keane. Keane performing “Somewhere Only We Know”. I do not know how it affected Sam; I could not bring myself to do anything but busy myself with nonsense (enter Facebook) until the song played itself out. Still, without realizing the exact point at which I'd begun to sing the song, the land mine made itself known and knocked me out of my minimalist mental context: silent running.

Another land mine, though this one was impotent, a dud which failed its purpose: one of the banished ‘pups’ dared attempt to contact me after repeated demands of no-contact. On my birthday. No surprise. Subject? “It's too late to apologize” Content? A tragic attempt at grand apologia, only to expose its true purpose: “...Not trying or expecting to make amends or anything, I just would hate to die knowing that I never said I was sorry...”. If you don't recall my opinion on genuine apology, go read it again. I'm Zeus, remember? I can ordain. An apology isn't an apology when it’s self-serving. I have a purple aura, remember? I am eccentric, nonconformist. Pursuit of great things by a natural born leader leaves no time for trivialities.

It is a hallmark of each and every ‘pup’ to ignore boundaries and pee on the carpets. Attempts both simplistically obvious and inanely bumbling to turn that Someplace Only We Knew into chew toys and puppy chow for their own base self-absorption I would never permit. Still, I have just now come to realize that only Pavlovian tactics and rolled up newspapers rapping on noses would have been simple enough and would have saved me quite a lot of time.

To this end, and to end this, I'll ignore boundaries; I'll impolitely soil the carpetings; I'll grab my blog, roll it up and make a final attempt at instruction. Here, in all its self-serving glory, is the entire epistle:

From: Justin Green
Subject: "it's too late to apologize"

But you deserve an apology. I'm sorry I was such a dick to you, and for all of the ways and times I was. Not trying or expecting to make amends or anything, I just would hate to die knowing that I never said I was sorry.

I hope you're doing well. I broke up with Nathan, I'm back in therapy, and I'm trying to be a better person.

You helped me realize I wasn't being a very good one. I'm sorry that I hurt you in the process.

Take care of yourself...

Are you uncomfortable reading someone else's “private” email? You should be because that's the right reaction. Am I uncomfortable posting a private email? Of course, but I'll live because it ended it. And Justin has dispatched with a boilerplate ‘sorry’ before his life is over, so he can check that one off his Earl list.

All of this brings me back, by way of seismic contrast, to that Theoretical: the Soul Mate question from a nonsense Facebook “application”. I am single now. Not blessedly so, not by choice, but by necessity, by fiat, by simple fact. It doesn't take a genius to realize that in life sometimes one just has to feel bad for a while, that in life sometimes conflict is not only healthy, but necessary, that absolution is not earned but merely offered. But often fear and timorousness occlude these simple notions. Some people just don't have the mettle. The rest don't have my respect.

I am single. I have no soul mate. I have myself, blessedly incomplete, a soul acting as vessel for universal energy and as drop cloth for bled-out, emotionally poisonous leachate.

But to throw the cosmic dice and create a new opportunity for understanding through unworthy means, I chose Allen as the man to test against as soul mate material. Facebook is a weird place (and yes, I do my part to make it that way).

But that final land mine, the one whose cold purpose delivered merciless violence, was Question 4 in the “Soul Mate” quiz:

How do you see what you two want from life? Life. For him. On the same page, indeed. Wasn't that easy? For the record, the quiz offered this:

You are perfect soul mates. You balance each other perfectly and are on the same life track. Your personalities are fitting puzzle pieces and he fills your needs and you fill his. You are meant to be.

That's when the crying and wishing started and wouldn't stop. Simple answers are the most brutal. Insipid questions don't deserve truth, but truth's brutality often obliges anyway.

It seems the fashion, the accepted behavior—more so than ever—that brutal truths are best handled by blanketing them with shallow lies and plausible deniability, by body doubles and clever CGI or other tricks of light. Livable worlds require the creature comfort of being able to suppress and forget and turn away from unpalatable truths.

I was never fashionable, and in the face of Brutal Truths like death the world seems populated ever more with liars. Fashionable, shallow coverups making bad copies of themselves: the world becomes choked with liars who can plausibly deny themselves and their own cowardice.

Eyes opened by Brutal Truths can never be fully closed to them again. And not for not trying, but the inexorable conclusion comes to this: the unclouded eye is best, and courage rises to purpose in times of need.

Liars Everywhere by Toad the Wet Sprocket

here in my mind is a wall i can't climb

don't listen now
there are liars everywhere

deep in my heart is a stone i must cut

don't listen now
there are liars everywhere
liars are everywhere