Demoralizing

Funny. There's a rather long list of words I could use to describe you, Zip, but "downer" isn't on it.

Thank you for the hip hop history lesson. For you, a Wilhelm Scream.

If only.

Paddy sez:
Since it bothers you so much, I suggest you stop.

But then I wouldn't be doing my due diligence as an art blogger, now would I?

That was a while back. I'd forgotten the conversation, actually. In the same one I described you as "free associating (with a particularly bizarre neural net)".

She's free to find my flip comments offensive and in poor taste and so on. Whatever makes her happy. Personally I think too many art bloggers are too polite and accepting (of crappy art, especially) and anyway I'm no good at being polite even when I try.

The blog from which that comes is a good example of someone who is polite to your face, appearing pleasant and even-keeled, but who, in private, will fail to respond to e-mail, ignore you, and basically pretend you don't exist, even while you're one of the people who make their career possible.

I'm just no good at being that two-faced.

Do you know the Ed to which Donna is referring? Do you know where that comment came from?

Zip is drawing on some of our shared history here. I didn't actually remember Donna's comment and had to search for it using Google. For a moment I thought my assholery here had become a topic elsewhere, but no -- the comment is from a thread from January of this year. I was involved in the conversation and I guess I wrote something offensive, which I seem to do a lot. Sometimes I mean to offend -- as in this post, which I admit is pretty obnoxious, but with, I think, I purpose -- and often I don't. In the case of the thread referenced here, I was arguing with George, who you'll remember from Franklin's as well.

The Ed of "as Ed repeatedly states" has a reputation for attempting to maintain a civil discourse on his site. Of course, that civility only extends to people he knows and likes, or to people he might one day have to do business with. Public figures -- George W. Bush comes to mind -- were open to all kinds of abuse on his blog. Further, Ed's definition of civility also excluded legitimate criticisms of, among other things, the actual running of his blog, his gallery, and the artists he showed there.

His following is somewhat cultlike. Mostly it's people sucking up to him for one reason or another, since he clearly is a rising star in the art world. Then again, Becky Smith was a rising star at one time, too.

By the way, if you go to Ed's more recent entries you'll see Franklin and George still sparring in the comments. It's not very interesting.

Occasionally interesting news items slip through. Sometimes I find the first mention of things on a given blog which isn't very useful most of the time but has pointers to other useful things. I can't keep track of everything. Anyway, it doesn't take much for me to run down the list of new posts and check them off: "Porn, porn, stupid video, inside joke, porn, brain-damaged review..."

I like to skim the brain-damaged reviews for my own amusement.

As far as Ed's I haven't read that in ages. I only just went back today to see if anything was going on, which is how I know Franklin and George are still waltzing.

The Fag blog, as you wonderfully call it, did break an interesting story and even followed up. Very rarely there's something there to keep on top of.

Listen: I consider Franklin a very, very good friend, but I still find he gets a little overly self-righteous and serious. I don't expect my friends to always act the way I'd like them to act -- quite the opposite -- so it's not something I get upset about or anything, but it can be exasperating at times. Meanwhile I'm certain he often finds me childish, probably even infantile.

I'm fairly certain he doesn't have Aspergers or anything in that spectrum. He's just very intelligent and has very little patience for stupidity.

Meanwhile, over the course of the last year I've come to realize that I'm an asshole. Back in April I was reading advice columnist Dan Savage (which I don't often do) when I saw a quote which struck me: "When friends say 'your personality is intense,' what they typically mean is 'you are an asshole.'"

This may seem obvious to you, but to me this was a revelation. I'd always thought, when I encountered an asshole, that they knew they were assholes and just didn't care. They acted like assholes, I figured, because they didn't give a crap about anyone else.

What had never occurred to me until then was that an asshole might not know they were, in fact, an asshole. And then it dawned on me: Most of my oldest friends are assholes. Most of the good people I've met didn't seem to stick around, but the assholes, I can't get rid of them. And now I know why.

This hasn't been all that easy for me to accept because I've always tried to be a good person. I hold doors for people, I'm a Boy Scout, I teach kids first aid and how to handle food on camping trips so they don't get get sick. I try not to cut people off when driving, don't get too upset when other people cut in line ahead of me, I don't spit in the street, I don't use public toilets and piss on the seat.

When I look back at the asshole things I've done and said, I always thought of them as aberrations. Like the United States torturing people. Americans think that's a few bad apples, but Afghan Muslims think Americans are evil torturers. Same kind of thing. At my bachelor party a good friend of mine showed up in a shirt that was so ugly, I actually asked him, "Did your girlfriend dress you today?" knowing full well his girlfriend was blind. He hasn't spoken to me since. I looked at things like that and thought, wow, I shouldn't have said that, but I let it slip. Whoops.

That Dan Savage line, though, that really struck me. I now see that my asshole acts aren't aberrations; they're who I am. I'm an asshole. I'm not too happy about it, but I've been trying my whole life not to be an asshole and failing. So I guess I just have to accept it.

I don't know if it's possible to use my asshole powers for good, but I'm working on it.

"Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" is from the Church of the SubGenius. I love those guys.

Scouting means a lot to me. But some of the official materials can be pedantic.

I'm fond of the Church of the SubGenius. But a lot of it is completely insane.

The way your head works is God's own private mystery.

Ah, but I do give a shit. It bothers me immensely.

I suppose we could compare the two of us and see who is most pathetic, except you don't even have enough courage to sign your comment. Which is pretty weak. Drop me a line when you're braver.