A Very Special . . . Blog

As said in homage to the great TV shows of the 70s and 80s that would use "A Very Special" episode to address some issue. (See http://www.jumptheshark.com/forum/Special/31 for a hilarious list of examples. I think Gordon Jump molesting Dudley on Diff'rent Strokes is the best.) This is a very special blog mostly because I am home relaxing and trying to stay warm instead of slaving. The road conditions in and around Tulsa are getting worse by the minute. Things started going downhill around lunchtime and once I was finally able to hit the escape hatch, it was a scary experience. I saw a truck hanging off an overpass. I saw multitudes of wrecks. A car rear-ended a fire truck heading to another accident. I was extremely relieved to get home and away from the pandemonium outside. Plus it's just flat-out cold and the combination of the wind and rain blowing in your face is pretty terrible. As soon as I got in, I raided the closet for my thermal underwear and started layering myself in a multitude of clothing. I had to take a sack of garbage out to the trashcan and damn near wiped out on the front porch. The guy across the street was trying to spread ice melt over his sidewalk and damn near fell out. Welcome to Oklahoma, biiiiiitches.

I was talking to my friend earlier today and we were discussing how many people on IMDb said they either walked out of the theater or fell asleep in Defiance. I was giggling about how once I start laughing in a film, I can't stop. When the philosopher man in the film started discussing Descartes, I lost it laughing and couldn't get my composure back. This is due in large part to how much it reminded me of this philosophy teacher we suffered through in college. He would be the type in the middle of a freakin' disaster to start pontificating philosophy to others. Uggh. But I digress. So anyway, the discussion of laughter causing more laughter segued to how once your feelings for someone change, especially in the context of positive to negative, it is so incredibly hard if not impossible to change them back. It's like there is some magical threshold that, once crossed, cannot ever be traversed again. That was on my mind today because . . . well . . . I was thinking about a friend and how I just can't get back the level of respect I once had for him. It's like how I say once you see something you can't un-see it. Like the time when I was in class back in grad skool and this guy walked in with a HUGE shit stain on the back of his pants. Once I saw it, I couldn't not see it again. I tried to ignore it and I also tried not to laugh but that stain might as well have had a neon arrow pointing to it. I have this friend and I've been on the fence for a little while now about how to feel. I have liked him and cared about him but I definitely have not felt like I was getting even 5% back of what I have invested. And no friendship that makes you feel crappy is worth keeping. Back to the point at hand, I saw something earlier this morning that made me lose it-- laughing, not crying or not with anger. It was similar to another experience I had recently where I saw an image of a guy I dated a few weeks back and the one word that flashed through my mind was: LAME. I saw this guy and he looked the same and was doing the same things and complaining about the same stuff and acting like an arrogant horse's ass like he always does and I guess the two words I could best use about that man are SAME and LAME. I can guarantee you six months from now, he'll still be in the same grind with nothing new to talk about. Just a big mess of Eeyore, roaming around Tulsa, whining that life is misery. Waaa-waah. (sound of old school Vaudeville horn there) So I saw a picture of my friend and there were so many bad connotations to it. I don't even really know where to begin. The people in the photo with him looked sketchy. People who, to quote James May, looked like obvious members of the criminal classes except that they are psuedo-wealthy. Like super-smug people who probably do heroin in the bathroom at home and who probably have every form of Herpes that exists. I think the main issue that it goes back to for me is people who are incredibly arrogant but who have absolutely NO right to be. Unjustified/Unjustifiable snobbery, if you will. Like my friend Carter used to say: they sit down to shit, too. I guess they see me as some country bumpkin (even though I am better educated than any of them) and they see my other friend as a loser (even though by even their yuppie standards, he makes more money and has more work than all of them put together, thanks much). Sometimes taking time away from a friendship causes you to demystify and demythologize a situation. In many cases it's sad when you do and it sucks. But it's nice when you get to that breakthrough place where you can laugh. As Margaret and I said on Saturday night: "We conducted an impromptu poll in your town and zero people know who you are."