Big Stink In Little China

Yesterday (Tuesday, now that I post this) was kind of a gaggy day, in this little corner of the web. And it is little. I'm not sure some of the well-known bloggers involved really comprehend that. Least of all, the perps of Tuesday's big stink.

I'm not even going to bother to preface this with all the "I identify with you as a woman" crap, because that should be a given. Not that there were many givens—which are, after all, the product of trust—around yesterday.

What showed up instead, en masse, was a lot of ego-underbelly. The dark side of narcissism. Disowned, projected content, with that fabulous mob-mentality willingness to point the finger.

Finger, what am I saying. They named names, numbers, URLs. People, read my lips: this is something healthy adults do not do.

And you could count them on one hand, the adults.

As to the many "friends" who rushed to defend Kathy ... WTF were you thinking? Are people so bloody eager to belong, so profoundly immature ... it disheartens me. That's not support, it's not friendship, and certainly not what a person in trauma needs. Idjits! Get a clue, read a book, something!

Apparently, we must also review basic civil rights: No one is free to accuse a suspected other in public this way, name names, organize vendettas or any other similar damn thing ... unless, of course, you believe in vigilante justice. So crude, so not nice.

No matter how very special you are. No matter, even, if disgusting things have been posted about your wife—outrage, yes. Posses, no. Let me see, also bandied about by some leading lights were: vilification,isolation, shunning ... prison, FCS. Them's some mighty big underbellies. Some mighty brave pajama people.

Now we come to the nub of things. Miss Tara Rogue Hunt's blog, where I had wandered onto the comment thread that fateful afternoon.

"If you are part of the swarm of mean kids that come around to just be disruptive without making a point, you will be deleted. Say what you came to say … you aren’t clever. You are mean."

Talk about riveting. Instantly, the discussion became like one of those accident scenes where everything unfolds in slow-motion, with sirens and flashing lights just around the corner.

And Miss Tara Rogue soon got down to her nub.

"I don't want to sound like Oprah or any of these really slimy things the "guffaw brigade" is indicating below (they remind me of the mean kids in high school who used to draw pictures of me with zits all over and laugh at my expense) ... I guess I want us to get real and human."

A many-headed nub, as nubs so often are, and we ought not to be surprised. That is compassion, not the rush to fawn, but letting people speak for themselves—and listening. Carefully.

Tuesday night's Dan Fost Tech Chronicles column: (revised, small mercies, for Wednesday's paper)

"Tara Hunt, of San Francisco, who had been the original target of Locke's 'Mean Kids' site (she had coined the term after getting flamed for suggesting that companies need to find a 'higher purpose') ..."

Which isn't quite true. Is it. Clearly that's how you felt; the astonishing thing (do I need to say this?) is the latitude you cut for yourself as a result.

"'Chris Locke is a sad soul who blames the world for his lack of success,' Hunt said when I reached her on the phone today. 'He's constantly broke and angry. He calls himself rageboy. All that anger makes him very hard to work with.'"

Without condescension, Tara Rogue, but because this is somewhat within my purview, I offer you one thought: Stop all that fucking Twittering and get your ass into therapy.

No one acts out that dramatically and harmfully to another who has integrated their dark side ... and the dark side is what this is really all about.

N.B. This post actually follows upon this one, unbeknownst at the time.

"My Bidness Nose!"

Okay, this FakeSteve guy is not only in many ways better than the real thing could possibly be ... as well as so like himself as to give the true Jobso fan chills up and down the spine (I leave it to you to decide who “himself” is) ... he is now, also, a friggin genius.

For surely “Not that one, my Bidness Nose!” shall go down in the Book of Great Lines ... to be inscribed by monks, many, many years hence ... after the whole, humungous explosion is over.

Monks in shorts. It will be very, very hot.

They will make books the old way, out of goat skin, and ink from gall and berries ... and every now and then, out of boredom and the natural desire for a good time, one monk will whisper, “Tito!”

Another, already in stitches, will whisper in reply, “Not that one! My bidness nose!”

Then they will all fall off their stools in fits of barely-suppressed laughter. Just like in study hall.

Not much inscribing the rest of that day.

I don't spose we'll ever know if FS really ran into Michael—yet is this not one credible riff?

“Then he turns to Tito and says, Tito, give me my nose. Tito opens a case and pulls out a nose. Michael goes, Damn, Tito, not that nose! My bidness nose! Tito's like, I thought this was an audition. Michael says No, it's a business meeting, and I need my bidness nose, and dammit, Tito, I swear I'm gonna smack you, you know that?”

One wonders if RS is funky enough to have the same sort of ... reverie?

Who the fuck cares, this guy is good.

Where Do They All Come From

Sometimes the best stuff goes on at someone else's blog. You know, kind of like the way some couples fight at other people's houses.

Like this poor guy, making his helpful little Liberal remarks. I can pick a fight with anybody. Particularly the well-meaning, whose very springboard is All Wrong. Bamboo slivers neath the nails. Bring 'em on.

Comment by Robert Franklin

“BTW, we have just finished up a round of interviews with teens for the website I will be launching FamilyThrive and one thing that was really clear to me was that even though teens push back about spending time with their parents to their parents. When we conducted our interviews they all shared how much they truly cherish spending time with their parents and want to spend more. Ironic.”

Thread hijacking? I don't think so. Or let me put it another way: this hi- wanted so bad to be -jacked, people were making fools of themself every whichway, using their best stuff to honk off in all wrong directions. Mean kids, the blog owner called us.

Comment by Zo

“Actually, this comment has steam coming out of *both* ears. If it is in truth a SURPRISE to anyone that parents are NOT to look to their teenagers for signs of approval of their parenting … but to BE the goddamn parent … step over to my blog, I want to have a word with you.

You had to “conduct interviews” to learn this?

Where, oh where, did we go wrong. In the Sixties. Are you young enough to be my child? My kids are not clueless parents.

But wait—I was one of the few hippie moms who actually behaved as a parent. An “old-fashioned” parent, it was called. Hell-o? It was clear to me who the children were, and who were the (stoned, drug-addled) grown-ups. It was very fashionable to let your kids Do Anything. Tres cool.

Like most such trends of cool, this made life easier for said grown-ups. They didn’t have to be Adults. You know, like doing the right thing, making unpopular decisions and such work, all by your lonely self.”

Comment by Robert Franklin

“Zo,

Seems like what I meant was not able to make it thru the steam. What I was trying to convey is that even when our teens are pushing us away they really want us to hug them tighter.”

Except there, right after the word “steam,” was a Smiley Face. A service to the reader you will never find here. Ever.

“May seem obvious to some, but it bears repeating, especially during the tough times with our children.”

I did not take time to count the ways R. Franklin still hung up on reaction/acceptance. Hell, my daughter couldn't stand the sight of me til she was seventeen and one half, at which time she promptly returned to her sweet normal self, and I says to myself, Job well done.

Once in a huge and serious pillow fight—when she was thirteen and I a mere lass of thirty-four—she belted me a good one and hollered, (bless her heart, I'll never forget it) “You old sow!” I dunno, I wouldn't let her date somebody who worked at the gas station. Point being? Point being, “All the insecure people.” As the Beatles almost wrote.

Here, I'll Just Stand By This Hole

Catherine Orenstein's Op-Ed Writing Seminars For Women:

“What I want to suggest to you,” Orenstein continued, “is that the personal and the public interests are not at odds ...”

OMSJ ... whole life wasted? (opens kitchen drawer)

“ ... and the belief that they are mutually exclusive has kept women out of power.” Don't you want money, credibility, access to aid in your cause? she asked.

Wait. More, but busy. Hara-kiri. HMFY. (How many fucking years.)

Cristina Page, a spokeswoman for Birth Control Watch in Washington, leaned forward. “I've never heard anyone say that before,” she said. [WTF you been, bitch?] “What you've just said is so important.

Pardon me ... have to adjust knife ... aaah ...

It's

... arrrrgh ...

so

... ugh ....

liberating.”

...Aieee! ...

Dissolves into puddle not of blood (yeah, you wish) but bubbling green frustration, like Wicked Witch of West, which is neither here nor there, but can you believe these women?

No, don't tell me. There are some things I would simply rather not know.

Undermining Dick Cheney

Cheney Assails Those Favoring Iraq Drawdown
“Vice President Dick Cheney offered an aggressive defense ...”

Interesting concept.

“... of the Bush administration's Iraq strategy today, asserting that those in Congress who pursue a gradual drawdown of American forces are ‘undermining’ the troops.”

No, what he's saying is that they are undermining Dick Cheney. As indeed they are. That this bothers him to hell is really beyond the creepy pale.

Not that anyone gives a fig anymore.

Mark my words. (Got a marker? Good.) It will only become more naked: Dicky cares only for Dicky, Dicky's skin, Dicky's reputation, and above all ... well, you just don't realize. Disobey Dicky, Do Not What Dicky Sees Fit—these sorts of concepts do not compute.

They just lay there, the clumps of indigestible information which eventually balloon into aneurysms behind the knees. Anyone knows that. White House crew? Gurney at the ready.

Because it's only going to get worse. Nobody is going to do a damn thing the way Dicky sees fit, which is to say, the poor man's world is already in the process of collapse. In this case, as in Rummy's, the fault lies in its own foul atmosphere. We are beyond the Planet Narcissism. We are in an inhuman universe, where the death—or life—of others, of kids, teenagers, do not connect up with, More Troops! On The Ground!

And all he knows, to try and get his way, is to say shitty things about others. Oh Dick. That iron-willed focus. Der Fuhrer would have loved you.

Argggh v.3

Behind Every Great Male Writer , a review by Hadley Freeman:
Many of the most esteemed authors in history have relied on their wives—or if not, conveniently placed women such as sisters or daughters—to help them knock out their tomes: Wordsworth, Nabokov, Carlyle, and, er, Dick Francis, to name but a few ... sometimes a wife's contribution has simply been to smooth the life around her husband as much as possible, clearing the way for him to work, undisturbed, as Jessie (wife of Joseph) Conrad did, ditto Nora Joyce. Both of them, according to Jeffrey Meyers in his book Married to Genius, provided a kind of stability for their highly strung husbands.

Fine. I can take it. Ancient history and all that.

Nabokov is probably the most illustrious example of this type. His wife, Vera, was his typist, proofreader, editor, agent, business manager, chauffeur and, somewhat intriguingly, the person who would cut up his food for him at every meal.

Knew that.

Vera was not, however, his bedmate, according to Nabokov's biographer, Brian Boyd—in this one activity, the author preferred to go it alone.

OFCS. Could we not be spared? Anything?

Everyone has to go just a little too far. Nabokov. The great, great beauty of Lectures on Russian Literature. Did you know that Kitty and—the name of that noble, farming clod momentarily escapes me—(Levin, of course. What a dull name.) are, for whole periods of the book, running six months ahead of Anna and Vronksky?

Well yes, all that making like bunnies. Slow, tragic bunnies. Death? Beneath a train? Feh! Stinkers to Brian Boyd, who just could not wait to issue this lifetime spoiler. Oh, hell. What do I care. Speak, Memory is a tad onanistic, come to think of it.

It's just that there is no more odd a sight—from a purely objective point of view, you understand —than the male, what is the clinical term ... jerking off. Do you suppose it was also Vera's duty to watch? From what I've heard, this is something boys like to do. In groups. Working out, I suppose, their latency issues. The poor sods.

Really. Beneath all the attack and dismissal, girls are rock solid, in that we do not agonize in such manner. It is apparent to us that we are female, and, well, it's the whole Object thing all over again, isn't it. It fucks up their minds, and while many a valiant attempt is made to project this obsession onto women and breast size, try as they might, I'm sorry, there is no female equivalent to a hard-on gone limp. Which I gather to be the ruling fear of this or any other time. Believe me, the fact that you plaster your anxieties all over women, children and weaker nations is the real crime. That's what we're charged up about, not you. It's your goddamn unlived life.

Occasionally, too, it is husbands who have provided support to their writing wives. Leonard Woolf is widely credited for creating a sufficiently comforting atmosphere in which his wife Virginia could, occasionally, find enough solace to write.

Oh, right. And what year did he die.