Black Thanksgiving

Last night, my Husband and I attended a charity dinner. I’m not exactly sure what disease or malady this dinner was fighting to cure, but I assumed it some sort of cancer. However, the real reason my Husband and I were attending was merely in order to meet our friend Brian’s new girlfriend. Apparently, she was hosting the event.

The story on the girlfriend was she had been whining to meet us for quite awhile. Brian was reluctant to make introductions because he wasn’t sure how serious he was about her and their relationship. Finally, the constant pouting and bickering won out and my Husband and I were herded like cattle to the event to meet Miss Prima Dona herself.

Obviously, I had reservations.

First of all, the girlfriend’s name is Tiffany. Tiffany. If ever there was a name that screamed spoiled self entitlement it is Tiffany. Hell, it’s impossible to even say the name without turning your nose up and pursing your lips.

Secondly, Miss Tiffany, after a mere 4 weeks of dating, had already tried to convince Brian to get rid of his cat. There isn’t a man alive who wouldn’t have been dumped 3 seconds after having the balls to ask me to give up any of my pets. And fuck allergies, they’re no excuse. The recipe for true love includes Zyrtec.

Fortunately, Brian retained possession of his beloved feline, but my subtle distaste for Tiffany remained.

After entering the building, my Husband and I quickly scanned the crowd looking for Brian. When we finally found him, he was suspiciously sans girlfriend.

“Where is Tiffany?” I asked.

“She’s over there,” Brian said as he pointed to a perky brunette animatedly talking to an awkward red headed guy, “Talking to an old friend. I’ll get her.”

“Don’t mention the cat,” warned my Husband.

Brian returned a few moments later with both the brunette and the awkward guy. Introductions were made and the guys quickly started talking sports. Politely, I turned towards Tiffany and tried to make conversation.

“So…do you live around here?”

“Oh yeah,” she answered, “Been here about a year.”

“Do you enjoy the area?”

Granted, this wasn’t the most stimulating conversation we could have been having. My only excuse was that I had only known her for about 30 seconds. Still, that didn’t stop this bitch from pulling her cell phone out of her pocket and, mid conversation with me, dialing a phone number and screaming profanities onto some poor sap’s answering machine.

Strike three and I was officially done with Tiffany. I turned towards the guys while Tiffany made another call. A few seconds later, Tiffany wandered off, leaving us with her weirdo friend.

The four of us decided to grab some seats. My Husband and Brian sat on one side of the table. I sat across from my Husband and next to Tiffany’s friend who introduced himself as ‘Bomber.’

I am not making that up. This guy adamantly insisted we all refer to him as ‘Bomber.‘

Did I mention that Bomber was strange? Because Hoooo boy, was Bomber strange! He stuttered and twitched and had absolutely zero social skills. For example, in the middle of a very lively conversation about politics, he interrupted to clumsily blurt, “I like karate!”

Trying my best to be polite to Bomber, I turned toward him in an attempt to make conversation.

“That sounds interesting,” I replied, “Do you take lessons?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been involved with the sport?”

“Awhile.”

Uh…throw me a bone here? I don’t know jack shit about karate, but I do know that if you interrupt a prior topic to insert the subject into the conversation, etiquette suggests you damn well be prepared to hold up your end of said conversation…and that includes speaking in complete sentences as opposed to stilted one word phrases.

Obviously, my Husband and Brian gave up on Bomber fairly quickly. They have very little patience for people who are painfully socially inept and began ignoring him completely. I, on the other hand, felt sorry for the guy and kept struggling to talk to him.

“So where do you take lessons?”

“My Mother died!”

Fuck.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the light on my phone was flashing; someone had sent me a text message. Since my conversation with Bomber was going nowhere, I figured it would be a good time to excuse myself to go the restroom. I did and found out that Brian had texted me from across the table.

“That orange guy is so weird!” he said.

“I know!” I texted back, “You guys should help me talk to him!”

“No way!”

I slugged my way back to the table like a murderer walking to the electric chair. Bomber was that painful.

After awhile, we realized Tiffany did not plan to join us for dinner. Considering the entire reason we were attending this dinner was to get to know Tiffany, it seemed pointless for us to stay.

“I think we’ll head home,” my Husband insisted, “Call us later if you want to hang out.”

“Sure thing,” said Brian.

“It was a pleasure getting to know you,” I lied to Bomber.

“Yes, yes,” he nodded creepily.

We didn’t make it out of the building before Brian sent my Husband a text message. My Husband immediately started laughing.

“What? Let me see!” I demanded.

He showed me his phone which read: “That weird orange guy is telling me that he thinks V is really hot!”

I groaned aloud and my Husband texted Brian back.

“What did you say?” I asked.

I read his phone again: “Tell him that you think she was really attracted to him as well.”

Then, “Haha, OK.”

I think it goes without saying that my Husband is an evil, disloyal, betraying bastard! Also, if I end up dead and buried under Bomber’s porch it is 100% his fault.

This finally, finally brings me to my point: “Nice Guys” are assholes.

You see, I bet Bomber thinks of himself as a typical “nice guy.” There is no doubt in my mind he spends hours on Internet message boards posting nonstop repetitive rants bemoaning the fact that women don’t seem to like him because he’s a really nice guy. In reality, he laments dramatically, women only want jerks. Women want guys who belittle them and refuse to call them after sex. Oh, woe is him!

What “Nice guys” never seem to consider is that the reason women don’t want them has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with their proposed “niceness.”

Women want funny guys. Women want smart guys. Women want guys who have mastered the skill of witty banter and are fully capable of carrying on a lively and interesting conversation. If all of this also came in a ‘nice’ package, women would pull those panties down so quick they would get burn marks on their goddamn thighs.

Do you want to know what women don’t want? They don’t want dorky little creeps with zero social skills who leer at them and interrupt conversations about karate to talk about their dead fucking Mother. They don’t like stuttering freaks or drooling nincompoops. The virgin serial killer vibe doesn’t get them hot. So sorry.

Despite their whiny insistence, self proclaimed “nice guys” are not getting snubbed because they’re nice. They’re getting snubbed because never, never, ever in my life have I met one who wasn’t also SOCIALLY RETARDED.

Learn to carry on a conversation, you creeps. After that, I guarantee you’ll get laid.

Hello and congratulations. Congratulations on being a part of the decision that made this nation move well and with style. Yeah, I’ll feed the stereotype, we do move well, better even than Bill with sax in hand.

Everyone asks us, “how does this feel?” It feels right, I say. The Presidential election is a hurricane of process and progress landing on our shores, the strongest gale of which was not ours, but the wooing gradient wind constant throughout belongs to us. See, we’ve been winning, waiting, fighting, waiting, losing, and waiting some more for this moment in history. But, this Hallmark card costs $4.25 and we need gas, gotta pay down some bills, and we can tell it better than any greeting card anyhow.

The Presidential election was a numbers game when we look at it through the electoral lens. The US was a bruised and bloodied map blotted with blue and red, the colors engaging in a perpetually palliative tug of rope. Blue won and so did black- it felt that equality and justice prevailed. And then we started hearing about California.

California is facing a brand new reckoning. In Cali, we responded to the promise of change in record numbers. We voted on equity for our President and even for our livestock. We elected a President who, like it or not, is the poster child for real progress on equality. We deemed the small living space of god damned bred hens and calves unjust, granting them more legroom. Yet, we told gays, our fellow fucking species, that they, strictly due to their sexual proclivities, could not get a “marriage” license. What?

Everyone can see the tug of war of white vs. black and weak vs. strong play out on the national and international stages. We can look to our victors and our victims as the same people: Martin Luther King, Jr., Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and John Artis, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, etc… As blacks across the US, we have been bullied and blessed by progress. We have been broken and built up by due process. We have been bartered and burdened by both and we will undoubtedly continue to be. And for that very reason, we need to champion the rights of others, just as others have done for us.

What are we waiting for? For gays to be enslaved? For gay citizens to be wrongly convicted of heinous crimes? For gay rights leaders to be persecuted and assassinated? We may be winning right now, but others are losing and our fucking voice is the most powerful tool we can give them now. They need us, understand?

Like I wrote before, congratulations on this decision for change. This change, though, will come and go. It will bite us, burn us, bathe us, and burp itself up eventually and when it does, we’ll need friends—preferably the passionate and fun loving kind that are fabulously skilled networkers, have connections to the media and entertainment industry, and have loads of excess cash to contribute to worthy “human” causes.

Over the next few weeks, we will be posting contributions from guest writers (yes, V will still write when she feels like it). You will have a say in which guest writers are invited to contribute on a regular basis. We will make our decisions based on the comments you email to: ViolentAcresBlog@gmail.com Comments on the blog will be disabled to discourage douche-baggery. So let us know what you think of Dame B. Should we invite her back?

On asking people who they voted for:
So…did you go hippy liberal commie or psychotic fascist nazi?

On how I voted:
First, I asked for a PAPER ballot, NOT electronic. Then, I went over to the special table for PAPER voters and filled in the little circle labeled ‘write in candidate.’ I wrote in Ron Paul for President and Dennis Kucinich for Vice President. I also wrote ‘I’m your biggest fan!’ in the margin, sealed my envelope, and moon walked out of there. Does my dream team have a shot in hell at winning? Of course not. Will I be able to sleep tonight? Absolutely.

On John McCain’s concession speech:
He should just walk up to the podium, scream ‘FUCK PALIN,’ and then drop the mic Chris Rock style and walk away.

On Obama’s acceptance speech:
Wouldn’t it be totally awesome if he came out wearing a sideways ball cap with the song ‘Whoop, there it is!’ playing the background?

On having sex with my husband:
V: I’m so cold. But it’s a good thing you’re like a blanket…with a penis.

Husband: *laughs*

V: Hm, I suppose that’s one of the odder things I’ve said during sex. I should put that on my website.

Husband: *still laughing*

V: I’ll add it into my comments about the election. I doubt anyone will notice.

On what will happen to our country now that we’ve elected a new President:
No matter what happens, the next four years are not my fault. Ultimately, that’s all I care about.

I looked up quickly to see my Mother carefully maneuvering her way in my direction. A giant purse was slung over her shoulder and her arms were loaded with packages. The heel of her stiletto got caught in the crack of the sidewalk and her entire body jerked with the effort of remaining upright. However, I was completely unsurprised when my Mom recovered from her brief moment of clumsiness without dropping a single package. She was nearly an expert when it came to walking in those shoes.

“V!” she called to me, “Come on, we’ve got to go!”

“Where are we going?” I questioned mildly.

“I’ve got to run some errands,” she answered, “Get in the car.”

Errands. How incredibly boring. I wanted no part of it.

“Couldn’t I stay here?” I asked hopefully, “I’ve got to finish this hopscotch board.”

“I’m afraid not,” she insisted, “It would be too late for me to find you a babysitter now.”

The force of my Mother’s words caused me to rear back so suddenly I lost my balance and landed unceremoniously on my butt. Shame and humiliation turned my cheeks a fiery shade of red. I blinked my eyes quickly as if I’d been recently slapped. My lips pursed dramatically; I’m sure I looked like I just swallowed a rotten lemon.

“Mother,” I whispered, shocked and insulted, “I do not need a babysitter. I am not a baby. I am six years old! I am a kid!”

“Well, that may be so,” she said, slightly amused, “But you still need a babysitter.”

Almost too stunned to answer, I replied, “I am old enough to take care of myself!”

“Is that so? What would you do all day here by yourself?”

“I’d finish my hopscotch!”

“And then what?”

“I’d go inside and play with my toys!”

“What if you got hungry?”

“I’d make myself something to eat!”

I was nearly dumbfounded. I couldn’t understand why she was asking me all of these questions. Could it be my own Mother thought I was a total idiot?

“Would you use the stove or the microwave without an adult? Would you leave this house without asking?”

“No!”

My Mother stared at me skeptically for a moment. I stared back, face pensive, heart thumping in my chest a million beats a minute. Suddenly, her face relaxed.

Then, “OK, I will let you try it on one condition.”

I nodded eagerly.

“You don’t mention this to your Father.”

“I won’t!”

“And don’t touch anything you’re not supposed to!”

“I promise I won’t!”

With a satisfied grunt, my Mother whirled around and loaded her packages into her car. A few minutes later, after gunning her engine dramatically, she was gone.

Then the entire world blew up.

Actually, no. After my Mother left, I completed my hopscotch, wandered back into the house to escape the heat, made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and curled up on the sofa and watched some cartoons. It was, literally and figuratively, no big deal.

Later that night, my Mother actually let it slip that she left me alone all day by myself. My Father started to protest and my Mom started to panic. But before their argument could spiral out of control, I quickly came to my Mother’s defense.

“Dad!” I insisted, “It was no big deal. What do you think I am? Some sort of baby? I am six years old! I ride the school bus and everything!”

My Dad looked at me thoughtfully. “You were OK? You weren’t scared to be by yourself?”

“Scared!” I nearly spit the word at him.

My Dad chuckled. “Well, of course you weren’t scared! You’re very mature and independent, aren’t you?”

“I am!”

My Dad laughed again and gave me a great, big hug…and I never felt so proud in my entire goddamn life. Mature and independent? Oh yeah, that was so me.

Of course, this was back when being ‘mature and independent’ was considered a good thing. You know, back before we insisted on turning our children into perpetual toddlers or overcautious ninnies.

A couple days ago, I was giving a 12 year old boy a ride home. Upon arriving in the parking lot and seeing my truck waiting for us, he stopped short.

“Uh…where will I sit?” he asked.

“Up front,” I answered, “With me.”

“But what about the airbags?” he questioned further.

“Don’t worry,” I chided gently, “I’ll disable the airbags.”

“Don’t you…think it’s a bit dangerous to let a child ride up front like that?”

It took me a second to realize that he was, indeed, referring to himself as the child. But that wasn’t even the part that really got to me. What really set me on edge was that I was standing with a 12 year old young man, no more than 2 inches shorter than me, who was honestly and sincerely scared of riding in the front seat of a car. When I was a wee misanthropic tot, riding in the front seat was a fucking badge of honor!

Even worse than that, he’s not all that abnormal. I look around me and all I see are droves of frightened kids. Ten year olds who have not yet worked up the nerve to get on a bicycle, teenagers who have never gone swimming, 5 year olds who refuse to even wipe themselves for the fear of germs touching their perfectly sanitized hands.

When did childhood become so terrifying? When did growing up get so scary?

This summer, I took a camping trip with a youth group. We were in a gated resort at a site no more than 500 feet from a playground. A bored little girl, who looked about 8, dawdled by a picnic table.

“Why don’t you go over to the playground?” I suggested.

“I’m waiting for you.”

“Honey,” I told her, “I’m not going to the playground. I’m going to stay here and set up camp. Why not head over there and play with the kids?”

“Without an adult?”

Holy Christ.

“We’re going to be right here. We can see you from here and you’ll be able to see us.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not? Don’t you want to play with the other kids?”

“How would I even make friends?”

“The same way you make friends any other time. You just go up, introduce yourself, and ask them to play.”

That little girl looked at me like I was the stupidest person in the world. “I never do that. My Mom does that for me.”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked.

She shook her head vehemently in reply. So I walked her to the park and realized that she was absolutely right. That playground was jammed packed full of overprotective Moms leading nerve wracked children over to other nerve wracked children, introducing the nearly silent kids to each other as they struggled to hide behind Mommy’s legs, choosing a game for everyone to play, and in some cases, even sticking around to make sure everyone was ‘playing nicely.’

It’s no wonder why there are so many teenagers and young adults with a severe lack of social skills. Growing up, no one gave them the chance to practice. Back in my day, you either worked up the courage to ask another kid to play or you played alone. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for most of us to become first class schmoozers.

A child has a statistically better shot at being struck by lightning than he has of being kidnapped. Yet, I’ve met some kids who have had the stranger danger mantra cripple them so completely it’s highly doubtful they’d let a fireman pull them out a burning building!

I’ve met children who fear bears, tornadoes, and going to hell. They’re afraid of falling down, getting an infection, burning to death and drowning. They’re afraid to hike in the woods, build a tree house, or ride their bike around the block. They won’t go in water above their bellybuttons, they won’t go on a roller coaster, and they won’t introduce themselves to another kid their age. They can’t use a butter knife, they’re not allowed to stir something sitting on the stove and most of them can’t even play alone in their own backyards. Yet, we seem surprised when they turn out neurotic, antisocial, co-dependent, whiny little babies far into adulthood. What can you expect after experiencing a childhood of near constant fear mongering?

Listen, it’s a good thing to teach your kid to wear his seat belt and caution him against doing anything overly reckless. But when you overdue it to the extent the kid won’t even get in the fucking car, you’re doing more harm than good. We should be easing our child’s fears, not instigating them.

Ultimately, the goal of parenting is to raise confident, independent, well rounded adults. How can you possibly accomplish that when your parental caution turns into downright hysterics and your frightened children decide to opt out of growing up completely?

I’m sorry, but no one raised a ‘mature and independent’ child by inadvertently scaring the shit out of them.

*Comments Open To All Who Register. No Approval Needed.*

For example, the crushing failure I experienced after going up against the zoning board makes for a good story and I’m sure quite a few of my detractors would be giddy at the thought of me publicly eating a piece of humble pie. Oh, but I’m not in the mood for that. Yet.

I could write a nice critique of the ‘Twilight’ series. But explaining to you, over and over again, the insidious urge I had to pluck my own eyeballs out and put them in a blender every time I turned the page would probably become redundant. With that said, I fully understand the appeal they hold to mommybloggers. However, I am even more disappointed in teenage girls than usual. I thought they at least had some standards.

I could do the typical ‘Who I’m voting for and why’ piece (Hint: NOT Obama and NOT McCain), but, like, everyone’s doing it and it’s getting old.

So, I’m just going to tell you all what’s going on with this site and leave it at that.

As of tomorrow, I will no longer be in technical control of the site. Which is a very good thing considering that I woke up today, logged on, and found 166 comments waiting for moderation…most of which were spam. I simply no longer have the stamina to click ‘delete’ 166 times a day. God bless those that do.

The layout of the site is changing. I saw a rough draft of it a couple of weeks ago. It was purple and, according to my husband, made me look like a serial killer. I’m a poor judge of layouts (Case in point: my current one), but I’m guessing some of you will like it, some of you will hate it, and nearly all of you will take the damn thing way too seriously. It’s a fucking layout, people. Get over it in advance, please.

The dude who is taking over this mess finally saw the light about allowing comments here. Most of you made fucking asses of yourselves. However, he doesn’t want to punish the 5 or 6 of you who had something worthwhile to say, so he thought of a way to keep comments, but weed out the morons. Basically, your first comment will be an ‘audition’ of sorts. If you write something funny, interesting, and/or contribute to the discussion in some way, you will be allowed to comment again. If you sputter and spit like a monkey with a mouthful of shit, you will lose the privilege. Keep in mind that you will be auditioning for him and not me. I will have absolutely no say in who ultimately gets to comment here and who doesn’t. With that said, the guy who will be moderating stuff doesn’t know me from Adam, so I highly doubt if he’d take offense if you insulted me or disagreed with me…as long as you managed to do so with an ounce of wit and verve.

Also, I have tried in the past to feature new writers here with little success. New writers here have a hard time working up the nerve for a second post after experiencing the barrage of negative comments from you ingrates. Either that or I honestly do have bad taste. To fully figure this phenomenon out, this site will still periodically feature new writers…with a catch. After each post, the readers will be allowed to anonymously vote on whether or not they’d like to see more from the writer in the future. This will allow me to determine if the negativity is actually warranted or if this is just a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease.

Anyway, once I’m no longer in charge of shit, my hope is that it will free up enough time for me to sit down and really concentrate on writing instead just jotting some crap down and slapping it up there just for the sake of an update. I have a lot of stuff bouncing around in my head right now, but no time to organize my thoughts. I know there are web writers out there who will zealously claim that, for them, writing is no big deal and they spend 10 seconds, TOPS, on the stuff they add to their blog and aren’t you totally impressed with how clever they can be in such a short amount of time? But folks, that ain’t me. If I spend 10 seconds on something, it reads like I spent 10 seconds on it. Hell, when I spend 3 hours on something, it oftentimes still reads like shit. What can I say? Writing just doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m a hack…a hack who absolutely, positively needs 3 hours if I’m going to write something halfway legible.

If this means a change in layout and the addition of comments and a few other things switched around, so be it. It’s better than force feeding you literary garbage, right?

*EDIT: Still working out the design bugs…It should be fully operational in a little while.

Sarah Palin is an evil, nasty, harpy, shrew-bitch.

Leave it to the Republicans to find someone even more distasteful than Hilary. I honestly didn’t think that was possible. However, at this point, I’d be happier if McCain’s running mate was a rock with a smiley face painted on it if it meant escaping putting what I strongly suspect to be an insidious alien in the White House. I’m not saying this to be glib, either. I really don’t think she’s human.

Like I said before, I watched the Palin/Biden debate. The only thing I was impressed with was the fact that Palin’s beauty pageant training was clearly coming into play. Every question she answered included many cutesy winks and sickly sweet compliments, but rarely did she actually say anything. She should have just answered every goddamn question with ‘World peace!’ and been done with it.

I don’t want Palin to help run the country. I want to her wear a bikini and twirl a baton previously lit on fire. Then I want to that baton to light her over styled hair ablaze. Fuck her. Fuck her with a rusty screwdriver.

Hilary and Palin. These are the best women our country has to offer? I’ve never wanted a dick so bad in my entire life. I’m ashamed to be a woman right now and all 8 of my female readers should be too.

Don’t get me wrong, but I’m not in the Obama/Biden camp either. However, until we as a people stand up to our government and demand our voices be heard, we are doomed to have Presidential elections where our ‘choice’ is either Garbage or More Garbage. To change the downward spiral of our country, we need to stand together and say, “Choosing between the lesser of two evils is no choice at all. We won’t settle for anything other than the best. As a country and as a people, we deserve as much.”

But we won’t do that. Instead, we’ll let the magazines turn Obama and McCain into quasi-celebrities and we’ll watch the whole horse in pony show in awe while our government laughs their asses off at us because we are so easily manipulated.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m scared.

So scared, in fact, I’m going to write a letter to God.

Dear God:

I don’t believe in you, but I will seriously reconsider my disbelief if you save the world from Sarah Palin. I’m not asking for much. Perhaps a heart attack or maybe you can drive her little retard demon kid insane enough to eat her fucking eyes out? Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of our very dire need.

Bless you,
V

Does anyone remember Ryan Holiday? He was that whining, crying, puling puddle of loser I made fun of last year? Tucker Max’s ‘personal assistant?’  I know, I know, I almost forgot all about him myself. However, a clever reader of mine periodically keeps tabs on the whole Rudius crew and thank goodness for that because without him, I would have missed out on some big time funny shit.

Apparently, Ryan Holiday got busted on Wikipedia for inventing a bunch of fake screen names in order to frantically edit Tucker Max’s wiki page, presumably in order to keep people from finding out that Mr. Max is a blatant fucking liar. Rumor has it that he’s been doing this for years. Since Ryan Holiday works for Tucker Max, this behavior obviously presents a bit of a conflict of interest on wikipedia (who tries its best to remain impartial), so it is against the Wiki terms of service. Another wiki editor type dude is demanding Ryan Holiday’s dishonest and (let’s be honest here) utterly ridiculous wiki antics be investigated. Once found out, Ryan ‘crybaby’ Holiday lives up to my insults by claiming that the entire investigation makes him feel ‘uncomfortable’ and begs that all references to the scandal be deleted. Read the about the entire saga yourself here and here.

There are a lot of funny things happening here, so I apologize if my discussion is kind of all over the place. I’m like a fat kid in a candy store right now.

First of all, SERIOUSLY? Mr. Tucker Max, so-called serious business owner, thinks paying a full time employee to edit his wiki page is a good investment of company resources? (I mean, you almost have to assume that Tucker put Ryan up to it. In what realm of loserdom does one have to belong to in order to spend their off time doing stupid shit like editing the boss’s wiki page? ) No wonder Tucker Max can’t afford to pay his writers!

Speaking of editing the boss’s wiki as a profession, I’m just curious…was that a promotion for Ryan Holiday? Or did he have to start out at the bottom and work his way up to to this oh so prestigious position? Also, how did Tucker initially word the job description? “Wanted: Someone to lie for me. I can’t be the only one making up bullshit here. Competitive pay. Uh, scratch that. Average pay. Er…Scratch that too. Other things; just not pay. Sucker.”

Oh God. Hilarity ensues indeed! But seriously, ignore all that for a minute. I want to draw your attention to a little quote that I found particularly amusing from our dear Ryan Holiday:

Regardless, I’d like to stress again that comments like this one that Theserialcomma left on my talk page make me very uncomfortable….It also really sucks to see an abusive editor and generally destructive person post my personal details and estalk me because he so hates someone I had some affiliation with…The whole thing makes me really queasy and uncomfortable so I will step away….If I could, this page violates WP:OUTING and WP:HUSH and it would be very much appreciated if it could be taken down or archived or something.

I know, I know. When I first read that tripe, I laughed too. After all, what kind of moron thinks that researching someone’s wiki editing history counts as e-stalking them and posting their ‘personal details?’ Ryan ’superior human being’ Holiday, that’s who!

Then I thought to myself: awwww poor Ryan Holiday! Why is everyone always picking on him? Perhaps I should send him a fruit basket or something to help him get over the pain of having his ‘personal details’ posted on wiki.

Then I thought: WAIT JUST A GODDAMN MINUTE! Is this the SAME Ryan Holiday who, after being called out by me for being a self obsessed sissy boy, decided to retaliate by working with all 7 of his readers to recklessly post the real name, address,  and motherfucking driving record of someone he doesn’t even know on his website? Because that couldn’t be considered e-stalking, could it? Could this be the same Ryan Holiday who suddenly feels ‘queasy’ when his own ‘personal details’ were shared online…even if those details aren’t 1/5th as ‘personal’ as the details he was more than comfortable posting about someone else?

OH MY FUCKING GOD. IT IS THE SAME RYAN HOLIDAY!

(Post from Boo Hoo Holiday hysterically insisting that I only wrote this to drive 27 new hits to my site in 5…4….3….)

EDIT: To the people who have been trying to post Ryan Holiday’s contact information in the comments, stop. Stop now. I won’t allow it and the only thing you’re doing is making a case for me to close comments again which I’m fucking ITCHING to do anyway. Stop acting like fucking animals, por favor.

We had absolutely nothing in common. She was fat. I was thin. She dressed in old sweat pants and a baggy, multi stained T-shirt. I wore blue jeans and a form fitting shirt with a collar. Her hair was slicked back in a greasy ponytail; mine was mussed and perfectly styled courtesy of my over expensive gay hairdresser. Her accent carried the faint hint of a southern drawl; mine contained nothing but the empty blandness of someone who has never lived anywhere noteworthy. She was single, a shut in really, and her time at the lake was her moment of excitement in otherwise droll and uneventful day. I’m a married woman, intensely busy, and my time at the lake is meticulously set aside to afford me one moment of peace.

Despite our numerous differences, we often met at the lake. We were friends simply because our dogs were friends. This phenomenon is something only other dog lovers, or perhaps parents, can understand.

For some reason, our conversation veered onto the topic of theology and the age old question of, “Why are we here?”

“People sometimes ask me,” she said as she watched her dog paddle towards the ball, “why I get up in the morning. I tell them it’s because I have to let the dog out!”

I laughed appreciatively at her joke.

“Then they say,” She continued, “’No, seriously. What keeps you going? Is it faith in God? Something like that?’ And I say, ‘No, seriously! It’s because I have to let the dog out!’”

She trailed off a little as we watched our dogs romp in the distance. For some reason, I felt slightly unsettled. I struggled to say something incredibly witty, but I mentally froze. Then, a thought hit me like a cold splash of water from the lake we were standing beside:

Her reason for getting out of bed every morning…was exactly the same as my reason for getting out of bed every morning.

It took me a moment to regain my composure, but when I did; my witty retort was replaced with a simple, “Yes. Me too.”

She nodded slightly in reply.

We both stood there for a moment, subdued. She watched the dogs race each other for another bite of the tennis ball; I found myself lost in the midst of thoughts as muddy as the water. For the first time, I considered all the days I had stood with her by the lake, mentally adding up all the ways in which we were different…never once noticing that in all the ways that mattered we were exactly the same.

Seriously, people. My eyes are bleeding here! Some of you just shortened my goddamn lifespan by 10 years with your insipid blubbering. Thanks a lot.

I was going to wait to write about this after things were finalized a bit more and I had, you know, accurate information to give you, but since some of you seem intent on riding my fucking ass until I talk about it NOW NOW NOW, here I am. And fuck you.

Before I go any further, I want to address the comments where people insist my last updates were ghost written and the proof is in the ‘subpar writing.’ To that I say: Bwhahahahahaha! Hey dummies! My writing has always been shitty. You were just too stupid to realize it before. That’s what happens when you read my site sober. My advice is to either get liquored up before reading or just accept the fact that I’m not the next Shakespeare now. Either way, I’ll be good goddamned if I’m going to take a ‘is this the REALLY REAL V test?’ before every update. Fuck you again.

So, I’m sure you’re all wondering: Has the website been sold?

The answer? Yes and no. The site will likely be sold sometime in the future. Right now, I can’t tell you exactly when. Like I said above, the details have not been finalized yet.

What does that mean for you, the faithful reader? In a phrase? Absolutely nothing.

You see, the main requirement for the sale of the website is that I stay here and post for you fucking ingrates. I mean, what kind of flaming simpleton would buy a website currently centered around a particular author only to fire said author? Newsflash people! No one that ignorant has the financial means to make a shit business deal like that even if they wanted to. If and when VA is sold, I will most definitely be sticking around to post. It’s in the goddamn contract.

So why I am I considering selling?

Well, for a couple of reasons. The first is that I’ve been extremely busy lately. Further, when I started this crap, I never considered exactly how much maintenance is involved in running a website of this size. Deleting spam, approving track backs, making sure everything was working right, working with advertisers, etc, started sucking up what little free time I had left. I found myself in a position where I was spending almost all of my free time simply maintaining the website and almost no time actually writing for the website. This meant no updates for you. I figured if I could find someone willing to do the grunt work for the site (in exchange for the majority of the profits), I could kick back, relax, write, and use this site for its original intended purpose: A pleasant way for me to kill time.

Also, once upon a time, I told myself I was going to use this site to raise $10,000 for charity. As you all know, I failed and only managed to get a shade over $5,500. If you’ve been reading me long enough, you will know that failure tends to make me more determined. So if I can’t raise $10,000 via reader donations, I am going to do my best to figure out another way to raise it. Deal.

So, in closing, yes I’m still here. Yes, it’s actually me writing. Yes, I will be here writing for a long time. Yes, you will be notified if I ever decide to quit completely. Yes, you may notice some changes in the layout, with comments, etc. No, that doesn’t mean a nefarious IMPOSTER has taken over my posts. It only means that the actual mechanics of running the website are no longer my concern and my only function here is that of a dancing monkey.

Which is all you ever really wanted from me anyway, right? Right? Good. Now shut the fuck up.

(To the handful of you with common sense who left thoughtful comments, thank you. Thank you from the very bottom of my cold, black heart. If not for you, I would have thrown myself in front of a goddamn bus.)