Moral Midgetry

Blogging is about the most narcissistic and masturbatory activity one can do with the possible exception of actually jerking off while looking in a mirror.

Which is to say that it is much like writing a novel… blogging, that is, not the other thing. Blogging is like writing a novel, except that it takes much less time and you don’t expect your friends and family to pay for it.

Take my last entry, the broken TV thing. I know that’s not that interesting, I knew it when I wrote it. I just hadn’t posted anything in a while and had no ideas. (There is actually a funny addendum to the TV story: I lugged a 27-inch TV- weighing approximately 50 pounds - up three flights of stairs only to have it break within the first ten minutes of watching it. So, I now have two broken TVs in my rather small living room.)

I was going to write a whole entry on that, but… I don’t know. Is that really something to write about. I mean, if we were just hanging out talking I could bitch for hours about my TV issues, but that’s talking. When you talk, you need to fill the empty spaces. When you write it should be interesting to, at least, somebody.

My goal in writing this blog is to keep it topical or related to stuff about my book and the efforts to promote it. Since that’s going slowly, you get blogs on Kramer and the Crocodile Hunter and on my TV woes. I’ll only apologize for the last one, since I think the other two are pretty good. In the New Year I’ll try to maintain the level of quality of the first two.

And since this is, most likely, my last entry until the new year I’d like to say something about the phrase that makes Bill O’Reilly shudder: Happy Holidays.

I say “Happy Holidays” to people all the time. And I promise you it’s not because I genuinely wish them a happy holiday – it’s because I don’t know them. I would be just as content to wish them a “Happy Go Fuck Yourself,” but then I’d get punched a lot. Saying “Happy Holidays” keeps me from getting punched and allows me to feign that I care for somebody other than myself.

Now, when I’m speaking to someone I know, someone whose background and/or religious affiliation and/or holiday preference I know, then I’ll wish them a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or whatever the heck else they might be celebrating.

Happy Holidays is a perfectly acceptable thing for a Wal-Mart greeter to say to me because they don’t know me. And it’s wonderful that they don’t know me. I don’t want that level of familiarity with the Wal-Mart greeter, in fact I’m uncomfortable with them knowing I shop at Wal-Mart.

That’s my rule of thumb: if you don’t know somebody, go generic. Actually, my rule of thumb is to avoid them altogether, but if you have to talk to them, go generic.

So, instead of mirroring Krusty’s statement, I’ll wish everybody a Happy Holidays and, baring a famous person’s death that I can make fun of, I’ll see you next year.

I always suspect that those I love will one day betray me.

But I didn’t see this one coming.

My TV has died.

Well, she’s not dead, but she’s dying. My 42-inch rear projection Mitsubishi has decided to just shoot colors all over the place. Everything now looks like a 3-D move watched without the red and blue glasses.

She’s young, too. Just over four-years-old. So tragic… and so just past her warranty.

My five stages of grief:
Denial: “This can’t be happening. Maybe if I turn it off and on a few times it will fix itself.”
Anger: “How much just to come out and look at it?! Why you dirty, crooked motherfu…!”
Bargaining: “Come on, man. You can cut me a deal, can’t you? You have a coupon or something?”
Depression: “sigh Sure wish I’d got one of those deals on a flat panel TV the Friday after Thanksgiving.”
Acceptance: "Well, I’m sure Battlestar Galactica will look just as good on a 13-inch black and white."

Huh, looks like I'm still in Denial.