<< prev = comments [26] = pings [2] = next >>


who's sorry now
04/15/2007 = 12:13 AM

Whether or not you believe it, this started out a whole lot rantier than it wound up. You'd be surprised how much relief one can get from writing it all down once, even if not for publication.

Or maybe you wouldn't.

Anyway.

You may have noticed that I spend a lot of time in here apologizing to other people.

In case you didn't notice, well, I apologize to other people a lot. Even when it's not necessarily my fault.

The reason I do this is that I have noticed that people aren't a very nice species and we don't always apologize when we have done something crappy.

I began this practice right around the time I began writing online. It coincided pretty closely to the year anniversary of someone doing a great unkindness to me and just leaving it there for me to be upset about, blithely going about the business of doing unkindnesses to others whilst I was still sitting there going, "Wait ... what?"

Not everyone sucks. But a lot of people do. And I made up my mind not to be one of those people.

If I had the opportunity and the means, in other words, I was going to own as much of my suck as I could, and I was going to announce publicly when I had done wrong and ask forgiveness.

Unfortunately, people are still not doing me the same courtesy.

For the most part, I try to be The Bigger Person, but sometimes it gets to be more of a burden than I care to bear alone.

Brace yourselves. An ill wind, she is a-brewing.

Don Imus thinks he's apologized enough? Did he say that before or after Jon Corzine was in that crash on the way to the Rutger/Imus meeting?

Besides, Imus hasn't apologized to me, yet, and I'm waiting.

Why does Imus owe me an apology?

Because he pisses me off. In fact, he's been pissing me off since long before this particular episode, and no one ever demanded he apologize to me.

Ditto Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, and that guy who got arrested and called the arresting officer an enword even though the arresting officer was Caucasian. Hate. It's the New Love.

All those people need to apologize to me, because I am pissed, and they are the ones who have pissed me off.

And they are not alone.

In fact, by that argument, a whole lot of people owe me an apology.

I repeat, brace yourselves. This will not be pretty. Because today it's all about me.

I'll even start it off.

I hereby apologize to myself and anyone else within earshot for being as much impressed with my own cleverness (in here, by way of my podcast, and with that stupid incessant breathing in and out thing I can't seem to stop myself from doing; so annoying) as I am.

I'm a showoff and I own it.

I try to justify it by saying that I try not to to take myself so seriously all the time, and I also try not to be narcissistic in other aspects of my life, but that's no excuse.

I'm not even going to pretend, as I often do, that I have "Other Fine Qualities." I don't.

I'm an attention whore and I fully believe, most of the time, that I deserve it.

The only difference is that, while I'll make pretenses at modesty and humility in public, I at least admit to myself privately that I am obnoxious and need to work on being less so.

There. That should make it easier for the following people to follow suit.

Anyone who has ever called me out for being mean, but has let other people be mean to me with impunity, owes me an apology for not having my back. I say "anyone." I mean "everyone." Because this has happened a lot. I've gotten more backs than people have gotten mine, and my back's about broken, now, and I'm fucking tired.

Andrew from Diaryland ought to apologize to me for accusing me of spamming, and for being such a rotten little teeniss-peeny about it, especially now that everyone on that site is still having a problem with spam and I'm obviously not the cause. I'd be happy to forfeit that apology if he'd fix things for everyone else, but he doesn't seem to be inclined to do that, either.

Danny Bonaduce should apologize to me. He's still as smart as he was thirty years ago, but it stopped being cute thirty years ago. I'll forgive him if I don't have to be witness to it anymore.

That kid who sucks but never loses on American Idol? He doesn't owe me an apology, 'cos I just don't watch it. But the producers of that show, they owe me apologies galore, because American Idol is insulting to everyone's intelligence, not only mine. If we want to see mediocre karaoke, why can't we just do what we used to do: go to a bar on Tuesday night and do it ourselves, then drink beer?

My cubicle owes me an apology because anytime anyone walks by, my Lanarama calendar falls down. Of course it's the cubicle's fault. Everything else stuck to its walls is immovable.

I had a whole lot of work stuff in this paragraph, but I took it out. Not only do I not care to dance the Dooce, but I have come to the conclusion that, if you pay me, you don't have to apologize. I'm for sale like that.

On the other hand, I'm not getting compensated by the person at work who not only decides that 9:00 am is lunchtime, but that lunch should involve microwaving, and microwaving at 9:00 am should involve making the kitchen smell like low tide, when the only thing my personal stomach is awake enough for is coffee. Say you're sorry, you evil fish-lover.

When you ignore what I say and I finally call you on it, don't make me apologize to you for hurting your feelings. This, by the way, includes anyone who deletes my emails and then wonders why they don't know something that was contained in one of them, and then thinks I ought to apologize for expressing anger about the situation. Don't you realize how you've hurt my feelings by making what I said so insignificant that it didn't warrant your full attention? You apologize to me. Do it. I'll just wait here. (As if that's ever going to happen.)

That Man of Mine owes me an apology for not knowing who Kurt Vonnegut was until I said, "You know, the guy who wrote the book report about his own book for Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School." All kinds of things were wrong with that whole fucking exchange, and I'm not going to be the one to apologize for it.

The weather owes me an apology, but don't think I'm holding my breath over that.

Also not holding my breath for Dick Cheney, who really owes everyone on the planet an apology.

Be fair, I'm not holding my breath over any of these other ones, either. But, you know — the incessant breathing in and out thing, I am still doing that; can't stop myself, so annoying.

Anyone who starts a sentence with "How do I put this nicely?" has already said everything they need for me to know. Say no more. I'll apologize back to you for whatever it was that sucked as bad as all that, as long as you're willing to apologize to me for hating whatever it was I did with such suckositence.

I probably owe myself an apology for eating all those Cheetos on Thursday, but I was depressed and tired, and I probably also owed myself an apology for having deprived myself of Cheetos for as long as I did, so it sort of balances out a little.

That said, I'll also apologize to Britney Spears for the fact that, when she "vehemently denied romance with basketball player," my first thought was "Our mistake — he was actually holding a basketball and we thought it was your head." However, I'm not going to apologize for making fun of her; she wants attention, she's getting it. If she doesn't like the attention she gets, that's not my fault.

I'm ready to apologize to Anna Nicole Smith. I don't feel right, as I've said in the past, about making fun of people when what one's making fun of is something they can't help. If Anna Nicole Smith was a) smart, but acting dumb or b) only strung out on drugs, I wouldn't feel so bad; but now, having seen her diaries, I think she might actually have been a little bit slow, developmentally, and someone should have been looking out for her best interests, so I'll hereby apologize for having ridiculed a situation over which she had no control.

And I'll apologize to la Lohan, not because I'm the one who started (or is perpetuating) the rumor that she is dating Kevin Federline, but because someone should apologize to her for that. That's a terrible thing to say about anyone. Completely uncalled-for. Shame.

Notice how I'm still apologizing to other people even though I'm still waiting for anyone to apologize to me.

Ron Howard and Tom Hanks don't owe me an apology, but Dan Brown does, because he Mad Libs books. "Name of Brilliant Protagonist." "Name of Older, Male Mentor Type Who Will Wind Up Being Villain." "Name of Obscure Sect or Governmental Organization to Fictionalize for the Sake of the Plot." Thirty pages into the book, I know who did it, and how, and if I continue reading, no matter what puzzle comes up, I'm able to solve it. I think that warrants an apology.

Even Josh Bernstein needs to apologize to me. I'm sorry I thought your hat was a fedora, but it was an honest mistake, because the brim's not curled like a traditional cowboy hat. You need to stop being so offended over it.

Finally, pardon my pettiness, but if you have time to blow off your thesis, your seminar paper, and your grading of your students' work to do memes on LiveJournal and myspace, then I can no longer use your thesis, your seminar paper, or your grading of your students' work to excuse you for the fact that you couldn't be arsed to send me even a lousy two word email on the 6th: those two words being, oh, I don't know, Happy Birthday. Or, if you forgot on the 6th, adding an extra word on the 7th: Belated. I might otherwise have apologized for calling you out on it, since you're so busy with more important stuff than my stupid insignificant little birthday ... but you getting your meme on pretty much zeroes out that apology on my part.

However, on the other hand, I have penguins.

I don't care who you are — it's hard to be truly bitter when your fingernails are this awesome.

With any luck, this is now out of my system and I'll be back to my sweet, unselfish (ha!) self tomorrow.

Vote for Golf Widow ...

She has never called anyone
a nappy-headed anything.

Tags: rant

drinking: ice water
listening to: The Joiner-Inners, Light Ray and Orion
and do i feel better now: i don't think it did any actual good, but yes, i feel much better