The Audacity of Malice

Okay, you want an honest blog entry? Fasten your seatbelt...

My relatives were complete dicks to me growing up: I was an overweight kid and they never let me forget it and to this day I still can't stand to look at most pictures of myself.

I maintain an awkward, amiable but threadbare relationship with my immediate family. Haven't physically seen my pop since 2003 (when I got fucking married).

As much as I blog, I'm wary of the internet. My enemies (and frenemies) are legion.

Once, this girl I met on the internet sent me a letter with a hair sample. And she'd carved my initials into her skin and pressed it against the letter paper, so my initials were there IN BLOOD...

"M.H."

(Admittedly, I used to court trouble online...)

I used to google my own name. Haven't done that in two years. I don't want to read all the snarky/shitty things people have to say about me or my work.

I don't like the way that FACEBOOK connects people. I'm weirded out by the way every little thing you do gets turned into a full-blown press release to real friends and phony-Facebook-friends alike. I used to be careful/conservative about uploading photos of myself, but other fools post class pictures from fucking Elementary School and I get "tagged", so what's the fucking point?

When you list yourself as "in a relationship" with someone on Facebook, you might as well be married. You are essentially, virtually married. Web 2.0 married. It is a public announcement. Your friend circles get merged and you're suddenly exposed for vetting by the respective parties. A breakup may be as simple as CANCEL RELATIONSHIP > UNFRIEND > BLOCK... but you are STILL, for a time, on this path! You are on a documented path. Electronic paper trail. Just more fodder for the enemies and the assholes and the hoopleheads and exes and ex-sympathizers...

... but you can't contort your life around the real or imagined motives of your (real or imagined) enemies. Haters have to hate. And some people need to get hurt. This is the way the world works.

You do anything—you walk out the door in the morning—and you make yourself vulnerable.

And so... we let go of control. Just a little. Strategically.

(Now and then...)