Well I Don't Call Myself Utah Savage for Nothing

Sometimes I'm a complete ass. Not only that, but I'm savage about it. And what's worse I am sometimes both unrepentant and unforgiving. If I were the killing kind, I'd have been locked up long ago. I think my weapon of choice would be a switchblade. I found one when I was a kid and it appealed to me far too much, and after watching me get real good at flipping it open and throwing it into the bark of a tree with amazing accuracy, my dad took it away. Might of been the only smart thing that rat bastard ever did. See what I mean? My dad's been dead for years and I still hate him with a white hot intensity, and it's not because he took my knife away.

Well, what with my big mouth and my nasty temper, I got myself in a bit of a pickle in the blogging world. I have lost real life friends because of my impetuosity and nasty temper. And in truth, I'm mostly pretty unforgiving when I think real damage has been done to someone I love by someone else, or even by my friend's own bad judgement. I will give my friends plenty of do- overs, but if they just keep doing the same stupid shit in the same old way, I eventually gut them with my eviscerating tongue lash, and forget they exist. Oh, I may miss them, think about the good old days before I knew the truth, but once that bottom line has been crossed, I'm merciless.

I have committed a serious blogging faux pas . Perhaps the equivalent of a throwing down the gauntlet. For awhile, when I was married to my third husband I took fencing. It might have saved his life, as it was a mighty fine outlet for my hatred of him. But now, here I am traipsing from blog to blog, thinking I am making friends everywhere. And being a somewhat passionate woman, when I really like someone, I hate like hell to find them insulted, especially if I think the insult is stupid, gratuitous, petty, or nit picking. And being a rather literal woman, sometimes the finer points of irony are lost on me. I don't think of myself as humorless, but some subtleties just might pass me by. Just saying.

So now we get to the meat of the matter. Lets say, blogger S writes a short story, and kind of hides it like she is slightly shy about sharing this fine piece of writing. I read the story and think it's really good. And in the comments thread, blogger P makes criticism that doesn't make sense to me--like there's too much description of the layout of the house (which there isn't) and blogger S has used the main character's name too often (which she didn't). I jump right in and call bullshit--because that's what I really think it is. Then this critic P tries to justify his criticism by giving an actual word count, I shit you not, which trips some switch in my brian and down goes the gauntlet. I say bring it on motherfucker. Well, actually I said, are you kidding? A word count to make a petty point that is bogus to begin with? Are you shitting me? So I take blogger P to task for the small minded pettiness of his criticism. It gets a little heated and pretty soon he is calling me stupid and an idiot and not worth his time, and then I say, "Yo mama!" And I swear if we were actually in S's living room (which we sort of were) and I still had my switchblade, I 'd have gutted him right then and there.

Then just the other day, I was visiting blogger A who wrote a lovely piece , the topic of which currently escapes my memory, and when I went to leave a comment about her lovely piece there was blogger F followed by blogger R. So far so good. I can't remember what blogger F's first comment was since it didn't push any of my buttons, and blogger R said something lovely and used the word "catharsis." Then following hard on the heels of blogger R, blogger F comes back and says, "Don't use the word catharsis, it's hackery." Well, button pushed, by god. I happen to really like blogger A and blogger R, and have a lot of respect for blogger F. But no one insults my friends and gets away with it. So I go on the fucking rampage. I wake up this morning and call my post Catharsis, which kind of makes sense since last night was the Indiana and North Carolina primaries and I had to stay up really late to find out just how close it was in Indiana--it was a bit of a nail-biter. Then I go to A's site and she has written a lovely post on Catharsis, giving it's history--she is far more elegant than I. Then everywhere I go I find a way to work either catharsis or cathartic into my comments. So now I'm wading knee deep in petty bullshit, and creating a little ill will with blogger S who is a close personal friend of blogger F. So now I'm begging forgiveness. Please F, except my apology. S, I didn't mean to insult your friend. R, I know you are capable of using your own razor like wit to defend yourself if you ever need defending. Did I forget anyone? Oh yeah, P. Well in P's case I was completely justified and I don't take back a single word, even the "Yo mama!"