As some of you may be aware, we (and I use that in the “we are pregnant” sense) have been caring for a neighbor’s animals while she’s been away. We had the cats and the dog over at our place, but they seemed not to be able to get used to the removal, and there were goats to take care of over there, so we decamped to our friend’s place while she’s out of town.
Wednesday, I wasn’t able to get out of work until 4 o’clock, several hours after the state had declared an emergency due to the blizzard which was dumping 28 inches of snow on the area. I tried to make it up the road which would take me to where my family were staying, but had to turn around, as it had become impassible. My only chance at that point was to aim for our place, which I did, only to find that the driveway was unplowed. Having almost had several accidents involving tractor-trailers, I gunned the van and slammed it as hard as I dared into a deep drift where our driveway ought to have been, and struggled into the house. Sometime overnight, the heat gave out and the pipes froze. I spent a little time the next morning breaking two shovels in attempting to free my vehicle, and hitchhiked to where I work.
My auto insurance is supposed to cover such eventualities for the small surcharge I pay on a quarterly basis, so I called them. They promised that they’d dispatch someone as soon as possible, but it would be hours, because, reasonably, true emergency situations had first dibs. I stayed late a work on Thursday, but they let me know that because I had the keys, I had a problem: nobody was going to come get me and take me to my debacle. I spent the night a the home of one of my wife’s colleagues, and made it in to work early on Friday.
By now I was getting a bit desperate, because I knew that if I didn’t get the van moved soon, the state would likely get around to towing it. So I left work early thanks to a friend, and spent the next two hours digging the damn thing out (without gloves, since I’d cleverly taken them to the neighbor’s). It was a great relief to have done so, and if the state plows manage today to scrape close enough to the mailbox, I may resume getting mail. But I started experiencing the most violent back spasms. Fortunately, I had prepared for this eventuality by purchasing a twelve-pack on the way home. And I must say, the beer and the movies and the occasional blogging distracted me from the pain. I also managed to get the heat running and shovel off the vent, not wanting to mix carbon monoxide with all that beer.
Why do I mention all this? Because outside of the humor of my sad-sack story, I’d like to point out that I was inebriated while I wrote what I wrote last night, and yet still in control enough of my faculties to realize that the Liberal Avender comment-twisting and lying about it is way, way over the line. I’ve blogged impaired, because of drinking or stridency or misreading, or some combination, but I like to think that I’ve at least had the grace in hindsight to admit that I’ve been an ass, instead of digging deeper and deeper. It’s disturbing that some people think that this is an acceptable and humorous practice. It’s called bearing false witness, and it’s a form of fraud.
If people really do think that it’s acceptable or defensible, I hope that they will add a disclaimer to that effect in their comments section, so people know what they’re getting into if they decide to hold forth, and those people can have the kinds of echo chambers that they apparently desire, the kind that the Duke 88 inteachers apparently would like to have. The “because it’s funny” defense is one that I’ve used to mark my self-awareness at the time that I’m making a remark that I feel is going to be over the top, but I don’t deploy it after the fact to justify my idiocies. When someone says something stupid, either out of ignorance or otherwise, one ought to own it, as I did with John Cole, or as Danny Glover did with respect to missing Pandagon posts, without resorting to “if I’d have known then what I know now” subterfuges. Some people who admire Edwards for being able to say, “I was wrong,” even if the skeptic might say the admission is also remarkably expedient, seem unable to bring themselves to waive the cachet coveted by intellectualthugniggahs.
People who themselves decry the lack of civility on the tubes seem to have trouble with this concept, largely because they believe that the appearance of credibility with their audience is more important than truth-telling per se. It’s commonly the dodge and weave, positing a greater offense by someone else that ought to make their own seem peccadillish in comparison, as Jeff has documented on many occasions, or, as he’s also documented, they claim that the offensive remarks were made in the context of some form of irony. In order successfully to practice irony, though, it’s necessary to have some understanding of your own foibles and to demonstrate that you understand that your judgment is limited, imperfect, liable to deception and self-deception. In short, it’s necessary to demonstrate a certain humility.
Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think so.
It would be hypocritical of me to slam you, Dan. Not that it would necessarily stop me, of course.
Now I have to go back and try to find the post where you had a 12 pack (half slab) inside you.
If you were a gentleman, you would have provided a link.
But it’s OK, I’m on leave, I have plenty of time.
That Stevexx is a fucking bore, isn’t he? I don’t think someone who identifies himself by what he isn’t should be allowed to be a practising shrink.
Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think so.
The state would tow your car out of your own driveway???
It wasn’t all the way in, Anwyn, and they couldn’t plow to the edge of the road.
You’re right, furriskey. It’s a real drag, these shrinks with narcissistic personality disorders.
I did what furriskey did and found nothing at all really out of line. I guess being a regular gives one a Dan Collins Gestalt that makes even what Dan himself might consider extreme seem merely hyperbolic.
I may have merely not understood what Dan was talking about, too. That happens sometimes, too.
Well, I’ve seen posts where I thought Dan was posting drunk, but lately there seem to have been a lot of those, so it’s hard to tell which ones he’s talking about.
Sorry about your travails, though, Dan. I think I would’ve bailed on work in the face of that.
I was drunk when I read it, so it made perfect sense to me.
I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison.
Any sane person would have stocked up on Booze before the storm hit, Geees.
Yes, well I never claimed to be sane.
OT: They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard.
Tell me you didn’t wake up with a shaved head and lips tattooed to your wrists.
Your missing the larger picture here Dan. This is a great opportunity to blame all of your misfortune on chimpy Mchalibushitler. After all he didn’t sign the Kyoto treaty did he.
GLOBAL WARMING PEOPLE……….BOO!
Maybe you didn’t here algore the first time…..
BOO
incivility on the tubes is, in my experience, not generally spontaneous, a certain tone usually precedes – there’s often an arc to it. For example, links to blogs or material that play particularly skillfully at the very boundaries of the acceptable are generally a red flag… but I think a constructive approach would be for a generally agreed upon arbiter – PJM would work just fine, to hold up a “satire of the week” as an example…
Blogging is a literary genre, of a sort, and sooner or later a robut taxonomy of style and form will emerge… why not give it a nudge?
Ok. So what happened to the goats?
One day I will tell the story of the Cypriot goat that was tethered to a boulder.
Turkish or Greek, Furriskey?
Does it end like the one about the sheep with it’s head stuck in the barded wire fence ?
The goat was neutral, but that didn’t save it-
Certainly not, Bill D. I regret there was a bottomless well involved on this occasion.
Me too , I suppose ……
And the goat…
Heh .
Ain’t that the truth. Soon, it’ll be a college course and then students will be writing papers on Jeff Goldstein and Absurdity in Blogging and how his style evolved over the years after he sobered up and became an Oscar-winning writer of screenplays (’Armadillo Nights’, ‘Guys and Trolls’, ‘Night of the Douchewads’
.
And it’ll be all over but the burqas.
Sounds like an idiom , you know , as opposed to a genre .