Permalink

DIGG THIS | del.icio.us

You might think your dog is greater but you'd be wrong. Your dog doesn't love me but my dog does--get it?

The hardest apology I ever had to make was the first one I made to my son when he was 13-months old. I was engaged in writing, lost in the zone and he was tugging at my pant leg and whining about something. This went on for about five minutes or so until I finally exploded and yelled at him, “Will you give you me a God Damned minute here?”

I watched it in his eyes. I saw some kind of a death in those baby blues and I could almost feel myself tumble a couple levels inside his little head and heart. My God, what had I done? By the time I was man enough to ask myself this question, he had already hit the tears and it became a big production.

I endured a couple minutes of this wailing and my wife’s scowling (there’s no justifying that to a mother), until finally I put my ego aside, closed the laptop, went over to him, picked him up, hugged him and made sure he was looking into my eyes.

I said, “Buddy, Daddy was wrong to yell and he is very sorry.” He was playing with his matchbox cars two minutes later and everything was alright again.

I became a true man that day. But sometimes I slide back, like we all do.

I’ve been a real prick the last two days and I’m not going to give any more excuses or justifications because that’s what got me in trouble in the first place. I attacked Tony, Wil and Shane without provocation and while the intention behind my attacks might have had a justified point, the whole thing eventually became like the frigging pink spots in The Cat in the Hat until it was all pink snow everywhere.

Well, here comes little Cat Z with his VOOM!

Tony, Wil and Shane—I’m sincerely sorry for calling you guys out. You didn’t deserve that and I hope you’ll accept my apology as sincere, as a man who has put aside his ego and all the bullshit to get down to the puckered up asshole of the matter.

I was a dick. I was wrong. I’m sorry. It’s over.

With that said, I am turning back on the comments from my initial blog post (here) and I have toned down the rhetoric and personal attacks in my manifesto. Hopefully clearing the air here will allow anyone still interested to get past the emotions and address the issue I was trying to bring up (through about three million unnecessary words) about what civic responsibility bloggers that get significant market share of blog traffic have to their audiences in terms of effecting social change.

So, hopefully this squashes all the beef out there and we can all make nice again.

On the plus side, pissing off Tony Pierce led to a 1,100% increase in traffic to Boys Wear Pants Dot Com; but this not something I would recommend for all the kiddies with newbie blogs and egos that bruise easily to go about doing. This whole frigging mess has been like trying to reach down to pull a turd out through your throat.

And I forgive the person who attacked my wife’s intelligence and character, although let it be known that you should never ever fuck with a man’s family online—that shit could make a man in the wrong frame of mind get into some straight up G shit.

And another thing, blog comments should be scrutinized with the most flexible grammatical yardstick. People are bound to misspell shit and get tenses and all that crap wrong when they’re writing in the heat of an emotional moment.

Again, I hope this squashes all this shit and I hope you all keep coming back here. If you want, sign up for my newsletter where I really let loose to a private opt-in audience about shit I can't make public less it come back to bite me on the boo-boo one day (like this did).

Tony, Shane and Wil have the West Coast flava but I’ll be keeping it real in the Heart of it All.

And I was serious about the school of Art thing--it's going to happen. Shit, I might even have these three dudes come out and teach a class someday.

Together we can all change this world for the better by focusing on our relationships and attitudes to those around us. If you asked me a week ago if I would be apologizing to the entire blogosphere for my behavior, I would have told you to stop eating retard-sandwiches. But life is both funny and fucked up sometimes.

Don’t underestimate or cheapen the power of this amazing tool of freedom we have been given to enjoy and speak to each other with. And don't forget that there are human beings on the other end of these virtual connections--treat them with respect when you can (I'm talking to myself here).

That new world is right there and all we have to do is choose to touch it and make it real.

Sincerely,

Josh

Let me tell you about the first time I went to the bank to get a loan. I was nineteen and I was looking to borrow five thousand bucks to invest in a pyramid scheme called Equinox (which has since been dismantled by the Federal government). I had on a shirt and tie, the whole deal. I was driving down the road in my POS 1981 black Mustang when this douche starts tailgating me on this country road and making like he was going to pass.

Now, those of you that know me know that I have Short-Man's Complex and at eighteen I was so full of piss and vinegar that you couldn't tell me shit. So, I swerve when the guy tries to pass me. He tries again. I swerve again.

We finally make it up to a major cross-section in Cincinnati and he pulls his car in front of mine diagonally across the lane like a cop in a movie. I said, "Hell no!"

I was out of the car and ready to go, all 115 lbs in a bundled rage.

This guy was fat--like 250 and 5' 8". He began walking up and, even though I had never been in a formal fight before, some kind of lion came out of me. I kicked him right in the crotch with a boot stomp that knocked the wind out of him in a "Ahoooooohaaah."

He started slapping at me like some little bitch and I was all over his ass. We must have looked so ridiculous, this short and skinny white kid with a shaved head beating the crap out of this fat ass middle-aged man on the side of the road.

Finally, my rage had subsided and I was standing over the guy with my fists still balled up. I took a deep breath, seeing that the fight had left him also. I reached out a hand and helped the guy up, trying to find some kind of apology that would put things into perspective in a way that he could explain what happened to his face to his kids.

I even helped him look for his glasses but they were lost in the weeds of Southern Ohio.

I never made it to my loan appointment because I had the guy's blood all over my shirt. I look back on this event with a mixture of shame and self-righteousness that always settles into some hegemonic haze of comfort.

So, fast forward ten years. Yesterday, I went to the bank to sign the final papers to open my company's corporate checking account. I had a 1:00 appointment with the lady. She wasn't there when I got there. The tellers had no idea where she was and were adamant that it was completely out of character for her to miss business appointments like that.

So, I waited for 30 minutes. I read all the webpages downloaded to my IPAQ and even finished the Time magazine about the London Bombing with pictures I hadn't seen yet (doesn't Time have the best frigging pictures in the world?).

Finally, I got up very calmly and went back up to the teller. I asked her if she could give the lady a message, that I couldn't wait any longer than a half hour and that I would appreciate a phone call by the end of the day to reschedule the meeting. I didn't scream. I didn't show any emotion other than mild disappointment. I could see in the tellers' eyes that they fully expected me to explode into an emotional outburst and to have caused a huge scene.

But what would that have gotten me? Back on the side of the road fumbling for an excuse for bad behavior with someone else's blood on my shirt?

No, doing that put me in a position of leverage where the person on the other end of the phone had to apologize to me regardless of whether it was her fault or not, if she wanted to keep my business.

It ended up being a scheduling mishap with her assistant.

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt now and let the little stuff go--life is too stinking short to tie yourself up in knots about things that don't really matter.

There are too many things that do matter which need the full spotlight of our time and attention.

This came from a comment I made on JD's post that you can read here.

My old man used to be a high school JV basketball referee and there was this one game where an old woman was being real belligerent, yelling out what an "asshole douche bag" my old man was and what piss-poor calls he was making.

Now, you've gotta love the old man. He blows his whistle and stops the game. He goes fourteen rows up into the stands with the basketball in his hand; people are moving aside as he walks by like a movie theatre; he's palming the basketball away from their faces so as not to be rude; he sits down next to the old bag. Everyone in the auditorium is watching them, the players, the coaches, the fans on both sides. He sits down and starts bouncing the ball on the empty bleacher seat in front of him. He leans over and whispers at her so only the people right around them can hear and he says, "Lady, I don't know what the f&^* you think your $2 ticket buys you, but I can assure you that you've used up what it's worth."

Then, he gets up, moves past the people again, heads back down the bleachers and blows the whistle just as his foot hits the black line.

Game on!

My old man is a cool dude.