Forgotten Beatitudes

I’m never quite sure how to deal with praise. Perhaps it’s my stoic Midwestern upbriging, although probably not because I’m not completely sure what stoic means (I sort of know the definition from context clues, but have never actually looked it up). I just thought that phrase would sound killer on the dust jacket flap of my first published novel. I don’t think it has anything to do with my childhood, really, because even then I was uncomfortable with it. Parents and relatives were all very encouraging, but frequently my response to their kind words was to run away somewhere and hide.

Over the years, as I accumulated various awards, prestige points and bragging rights, I learned to just sort of autopilot through the acceptance. When I was doing theater and had to do meet-and-greets before or after shows, I would just view it as an extension of the performance and wander out to shake hands, smile and say thank you convincingly while inside I was squirming more than a henchman wondering if he’s gonna get a pardon.

The thing is, I seem to be unable to just take the compliment. I have to analyze it, weigh it, decide what is really meant by it, gage the sincerity with which it was offered. Then I have to figure out the appropriate level or response to it and why that level is appropriate. I have to Sex-And-The-City the hell out of it until I just want to scream!

Case in point, the charming Eric over at Secrets of the Red Seven kindly nominated me for a Thinking Bloggers Award meme-type thing. There’s a graphic and everything:

See, pretty posh. Now I have to figure out how to stick the dratted thing in my sidebar.

The thing is, he did this several days ago and since then I’ve been trying to figure out how to address it. Part of the process, evidently, is that I now have to nominate five other blogs, which I can certainly do, if I can just get past my own neurosis and start doling out the compliments. So now, to my mind, I appear ungrateful and am uncertain if I should even address it at all, but I want to acknowledge the compliment and not offend Eric who’s viewpoint I value but how does one belatedly address something like this and maybe I’m reading too much into it in the first place because it’s more a meme than a contest really but I don’t want to be dismissive of it because it’s important that someone thought enough to include me at all but on the other…JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, CARRIE, JUST LET BIG IMPREGNATE YOU BEFORE YOUR OVARIES DRY UP AND BLOW AWAY LIKE REPRODUCTIVE TUMBLEWEEDS BECAUSE WE’RE ALL SICK UNTO DEATH OF THE SELF-INDULGENT, SELF-INVOLVED, WHOLLY MANUFACTURED DRAMA-MAVEN ROUTINE!

ahem, where was I?

Maybe the problem is I just think too much? If so, then this award meme is utterly appropriate and I accept it in honor of a life lived in overanalyzation.

In the spirit of just getting over it, thanks, Eric. And I think we agree more often than not, it’s just that I rarely speak up when I’m in agreement with someone for reasons similar to why I have issues with taking a compliment.

Now, lets see if I can mess up someone else’s house with a well placed golden apple:

1. North Dallas Thirty. I don’t agree with NDT all the time. In fact, it’s rare enough that I remark on it mentally whenever it happens. That’s not a bad thing, though, because even though we disagree, I know his positions are well thought out and rarely simple knee-jerk reactions. Occasionally he descends into shameful partisan hackery, but who among us is 100% not-guilty of that? Plus, he’s like the one person I know who’s been banned from multiple blogs for ideas and not just pointless trolling. Part of me thinks if you’re pissing off people that much, you gotta have a viewpoint worth considering.

2. I Must Be Dreaming. Jamie seemingly changes his layout more often than some people change their underwear, but that’s part of the fun. The new layout, I mean, not crusty drawers. His posts are passionate and insightful, although a part of me had second thoughts about nominating him since the current top post on his blog is some nonsense about who’s gay on Big Brother Season 8. The answer is simple: THEY’RE ALL GAY FOR GOING ON THE SHOW IN THE FIRST PLACE AND YOU, SIR, ARE ULTRA SUPER MEGA GAY TO THE NTH DEGREE FOR WATCHING THAT CRAP!

3. Out In Left Field. I love Kate, her commentary and her ultra-liberal stances in a way that’s probably best that we live nowhere close to one other. Not that I’d switch teams and try to woo her away from her loving husband and children, but in person we might kill one another and that would be a shame as she’s just sold her house and I’ve just bought mine and neither of us have had a proper interval of time to enjoy our real estate transactions. Also, I know way too much about her sweater puppies to not offer her some sort of award. Again, while I may not always agree with her (on some subjects we wildly disagree, like capital punishment, but we both seem adult about that disagreement), she always makes me think and that’s the point.

4. Abstract Nixon. I met David several years ago via some AOL internet thingy. Surprisingly (and somewhat annoyingly at first), we never slept together, and that, as the poet says, has made all the difference. His obsessive and slightly bizarre devotion to Whose Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? has certainly made me think over the years, usually, “Jesus you’re a freak.” His taste in music, his excellent photography and his amazing storytelling ability have also made me think, but much more positively. Of course, he doesn’t read my blog nor to I merit a link on his, so perhaps I shouldn’t nominate him for anything other than schmuck, but I’m going to anyway because that makes me the bigger man and that means I WIN!

5. Caulk is Cheap. John’s fairly new to the blogging game, but I have high expectations from this “amateur student of economics”. His pool is also frog free, which makes me strongly suspect that he’s a fundamentally better person than I am. Perhaps he just has a better pool boy.

Five is not a lot. There are lots of other blogs out there I read obsessively, but these are the ones that have consistently produced firing synapses in my head. I would have loved to mention the Reverend Jack Malebranche’s blog, not just to pimp his book Androphilia (it’s…interesting, to say the least), but comment on his certainly different take on homosexuality. He’s not updating it very much at the moment, though, so I didn’t. Cuts have to be made somewhere. Or Angry Black Bitch, who I’m a little bit in love with and have been for a long time, even though I never post comments on her site because I’m also a little bit scared of her, too. If I can’t psych myself up to post there, then nominating her for an award seems presumptuous somehow.

I urge anyone in my incestuous little blog readership who hasn’t checked out any of these sites to do so, post haste. They each have unique and enjoyable viewpoints, even if they may be wildly different from your own. In fact, hopefully they will be wildly different from your own because everyone should travel outside their comfort zone at least a couple of times a day, just for their own good. These folks are some of the best places to do just that, because they know how to have a conversation rather than a flame war and that is what makes them even more valuable.