New Year's Easter

   I think I'm fairly reasonable as a person. I have so many stories- lord, so many stories- generated by my crazy lot of kith and kin, and I have only mined maybe a tenth of the really good veins of drama here or anywhere. There's a certain element of risk to a blog like this one- whatever way I go, if I'm writing decently I'm really going to end up making someone's bad decision public. I try to limit this reasonably to things that I can talk about (most of which are just so damn funny in their scope of ridiculousness, it would be a crying shame not to share), and I tend to edit around even the most amusing things some of my posse have gotten up to if it wouldn't be fair to do a song and dance around it.
   But every so often, a repeat offender will either go to such gorgeous lengths of stupidity or offensiveness, and then even a friends-and-family protection order will go bye-bye. I'm sorry, but dem's de rules: you shit in my shoe, I paint your bedroom with it. I've racked up some spectacular bullshit of my own in my time, and frankly most of the day is spent wanting to poke my own eye out for the sheer units of moron I pump out from hour to hour, and I'm sure if anyone else wrote delightful if horribly pointed stories about my personal kind of stupid I'd shrink into myself. But at the end of the day, I have to own that shit. I make a choice either to be a prick or to be sensible, and whichever direction I choose inevitably has a receiving party who has all the right in the world to feel wronged. It just baffles me that if any one of all my varied acquaintances throws a tantrum or spews vitriol everywhere that you could possibly feel so hard done by when you see it laid down in black and white. I mean for fuck's sakes, perhaps it wasn't your finest hour, but chances are I took the time out of my day to write it down because it was both funny and largely inexcusable. Probably both with a dash of "I don't give a fuck whether I treat you or anyone else like something I stepped it, bask in the glory of my magnificent arseholedom" thrown in for good measure. But having it described to an only slightly wider audience than my cats is the cardinal sin? As many an excellent Jerry Springer audience member has helpfully quipped: Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself.
   Roundaboutly what I'm getting at is that I've ended up editing myself more than I'd like here. Not so much in what I write down as in what it is I end up deleting again after it's been published. Since I really only feel justified in writing about the more egregious examples of wank, they do tend to attract the most hissy-fits and flounces once they go up, and I've twice been asked now to take stories down in respect for family ties and such. Both times, after having to think over how comfortable I am with bowing to that kind of pressure I've decided that's not the kind of dick I want to be (I want to be an entirely different kind of dick, obviously) and I've taken them down. If I had gone the route of a printed autobiography I suspect there would have been just as much if not more bitching, but I don't know if there'd have been quite as easy an expectation for me to "take things down" or whatever the print equivalent is. Somehow a blog, being digital and easily altered, is not quite as free to enjoy impunity in honesty as a physical book would be. I suppose the flip side of that- at least for me- has been that in writing something as ephemeral as a blog over a book, it's been easier to allow myself more liberty with people's names or relationship to me. There's a feeling that largely the people reading this either already know your shenanigans or will never know who you are anyway, and perhaps in that I have been remiss. From now on if I tell you about someone who's personal topiary gets shaved into a heart-shape, I'll take more pains to at least give them a cursory veil of anonymity.
   One day I'll write you that book, and you shall all cringe and cry with laughter so help me Judge Judy, for I shall plumb the depths of unwritten material that is simply growing riper where it waits in my Bag Of No. It shall be a glorious day and all shall feast on pastries and wine, but until that day I'll curb myself to within the limits of appropriateness- without cutting down on my arsehole quotient too much. Fair warning though: if you're going to be a buffoon, be it somewhere out of my eyeshot, because that shit is fair game.

   I've been quiet for a while, largely because I now have stairs to climb at home and that tires me the fuck out. Can't spare no energy for the typings after two flights. There's been moving and subsequent unpacking and keeping an eye on the size of the spiders in the bathroom and heart attacks and laziness. I shall be endeavouring to get into more adventures and angering the locals now that my hiatus is over, and if I were you I would expect at least one instalment of Why I Love Shitty Reality TV by Snofferol. My PVR is now my best friend, for it affords me the luxury of watching both Cake Boss and Don't Tell The Bride, even if the geniuses at TV Central should decide to schedule both at the same time.
   Happy New Year's Easter from Pie HQ, next time I'll bring pictures.