The human species has spent several hundred thousand years sorting through which emotions and marginal neuroses to keep under control and which to release. Now, with a keyboard, people overnight are “free” to unburden and unhinge themselves continuously and exponentially. One researcher quotes the entry-page of a teenage girl’s blog: “You are now entering my world. My pain. My mind. My thoughts. My emotions. Enter with caution and an open mind.”
– Daniel Henninger, OpinionJournal, “Disinhibition Nation”

Henninger makes a few salient points, most of which are about the new lack of repression that has come with the blogging age. Hell, I’m guilty of it myself; I’ve used this space for self-therapy more than once. Last night, in fact. If no one wants to read about my insanity, then there are plenty of other sites (and growing!) that they can surf instead of mine; and I’ve gotten some good feedback from both friends and strangers, not just about issues involving my bipolar disorder but my writing, my music, my life.

A large chunk of the article deals with something that I see as a false connection: the use of language. Language — I’m in the realm of the four-letter-plus variety — has been getting looser and freer as I’ve grown older, and I clearly remember a time before microwave ovens, MTV, remote control and home computing, much less blogs. The fact that you’re apt to hear “fuck” has less to do with blogging and a freedom from the constraints of face-to-face society and more to do with a sign of the times, I think.

Though my elders would just blame that on the fact that I run with a bad crowd. So there’s that possibility, too.

I do think the anonymity of the Internet is propelling us toward a darker time, at least socially. Blogs are a big part of this, with their loosening of the shackles of conventional behavior. Even someone like myself — with a full name, photo, and contact information attached to their every word, without the need for sleuthing — remains anonymous to a large extent. Even taking these words at face value, assuming that I’m not a big act or charade or exercise of writing (much less brilliantly executed AI with a sense of humor), you still don’t know me, any more than you know Al Franken or Stephen King or any other writer, famous or not.

And that knowledge, especially for those who are not so real-world bridged to their blogs, allows people to be whoever they want to be, or worse, whoever they think people want them to be. Look at blogs and the “half-naked thursday” meme (if you haven’t seen it, click around, and you’ll bump into it soon enough), or just about any MySpace page. More and more identities online are becoming a part of the popularity race.

Has this bled over into the waking world? I might be in the wrong age group to answer that, as I was in my pre-teens when hacking and personal computers and War Games were all the rage, and just out of college in the early nineities when getting online was finally a possibility for the masses. I can draw a hard line between my parents’ generation and my baby sister’s, with me and most of my peers sitting uncomfortably on the edge of one side or the other.

I think certain behaviors are changing, though I won’t make a better/worse judgement call on them. More and more communication is taking place in email, which is a huge plus for me. The world, in some sense, is opening up before us; ten years ago, I had a broad base of connections and contacts throughout Birmingham, but not much further, unless friends had moved away; now I have a network that crosses continents, all thanks to bulletin boards and forums. I even met Kasey online — she’s largely a homebody, and I doubt we ever would have crossed paths without the Internet.

But I think we’re also starting to see an isolation among people, sort of an electronic retardation of social skills. Face to face encounters look different to me, as a long-time observer of people; Friday and Saturday nights in the bar don’t really look anything like they did when I was in my early 20’s, for all the surface similarities. Maybe that’s just me getting older and grizzled, but I don’t think so; not yet, at least. More and more, though, I feel like I’m watching a bunch of home-schooled bubble children let out into society for the first time, dealing with other humans with the techniques they picked up from The Real World and Jackass.

We’re definitely, as Henninger points out, becoming more and more of a warts-and-all world, at least those of us that open up like this online. And I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. On the one hand, the more we open up, no matter in what medium, the more that honesty is encouraged between people. On the other, there’s a desensitization to the ugly things in the world that comes with being human: the more you are exposed to something that is distasteful, be it language, gory movies, naked women, death — whatever the thing is, you grow numb to it.

It can’t possibly be good that what used to be too much information is now considered a tasty hors d’ouerve. Eventually, the search for greater stimulation leads to the edge of morality: the sadist eventually goes from fantsy to hurting someone to get his kicks. The cat torturer becomes the serial killer. It’s addiction; you up the dosage until the craving is satisfied. Look at extreme sports, or porn, or any number of escapist rituals available to us, and track how they’ve (d)evolved over the past ten, twenty, hundred years. It’s not hard to see.

But what is the presumed “natural conclusion” that I’m hinting at? Where does this tangled path of anonymity and fantasy and showing the world your most naked (perceived) self lead? An even more complicated question, when you consider all the other factors and variables at work in the equation, the progression of other areas of the world, the changing times in which we live, the polarization of the haves and have nots…

…

This is point at which I pause, reread what I’ve written, realize that I’m headed toward a really bad headache (or, at the very least, a lengthy post that wanders so far from the topic that I can’t possibly bring it full circle), decide that I’m not having nearly enough drunken conversations about philosophy with my regulars, and finally settle on the good idea of turning off my computer and heading somewhere that sells alcohol.

the days go by
and nothing brings me joy
the glow was strong
when i was a boy
but it’s gone

I’m hesitant lately to write posts like this. Maybe it’s because I know what I sound like, and it’s a whiny, irritating, broken record. Maybe I don’t want this side of me to exist, and putting it in print, in public… maybe acknowledging it like this is just making it more real.

But I’ve never been one to admit when I’m really down. I don’t want to appear weak. I don’t want to burden people with my troubles, especially imagined as they often are. In my head, if you’re having a good day, then I don’t want to bring you down, and if you’re having a bad day, then you sure don’t need any extra weight on your shoulders. So I keep so much of it inside, internal, where it sometimes works itself out and sometimes grows into an ugly cancerous beast that eats away at me.

Garth and I have talked a lot lately about how I’ve got a lot more going for me than I know. But it’s not that; rationally, I know. I’m aware of my faults and weaknesses, but I’m also in keen view of the things that I possess. In reality, the problem is much deeper than that: at the end of the day, I’m not entirely sure who or what I am.

There’s a very meta component to all of this, in that what I’m about to delve into says a lot about who and what I am, and that awareness (at least, according to Neely) puts me miles and miles ahead of most of the population. And maybe I should give more weight to that. But it ultimately doesn’t provide me with the answers that I’m looking for, and so perhaps, I think sometimes, I need to rethink the question…

I do have a fair grasp on my ideal self. The values and behaviors that I’ve espoused in my words to friends and my words here pretty well sum up a lot of that: a strong sense of accountability, honest, fair, objective, relaxed and unshakable (at least by the things that commonly stress people out). I’m not where I want to be on any of those levels, but I think I’m on my way, at least.

But there are a lot of things that I’m still trying to figure out. I’m a reasonably non-materialistic person, but I think that’s either a way of feeling better about my current financial situation, or maybe something that I strive to be based on things I’ve heard all my life (that money complicates things, for instance). I’m certainly not anti-money, but I think that if my position in life one day improves, I’ll certainly embrace it.

It’s a lot of things like that that fill my box of pondering. Paradoxical sides of coins: I want to have my nights and weekends free, but I don’t want to be a day-walker. I want to stand out in a crowd, but I want to be invisible. I want to live a normal life, but that’s the last thing in the world that seems appealing to me. A lot of that is my constant desire to have what I do not, something that has always been a part of me. The grass is always, always greener on the other side of the fence. I’ve come to accept that it’s not greener, that the other side not anything-er. It’s different.

But I still try to insist that I can have it all.

Even at the age of thirty four, having been through all I have, I’ve developed little more than a core idea of self. I have always had a tendency to absorb personality traits of those around me, especially those who have what I do not, what I covet. To some level, I see the innate talent that I have, for spotting the traits that I want to pick up and knowing what they’ll get me, without consciously thinking about it; but beyond that, I wonder how often I come across as a cheap imitation. Of course, it’s possible that I never do — that each new trait that I pick up is combining with all the others in a new and wondrous way to behold. But the wonder is still there.

Melissa told me a long time ago that I was never going to be happy until I learned to love myself. She was speaking about being one half of a couple, and she was right, but not entirely there. One, I can’t really love myself until I know myself, yeah? And don’t get me wrong: I don’t hate myself. Far from it. I just happen to doubt myself, to question myself a lot. Maybe I do love myself, like I think I do, but it’s not unconditional as I need it to be.

As a sidenote, I think it’s odd, the notion that you can’t love anyone else without loving yourself. The exclusivity there doesn’t work in my head. If you don’t think you’re a very good person, but you think someone else is, why can’t you?

Two, though… two is that I think sometimes that I’m never going to be happy until I let myself be happy. Things in my head are just never right; some part of me is striving for perfection. And I’m sort of proud of that; it’s uncompromising, it refuses to settle, to accept that what we’ve been told all our lives is the best we can have is really it. It’s the dreamer, on some levels. But it’s also a serious pain in my ass, because there’s always the nagging voice at the back of the crowd in my head that is telling me that hey — maybe everyone was right, that there is a limit to what you can have in this life, and oops — you just tossed it out.

Oops, indeed.

Is this search for self something that we’re all going through, or is it a sign that there really is a reason that I look so much younger than I am? I’m open to being somehow developmentally stunted, to still being a child by refusing to let childish things go. I’m also, however, open to the idea that this is okay, exceptional even, because it’s not taking the easy way out.

The problem with exploring the idea of perspective as much as I have is that sometimes you can’t fix on one.

if you knew the man i used to be
please hold me under the sea
or scratch my arms till they bleed
save me
will you help me to feel the glow?

I don’t know that I’ve ever really felt, for more than short stretches of time, that I am stably who I am. Constantly shifting, depending on what is expected of me in situations or on who I am around and what they have that I currently don’t. Wade or Kevin could probably confirm or deny this; they’ve both known me for twenty years or more, and I suspect that they have a more fixed perspective on me than I do.

I look backwards and see parts of me that I let fade but want to reestablish. There’s a lot of passion that I’ve lost over the years, and while a lot of negative ways of thinking were left behind with the passion, I think that maybe there’s a balance that can be struck. I’ve started feeling more of my old thoughts — the ones that were best left forgotten — as I reached back to allow myself to feel again, and it’s not pleasant, but I don’t think that the two are necessarily untanglable. I can see a lot of strength at moments in my past, a lot of determination and objectivity without self-recrimination that I want back.

Perhaps life is simply wearing me down. I find myself in a place at my age that I never imagined I might, the result of years of missteps and choices that were so subtly bad that only their cumulative effects revealed them for what they are. Maybe a lot of the things I was fall by the wayside because I am, plainly, tired of the uphill struggle. But I don’t think it has to be that way.

I think maybe that I need to remember my own words, that dying is for those who don’t have any more living to do. And thanks to the Exhibit(s), and to Kasey*, and to a billion friends and acquiantances, I have much more living that I want to do.

Anyone out there that wants to drop me line about figuring out who I am — whether you can help me answer my question with observations about me, or your own experiences — please drop me a line. The info’s in the CONTACT ME link at the top of the page. Or leave anonymous (or not so anonymous) comments. Whatever you please. Ofttime, I’m writing here just to hear myself think, but there are occasions (this one, for instance), where feedback would be most appreciated. Rewarded, even.**

* Kasey, for anyone that isn’t aware, is the honest to goodness real-world name of Red. In the interest of protecting the not-so-innocent, I gave her a pseudonym, but she asked last night when I was going to call her by her real name. So there you go, love. Everyone can track you down now, and make fun of you for hanging out with a wretch like me.

** Probably not, unless you’re one of those suckers who believes that helping a fellow human out is reward in and of itself.

Red has a few sayings that she pulls out all the time. “You have no idea…” is the one that I’m trying to curb; what’s stuck in my headmeat today is, “We all have our things.”

She says this in reference to our quirks and eccentricities — both between the two of us, she and I, and in other people. It’s her way of saying that things that people do that are a little off (my bipolar disorder, for instance [you should see what I define as majorly left-of-center]) are completely forgiveable, because who among us doesn’t have issues?

But I started thinking about “our things” in the context of talents, abilities, gifts. It’s a little bit of hearing Red say that, a little bit of talking to Garth about movies and filmmaking, and a whole lot of hallucinogen residue from my youth.

I don’t know that for sure, to be honest, but odds are on the side of the flashback.

I write. I write a little every day, to stay in practice, to keep my brain cleaned out, to give you guys something new to read while you’re buried in the flourescent light slave-pits of whichever company you’re currently employed by. I don’t write to get better, necessarily; I’ve had a strong grip on the rules and conventions of the English language since high school, so I’m not so concerned about grammar or punctuation, and I’ve always had a large vocabulary. Similarly, I don’t force myself to adhere to strict standards (for instance, note the sentence-ending preposition a few lines above), nor do I agonize over every last word choice and structural gamble. These words that you read, generally speaking, come tumbling out, and then the entire thing gets a final read from me to spot typos. Sometimes. Some entries just get written and turned loose on the world.

I make no aspirations about being a full-time professional writer. I’ve been published in local newspapers and national magazines (check your newsstands this weekend for the May-June 2006 issue of mental_floss), so I don’t need the validation. I get compliments often enough. But my heart’s not entirely in it.

(Note to hiring editors: my heart can be in it for the right price, of course.)
I know a lot of artists, a lot of creative people. Filmmakers, actors, musicians, writers, artists — I’ve surrounded myself with them all my adult life. And they’ve all got talent, in some form or fashion. I’ve been fortunate enough to know some of the very best in their areas: my ex-wife Melissa Bush is a phenomenal actress, as is my friend Mia Frost. Wade is one of the most able writers I’ve ever known. Fellow Exhibit Eric McGinty is easily the most natural musician I’ve ever known.

There are people out there that would argue any or all of these points with me, and that’s fine; these are just opinions (though like my t-shirt says, you can agree with me or be wrong). And that, I think, is why I approach writing, music, filmmaking, etc. with very few expectations of success: said success is based entirely on the whim and interest of the masses. Talent may help you get noticed, and talent can allow you, maybe, to read what the people want, but in the end, it’s not about gifts but about giving them what they want.

Only a select few people have ever been able to find financial and creative success while offering the public something that they didn’t even know they wanted: Steve Vai springs to mind. Chuck Pahlaniuk. I’m sure there are people in all the other creative disciplines so amazingly talented that they could create art on whatever edgy fringe they wished, and a sizeable fan base would seek them out.

But these are a select few, people who are either so frighteningly gifted that a look into their thought process would be the equivalent of waking up next to Cthulu after a night of binging on Rumpleminze and Xanax, or so disciplined that they have been able to shape and mold their natural talents into the absolute pinnacle of what they can be. These people are few and far between, rarer than the savants that can tell you how many M&Ms hit the floor seconds after your bag rips.

Not necessarily as entertaining at parties, though.
Talent — even above average talent, with hard work to go along with it — doesn’t guarantee you shit in the world. I’ve grown so tired of hearing other musicians complain about how they’ve got more musical ability in their pinky fingers than Pink, so why are she and Britney and N’ Sync resting on the beach in Cabo while the rest of us work for tabs and (when we’re lucky) a little extra money?

Because they’re what the people want, and we’re not.

Once in a blue moon, a Van Halen or a Nirvana or a Beatles come along — talented, gifted artists whose creations happen to fill a need in the greater portion of the listening world (transpose your own artists and field for other media). And they — and we — are luckier for it. But for the rest of us to expect that, to feel some sense of entitlement to the same good fortune, is foolish.

Yes, that’s a music story in a diatribe about writing.  My talents are too many for a single medium.

Back to the written word:

I’ve never edited my own work. I rarely even reread my own writing — I couldn’t even begin to tell you about the contents of this blog over the past four years, outside of a few entries made under intense cirtcumstances that happened to find the magic that I was hoping for. I’m not disciplined enough to work on applying what gifts I might have to the craft, and I’m not terribly concerned with it. I’ve certainly not made it to the levels that I might have liked to, and may never, but I’ve had more ‘success’ than most ever dream of, and that’s enough for me.

To those of you who have read my work — whether this blog, screenplays, short stories, whatever — and let me know that you like it, thank you. To those who continue to read, thank you a little more. It’s for me that I write, to practice, to get some things out, to work through others, but it’s you that give me the rewards, no matter how silent they may be.

We all have our things, and this is one of mine that I’m glad to know other people enjoy sharing.

Warren Ellis needs help. Or another round, if you’re buying.

I like hearing people say that change is on the horizon.

Of course it is. Change is always right there, directly in front of you. You can choose to ignore it, sure. You can wrap yourself in the lukewarm blanket of today, and you can stay right there, forever if you want. Or you can step forward, one foot always on the edge of the cliff, the steep drop into nothingness constantly to one side, and walk headlong into the change, smiling as you go.

Perhaps those people are referring to change that is outside of the boundaries of your control. Things like people leaving you (through choice or death), or jobs disappearing, or war, or famine. That kind of change is always on the horizon, too, as regular as sunrise if slightly more unpredictable. But a butterfly flaps its tissue wings in Nebraska and suddenly you’ve got the Seventh Trumpet being played somewhere in the sky, and a plague of boil-infested first born locustfrogs is falling on Egypt.

If there really is a god, you’d think he’d have given butterflies brains enough to realize how much power they have.

Or maybe god’s just a big fan of chaos theory.

Change is scary. At worst, it’s a leap (or a hard push from behind) into a dark and cold unknown. You have everything you know and are familiar with ripped away from you, and you are shoved headlong into a place where, if you’re lucky, you speak the same language as everyone else. At best, change is an opportunity to reinvent yourself, to redefine who and what you are, to shape your world in whatever way you see fit.

Very rarely in life are we faced with either extreme. Most change falls somewhere dead in the middle of this – half promise, half-scary. From there, it’s all perspective – one man’s C6 is another man’s Am7. It’s up to you to focus: look for what you gain, ignore what you lose.

Sia says, “It has to end to begin.”

Richard Bach says, “The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.”

Richard Bach also says, “Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.”

It’s easy and simple to give in to your fears, and it can be unreasonably hard work to focus past that to your hopes. But work, whether now or in the distant future, pays off — at least, it has in my experience.

Regardless of the “for better or worse” of it all, change is good, because it signals another step forward. Isn’t motion preferable to stagnancy? There’ll be plenty of time for staying still when you’ve no more life within you; for now, keep moving, and keep living.

Peanut Butter Terror With a Baseball Bat, even! (via Bitter Old Punk)

ELEVATED.

Jung Explorer Test
Actualized type: ENFJ
(who you are)

You’ve confirmed what I already feared:

“There has to be more to life than this, because in our confrontation with a cold, cold universe, there is something comical to the idea that we can really impose our will on humanity; power corrupts!”
– Poe, Control

It took me a while to finally watch the recent two-parter on South Park (Cartoon Wars) that deals with censorship, depictions of Mohammed, Family Guy, and so much more (including the fact that in fights between kids, a shot to the balls is just plain unfair). Frankly, given how hot button the topic is, and how personally involved Stone and Parker were involved (Comedy Central refuses to rerun the episode that tackled Scientology and Tom Cruise, as well [one would assume from the episode] as not permitting Parker and Stone to show a depiction of Mohammed), I thought it was incredibly well handled. It’s worth tracking down on YouTube or through Bittorrent to find it.

One of the things that is so — well, for lack of a better word, interesting about me and Red is that she’s a fairly conservative type. As in, votes Republican. Now, it’s not that I’m a screaming leftie who worships all things Kennedy; frankly, I’m not sure what category I fall into. I’m pro-choice, I’m all for the right to bear arms (though, in fairness, I think we should arm the bears in return), I’m all for Medicare and anti-war. I certainly lean progressive on a lot of social issues, though I also feel fairly strongly that the government should keep it’s hands off of anything that involves me and me alone (I’m not a fan of most drug laws, seatbelt laws, etc.).

I think my most politically defining characteristic is that I believe there are no rules, only expectations. There’s nothing that I believe in so strongly that I won’t concede the occasional exception: parents who let their kids into cars without seatbelts should be fined exhorbitantly, and limits on things like drinking (age restrictions) and gun ownership (background checks and mandatory waiting periods) are really good things. I believe in balance and moderation; the one thing I hate about American politics more than any bad decision or backstabbing manuever is the rabid extremist. Ann Coulter comes to mind (mostly because she’s utterly deluded, rarely if ever backing up her opinions with non-imaginary facts); I’m certain that there are liberals in this same vein out there. I can’t name one, though, because Democrats seem to be represented by scared little girls.

Al Franken, by the way, gets a pass, for two reasons: his arguments (at least in his books; I’ve never listened to his radio show) have the weight of research and factual evidence behind them, and he’s funny as hell. Coulter — well, she looks funny. That probably counts for something if I mute the TV.

That was mean, wasn’t it? But then, I’m also fully aware that if you like Coulter, I’m wrong, period, from here to eternity. And if you don’t like her – well, what’s left to say that we haven’t already all imagined?

Politics in general sort of disgusts me, because the people that run for office and win ostensibly represent the majority of Americans. In factual reality, they represent the majority of American voters. In my eyes, they represent the absolute bottom of the barrel of humanity: they are obsessed with power, with money, with getting and getting and getting for them and theirs. I have yet to approach an election with any feeling other than that I was choosing between the lesser of two really unpleasantries.

Voting in this country has become a new game show. Let’s Make a Deal meets Fear Factor. And we all lose. “All right, Harold – you can bury your face for four years in a bucket full of rotten, dieased meat and bum urine, or you can take whatever waits behind door number two! But here’s a hint, before you make your choice: he has a fourteen inch penis when flaccid, and he thinks you’ve got a really nice smile.”

There are good people running for office, of course. Unfortunately, they have nice smiles, too, and nowhere near the resources it would take to keep door number two closed.

I’ve never been one with aspirations to be President (duh), or even in upper management. Well, that’s not entirely true, though I have no interest in being in charge of other people. Not to say that I can’t do a good job of running things, in areas where I am experienced and competent; I’ve held management positions before and done a more than capable job, if you look at numbers and results.But I hate the idea of firing and hiring people. I hate the idea of having to reprimand people.

I don’t want control over anyone except myself.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, for various and sundry reasons: if there’s a reason for me to be in management, it’s so that I don’t have a boss above me (ditto self-employment). The issues I have with relationships stem from plays for power and control — and really, how sad do you have to be to validate yourself by contolling someone who loves you?

Yeah, that’s a shot. Fuck you if you’re reading this.

I don’t want to control anyone else, nor do I want anyone having control over me. One of the turnaround moments of my life was when I realized and accepted that I have ultimately absolutely no control over any person other than myself. I can advise, and push, and steer and hope all I want, but sometimes even my best intentioned efforts will fall short, because people will do what they are going to do. Once I let that go, I stopped wasting a lot of energy.

So, you want to control other people on some level. You want them to be more like you, to believe in your god, to take offense at the same things, to eat what you eat and be the same color. You go out of your way to strip away the right of the minority to choose: establish an official state church, a state language. Outlaw things that fit your definition of offensive. Then turn the screws some more, until everything fits your nice, dreamy vision of The Way Things Ought To Be.

But leave me out of it, because I’ve got my own dreamy vision. So, I’ll wager, does every other person walking this earth. And maybe the majority of us walk with you right now, instead of me; but stop and think before you strip away the rights of the minority, because things turn on a dime in this world, and you might be the minority in the space between a breath and a scream. And then what — will you act as you expect me to, complacent or even thankful when you are forced to say “cum dumpster” to finish every sentence, ritual cutting is required to graduate high school, and you either worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster or opt for slow death by snorting broken glass?

The problem with being someone like me, who believes and tries to practice a live and let live way of life, who really at the core just wants to be left alone, is that – well, we just want to be left alone. We don’t want to fight, but you do, because you want control. And too many of us are not prepared to fight, not for ourselves and most certainly not for others who want to be left alone, too.

Why do you control? Beneath your rationale and validation and justifications, what is in it for you? What do you gain from taking away my four letter words and my gonzo porn and my horror movies? What’s in it for you that I should wear a coat and tie and cut my hair and have no tattoos?

If you’re a politician, I think the answer is money. Because by and large, this country is no longer run by the people, for the people. What you see in the papers and on TV every day are not people with your best interests at heart, but puppets with the cold and unfeeling hands of corporate slot machines elbow deep inside of them. This is a country run by the talking heads for Big Money.

But even behind them, behind the politicians, there are still the people who elect them, the people who write poorly constructed editorial letters to the local papers, the bloggers with the acid keyboards, the flag-wavers and church-goers who who be lost without their fellow sheep to show them where to go next. And I think, deep inside of them, there is very little more than fear; fear of what is different, fear of a change to their precious status quo, fear that they’ve been wrong all this time. They find safety in numbers. They relinquish a little bit of their souls in order to make a play for yours and mine.

If there’s a reason that I’m pro-choice, that I’m anti-censorship, and that I will find exceptions to every rule (including the rule that there are exceptions to every rule), it is this: if you find that you can control one aspect of my life that should be hands-off from the get go, you’re going to start pushing and prodding until you find another, and another, and another, until soon enough I’m all yours.

That’s a slippery slope I’d rather not head down, personally. If for no other reason than I get the feeling there’s no South Park or Family Guy at the bottom.