Proverbs 8, Verse 6 & 7
"Listen to me! For I have important information for you. Everything I say is right and true, for I hate lies and every kind of deception."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
There are two kinds of people in this world....
Don't you wanna fucking gut people who say that?
Yeah. I do, too. Want to know why? Cuz there are two kinds of people in this world: assholes who say "there are two kinds of people in this world", and assholes who don't. Personally, I more strongly dislike the type of asshole who uses that phrase. And, since I dislike myself, and I'm an asshole, I'm going to use it too.
Ready? Watch this asshole:
There are two kinds of people in this world... people who read "Dear Abby", and people who don't.
I never read "Dear Abby" growing up, though we did get "The Philadelphia Inquirer" delivered to our house every day including Sundays, a sure sign that we were not-quite-so-but-almost-daringly upper middle class. I can remember perusing the paper avidly as a boy of maybe eight or nine. While my older sister got Cinnamon Toast Crunch milk splotches on the comics and my oldest sister enjoyed reading about rare diseases she could collect in the Health section, I was busily scanning the obituaries looking for familiar last names. I don't know exactly who I thought I was going to find in there-- the aunt of my fourth grade teacher, the dad of the guy at the pharmacy?-- but I sure looked religiously. I guess I learned my obituary reading habit from my mother, whose fear of death was legendary, and from whom I also gained a healthy aversion to airplanes, crime, dust, animals, and college.
While I don't know for sure, I'm reasonably certain that nobody in our house read Dear Abby. It's hard to imagine my hairy-shouldered Israeli father taking suggestions from some Stepford wife from Sioux City while swilling scalding hot coffee that tastes like a submerged cigar, although it is kind of entertaining to me to imagine him reading, and then religiously following her advice. Like about sex.
As my relationship progressed with my wife, I started to realize that she was one of the kinds of people in this world who reads "Dear Abby". At least, she did. Very frequently. On Uexpress, whatever the fuck that is. Sometimes I would drift into the office while she was reading the column and I would let my eyes fall on a sentence or two, and then a paragraph, and suddenly, I was addicted. To making fun of it. A parody of "Dear Abby" became a staple on my old blog, with zany, profane, racist and offensive (maybe to YOU) advice to actual letters that had been sent in.
And that was all good fun, and we all had a jolly good laugh.
As I have been searching for a new job for, oh, I don't know, maybe twenty months or so, sometimes someone will ask me "Well, if money or qualifications or practicality were no object (and, believe me, they're not) what would you want to do every day for the rest of your life?" and, sometimes I say one thing and sometimes I say something else.
Today? I'd say, "telling you how to run your goddamned life".
That sounds like as much of a dream job as I can think of. And I wonder sometimes if Pauline Phillips knew how good she had it, that little bitch. Sitting at her Underwood with some licorice candy (women like her eat that, you know) clutched in her perfectly manicured digits, clacking out advice with solemnity and purpose, cocksuredness and clarity. It's hard to fathom that someone like me, with such a dearth of self confidence, could pull it together enough to unapologetically tell someone that their shit stinks and that they need to get a life, and I suppose that's what makes it a dream job. And the dream is sweet, I think. I think it's sweet.
My father, speaking of sweet, is facing a decision in the next year or so about whether to unload his business on some poor fucker or close it up and tank it all. I asked him, at one of our infamous lunches at the park, what he was going to do with the rest of his occupational life, as there is way too much piss in this man's vinegar to just retire.
"I don't know, Mummy," he said, "maybe I will consult. I love to tell people what to fuckin' do."
And he's good at it, too. Far better than I'd ever be.
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