Roy Huggins Says Stuff

I realized today that I haven’t listened to Poe in something like 3 years. That was a severe oversight. I really like Poe and am happily listening to Hello right now.

It occurred to me before that she must have a history of abusive boyfriends — or at least one really bad one. But now, 3 years later, I can realize it in that counselor-y¹ way.

A lot of things sound different than they did 3 years ago, in fact.

1. I find myself wanting to hand the lyrics from Trigger Happy Jack (”You can’t talk to a psycho like a normal human being”) to some of my clients [↩]

I just got an email from MoveOn, like I do.

The gist of the message is a request for members to support a bill currently sitting in front of Congress that would make it a federal crime to price gouge for gasoline. The punishment would be up to 10 years in prison. Hmm…

I know gas is expensive. I know it effects all Americans heavily when gas costs a lot. I know that oil interests are utilizing the current political climate to price gouge. But come on. Make that specific thing a federal crime with significant prison time? That’s going too far and is certainly a slippery slope issue.

I like MoveOn. But sometimes it isn’t the best idea to support something just because it’s a chance to stick it to the Republicans.

Personally, I like to think systemically about this one. Maybe if gas does top $4 then that’s one more price point in the direction of convincing even the most grossly consumerist, SUV-driving Americans that maybe it’d be a good idea to work towards more sustainable energy practices.

Some interesting facts about Sapporo, Japan:

1. It’s cold. Cold is not hot, unlike the rest of Japan.
2. It has an extensive and useful system of mass transit.
3. They make beer there!
4. The City of Sapporo is 60% forest.
5. My wife will be stationed there next year with the JET program.
6. I will be, too!
7. Yay!!!!

Yay!!!!

I’ve been thinking about the ways people behave around apologies. Sometimes folks don’t really know how to express themselves well when an “I’m sorry” situation arises.

Consider the following scenario:

Sam and Sally are housemates. Sally really loves curry. Suffice to say that there is a convincing reason to treat Sally’s curry as sacred.

Sally leaves her leftover curry in the fridge one night. Sam comes home after an evening of heavy drinking, finds the curry, and scarfs it.

The next morning, Sally opens the fridge and is furious. She doesn’t say anything, though, because her general approach to conflict is to be passive-aggressive. Sam wakes up (several hours) later and comes into the kitchen, opens the fridge, and realizes with a smack to the forehead that he ate Sally’s curry and she’s going to be very unhappy about that.

Sam goes to his silently fuming housemate and apologizes. What is Sally’s response?

“It’s okay,” she says.

This doesn’t sound right to me.

Yes, Sam is doing good by noting that he has wronged his housemate and taking the initiative to apologize. However, that doesn’t make the original act “okay.” It may repair the rift in his relationship with Sally and allow them to move forward without hard feelings, but simply declaring everything to be “okay” is sweeping it under the rug. It certainly doesn’t do anything to help Sam understand how much he has hurt his roommate.

I think I don’t like the phrase “It’s okay” as a response to apologies unless it really is okay. The phrase should be reserved for moments when someone is apologizing unnecessarily — like if they accidentally bump into you.

In the scenario above, it seems that Sally would get more mileage out of saying something like “Thank you for apologizing, it makes me feel better about this whole thing.” That way she smooths over the problem between her and Sam but without creating the impression that Sam’s behavior wasn’t actually hurtful.

It is my observation that insects in general, and flies in particular, find no problems in the fact that they are icky.

This is why they must be stopped.

Many of my fine readers know that I’m in the throes of building an advice column-blog. It isn’t quite ready yet, so no link for you¹. As such, I’ve been paying closer attention to all the advice columns I read…

And you wouldn’t believe² how many people write in all offended by secrets they found while snooping though their SOs’ email. The letters usually go something like:

So, I just happened to walk up to my husband’s computer while he was away and I accidentally glanced at his email and just happened to notice an old email from 5 months ago to his ex-girlfriend where he implied that he misses her! My trust in him is shattered! What do I do?!

It also goes the other way gender-wise. I’m not being sexist. Or hetero-sexist. It happens with same-sex couples, too.

Whenever I see these letters I feel the need to stop reading at the point where the spouse is snooping on his/her partner’s email. Ya, obviously there is a trust problem in your relationship. But maybe the cause is a little more systemic than you previously thought.

This post was inspired by today’s Savage Love column, in which the ever-wonderful Dan Savage dishes it out with a fantastic way of thinking about these situations. His rule:

Here’s a good rule of thumb—one I just made up—for e-mail snoopers, PISSED: If the transgression your snooping uncovers is a more serious transgression than e-mail snooping itself, you apologize for snooping and confront. But if the uncovered transgression is less serious, you keep your fool mouth shut.

I love you Dan Savage. Will you be my friend?

1. but there is one in my blogroll. I’m fickle. [↩]
2. unless you read advice columns as much as I do [↩]

The best part of cel phone ubiquity is that, by simply waiting on the bus for long enough, we can occasionally be privy to the deepest cuts of lovers’ spats.

A client of mine died. He was murdered last Friday night. I don’t really know any details at this point.

So I’m writing this while Electra goes to get some mini-burgers, which I’ve never tried, from The Barley Mill Pub. We only own one DVD and have no television service. I’ve read everything my RSS reader has for me. You know the scene.

When my supervisors broke the news, I’m not sure what happened. I was already kind of in my own world and worried about something else. I was in movie-observer mode. But that isn’t really true. Movies suck me in and get me. I cry at movies. This felt like I was somewhere else. I’ve felt that way since.

Apparently they found out about it because the homicide detective called the agency today to talk to whoever his counselor was.

I learned he’d been murdered and I was all “I gotta call that detective! I’ll give him my intel and he’ll break this case!” But the homicide office at Portland Police closes at 4:00pm. Another useful piece of learning.

I keep auditing my feelings and coming up short. All I know is that I’m really detached and that I refuse to tell anyone any personal info about the guy. When you die, your rights to confidentiality pretty much go out the window. But my mind won’t accept that. I won’t even tell anyone his first name.

I know that when I look to see what I’m thinking I envision myself meeting at his appointed time tomorrow and chatting about all that murder weirdness. Wasn’t that just crazy? Life sure can throw some strange curve balls, can’t it? Wacky!

I am also drunk. And I plan to get a wee bit drunker. Lucky for me, it only takes a few beers.

Good night, Internet! I’ll see ya later!

I have something to confess.

It’s hard to say it… But I’m not really convinced that having our troops just leave Iraq in six months is necessarily a good idea.

What I do know is that our Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad President has gotten us into exactly the kind of nasty mess that war opponents were screaming about way back before the “Mission Accomplished” debacle went down. I also know that cleaning up after him is going to be drastically painful.

But if we just up and leave I’m not sure things will be any better. One thing I’ve learned about Iraq from all the screen time they’ve been getting is that they were never a “people” like we think of that word around these parts. It seems it’s a lot of “peoples”, some of which would be perfectly happy to see some of the other “peoples” take a long walk off a short pier, and was previously glued in place by a powerful despotic warlord¹. It seems we’ve replaced said local despotic warlord with a foreign almost-despotic warlord. Funny enough, many locals seem upset about that.

Yes, the American people are really unhappy about being in this position. I imagine most of the people living in Baghdad are pretty bummed about it, too. Whether we wanted to be dragged into it or not, we’re there now. I can’t help but feel that a plan in which we simply leave would make for a serious case of abandonment. I think the most healthy plan is a lot more difficult than that. I think it would take a lot more “hard work” to get us out of President Warbucks‘ special little hole.

I don’t have an alternative plan to contribute, however. Just my opinion.

1. That we put there for that purpose [↩]