If They All Just Disappeared...

Thanksgiving's a nice time of year to be a blogger, and have blogger friends.

You're probably waiting for a "But...," but there isn't going to be one. I'm for realz. Yo.

As a blogger in late November, you get to read all about what the folks you care about are thankful for. For some, it's their health. For others, it's their significant others, or their jobs, or their cats. For most, it's their family.

And that's, just, well, nice.

As I was driving around downtown Philly tonight, I tried to think about what I was thankful for. After a notably awkward and stilted Thanksgiving dinner at my parent's house, I reinforced the admittedly uninspired fact that, yes, I am thankful for my family. But I tried to reach beyond that to find something slightly more off-center that I was decidedly thankful for, something everyday that maybe didn't receive everyday approbation or appreciation. And then it hit me.

My undershirts.

I am thankful for my undershirts.

There isn't really an article of clothing that I depend on more than my undershirts. I have lots of different kinds of undershirts-- and they are truly the day-in, day-out workhorses of my wardrobe. If my dresser was Jay Leno's multi-car garage, my undershirts are the equivalent of his Honda Accord. There it sits, amidst the Dusenbergs and Lambos and Lotuses, waiting patiently for its chance to prove itself as the banal, mundane, yet essential motoring companion.

My undershirts are Jay Leno's Honda, and I never realized it until tonight.

I have two types of cotton crew neck undershirts. I have two types of cotton v-neck undershirts. One of them has a very slight v, the other is the equivalent of a plunging neckline. Very sexy. I also have an endless supply of Coolmax white crew-neck undershirts, thanks to my father, who manufactures them. The Coolmax t-shirts are excellent at wicking moisture, which, when you're an anxious sonofabitch, you tend to produce a lot of. The necklines, however, of the Coolmax t-shirts are very thick and high, so it's difficult to wear these undershirts underneath dress shirts with ties, as nothing makes a man look like a 4-star d-bag than wearing a dress-shirt with a tie and a little square of white t-shirt peeking visibly over the closed dress-shirt collar.

Unless, of course, you're wearing a semi-transparent dress-shirt with a v-neck t-shirt underneath, and the people you meet can see the outline of the v underneath your dress-shirt.

This, friends, is why I own lots of different styles of undershirts-- because you can't be successful in life as a man with just one permutation. At least, not if you're crazy.

The one type of undershirt I do not own, have never owned, and would never wear, is the so-called "wife-beater." Maybe it has to do with its negative monkier, maybe it has to do with the fact that my 6'5" Neanderthal freshman-year roommate wore them (even to class) and I still shudder at the memory of the broccoli-like tufts of his shoulder hair sprouted out around the slim shoulder straps.... I don't know, but I've just never been struck with the desire to put one on. I do, however, thoroughly enjoy their aesthetic on the female form.

In this life, as a man you either wear undershirts or you don't. If I didn't wear undershirts, I would ruin all of my precious dress shirts with sweat, so going without isn't really an option for me. If all my dress shirts went away-- if they all just disappeared, well, I would be one messed up puppy. I need them. I hoard them. I crave undershirt diversity and consistency. I would gladly free-ball it for a month-- wouldn't bother me a bit-- but I can't go out in public without the security blankie that is an undershirt.

A good undershirt might just be the most important component of my wardrobe. It's definitely the one thing in life I'm most thankful for.

I mean, after my family and my wife and my dog and my collection of old typewriters and eyeglasses and telephones and antique hats and recordings of G&S operettas and English cookies and orgasms and aimless drives around town and sugar in my coffee and 1970s britcoms and winter coats and meaningful talks with old friends and our sofa and dirty jokes and sad folk songs. And all of you, of course.

HOLY WALRUS TITTIES, BATMAN: IT'S MY MASONIC APRON'S 100th BLOGDAY!

It's a day I thought would never come.

I wistfully remember my old blog's 100th blogday. And 200th. And 300th. I snuffed that bastard out at 336 posts, and it still pains me. But what is anonymous blogging when it ceases to be anonymous?

Oh, right-- a threat to one's way-of-life.

Right.

After I killed the old blog, I got very depressed. Mrs. Apron got even more depressed, I think and, even though I created My Masonic Apron that very same day, even though I made a clear statement that I was not going to wave bye-byes to the blogging world, there was a definite fear that I would not return with the same resolve I had from June-March.

And, you know what? I probably haven't.

I am thrilled, though, to have a dedicated emsemble of readers who, apparently, don't care about that or just haven't noticed. Thanks, buddieboos!

These blogs are funny little things, aren't they? In the old days of philosophy and pointless masturbation, we used to wonder "Why am I here?" When bloggers get all philosophical and meta, we wonder, "Why are you here?" Seriously-- with so many other blogs out there in the universe, what brings you here? I mean, there aren't even any YouTube clips to watch. I should probably look into that. But I won't.

Anywhoo, in the tradition of my blogdays of yore, instead of needlessly pontificating and getting all smushy about life and blogging and the momentousness of the blogday event before us, I'll just do what I normally do on here: lift up my masonic apron for all's y'alls to get a good, strong whiff and a tasteless peek.

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"Surprise: You're The Asshole!"

I had to pop into Genaurdi's supermarket this morning, because I promised Mrs. Apron I would. If you can't keep your promise to your wife, especially such a banal and easily accomplished promise, than you're pretty much a totally useless fuckhead.

(Remind me of that, will you, the next time I forget that peeing in the shower is inappropriate for someone with two advanced degrees and the correct number of chromosomes.)

I went in there prior to heading in for work and I raced around like a madman, fearing I would be late for work, only to later arrive at work 1/2-an-hour early. I was in and out of the supermarket in 7 minutes, probably a record, and, if not, close. As I tromped through the prepared food section, I paused for approximately five-or-so-seconds to catch an Asian man involved in a heated debate with the obese, Asian woman behind the sushi counter.

"Just tell me," the customer implored, "Do you use long-grain rice or not? Also-- what is your process for making the tempura? I want to know what kind of oils you use. Okay? O-i-l." He sounded out the word for her very clearly and very loudly, just in case she happened to be retarded, deaf and/or made of wood-chips.

Wow, I thought as I passed by this very unusual exchange, you, sir, are a fucking asshole. What, exactly, do you hope to gain by berating the unfortunate, lumpy, pock-marked behemoth who has the misfortune to prepare sushi for arrogant bastards like you in exchange for $6.00/hr and a ten minute pee-pee/psychotic meltdown prevention break? What do you really want to know? "You make sushi like mamasan?" No, needledick. Of course she doesn't. Because she doesn't love you. Only mamasan love you. Long time. Now go buy a fucking sandwich like everybody else and leave this poor potatosack-shaped woman alone. Really, it's your fault for buying the food of your own culture at a supermarket. What do you expect? Do you think I would buy falafel from Shoprite? No. I mean, I don't eat that shit anyway. I hate chickpeas.

After buying my six groceries, I found that I had time to go run the groceries home to the refrigerator before work instead of leaving them in the car to spoil in the 70 degree sun, which was fortunate, because spoiling the groceries kind of defeats the points you score from remembering to go to the market and remembering not to step on the dog's face while he sleeps. On my way home, I was in back of a McCandless Home Heating gas truck (and if I had seen the truck number, I would have posted it here, you bastard) that was driving approximately seven miles-per-hour. He made a left turn, and I did the same behind him and, at the corner, he put on his hazard lights and stopped at the curb. Well, half of my car's ass was hanging in the middle of the intersection, as I was in mid-turn behind the fucker. So, I checked and then I drove around him. A van was coming down the street from the other way, but he was going extremely slow and I had ample time to pass the parked gas truck. As I passed him, he stuck his scruffy head out the window, pointed at the slowly-approaching van and screamed,

"WHAT DO YOU THINK I PULLED OVER FOR, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!"

If I had more time, bigger balls, a loaded Glock, or life insurance, I would have slammed on the brakes and shouted back,

"MAYBE TO MAKE A FUCKING GAS DELIVERY AT THE HOUSE ON THE CORNER, YOU SHIT-FACED, HALF-WITTED SISTER-FUCK!"

But I didn't have either of those four aforementioned items, so I just kept on driving. Yet another example of someone thinking they were doing the right thing by calling someone out on a wrong, only to commit a larger, more obscene wrong. You may have thought I was the asshole, but, surprise, you're the asshole!

Then, later on in the day, I saw a cadre of fat, slovenly, pimply adolescents horsing around at a playground and I thought, "Gee, it's 10:30am: you numbtitties should be in school. 'Cause nothing makes you look more like an asshole than being fifteen, playing around on a swingset in the middle of the morning, while 3 and 4 year olds with their parents can only look on, dejected and bemused, wondering if that's what they'll become.

Unless It's Mean

I pissed somebody off in the blogosphere recently.

This should not be altogether surprising.

I don't like upsetting people, but it happens. In my insatiable quest to be humorous and entertaining, I realize that I will inevitably rustle a feather or two. It can't be helped. I mean, some people are sensitive. And others are Catholic. I think one or two people might even be a combination of the two.

See what I mean?

I wrote a comment on a blog that hamhandedly suggested that someone's 90-year-old grandfather might have "something in common" with a beautiful, blue Beta fish which, unfortunately, had a life-altering ailment. This person thought I meant that her grandfather was "on the way out, like the fish." That wasn't what I meant, but my remark wasn't carefully thought out, keeping in tradition with 99.7% of the remarks I make on any given day, and the young lady freaked on me, old school. Well, I guess actually it was more like "new school" since it was done in the comment section of a blog and utilized a keyboard, as opposed to on the mulch pile at an elementary school playground, utilizing fists, and/or a tire-iron.

Flip comments get people into trouble all the time, but they shouldn't. Look at the tumult and backlash that poor Joe Biden created when he said on the Today Show that he would advise his family members not to get on a subway or a plane during the apex of the swine flu outbreak. People freaked-- namely, people who routinely get on planes and subways, because they don't want their way of life jeopardized or questioned, even if it's for their own good. So everybody went ape on Big-Mouth Joe. I don't see what the big deal is. If I had kids, I would bar them air, ground and sea travel as well, and I would place them in isolation during such an outbreak, home-schooling them while wearing matching wet suits and scuba-gear.

Part of the problem isn't just the people who make flip or cavalier comments, it's the people on the receiving end. There are some people out there, lots of them, actually, who like to get offended. They enjoy being outraged, or slighted, or indignant. They, well, kind of get off on it. You know who I'm talking about-- the woman who hears someone swearing in the bread aisle at the supermarket. She thins her lips, crosses her arms in front of her chest and exclaims, "Well, I never!"

Sure you've evered, biatch, and don't tell me you haven't.

There are just these people out there who will look for any excuse to get their nose out-of-joint. And that's okay, really-- that's their thing. Some people have a fetish like that. Other people are obsessed with... other things. There's a woman on my street who, every time she sees me picking up my dog's shit, she thanks me and launches headlong into a monologue about how her husband would have stepped in that if I hadn't picked it up. I've heard this now several times.

That, I guess, is her thing. And I admit that it makes me feel awkward and weird to stand there holding a bag of shit while I get praised for it in a rather mechanised, rehearsed style-- but I also admit that it's damn better than getting laughed at and ridiculed by the young, black children in the ghetto for picking up after my dog.

I think it's kind of funny that there are some bloggers out there who are very sensitive to anything less than ego-enhancing praise left in their Comment section. I mean, it says "Comments," right? It doesn't say "Affirmations" or "Supportive, redundant missives." If a blog is a place for you to say anything you damn well please, then your comment section should, really, be a place for your readers to say anything they damn well please. There's a blogger out there whose comment section has a warning that reads something like, "Leave it here. Unless it's mean. Then either click that red box/circle in the top corner, or try email." So, it's okay to be mean to you in an email, as long as your readers don't have to see it? Hell, we all know they'll see the mean comment the very next day, when you write a blog post about how mean someone was to you, and you lambast them with all the clever retorts you were able to brew up in your head during the night.

Come on. "Unless it's mean?" Grow up, buttsuck.

Maybe it's because I used to frequently engage in the socially ill-advised practice of writing editorials and commentaries, and a book that advocated for the continued imprisonment of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal that "mean comments" really don't bother me very much. I've had people threaten to kill me, and my family. I had one person threaten to burn my house down, and he even went so far as to mention my neighborhood, which kind of freaked me out, but it never happened. At a book signing event, the book store received threats and contracted the services of two uniformed police officers and one plainclothes officer to protect me and others who might have been caught in the cross-fire. Nothing bad ever happened, because most people are just angry and full of shit-- only a choice few are actually armed and insane. But those episodes, the hate and vitriol that has been spewed in my direction by people who love freedom of speech as long as you agree with them has definitely changed my view on the whole commenting thing.

Mean comments? Sure. Why not? You're allowed, aren't you?

On the old blog, I wrote a review of a concert I attended with Mrs. Apron. The opening act was Sean Hoots. I didn't like him, I thought he was a phony and a narcissist, so I wrote about it. A couple months later, his friendlettes and hangersons littered the comment section of that blog post with criticisms of my review, some were downright abusive. Did I delete their comments or tell them to stop "being mean" to me? Fuck no. I just let them go on and on, and, in doing that, I was able to let them show everyone else how petty, obsessive and stupid they were. See? People generally take care of things like that themselves-- especially idiots and assholes.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: lighten up, world. Don't be afraid to speak your mind, especially here. If you don't like something, speak up. I don't mind. I'll still love you in the morning. You don't have to stop reading just because I made a comment that offended you, or burned you, or pissed you off or made you put your dog in a headlock. It's okay. We're human. We do that shit to each other. But don't just read things you agree with, and don't just leave warm and fuzzy comments that mimmick everybody else's. Don't be afraid to stir up the pot. Don't be afraid to disagree.

Don't be reluctant to speak your mind-- because nobody's going to do it for you. The blog is the champion of mind-speaking. So speak it, bitch.

NPR Sundays

I'm taking a break from stripping wallpaper.

I've been doing it from 9:30-2:15, pretty much without a breath. We moved the big-ass radio from the living room to the kitchen so that we could both listen to NPR's Sunday offerings while listening to the radio together. Mrs. Apron was busily crafting away in preparation for a craft fair, and I was-- well, stripping.

I may sound like a tote-bag-slinging, mug-loving snob for saying this, but I love NPR Sundays. Today was a great day-- we started listening earlier than we normally do and caught most of a show called "On the Media" which had a lot of content about the pros and cons of being anonymous on the intrawebz, a subject which is both near and dear to my little apron-covered heart. The show discussed websites that have nameless and faceless bloggers and writers reviewing restaurants and physicians, and the various complications that ensue from such brave souls who write without fear of any real repercussions. One former neurosurgeon now heads a group called "Medical Justice" or some such shit and he was discussing how inappropriate it is for laymen and women to rate doctors on standards-of-care because, really, us nincompoops and doingobats aren't qualified so to do. We are, though, qualified to say whether or not doctors are "jerks." At least, according to this prick.

There was an unrelated psychologist from Britain (St. Bart's) who stated that those who write on the internet under the guise of anonymity run the risk of unleashing a torrent of rage that would normally have been restrained under the auspices of social constraints and the norms of civility. And, while I must say that I believe he has a legitimate point, if I ever see this guy I'm going to freak the fuck out on him, his family and his dead ancestors and rain down on them like the unending fires of hell.

People like to get down on bloggers and other internet writers who write under a pseudonym and, even as a pseudonymninious blogger, I understand that. It's the old, "Show yourself! Meet me by the flagpole after school! Meet me in the parking lot bar! Stop hiding behind your mommy, or your daddy, or your big brudder, or your white hood, or your religion, or your gay-ass online handle."

"Mr. Apron."

I mean, seriously. What a fag.

And, to a certain extent, I agree with people who advocate for more online transparency. On the other hand, I'd like to introduce myself to these people and say,

"Hi. If you can guarantee that I can continue blogging with my full 1st ammendment freedoms intact and still keep my job and my community standing, then I'll toss this pseudonym in the trashcan where it probably belongs."

Trouble is, nobody can give me that guarantee. Ironically, the internet, which was created as a mode for increased self-expression, comment, commentary and exchange of ideals has created a vacuum in which freedoms and rights get routinely suffocated, and decent people are hung out to dry. Sometimes it's because of a story that you wrote eight years ago that had the word "fuck" in it. Maybe it's a Facebook picture of you holding the ubiquitous red, plastic cup at a frat party, your eyes glazed over and your tongue hanging out like the family dog's, your navel-ring visible below your midrift top. Maybe it's a YouTube video of you dancing in your room to the Lord Nelson Mass in your Hello Kitty underwear.

In this era of extreme visibility, you'd better start Googling yourself and seeing what comes up, before your current or prospective employer does. Take the advice from one who has been burned: do it today.

I argue to everyone out there that anonymous internet writers have largely been driven to do so out of a very real and damnable need for self-protection. Anonymity is our only defense against the Googlers of the world who would use our words against us in a heartbeat. Goodbye controversial, humorous musings. Farewell, freedom of expression. See you later, honesty. They call us cowards, but I dare someone to stand up and call Mark Twain a coward. Obviously, though, Samuel Langhorne Clemens felt the need to create another identity so that he could express himself in a freer way. And Mark Twain wasn't his only cover: there was Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, among many other elaborate ones. For a while, in the early days, he was known simply as "Josh." The outside world creates a need for pseudonyms-- writers just create the names.

"This American Life" was next. Two very depressing stories by people who probably should have used pseudonyms, but didn't.

Then there was "Car Talk." Everybody knows Tom & Ray Magliozzi as "Click & Clack," and I think that's how they like it. That way, all the people to whom they erroneously recommend new catalytic converters or fuel pumps can't so easily find them and raise hell. Tom & Ray probably don't need pseudonyms, but they have every right to them.

I only listened to the first ten minutes of "Prairie Home Companion" before shutting it off, turning off the wallpaper steamer and coming upstairs, sufficiently moved to blog. If you listen to the full two hours of "Prairie Home" you won't hear Garrison Keillor mention his own name once. Most radio personalities mention their names constantly, after every single break, worried, apparently, that the listeners won't know who they are if they don't constantly drop their own names. Garrison Keillor doesn't seem to worry about that. I guess he figures that he's been doing this for so long, everybody knows his name anyway and, if they don't, well-- that doesn't much matter anyway. As long as they keep clapping after the "Powdermilk Biscuit" ads and the "Guy Noir" sketches, that's really all Garrison Keillor cares about. He strikes me as someone who's old enough to not have to be very much concerned with his own personal noteriety, or his own name-- if that really is his name.

I like that Garrison Keillor doesn't mention his name all the time, or at all. He doesn't need to. And neither do the rest of us.