So I’ve Ruffled Some Feathers
“My feathers have been sufficiently ruffled.”
It seems I’ve ruffled some feathers.
Some big, fat, whiny, bitchy, crybaby feathers.
It’s not that this blog hasn’t generated negative reactions in the past. It has and that disapproval has been manifest in many forms:
- Through the WordPress comments function.
- By email.
- Unfriending me on Facebook.
- Friending me on Facebook for the sole purpose of unfriending me.
- Tweeting about me with the hashtag: jackass.
- Sniper fire.
- I’ve been accosted by mimes. (They don’t say much, but their gesticulated scorn is withering.)
- Women flee at the sight of me. (To be frank, this was happening long before I started this blog.)
- Small children bite me with their sharp little adolescent teeth.
- A vicious diatribe was nailed to my front door, written in blood. (This one surprised me; Grandma needs all the blood she has.)
- Random baboon attacks.
- Skywriting.
- Strategically placed billboards with shockingly filthy messages.
- The song “You Suck” is constantly being dedicated to me on the radio.
- Vitriolic letters to the editor of The Bolivian Free Press. (The Bolivian Free Press is an odd name for a newspaper in a country where the primary language isn’t English. It’s almost as though I made it up.)
- Llamas spit on me, then act like it was an accident.
- Lorenzo Lamas spits on me, then acts like it was an accident.
- I get junk mail addressed to: That Ass Who Writes The Blog.
- The letters in my alphabet soup randomly form death threats.
- I am frequently presented with that time honored and always effective middle finger.
But it was the following passage from a recent post, Home is Where the Heart is…and a Bit of Predator, in which I detailed reasons my hometown is awesome, that has caused the cheese to slide off the crackers of a few people:
Reason #4: my aunts and uncles
If modern cinema and television have taught us anything through mega-hits such as Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Walking Dead, it’s that witches, vampires, werewolves, and various incarnations of the undead, are quite popular in current culture.
The town of Westfield, NY is polluted with my aunts and uncles.
Note: you get what I’m implying.
It has been suggested that this passage is defamatory, and this blog is guilty of slander.
That is ridiculous–defamation in written form is clearly libel.
Note: seriously, if you don’t know the difference between slander and libel, you shouldn’t run around all willy-nilly accusing anyone of either.
Nevertheless, a few points of clarification.
None of my aunts or uncles are werewolves. Sure their behavior is a tad monstrous when the moon is full, but it’s monstrous during all phases of the moon. They’re not any better when the sun is up…I guess my point is it’s pretty much a perpetual state.
None of my aunts or uncles are vampires; they’re bloodsuckers of an entirely different ilk.
None of my aunts or uncles are members of the undead. The stench of rotting flesh that follows when they arrive, and their seeming inability to communicate in even monosyllabic fashion, are probably just coincidences.
Witches? Granted, I’m not referring to the type of stereotypical green-skinned, broom-traversing witches such the wicked witches from the Wizard of Oz. However…
Note: if only I could dispatch them with a bucket of water.
Remember this one important thing: it isn’t libel if it’s true.
Addendum
Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a troop of flying monkeys to do your bidding?
A flying monkey toting Toto. (Not the rock group, he’d need a bigger basket.)
