Click (Inter-Personal Conflict in the 21st Century)

It's been a fairly reflective year for me. What with the damn 40th birthday, and trying to figure out where I actually want to be in my life. It's like sitting on a cusp, there are so many directions I could go, but ultimately there can be only one. And right now I not on zee left, not on zee right, but right in zee middle.

When I get reflective, I tend to get a little aggressive, but I always see things as they actually are in my little black and white world.

One lesson I've learned the last couple of years is that things don't get resolved as they used to. We are now in the age of Facebook, Bebo, and Twitter. People are losing social skills like they were a passe' religion, and the future as we currently know it could be very scary.

What really makes me giggle is the friend punt. It's a whole new phenomenon. We as a people no longer have to be accountable to our friends. If we don't like what they have to say, no matter what we did to them....we just have to click "remove friend", and that's it. Could you imagine having that conversation back in the '60's or '70's?? "In the future not only will we drive cars through the sky, but we will also simply have to click a button to remove someone from our life." It's quite funny when you think about it. I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook, sort of a fancy photo album for me that's about it. I can't even fathom the people that have more than say 500 friends. Hell, I dunno if I've ever even known 500 people, at least not enough that I wanted them in my daily life.

In the last 2 years I've had 2 people punt me from their list (3 if you count that Heather Graham stalking thing...I keed, I keed). In both cases I had recent conversations (somewhat heated) with the punters. I had them dead to rights, I had done zero, zip, nothing wrong, but I had pointed out what they had done to me. We aren't talking a first strike thing, this is something that in both cases I had told the individuals numerous times "you know....I would prefer if you didn't do that to me." But they did it again, and again, and again. You get the point. They didn't. PUNT. "John Christopher Hartwick with this finger I let you know that I am not accountable for our friendship whatsoever, how dare you say that I can't treat you the way I want no matter how it makes you feel." CLICK!!

It almost makes you wonder if at the time they are performing the actual "click", if they have a twitching eye and bulging temple like Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the old Pink Panther movies, or if they come up with some line for the soon to be departed like maybe Captain Ahab in Moby Dick "From hell's heart I stab at thee!!!" or maybe a little Schwarzenegger "Hasta la vista...baby" as they click down sternly on their mouse.

Hahaha, it seems so ridiculous. So silly. So small.

But, most importantly...at the end of the day the two people that weren't accountable to me had never been accountable to themselves and maybe, just maybe that was the point I was making in the first place.

So the lesson for the day is, if you get in a conflict with a friend....don't click. Deal with things the old fashioned way and everything will work out fine. If you fucked up, suck it up. The first rule of the playground is nobody gets hurt. If you don't know the rest of the rules they are at the end of my very first blog on November 3, 2007. They were put there for a reason.

I Fought the Law....And I Won!!

They said it couldn't be done. Hell, even I didn't believe it. I just finished watching last nights council meeting while I was working on some reports. Not only did city council shoot down the patio bylaw, they destroyed it, unanimously with the exception of one.

One of the councillors (a former smoker) was even irate on the issue, saying he wanted the bylaw struck down immediately, quoting directly from the letter I had sent on Sunday.

At the same time it taught me that if you never try, you will never know. You would have thought I would have already known that. But oh well, I'm a slow learner. Reverse psychology....dig it!!

Meanwhile...Back at the Ranch

Now that I have scared away half the western hemisphere, it's time to pick up the pieces and get back to business. I'm leaving for Victoria in the morning and I'm hoping a few days away will do me some good.

There is a big council meeting at city hall tonight. They are finally pulling the plug on patio smoking. I would go to the meeting, but I will have to get up around 4am so screw that. I e-mailed the mayor and all of the councillors yesterday, and actually ran into one of the councillors this morning. (The advantage of a relatively small town.)

I'm actually torn. Part of me hopes they do it. I need a good kick in the ass in another direction. But as most of you know, I don't tend to like people messing with my personal freedoms. I used a little reverse psychology in the letters, so I'm a little curious to see how it works. It will be on the tube tonight, so I'll try to catch it there.

Other than that, let's just get this month done.

Sometimes I Feel Like I'm Tied to the Whipping Post

I guess it’s been a long time, maybe I just didn’t have anything to say, but we all know that’s not true. It’s gonna fall under the old “Momma said if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” clause. I have had so much on my mind the last month and a bit that even logging on to Blogger seems like a Herculean chore. One thing for certain is that I seem to have locked horns with every single woman in my life.

I had lunch with one of them yesterday. We had been butting heads for about 5 weeks or so, and decided it was time to bury the axe. In all fairness to her, there has been something really drilling at me for the last four weeks or so and she had landed right in the crosshairs. She said to me “You know Johnny, I think you have this image in your mind of a perfect friend. An image that nobody will ever be able to match, you have taken every wrong ever done to you, reversed it, and made it an expectation of everyone else. We can’t do, nobody can do it.”

After I told her to fuck off and left, I thought about what she said as I walked through the parking lot. (I’m kidding, I didn’t leave or tell her to fuck off…..until later. I keed I keed). She’s right in some capacity. I had to move a lot in my younger years, and learned over time to serve up friendships on Chinet, because eventually I was going to be throwing them out. And it seems with every one I toss, I become more and more withdrawn.

I went away a few weeks ago, took off up the coast for a few days to bring a friends yacht back to town. Even though the weather was a little on and off, it was a great opportunity to think. Nothing puts your mind at ease like a forever sky, a deck chair, and a cooler full of Coors Light. I realized I was basically done. The Johnny Holding Company was emotionally bankrupt. My heart was closing it doors forever. I would keep a few key people around for the liquidation, everyone else was getting an invisible pink slip most likely accompanied by a hardened stare, or an unanswered call.

It’s not that I’ve had it with people, I’ve had it with the people I care about. I have got to say other than my core group, I’ve got the shittiest friends in the world. My whole inventory consists of nothing but empty promises, unanswered messages, and broken dreams. It’s quite shameful really.

But you want to know what really burns me? Hypocrites. Those that know me know I will go to the end of days to help a friend through a bad time. 24/7/365. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I have gone through a scenario where a person comes to me because a person or a group is treating them in a way they don’t like. Whether it be treating them like they don’t belong, bullying, teasing, whatever. And do you know what the end result is?? Every time the person that comes to me ends up treating me like the others were treating them. (Of course if someone tried to bully or tease me, you would probably find their body in a ditch somewhere. But you know what I mean).

So today’s theme is one that seems to reoccur on this blog more often than not.

TREAT PEOPLE THE WAY YOU WANT TO BE TREATED YOU FUCKING MORONS!

Whew! Glad I got that off my chest. I apologize to my mother in advance for not having anything nice to say.

The Video For Below....I Somehow Managed to Delete It

Mark Wrubleski's Take On Interior Design

So a buddy of mine, Mark, decided that he wanted to an RV owner. Kind of odd enough in itself if you knew Mark, but it gets better. He didn't walk onto the lot at O'Connor RV or anything like that. He just saw one sitting in someone's driveway and decided to make an offer. It is a 1980 Frontier 20 footer, I mean c'mon, who could resist??

Mark's a pretty industrious guy when it comes to fixing things up, and he soon started to renovate the interior of the RV. He somehow settled on bamboo to do the interior with, (must have a closet thing with Gilligan's Island.) I was like bamboo??? What the fuck??

Now Mark is never one to shy away from showtunes,especially when he's defending his position on something. He gave me a blank stare, and then went inside. Moments later he came back out with this group of other guys and put on this little skit. I must say he put me in my place. I was fortunate enough to catch it on my camera for you to enjoy.

They are off on their first adventure this weekend, to faraway places and endless adventures, otherwise known as Squamish. About 30 minutes away with a good tailwind.

Ahhhh, crazy kids.

Fun With Graphs

Another sign that I'm bored out of my skull.