B. U. G. S.

NOT SPAM
NOT SPAM

Peter, I’m a big, mean wolf and while I’m glad as hell you use the Mantra, and while I respect you immensely, I’m beginning to feel a low guttural growl slowly wriggling upward thru my throat and my canines are showing a bit — about not getting any mention on these boards from Bob. I’m feeling a tad irrelevant and as you know, an alpha wolf doesn’t like to be ignored when he’s fought a battle for the pack. I post daily, perhaps not in as large a quantity as you do in one sitting, but mine is a slow and steady approach, like walking across the dessert all day rather than running for a few hours. I cover the same distance only slower and in my wake I leave carrion for the vultures. My fur is bristling and I’m beginning to circle the pack with my eyes wide open, my tail held out straight, and a howl lodged in my throat…

Comment by Mark

ME:

Mark, our pack cannot afford your eating any of other members.

You may, with my blessings, gorge yourself on dog meat.

I got a bit giddy from Peter’s mention in specific cases of battle. Please understand I have fought all my life ALONE and this is like a shot of co cocaine to have a little army out there fighting with me just the way I have fought alone all my life.

By the way, I sniffed cocaine a couple of times, but I didn’t INHALE.

Contrary to popular opinion, junkies make mistakes in their psychedelic states.

In my exhilaration I made the same mistake I was complaining about. Mark is fighting the battle on a broad front. He does not have the same battle stories Peter does because, like my best efforts, he doesn’t HEAR BACK from his hits.

But those are exactly the kind of hits that have made me a power nobody knows about. I planted ideas and only after years did I come to realize that the fact that my ideas showed up at a regular filter-down level in general conversation and the public media. Peter is giving your aging pack leader regular encouragement; Mark is fighting the long fight, the very fight I keep asking for.

So I ignored Mark.

Smart, Bob, SMART!

But I would not have realized this if that particular wolf had not snarled at me. Which brings me to a wholly different topic.

Mark said, dammit Bob, I want some attention to MY ideas, MY fight! He said it out loud.

The dogs don’t DO that. If anybody compliments our modern human doggies, said puppy is supposed to say, “Oh, I’m really nothing. I am not worthy of notice.”

I didn’t realize how SICK I am of that until I read Mark’s comment. I have a feeling that, if they think about it, a lot of commenters will feel this same rage we hardly ever think about because, it has become so much a part of our society.

When I give a person a compliment, I sort of expect them to APPRECIATE it, not to say, “Oh, you’re wrong. I’m embarrassed. Look at the pink blush on my face.”

Nobody has any trouble resenting it when I give them hell. But the fact that I give you hell SHOULD also make you understand that you don’t get an accolade from crusty Ole Bob unless I MEAN it. The last thing I want when I have the rare joy of telling someone that they did it RIGHT is for them to shrug it off.

It is RUDE to shrug off a compliment. But all the little doggies today seem to thing it’s the thing to do, it makes them look good. It never occurs to them to look at it from the OTHER person’s point of view, the point of view of the person GIVING the praise.

When did it become the height of party manners to respond to a compliment by kicking the person complimenting you in the teeth?

This is a very ORIENTAL habit. I remember a ritual exchange among Chinese businessmen in the old days in which one would compliment the other and the other one would denigrate what he had and then compliment the other, to which the other would reply by putting his own down.

One of part of the exchange had to do with asking about the other man’s wife:

“How is the flower of your Household?”

Ritual reply:

“That pig is fine.”

I must be missing a subtlety, but that does strike me as courtesy incarnate.

In ancient times, when one described a hero, one of the required compliments, right up there with courage in battle, was, “He hungered for glory.” The Chinese were referring to their wives as pigs back when a Western man could not be a hero unless he was hungry for glory.

Mark has to give up his hunger for glory as part of the battle we have to wage here. But he’s no Chinaman.

Give him some credit or he’ll bite your ass off.