REDACTING

Late back in the 20th century, my then wife announced her intention to divorce me. About three seconds after that, she began dating her boss. I don't mean to put the cart before the horse after it's done bolted from the barn that i neglected to lock nor do I mean to re-invent the wheel or determine why the chicken crossed the road. This was just something that just happened to happen and it changed my life. It wasn't really a bad thing, not even at the time.

Her boss, "Jerry", wasn't a bad guy. We differed on his other- guys' wife-fucking view in life (him being for it and me being against it) but, I have to say that he's a likable guy. Dear God- I could have done much worse with what some Southern rednecks refer to as a "boyfriend/husband in-law"! Ido miss Southern humor. When you finish second in a Civil War or a marriage, you have to keep a sense of humor. As an added bonus, he makes some serious money so, her, our son and her daughter, don't have to live in poverty like many divorced women do. No one was happier than I when, several years later, they eventually married. It was the best birthday present I ever got...

Anyway, about a year after the divorce, she called me up for one of her regularly scheduled harangues concerning where I had gone wrong in the marriage and in life, how I truly felt about this/that and the other thing- typical ex-wife, service after the sale stuff. I would listen for a few minutes, think of jokes and then ask if it were time yet to speak to my son. On this particular day, I changed the subject. Jerry's mom had passed and I offered my condolences. She was INCREDULOUS.

"Who told you?! How do you know that?! ARE YOU STALKING ME?!"

It was in the paper, I told her, the obituaries. "Oh", she replied.

Had I done a bad thing? Should I have not picked up the paper that day? Perhaps I should have taken hers and the rest of the worlds feelings into consideration- set my own selfish sentiments aside for a change- and NOT read the newspaper because THERE JUST MIGHT BE STUFF IN THERE THAT DIDN'T CONCERN ME?! Or worse- stuff that DID concern me?! The CIA regularly issues redacted memos and papers with key sentences and words blacked out for those of us not on a "need to know" basis. Should someone get ahold of my newspaper and internet before I get my prying eyes on it and redact anything that might possibly be read by me? Well, that would kinda include oh- EVERYTHING- and not make for interesting read for anyone, particularly me. And I am nothing if not all about me.

Newspapers and the internet are public forums. So is this blog. I choose to have no control over who reads it though I could limit it to blog members if I desired. I could also just write e-mails to people if I only wanted a specific person or persons to read what I write. If it wasn't for public consumption, it would BE an e-mail or a message on a private, "offshore" yahoo group. Some people do that- just not all the time.

If you post something-anywhere- on Topix and you are alarmed when you learn that someone has read it, you're a fool to cry about it. You can tell people that they can't read a particular thread but, good luck with that. If you've got doors and walls in your house, don't scream when the neighbor see's you running around naked outside. He's not being a voyuer when you're outside your home running around buck-naked screaming, "DON'T LOOK AT ME!"

These days, for reasons known to readers of this blog, everything that I say and do is under much scrutiny. Yesterday a quasi-e-friend posted a response to one of my blogs and, in doing so, she referred to me by my IRL name. Having wanted to keep that info between me and my IRL people and not knowing how to edit that piece of information, I "hid" all the comments to all my blogs until I figured out what to do. Some people came to view that as a conceited, selfish act by a totalitarian tyrant. More anti-ferrer sentiment. As if there hadn't been enough already. This act just served to re-inforce already cemented feelings about my jerkfacedness. You see, I sorta kinda read it somewhere and I probably shouldn't have done that because no one had given me expressed written consent to do so and...

Well, enough of this. I must go stalk er, uh, READ Dear Amy now. I hope she doesn't mind.