Let’s just get down to business, shall we?
S. Reed says, “I have only one question: Why does your farewell tour include mercilessly abusing your readers?”
You’ve got it all wrong! I don’t abuse my readers, they abuse themselves. Every day my readers could be doing something else. They could be learning about the world by reading any number of online newspapers and academic journals. They could play a game of Scrabble with a friend. They could watch movies or listen to music. They could do any number of things to better their lives, but they instead choose to come to my site and punish their brains with a near incessant fire hose of pablum. So though I may be caustic, the abuse is self-inflicted.
Karla says, “This would be so exciting, if only I were interested in you in some way.”
Ha! Just like a stupid woman to say something like that. It’s not even a question! I’d teach you how to properly form a question but I’d be afraid that you’d use your newfound knowledge to better stalk your longtime target of obsession: Don Henley.
elise says, “Do guys REALLY want to have sex all the time? I mean, what if I hadn’t showered in three days, had just come back from jogging, and then cleaned all the toilets? With my bare hands? Would my husband want to have sex with me THEN?”
Elise, this is a tough question for two reasons: I can’t reasonably speak for all men, and having never met your husband cannot speak for him either. However I think we can develop a chart to show how this might work. Imagine a line that increases for perceived level of “hotness” and a line that decreases for a perceived level of “dirtiness”. This chart would show that low hotness and high dirtiness would result in fewer thoughts about sex, while high hotness and low dirtiness would result in more thoughts about sex. The tricky part is the area where hotness becomes average and dirtiness becomes average as well. Then again for some people, the dirtiness might increase the hotness, so you may just want to ignore this whole theorem and simply have sex with your husband whenever he wants to do so, regardless of your cleanliness.
johnny dollar says, “what is the difference between?”
Tricky. In this case, looking at the query from multiple perspectives (including, but not limited to: philosophy, psychology, theology, literature, poetry, art history, grammar, and science), there are a number of conclusions that one can draw, the least of which involving no less than the entire thinking power of a group of people whose numbers mirror the population of a state somewhere between South Dakota and North Carolina, especially when giving consideration to the variance of the ontological while simultaneously exploring the hegemonic doctrine of the post-modern narrative, I could only say the answer is.
Skinny Monkey says “Coming out of lurkerdom, why is the last ever? Yes, that’s my question.”
This is the last ever because a) it takes a lot of effort to answer all these questions, and b) the blog is ending on August 27th of this year, and c) I don’t really anticipate having another Ask the ACW session between now and then.
Charm City Barfly says, “Why do your stupid rules suck big donkey balls? Oh, yeah. I went there. Biotch.”
What can I say? They learned it from watching you.
ThreadedClown says, “I stumbled across your blog back in January, but I wish I had found it earlier…I can’t get enough! What does Mokie think about your quitting blogging? Has he been threatening you and throwing rocks through your windshield? Or does he do that on a regular basis anyway?”
Nope, he hasn’t threatened me at all. In fact, I’d say he’s probably relieved. Every time something goes wrong, or needs to be changed, or updated, or fixed, he’s the one that ends up handling it. If anything my quitting blogging will save him from having to hear me whining about whatever might currently be going wrong with the site. Besides, if he ever tried to throw a rock through my windshield I’d kick him right in the peener.
Caroline says, “How could your wife tell the difference between you being “insulting, combative, and bristly” and you being your regular self? I thought that WAS your regular self. Can you translate that into Latin and put it on a family crest? And what symbols would you put on your escutcheon if you were to design one, I mean a real one and not just one of those ghastly fake “family tree” crests the computers will generate for you at the mall? I have my own theories but I want to see if I’m right.”
Let’s see, I’d probably have an escutcheon with a party per bend sinister with the dexter chief field being ermines and the sinister base field being erminois, and I like the idea of a charge at the fess point, but I’m not married to the idea. I’d have two supporters: the dexter supporter would be a zombie, and the sinister supporter would be a pirate. The compartment, wreath, and manting would be simple and understated, perhaps resembling fog, and the helm would be the hockey mask from Friday the 13th. I think I’d probably skip the crest. And of course, the motto would be at the base and would read, “Vituperium, Pugnax, Iratus”.
Is that what you had in mind?
Savage Bliss says, “Yah, there’s definitely a “Fuck you, readers” vibe. I have no questions that wouldn’t violate one or more rules.”
Wow, I must have come off as I lot angrier that I thought I had. I figured I was just setting up a little banter for the Q&A. I remember the last time I specifically clarified my feelings on necrophilia only to field a dozen questions on the exact same topic. I figured I’d egg people on a bit to see if they’d bite and go for more of the same, but I guess I was a bit overzealous. My bad, y’all.
Lori says, “Why did Government officials, who claim to be all free market and against welfare of any kind, provide money to Bear Stearns for that whole JP Morgan buy out bullshit? HUH? WHY!??!?!!??!?! And why won’t my lender reduce my principal on my loan? I mean….The governement does that shit all the time, why can’t *I* get a break on paying *MY* mortgage? HUH?!?!?!?!?”
Simple, they’re hypocrites. Everybody with money is all “free market! free market!” until it’s convenient to them for it not to be that way. That’s why they continue to have all the money. If it was really a free market, we’d all have a better chance of getting a piece of that pie.
Secondly, because you are a sucker, and it is your fault that you haven’t pulled yourself up by the bootstraps, embraced free market economics, invisible hand of the market, welfare queens, affirmative action, and other republican economic talking points.
Matt says, “Caroline, I might be able to answer that- It would probably be an Ouroboros, since we all know that ACW doesn’t really have a family tree. It’s more like a family wreath.”
Oh, man, that’s so funny. An incest joke! Ha ha ha. Oh, yeah, that’s hilarious. I’m sure your mom will find it funny when I’m boning her later tonight.
(Actually, I did laugh out loud when I read your comment, but felt compelled to not give you your props right away because you didn’t ask a question. Douche.)
Anonymous says, “My question is: Would you do us the service of creating some ACW shirts at CafePress? Cuz I’d be all over that like stank on Shiite! Maybe after you are off the air, the back could say 404… just a thot…”
So, the short answer is a “no” with a “but”. Here’s the long answer: No, I won’t be creating any shirts for the ACW site on CafePress for numerous reasons like my terrible design ability, my lack of interest, my lack of time, and other such reasons. I also won’t be doing it because I don’t own the now iconic image of the Anonymous Coworker by the water cooler. That was created for me by Common Wombat, and I’d be loathe to earn money off of his hard work. Also, I’ve briefly thought of earning money through the sale of items by way of CafePress, but those ideas quickly fizzled for a few reasons, some of which are listed above, and some of which are related to my feelings on advertising in general. I’ve never really wanted to advertise on this site, despite the fact that I get enough hits that I think it would actually be able to make me some money, even if it’s only a few dollars per month. I’ve kept the site donation/advertisement/product free because I want it that way. I don’t want anyone to ever feel compelled to pay for what they find here. I write because I want to, and you can read or not read if you want to, but I don’t want anyone to feel guilty for reading and not paying for something, so I removed that option from the equation entirely. (My Amazon wishlist, however, is an altogether different matter, and you should feel compelled to shower me with trinkets constantly.)
Here’s the “but”: But, if YOU (any of you) wanted to create some ACW stuff to sell, that would be fine with me. I’ll probably regret typing that, but I can’t really think of any reason why any of you making ACW shirts would make my life any more difficult, especially considering that this blog is four months from ever being updated again.
More answers later, or tomorrow.
