Any person who has been physically attacked by a person of the opposite gender at a vulnerable time in their life, especially childhood, is going to have a tough time being sane when the full weight of the insanity of the blogosphere comes down on them.

Especially when it's the opposite gender coming down on them, virtually or otherwise.

If you've never actually worked through your own trauma, you have no idea what it's like to actually puque this stuff back up and take an adult look at it. It puts a rather busy life on hold and can make a person physically ill in the process. Ill as in auto-immune disease ill. I'm not talking headcold here.

My point is that we need to accept that some folks are going to be really sensitive to threatening behavior and are going to seem to be overreacting to our words and content. I think once you've done the kind of work required to get over this kind of stuff, you realize that there's not a snowball's chance in hell that most people are going to be able to do more than stir up an angry hornet's nest by going into therapy and overcoming the strong sense of victimization that goes along with unresolved trauma. It's just too hard and we're fighting the bell-shaped curve on this one.

When boys get angry, they want the fight to be about physicality and physical power. When girls get angry, they want the fight to be about communication and the power of people banding together to fight a common foe.

Guys, it's not a fight that's worth winning; more often than not, you will lose. Gals, mental cruelty is no way to garner support from a world filled with angry man-pigs and chimpanzees who think everything that's shiny is worth picking up.

The neo-cons are noticing this derisive sentiment in the blogosphere and using it to whip their "promise-keeper" base into a frenzy, and to further wedge and divide the rest of the populace against itself.

Can everyone agree that men shouldn't physically threaten women under any circumstances and that under no circumstance should women do that thang you do that turns the lives of men into a desert wasteland? That should be everyone's commitment online and in life. If you don't pick up the weapon, you won't be sorry for the damage you do.

Regardless of who gets paid more, who has the jobs, or who is smarter, we are all equals. The opposite sex will always be able to tear us a new one. That's the way it is. All victories in the battle of the sexes are imaginary and temporary.

That little ditty probably extends to all donnybrooks of any composition. Rage against the person in the mirror and leave the machines alone for a while.

...of unguided love. A quaint 24-hour courtship that ended up in front of a justice-o-the-peace.

We been bumpin' uglies since 1997. Ten years on 5/12, buzzbrain.

When are ya'all gonna get it through your skulls that there's more to people than just this online personna thang??

...that page shall be mine o'mine.

I could suggest that I strive for the little things in life, but I wouldn't want ya'all to feel like you're in competition, or anythin'.

...has an imaginary 96 year old grandfather who is dying on the installment plan. His imaginary daughter, my imaginary wife's imaginary mother, was just diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The fast acting kind.

Imagine that.

My oldest sister was among the shakers who built San Jose from Dyon Warwick's time until just a few years ago. All the old mafia people moved up to the hills as soon as 85 went in and let the casino/steakhouse with all those imported Vietnamese cuties go.

Nick's only reason for being here, at 80, is to create billable hours on a dialysis machine in Sonora. My sister is about to become a mess and I can't get to her from here.

Which is fine because in addition to being unable to pry her jaws loose for an honest moment to discuss the stories she keeps locked up inside her head, she has a habit of keeping alot of information secret. She didn't tell me until my twenties that all those stories my father used to scream at me as gospel and I wanted to kill him over were true...my mother was really nuts and it started long before she ever met him. Emotional abandonment is betrayal, plain and simple. My sister has my number if she needs to talk, but I'm not sure what we'd talk about. I get more spam from her than any other human being on the planet. You think my cliches are worn out and sullied past platitude and heading towards Miltonian perdition?

How many chain letters of glad tidings and Jesus was I supposed to stand before my head turned off my shoulders?

I still can't get over how I can't get past superficial small talk with this woman who has to get dressed and bathe in the garage because the house can't ever be messy. She changed my diapers when my mother was locked up at Agnews for months at a time, for crying out loud (something I don't remember but I don't s'pose it's possible to forget at some level).

So I don't have to have alot of excitment or imaginary stuff going on inside my head.

I'm full-up with crazy here. I come here to be abused and have smoke blown up my ass. It keeps me from falling completely asleep, shutting down and drooling.