The truth is out there in here

I am getting aggravated.

When I was about 25 or so, I once woke up in the middle of the night with a loud, ferocious toothache, so exquisitely painful that the tiniest head movement sent bolts of pain straight through my skull. Not only couldn't I go back to sleep; I couldn't even move!

You're slightly more annoying than that. Well, some of you, anyway.

First, I owed you an explanation of where I went for two months. Then, the writing was bad. Then, most ridiculously of all, someone cooked up the completely dunderheaded notion that a hacker hijacked my blog and is now writing as me!

Do me a favor. Raise your hand, right now, if you honestly believe this could have happened.

If you actually buy that crap, or any other X-Files worthy theory involving 9-foot-tall intergalactic kidnappers with green skin and hydrocephalic heads, you are off your chump, as the Monty Python gang would say. Have any of you actually gone back and read your own comments? Do you have any comprehension of how reality-challenged you sound? And by the way, if you're raising your hand to a computer screen, I rest my case.

Allow me to be very honest. Right after I came back, one of my friends showed me part of a book she was publishing. I read it, and it felt... polished. It had a depth that I suddenly felt my own work did not have. Filled with self-doubt, I sat down and wrote two posts in a row, forcing myself to be more descriptive and detailed.

The operative word there is forcing.

I went back and read them, and almost immediately did not like how they sounded. It wasn't me anymore. I didn't recognize the person who had written them, and I decided right away that, for better or for worse, I had found a style and a voice and a rhythm that worked for me, and I needed to be true to that. Of course, the writing wasn't as horrible as some of you made it out to be, but you see me working.

So, I went back to work, gleefully filling my posts with dialogue and italicized smartass-isms. I read them back, and loved them. But some of you are so stuck on your theories that you don't want to let them go. I probably shouldn't be surprised.

One other thing: I made some comments about Casey that I regret. Talking about knives, and electrical appliances, and playing in traffic, even when completely in jest, feels horribly insensitive and inconsiderate in retrospect.

I'm not crazy about kids, but I do like Casey very much. She is smart, well-behaved, and very mature for her age. This is almost too obvious to say, but I wish her no ill will at all, and would love nothing more than for her to be deliriously happy, safe and sound her whole life.

I said some stupid shit, and I used Heather. That appalls some of you. You're shocked that I am not a fine, upstanding, morally upright pillar of my community.

Surely you jest.

I'm an asshole. You KNOW I'm an asshole. Most of you like me BECAUSE I'm an asshole. If I were a briefcase-toting 9-to-5'er with 2.3 children whose biggest thrill was riding the Matterhorn at Disneyworld once a year, you wouldn't give a shit what I have to say. You wouldn't read my blog. I wouldn't even have one.

If you're looking to read nice-guy stories, go elsewhere. Maybe Donny Osmond has started himself a blog.

And quit breaking my balls about the writing. The writing was different briefly, but now it is the same as when I left. Go back and read my posts from June and July; they feel the same. In fact, some of the new ones were written BEFORE I stopped blogging. Any difference is in your imagination.

......aaand, exhale.