Stupid Thing o' the Week

So, I sent an email to one of the guys who submitted a story to us many months ago, to tell him we wouldn’t be able to get his story on the air this month (on my podcast, obviously), explaining the situation and the embarrassment I felt about it, but also stating that it was my call, so I’m the one to blame. I then explained when I thought the show would go up and what progress had been made on it thus far.

Sometimes, for reasons out of our control, we accept stories, and don’t air them for many months. I think there was one that we held for a holiday, that we didn’t air for more than a year. I always feel bad about that. But life is an uninvited intruder in your house just when you’ve put on Barry White’s "Can't Get Enough" LP, and you've got your cousin nice and buzzed.

Well, I got a very terse, but not at all impolite email from the guy immediately after, and I didn't give it a second thought.

However, when I got home from what passes for work in my life, there was a second email from him, a much longer one. Apparently, he read my message at work on his phone or some similar device that only showed him the first paragraph of my email, the one where we weren't going to get to his episode and it was my fault. With no further information from me, he got the impression that even though we said we'd accept his story, we were now rejecting it (and him), and hoping he would have sex with himself.

According to my new ex-friend, a voice inside him said, "Use your aggressive feelings, boy, let the hate flow through you!" Even though he had been polite in his email back to me, he kept thinking about it during the day ("I can feel your anger!"), unable to put it behind him ("Your hate has made you powerful!"), until it filled him with such righteous indignation that he had to talk to his wife about it ("Now, strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the Dark Side will be complete!").She read the email and was puzzled. "Which part are you angry about?" she wondered. He was upset that she wasn't helping him set swarms of lice or fiery hailstones down upon me.* She told him my email had been quite apologetic and quoted it to him, but he had no memory of that part. Only then did he realize that there was more to it than the first couple of sentences.

In context of the rest of my message, I guess he had less reason to be angry, and was grateful his religious upbringing had prevented him from sending me a venomous, violently vitriolic invective like he wanted to. He canceled the whole prayer for vengeance thing and typed up a lengthy email explaining what had happened.

Unfortunately, it was already too late, as every hole of my body is now swarming with red-hot earwigs. Especially THAT hole.

I called Big Anklevich to tell him about it, and he said, "That serves you right for apologizing. I wish he had told you off."

Well, I guess we all learned a lesson here.

Rish Zacharias Outfield

*Isn't there a Bible verse where God tells Malachi or Jeremiah or Ezekiel or Obama, "Whoever you curse I will curse?" Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I figure a devout churchgoer has more power at his disposal than a card-carrying member of the Gilligan's Island Fanclub like me.