Someone best be bleeding out the head

I admit it - I'm not what philosophers might call a complicated man.  In fact, it's like the song says, "Simple songs about simple things is what makes my Markatoa swing." (you didn't know that I knew Big Bad VooDoo Daddy, did you?  And if you recognized the above song, I promise I also do have eyes like an angel.  Smile like the devil?  Not so much.  I end up with a smug, ridiculous look of barely concealed condescension when I try.  I feel like the devil would be way more suave than I am)  Part of that simplicity is the belief that if someone is calling me at or after midnight on a day that I have work to go to the next morning that someone I know better be in the process of dying or being born.

Failing that, maybe a close friend who accidentally is calling or having a moment of crisis can be forgiven.  Maybe if you're down in Rio for Carnivale and some buxom lass has been feeding you booze and promising to do things to you that will make your family blush for a hundred generations in either direction if only you called your Norteamericano friends.  Those situations are acceptable.  In the case of the last (and admittedly incredibly unlikely.  I've met my friends - none of the mansome ones would really inspire intercontinental lust in pre-Lent Lascivious Latinas.  I told you I liked alliteration.  Also, most of them are married.) I might give someone a pass.  But only because I would seek sweet, sweet revenge on them.  Also, because if you sleep with that kind of girl the mouth-herpes that you get infested with are almost punishment enough.  Mouth.  Herpes.  Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, don't be that guy.

You know who never gets forgiven for that sort of behavior though?  No matter how much herpes they get? Ex goddamned wives.

This is what ex-wives look like, right?  It's not just mine...please?

Now, Markatoa, that seems oddly specific.  I can hear these thought-questions rumbling around in your web-soaked brainpans.  How?  Both because I am amazing and therefor know what you're going to say before you do...and also because it's incredibly specific and sort of an obvious question.  To that I say well done you.  You've unraveled my motives.  You can win a prize.  It's almost Halloween so it'll be a fun-size candy bar (Fun size candy bars are no one's idea of fun)

The other night, my ex-wife sent me a series of messages.  Once I cleared myself out of the dream addled haze that I found myself swathed in, my trembling hands grasped my phone.  I wondered what might have happened.  Did my mother have a slip and fall?  In-laws devoured by an elevator? A friend giving birth to a secret baby at the Prom and needs an out?  Nope.  As I clutch the phone in my hands and try to stop my heart palpitations I find that...some bands are playing somewhat nearby and she was thinking that maybe Ladytoa and I would like to go see them.  For serious, woman?  In the process of the divorce you lost: all access to me after bedtime, my prodigious knowledge of 1970-1995 in comic book lore and my not-inconsiderable skills as a lover. (Disappointing people is a skill.  It's on my resume and everything.)  It's not that I hate my ex wife.  She's pretty cool and all that.  It's not that I mind the idea of seeing bands.  I like bands.  It's just...well, damn...a little consideration, maybe?

Maybe it's just a sign of being old.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that along with me, everything else is constantly getting older.  I have concerns about family and friends that I would never have imagined being serious when I was younger.  A slip and fall?  That right there is comedy gold.  Especially if the person slips and falls into a giant novelty pie that was for some reason sitting on the ground.  Or like, the most gigantic whoopie cushion of all.  That would be pretty boss, actually.  Now I hear someone fell and I think of what hospital they'll be admitted to and who can care for them while they recover.  That's not a bad thing - I want my friends and family to be taken care, but it's a very different, pretty foreign set of concerns than I used to have.

I'm sure there was a time five or six or eight years ago when if someone texted me at Midnight I'd be all like "what?  the party's just getting started up.  just make sure you're here by like, 4:00 or so.  that's when these bastards start passing out."  But ya know what, Intertron?  I'm sure you know.  Mostly because I've said it before.  I'm not in my gorram 20's anymore and that sort of crud just doesn't fly.  The lesson here?  At least in my world (which is where you are when you come to look at this collection of default fonts and unedited layouts in a blogger.  My world is pretty limited in some ways.  But also filled with whimsy.  The world is like an autistic child's snow globe like that.  Ooooh) you think about what you're doing before you do it.  Unintended consequences are still consequences and saying "well, I didn't think about it" has never once been a successful defense in court.  Except when it will be in the future, when all jury decisions are reached by a panel of telepaths.