Thomas Wictor

A few days ago a Scottish mental patient went off on me like nobody has in years. I don’t know the guy. He objected to this post; I can’t remember what he said exactly because the moderator of the site deleted all of his comments. Here’s the gist.

“You’re a narcissistic, childish, aging failure and attention whore with a sexual attraction to Scott Thunes. All your notions about life after death are moronic prattle based on your aging brain. You deserved to be fired from Bass Player because of your lack of imagination and your gay obsession with Scott Thunes. You’re old and sick, and nobody cares about your fake ghost cat. You couldn’t get over a girl from twenty years ago. Nothing you write has any value. You write too many blog posts, and all you care about is selling copies of Ghosts and Ballyhoo.”

Then he abruptly flipped and became calm and friendly, wanting to have a nice chat about guitarists. Being alcoholic, bipolar, and Scottish is a hell of a ride for everybody.

But it didn’t bother me. Insane foam-spewers are no reason to get upset. Plus, all he’d done was repeat everything I’d said about myself. He’d just put a frosting of homosexuality on it, thus broadcasting his own interests.

So I wasn’t pissed off. I Fisked one of his posts, but then he got operatic in his personal attacks. Since other people reading the thread became upset, I ignored the rest of his attacks and attempts to be pals.

Another thing that doesn’t piss me off is that three “friends” in one week took me to task for not having the correct political ideology. One even went so far as to adopt the Maoist philosophy of demanding that I make a public apology. I did, but only as an experiment. Sure enough, the people I’d terrified and angered with my dissent were tickled pink.

Again, this doesn’t piss me off. Lots of people are so truncated, and their lives are so bereft of meaning, that they adopt politics as a substitute for religion, hobbies, thinking, and feeling. I’m completely apolitical. Though I vote, I do so in the same spirit as I do this.

If I don’t want my teeth to fall out, I floss and brush them. If I don’t want the US to become a corrupt, lawless, banana republic run by pathological liars and power-mad narcissists, I vote.

Wait…

All right, I vote because it’s my civic duty. Having people lose their shit because I’m not marching in lockstep with them doesn’t piss me off. Even being asked to make a public apology—as though I were in some fascist kangaroo court—didn’t piss me off. I’d never been asked to apologize for dissenting, so I wanted to see how the “aggrieved” reacted. They were ecstatic, so it goes to show that disagreeing with the prevailing political view is actually offensive, an act requiring remorse and restitution.

The person who said I should apologize was completely unreachable. He argued exactly the way my father, Carmen, and Noreen argued: refuse to address the actual issue and instead completely distort what the other person says. Their strategy is to make disagreeing with them such an ordeal that everybody just shuts up and lets them have their own way. I’ve experienced it so many times that I simply bade him farewell. That form of assault is a deal breaker.

But it doesn’t piss me off. It’s too pathological and sad to make me angry. And my life goes on without them.

It also doesn’t piss me off that only one radio show in the United States of America was interested in how Mike Albee and Lura Dold stole $40,000 from a housebound, mentally ill guy whose parents committed suicide, the irony being that the book was about overcoming trauma.

I realize that I’m the wrong gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and occupation for the sanctified pussies of the media to care about, so that doesn’t piss me off. Old, white, hetero males deserve whatever happens to them, to make up for the fact that strangers with no relation to me once did to others exactly what the others did to others and each other. Things are only evil when old white males do them. It’s a perfectly justifiable worldview and not racist in the slightest.

It doesn’t piss me off that the US Postal Service has a theft ring based in New York that steals rare postcards sent from Germany by registered mail. My loss rate is now 80 percent. Here are the latest three cards that were stolen. First, the death card of a grenadier from Assault Battalion No. 2.

Second, a portable-flamethrower squad.

Third, a portable-flamethrower shock troop.

The people who steal these cards are obese government workers whose pensions will soon be canceled. Also, they have massive health problems, so their quality of life is awful. In a few years they’re going to be broke and unable to pay for their dialysis and amputations. I’ll be fine, living well in Austin. Sure, I’ve bought my last postcard from Germany, but that means the idiotic kraut dealers who refuse to use my foolproof sending method will lose out on the hundreds of Euro I would’ve paid.

No, how to piss me off is by making unsolicited promises and then not keeping them. I was recently put in touch with someone who made three specific offers and then didn’t follow through on any of them. My interaction with this person was a complete waste of time. Apparently I was supposed to be grateful that fifteen minutes of a busy schedule were put aside for my work to be given a cursory glance while shockingly dumb questions were asked and the answers ignored. I only had to repeat myself every five seconds.

I’m in the middle of another “I’m gonna make you famous!” routine that I’ll be terminating in about a week or so. Though people love to pretend, I’m actually serious about trying to sell books.

Therefore, to all you fabulists and actors: Find someone else to star in your drama. I don’t care about being famous, I’m not impressed with a single person on TV or the radio, and my role is not to be a prop in your fantasy. I just want to sell books. My books are products. They’re art, as is my writing, but in the end, we’re in the business of selling.

The reason the publishing industry is collapsing is that you people are demented. You have no taste, and the one thing you never consider is the quality of the writing. Therefore, no more reaching out to me, okay? I’ll make my own decisions from now on. And please don’t put me in touch with anybody. Don’t tell me, “You should meet my friend who’s a ________.” I want ice-cold professionals, not new family members or fans or impotent cheering sections.

I’ll find my own way. Thanks!