Descending Into Deconstruction

It’s been a good while since I last wrote something by way of turning my scalpel upon the tender meat of my own flesh, slicing it open and letting the slithery viscera of my own insecurities spill out onto the examination table for the pleasure of external review, so I invite you to step inside the operating theater today, while I commence with the self-vivisection. Refreshments will be served after the ritual bloodletting concludes.

Here at Coquetting Tarradiddles, I often ramble on about the flaws of others while conveniently skimming over my own like a smooth stone skipping over the calm waters of a placid lake somewhere in a picturesque little village where it’s safe to leave your doors unlocked at night, and neighbors are always on hand to lend you a cup of advice laced with a bit sugar when you’re baking a cake and realize too late that it’s eight ounces away from just being bread. It’s the sort of charming little towne that loves a good silent ‘e’ and looks good on postcards, but whose exact location no one can ever seem to actually place. (This, of course, leads many people to jump to the erroneous conclusion that such a village is entirely fictional, while the truth is that its a very real place, but its exact whereabouts have been lost in the mists of time and are now a closely guarded secret known only by a select few members of the greeting card and motel art industries – which is always a contentious issue with Ye Olde Tourism Board at towne meeting tyme.) So, while it may appear that my egotism and rage are the stuff of illusory watercolor paintings and glossy paper rectangles with stamps on, I assure you it’s entirely true. Except when it isn’t.

The reality of Me is as complex and layered as any other multi-layered thing handily used as a literary device, but the core of the Kristian-Onion is decidedly simple: I’m terrified of being wrong. The driving force behind everything I do serves the singular purpose of keeping me from looking stupid, which is an unpleasant experience of which I have a complete and irrational fear. I strive to learn as much as I can about as many things as I can, solely so that I may pass myself off in conversation as something other than one of the slushbrained illiterates for which I so routinely hold in a grim and terrible level of disdain. I believe in a creeping surrealism that’s replacing real Truth in a world built on lies, deception and self-delusion, where the functionally illiterate rule on high from towers of glass and steel, and everyone else sits around in their underwear, licking their shoes and mumbling troubling thoughts about patriotism. I believe in this concept so strongly that I’m loathe to ever find myself a part of it, so I defend the sanctity of my brain by reading lots of books and going to bed a little bit angrier each night than I was the night before. It’s a vicious cycle, but the alternative is a life of supine acquiescence to the rule of authorities I neither recognize nor respect. Instead, I rant…

At length. If I have one standard complaint leveled against my writing here at Coquetting Tarradiddles, it’s always about my complete disregard for the common Internet law of brevity. This, again, flows back to the source of all my behavior and merges my love of knowledge with my utter contempt for those who would ignore Truth in favor of bite-sized news and new episodes of reality tv. I write just as many words as I need to feel like I’m getting my point across, although I know how many readers my verbosity doesn’t get me. Sadly, I don’t seem to care.

I write what I write, and I welcome any of you to stay if you like what I’m doing, or go away quickly if you don’t. I do not advertise my site or participate in link exchanges, or broadcast its location across the web in some desperate need to be heard, even if the tinge of some sort of desperation stains everything I write. Admittedly, I have been guilty of whoring my site out from time to time, but there’s always been a hidden methodology behind such actions, with a clear and distinct pathway in mind that leads towards a specific goal known only to myself. The rest of the time, I just don’t give a toss if people read my blog or remain blissfully unaware of its existence. I do value the geographic dispersal of my readers who dot the map in my sidebar like little red pustules of infection across the globe, but I’m entitled to a bit of egoboo every now and again, (which is the true currency of any personal blog, despite the phantasmic promises of AdSense riches). But mostly, I simply don’t care.

This indifference may appear to be arrogance masking some underlying inferiority complex, but in truth it’s nothing more than me simply not wanting to get dragged into overlong discussions with stupid people, who seem to make up the majority of the international citizenry of the World Wide Web. It’s also why I discourage comments – and long posts have the strange effect of weeding out the hideous and misinformed comments of would-be pundits. I’m not sure why this is, but I suspect it’s something to do with that sort of person losing interest around the second paragraph and clicking off towards happier websites filled with illegal .MP3s and barely legal porn. I don’t miss their company.

This blog has always been and will forever be about ME. Not YOU, and certainly not some nebulous concept of a bizarre community built around my ramblings. I write about my life and things that interest and disgust me, and I’ve little concern for whether this either encourages or offends your sensibilities. I don’t really want to hear about it, either way. In truth, I have dark caverns worn deep into the bedrock of my soul that hide a subterranean layer of insecurity and doubt, but that should be obvious to anyone who isn’t stupid. Examining and correcting these issues is part of the reason I write the sort of things I post here. Yes, I adore myself. And yes, I’m an opinionated bastard who thinks he’s always right – but the trick of the thing is: I usually am, or at least I am as far as I’m concerned, which is all that really matters to anyone. I believe the world is divided into distinct divisions of black and white: there’s what’s Right and there’s what’s Wrong, and anyone who goes on about shades of grey has just never had the benefit of a proper education in laundry. Think of the world as a giant washing machine, where the light clothes sometimes get mixed with the dark ones and come out in varying hues of unfortunate coloration. That’s how the Truth gets lost in this confused world: in the shades of grey that come from all the Wrong that gets added into the mix along the way.

Am I as infallible as I make myself out to be? No, not hardly. However, I’m only as flawed as I allow myself to be, and it’s something I work on every day of my life. On some topics, I am well educated and brilliant while, on others, I will forever remain deeply stupid. I can’t know what it’s like, for example, to live inside the mercurial braincase of a woman. I can drone on about Right and Wrong until I’ve gone cold and developed a debilitating case of rigor mortis, but I can’t ever experience the world through the perspective of someone else, even if I’m comfortable making comments such as, “Mental health can be best described as points on a straight line, with Reason and Logic on one end and Women on the other.” (Told you I was a bastard.)

Unfortunately, I can only color my own reality with what I’ve learned myself, from my own victories and failures along the meandering road of life, and hope that I’ve found a little wisdom along the way. The truth is, I doubt myself all the time. I hate making definitive statements even while I seem to love declaring absolutes. I’m always afraid someone smarter is going to come along who trashes my arguments and leaves me crying alone in the shower and biting a washcloth to muffle my sobs. I’m terrified of that happening, so much so that I compulsively seek out information at an incessant and obnoxious rate to avoid (or at least postpone) that miserable experience. It’s a difficult life, living in this Kristian skin – but I suspect it’s a great deal more trying for people living nearby, who are forced to tolerate my soapboxing on an hourly basis. My wife, for instance. Poor thing.

So that’s me in a nutshell. I’m the sort of person who believes only in myself, even while I doubt almost every decision I ever make. I divide the world into two neat categories: there’s right and there’s wrong, but most people live their lives in the grey space of a truth that’s been made grubby by the color-bleed of fiction. I’m an insecure and neurotic mess at my center, but outwardly confident to an intolerable degree. I place myself upon a lofty pedestal from which I can look down upon the rest of humanity and frown, even as my secret desire is that they will someday climb up and join me. I want someone smarter than me to come along and slap me across the head like an irritated and abusive parent, even while I live in mortal dread of that ever happening. I’m a contradiction, a sort of personality paradox that both loves and loathes the world. But mostly, I’m just a lonely little scribbler pouring the stuff of my soul out into the world and hoping that someday it will all somehow matter. That at the end of my days, I won’t look back upon my life and see an ocean of unspent possibilities, of missed opportunities and successes lost to the crippling addiction of fear. In the end, I just want my life to have mattered. In the end, I’m just like everybody else. Damn.

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
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The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
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What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.