Reflections on Compliments

I am doing paperless paperwork. It is not easy, I have learned, to research new computers to buy (for other people, at that) without having happy fun loser-friendly bubbles to click in and automatically update the price or, for that matter, seeing even a picture of what you're reading about. I don't think well in the language of part numbers. The University has also, in its wisdom, chosen to restrict its employees' expenditures of grant monies, getting itself lucrative contracts and conscripting us to buy only from the Official Computer Store. Therefore, I say Non serviam, adding Rebel Rebel! for good measure, grabbing a plate of hamburgers even as I fall like some heavy metallic blimp.
On the homefront, I am sick of these Texas Twelve-Step liberals and their little clichés. A case in point is the notion of holding up a mirror or a compliment. Or and only or. Christ knows our fragile little psyches can't stand the truth, this truth being that we are fundamentally loathsome creatures beyond redemption by our own devices. Instead we need 12 Steps or Holoenergetic Dietetics or Scientology or Jesus to redeem us from our inherent worthlessness. What's worst about it is that these touchyfeely types have ripped off the old Xtian fallacy of Original Sin and replaced it with drug addiction or obesity or malaise in the face of the human condition.
I will not serve them, either. Give me a mirror and a compliment; I've got two hands and they're perfectly able of molding together two separate things. Who is that magnificent balding mammal in the mirror? It is I. Who was that asshole who vomited, drunk, on some poor guy's floor and scooped it up to throw it in the sink? That awesome bastard was me. Who's been known sometimes to sin up to seven times before breakfast? This badass right here. Who's bound, some day and soon, to get his smartass teeth kicked in? I am.
And when Lo! it comes to pass, I won't regret it. It'll be certainly something more to bitch about than trying to buy a lousy computer.