In Which I Discuss Picaroons, Peccadilloes, and Fucktards

IN ADDITION to the many posts I anticipate writing on the always titillating topics of love, sex, relationships, and life in academia (as though one could separate these four!), I also fully intend that this blog -- as my ongoing and very public exploration of self-awareness -- should be a site for continued contemplation of the complexities of friendship (often wrongly confused, of course, with any one of the four afore mentioned topics).

As an admitted "lusty picaroon,"* I have enjoyed my share of peculiar peccadilloes. I have made friends, lost friends, and even created friends, and yet, I have never successfully identified even the slightest, singular thread by which these relationships -- with all of their glorious growth spurts or rapid, and often painful, declines -- might be explained. Indeed, if there is a thread to be found among the thirty-some-years of amity in which I have taken delight, it is likely it is I.

So, with this "thread" in mind, I now entertain the possibility that each of my friendships, along with the making, breaking, and defiling of such, are -- you perhaps sense that I am loathe to accept this as truth? -- a signifier of my own unique brand of foolishness, insecurities, and interpersonal missteps. I console myself with the following scrap of logos: if it is true, that I alone am responsible for the decline of these lost bonds, then [praise be!] I am equally liable for the unlikely successes.

While I have any number of long-term friendships I might use as further evidence of my exemplary talents in creating rapport-- outside of my own word, though I imagine one might consider any "proof" I might provide as nothing more than creative wordsmithing, and hence, just more of my "own word" --; I believe that two other avenues of discourse might provide richer data for my continued, critical self-examination.

To this end, future posts will more closely examine 1) an example of friendship lost, including the myriad of ways in which I, no doubt, fucked it up, and 2) friendship reclaimed, via the mechanism of virtual reality: Web 2.0 (the specific manifestation of virtual friendship, in my case, has been the "social networking site" commonly referred to as Facebook).

Meanwhile, I have compiled a list -- offered in no particular order of significance or gross maladjustment -- of but a few ways in which friendships might be destroyed in the grandest tradition of personal drama and decadence. I have gathered these random examples over a good many years, and though I have been guilty of at least one of these transgressions myself, most have been provided courtesy of assholes the world over.

Toward Friendship Reduction:

1. Sleep with said friend's spouse

2. Kill friend**

3. Accuse friend of being "overly" educated

4. Crash friend's vehicle, sleep with friend's mother, and "borrow" $200 --- all on the same weekend

5. Get married

6. Travel internationally with friend and 27 others -- without the benefit of air-conditioning

7. Have grunge sex with (new) friend on a train to Madrid ***

8. Call friend a fucktard**** -- and mean it

9. Report friend to the IRS*****

10. Have friend deported -- even though friend was born in Arkansas

This list is not intended to be exhaustive, but should, instead, serve as a foundation for our future metacommentary here at "The Life and Opinions." I urge you, nay compel you! -- to seek absolution were you ever guilty of even a single indiscretion listed herein. Or, if the dissolution of friendship was well deserv'd, I applaud you for your grandiose, relational contravention!

In the Cause!

Dr. T. Shandy

* Though the word "picaroon" has fallen out of favor with youth today, the Urban Dictionary lists two possible definitions for this apropos term. I would like to think that I easily fit into either category

** To clarify, this must be a successful "kill" and not merely an "attempt"; credible prime-time soap opera research has consistently proven that murder attempts may, in fact, prove more exhilarating than anticipated, which serves to rapidly move friendship -- though also, likely, to an inevitable "end" -- into an entirely new category, that of (ahem) "partnership"

*** Trains elsewhere work equally well, though it has been my experience that international trains offer a unique brand of "grunge," thereby insuring that friendship will not survive said excursion

**** The word, "fucktard," is in no way meant to disparage those persons suffering any form of mental handicap. It is, instead, a simple contraction of the colloquialisms "fuck" and "retard" = "fucktard" (as in, "he is a fucking retard")

***** The "DEA" is also a fine replacement, depending on specific circumstances of friendship in question