You may not be surprised to learn that none of the books on my bookshelves ever found itself next to a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul, but a few years after its first publication, in 1996, while visiting a friend on the west coast, I came upon a copy of the book, which his aunt had given him a few years before as a gag gift. One morning I woke up early and, not wanting to disturb my friend's sleep, flipped lazily through its pages until I found an anecdote that made the existence of the whole series okay for me. I have searched and searched over the years for a first edition, because of course this anecdote was not printed in subsequent copies of the book, and I have yet to find one, but at last Google Books has allowed me to relive my experience in a small way, so I offer it now to you.

If you are too young to know who OJ Simpson is then by all means you can go here to find out why this is hilarious but for God's sake please don't tell me.

and, somewhat disturbingly, this (though of course it's likely that what I found disturbing was not the photo itself but my physiological reaction to it).

I considered sending him a friend request along with a flirtatious message, but since the last time I antagonized a homophobe on a whim it didn't go so well I figured I had better leave well enough alone.

Then, three days ago, someone who listed his or her email as s@none.com left a comment on my blog that said, "Ur a Fag point blank period".

Again, I appreciated the information, but given that the comment was on a post about how my sexual fantasy about Chris Meloni was interrupted by my horror at a mistranslation of Latin on prime-time television, I am hard put to understand why s@none.com believed I was not already in possession of it.

Is it that, now that I have spent thirty-nine years in this vale of wrath and tears we know as Earth, these people feel bad that senility is about to descend upon me? Are they concerned that Alzheimer's will soon rob me of any sense of my own identity and they want to make sure that I at least remember the basics?

Any ideas?

Imagine yourself in a large group of people.  An official-looking person asks the group to separate into twenty-six smaller groups, organized according to the first letter of members' first names.

Then another official-looking person comes into the room wheeling a cart of cupcakes in three different flavors:  chocolate, say, lemon, and red velvet.  (The you in this thought experiment both loves cupcakes and loves chocolate, lemon, and red velvet cupcakes equally.)  As the official-looking person walks around the room, she offers each person his or her choice of cupcakes (this is apparently a bottomless cart).  Some people choose chocolate, some lemon, and some red velvet.

Then, when the official-looking person gets to your group, the people who share the first letter of your first name, she says, "Oh, sorry, the lemon cupcakes aren't for you.  You may have your pick of the chocolate and the red velvet."  You take a cupcake, perhaps chocolate, perhaps red velvet.

Then she continues on, offering members of the rest of the groups their choice of all three kinds of cupcakes.

So here's the question:  Are you angry that you weren't given the choices the other groups were given?  If so, how angry?  (I will reveal that, in the piece I'm working on that includes this thought experiment, the title of the section is Fuck You and Your Goddamn Cupcake, which ought to make my answer clear, but you have no obligation to agree with me.) 

Note, please, that the question I'm asking isn't about practicality—a cupcake is a cupcake, I still like red velvet, if that's the way it worked out then whatever—but about the visceral emotional reaction you do or don't have to the thought.

MIKE and JOEL (singing along with the stereo):  Once more, you opened the door, and you're here in my heart, and my heart will go on and on.

JOEL:  God, we're so gay.

MIKE:  We're old, too.  Don't forget old.

JOEL:  God, we're so gay and old.

I enjoyed Avatar when I saw it in the movie theater.  I thought it was visually gorgeous and deeply moving.  At the same time I was deeply disturbed by its politics.  "Yeah," I said to friends the next day, "I just saw Blue Like Me."  Thank God the white guy could come and save all the colored people.  The—I don't know what to call it; blueface?—aspect just made it feel more shamefully self-satisfied.

The thing that I could never figure out was whether their acceptance/celebration of him once he showed up riding the Great Leonopteryx was realistic or just an Orientalist fantasy.  On the one hand, it was his fault that the humans were there in the first place, and how could that be forgiven him in any way?  On the other hand, he did lead them to a victory that implied the humans would never come back, so from a certain perspective they were better off even though he'd destroyed their home, and they did place a pretty high premium on being Toruk Makto.  I tried and tried to figure out an analog in my life so that I could test the proposition, but I failed.

Then, last night, when the Home Tree fell, Mike—I'd mentioned my difficulty to him—said, "Well, obviously, it's 9/11."  And I was like, Jesus Christ, I'm an idiot.

And it was pretty easy from that point on.  I mean, imagine (if you're an American) somebody shows up, insinuates himself into your life, makes you trust him and like him, and then says, oh, by the way, I gave Osama bin Laden the plans to the World Trade Center.  As far as I'm concerned, at least, nothing he did after that could possibly lead me to forgive him.  He could probably manage it so that I would only want to see him exiled or thrown in prison forever rather than being executed for treason—which is saying something, since the list of people I think should be executed for treason is a long one—but if he was then like, oh, my friend Sigourney Weaver is dying, can you help her, I'd be like, fuck off.

"The Omaticaya," said Mike when I suggested as much to him, "are much more forgiving than we are.  You can tell because they're blue and wear loincloths."

I'm almost hesitant to post this, given how obvious it all seems now that I've figured it out, but one of my new year's resolutions is to revivify my moribund blog, and it seems I'm now well-medicated enough to prefer follow-through to avoiding embarrassment.

Note, please, that none of this makes the colors in Avatar any less pretty.