madcap envy

[larvatus]

    Michael wishes that he could be half as funny as this:

    Tabloids Scream:
    “Min at Work”
    “SEC probes Min probes daughter”
    “Erection Connection”
    “Shitzhu a real dog”
    ― Yahoo! Message Boards: WEBX, Msg 37761 by gloufam, 08/25/05 08:13 pm

    In the event, he can only dream of being half as funny as the Kipper Kids.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't understand any of this. This Erin Zhu person seems to be out of her mind, and in any event utterly unreliable, unable to recognize limits, and generally a total jerk. That being so, and given that the situation with her father shows that you're dealing with insane people in any event, why are you so convinced you can unravel it and know what Mr. Z did and what Miss Z invented for her own stupid reasons? Are you confident you know everything she deceived you about?

Also, why talk about yourself so much? You quote various literary figures who also say things about themselves, but is that all they talked about? If you talk about yourself a lot, and it's all dramatic, and other people always come off worse, it arouses doubt about how true it all is. If you say something about say your father, wouldn't you rather people had good grounds for thinking it's all so?

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

    I made every effort to stop dealing with insane people by agreeing with Erin Zhu’s proposal to buy out my interest in our business ventures for $0. In return for my forbearance, I got threatened and menaced. These threats and menaces brought up the name of Min Zhu. His name appeared in a context that recapitulated Erin’s accounts of being raped by him. As a result of a lengthy and thorough investigation, I am satisfied as to the truth of her story. The evidence at hand includes objective facts borne out by medical records. No less significant is the avoidance of this issue by the Zhus and WebEx, which culminated in Min Zhu fleeing the country instead of trying to clear his name or support the company that he founded in its struggle against me.
    I have no illusions about my virtues. My family, my friends, and my heroes are my betters in every imaginable way. As promised, my journal exists in the service to them. The fact that my story involves me with some wretched specimens is a further reflection of my character flaws. The fact that its telling involves me in confessions responds to the imperative of self-knowledge at the manifest expense of my vanity. I urge you to question my account to the best of your ability, just as you should question everything that you hold fast about yourself.
    I have a friend who aspires to literary greatness. For many years, he inscribed his boutique publications with solicitations of my reciprocal flattery. This practice ended when I gave him a piece of my mind on the occasion of his public foray into ad hominem philosophical criticism. A further bout of sparring over an ancient slight caused me to revisit the issue in person. I saw a middle-aged slob, imbued with Ivy League mannerisms, dropped out of business, abandoned by the academia, living off unearned income in a smug haze of assorted intoxicants. All these epithets are equally applicable to me. The difference that I strive to establish resides in the nature of my self-regard. As Georges Bataille says, « L’homme ne peut s’aimer jusqu’au bout s’il ne se condamne. » The gravest of all possible character deficiencies arises from man’s futilitarian attempts to love himself all the way down, without first condemning himself.