LUDIC LOG

It has come to my attention that certain of my readers are unsatisfied with the blanket apologies I have issued in this space in the past. I therefore make it my obligation to direct specific, narrow and heartfelt regrets below. However, I am no egotist, and in light of my passion for self-improvement, both in my own life and in the lives of others, I would also like to take this opportunity to suggest ways in which such incidents as have scarred both our lives might be avoided in the future.

To Offended In Oconomowoc: I apologize for having made those comments, especially in the presence of your children, your friends and your peers. I can certainly appreciate how someone so filled with self-loathing and insecurity might have found my words to be, as you put it, "hurtful". I shall endeavor in the future to couch my cuttingly accurate observations in more soft, harmless euphemism. As for your end of the bargain, perhaps you could call less attention to your unfortunate ethnic heritage. "Pride" is an emotion associated with accomplishment and craftsmanship, not an unlucky accident of birth comparable to being infirm or simple-minded.

To Laid Up On The South Side: No one regrets more than I do the terrible fate that befell you. Not only did it cause you great physical harm and banish you to that cacaphonous, unattractive mechanical chair, but it cost me a dear amount of money thanks to inequitable laws and the vulpine rapacity of the legal profession. I regret it in the profoundest possible sense, and please believe me when I say I wish it had not happened. While the fault was largely my own, at least according to the judge and that ridiculous "breath-testing" machine (which I must admit strikes me as a pseudoscientific P.T. Barnum gadget if ever there was one), here is a lesson you might learn from this terrible experience: be alert always. There are no accidents, only carelessness.

To the Best Buy Corporation: It seems to me that I have already apologized enough, and the Illinois Department of Corrections agrees with me, but apparently no one told your security staff. At any rate, let us wipe the slate clean: it was "wrong" of me, at least in the judgment of what passes for society these days, to drive my car through your front door and steal all of those electronics, just as it was wrong of you to make me want them so much via the nefarious medium of advertising. So, I'm sorry. Now, I realize that you are a corporate entity and cannot learn the moral lessons so invaluable to a man, but let me nonetheless urge the expansion of your philosophical horizons. If I might be so bold, a good place to begin might be the works of Marx, Weber and Proudhon, and others who emphasize the hollowness and transience of the concept of property.

To Miss Thing in Chi-Town: There is no way to prettify what I did. I said a number of terrible things, and I failed to honor the precious (though, in my defense, unwritten) contract that exists between a man and a woman in love. All I can say is that what I said and did, I said and did because of the mighty passion you inflamed within me. It is my tragedy that I love too much, too deeply. And yours? That you love not enough, perhaps. Might I suggest that some evening in the near future, instead of chatting endlessly behind my back with your cronish "girlfriends" and stuffing your already overtaxed gullet with frozen treats, you aquaint yourself with the simple needs of a man with a reading of How to Please Your Lover, a hearing of "Stand By Your Man", and a viewing of "No Man's Land XXXVII: Redheads in Heat"? Learning to give is the first step in learning to live.

To the Families of the Victims of the Destruction of Haku'peme Atoll, the Crash of Varig Brasil Flight 27A, and the Disappearance of Gunnery, TX: Okay, I fucked up on these. My bad.