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Thu.Jul.28.2005

11:52 pm EDT        57°F (14°C) in Ishpeming, MI

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Oh yah, dis update is coming from da U.P., eh? This past Tuesday, I hooked up with my friend Pat for the trip up here; my friend Eric's wedding is tomorrow afternoon. It's supposed to be a gorgeous day, with sunny skies and a temperature around 70°F (21°C), so that bodes well for an outdoor ceremony. Of course, being the true Yooper he is, Eric and his bride are going to spend at least part of their honeymoon at Eric's family's camp in rural Marquette County. (Cue "Da Second Week of Deer Camp" by Da Yoopers …) wink

I'm going to have to run Pat back down toward Detroit on Saturday so that he can catch his Sunday morning flight back to Los Angeles. Then again, considering a four-day sequence of events that culminated this past Monday evening, I don't think I'd mind a few more days up here in Yooperland away from my parents — it seems as though my July 19 entry constituted the perfect excuse for my mother to tell me what she really thinks of me. I'll get to that in a minute, but first, there is one thing that I must clear up.

I believed I made it abundantly clear that I wasn't entirely sure of the details regarding the story about my father and his 1973 Dodge Dart Swinger — I know I prefaced at least two sentences with "… if I'm remembering the story correctly." As it turned out, I did have part of the story wrong, but as I explain it, it should be pretty easy to see how I could have screwed things up.

There was no loan taken out to finance that car; according to my father, he paid $1,000 of the $3,200 sticker price, with my grandfather paying the other $2,200. (As a Chrysler employee, my grandfather could get their products at a discount, and he so hated credit of any kind that he saw to it that the Dart was paid for immediately.) Come 1974, my father got a job that provided him a company car, and he really didn't have much need for the Dart; he sold his share back to his father for two years before buying back 100% ownership of the car in 1976.

Now, compare that to what was in the aforementioned July 19 entry, and you'll see that I had a fair number of the surrounding facts straight — namely, that my grandfather had the car between 1974 and 1976, and that my father paid my grandfather to re-assume ownership in 1976. Until now, though, I apparently wasn't clear or correct as to the reason behind the transfers of ownership, and now I know. I admittedly should have done my homework and gotten the facts straight first, although in my own defense, I write about whatever the hell I feel like here without being subject to the rules of journalistic ethics. That's not to say that I won't come back and set the record straight if I do screw something up, like I did here, but unless and until I get hired by the New York Times (or even the Podunk Post, ferchrissake), to hell with the rules of journalism. This is my own site, and damn it, that $14 per month entitles me to upload any legal (i.e., non-pornographic) thing I please.

In any case, I have to say something about "'Fact' Three" in the e-mail message my mother sent me last Friday morning. "Several government and private studies have concluded that the vast majority of the people who write these blogs are of high-school age or younger. … As to my opinion of your site, it would depend on whether I [were] judging it as fiction or non-fiction," she wrote. Uhm … wait just a minute here, and back the complete bullshit truck up. As any of you who have any clue about the blogosphere can attest, the vast majority of bloggers are at least in college, if not quite a bit older; I can easily name 50 blogs written by the 30-and-older crowd for every one run by a 15-year-old. Just to name a few examples, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos, Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette, and the writers of Washingtonienne, Atrios, and LiberalOasis, are all north of 30. This is almost universally true of the most widely-read blogs.

Unknowingly screwing up facts is one thing, and honestly, I don't really care that my mother didn't quite have her facts right about blogs; however, the completely gratuitous insult to my intelligence (or maturity, or whatever she was going after) was uncalled for under any circumstance. One of her favorite things to do when I was much younger was to use the "unfavorable comparison" tactic (i.e., "Why can't you be more like (insert sibling/classmate/neighbor kid/etc. here)?"); that's bad enough parenting when you're dealing with a 10-year-old, but now that I'm 25, I'm sick and fucking tired of it, and it doesn't work against me any more. If there is anybody who hasn't "grown up" since I was 10, it quite obviously is her rather than me, and "'Fact' Three" in that e-mail was, at best, a lame attempt at the same kind of put-down she's liked to aim in my direction for years.

Honestly, it's like this: either both of my parents are going to start treating me as an equal adult, albeit one with some financial struggles yet to overcome, or I will have as little dealing as possible with them until the day I move out — and then they'll never hear from me again once I'm gone. I've had it with being treated like I'm about 15, and I will no longer tolerate that. My father, especially, wonders why I've talked to them less in the last few months; well, this is one of many reasons why. He also wonders why I have zero trust in them; given what I've said here, that should be pretty obvious too.

I need to be off to bed, as an extremely long day awaits me tomorrow.