In Which Eric Confuses Mockery with Popularity

While trumpeting his own virtues and over-reaching in his desire to call attention to himself at every opportunity are the cornerstones of Eric Walkingshaw's personality, I find his latest attempt at self-congratulatory blog-posting to be, quite frankly, a little puzzling. It has left me perplexed, staring at it with varying degrees of intensity and focus, trying to decipher its hidden meaning like I would a symbolic poem or Magic Eye poster. And yet, a full 33 hours after he originally posted it, I am no closer to solving this mystery than I am to growing a second penis out of the back of my neck.

What gets me is this: why does Eric Walkingshaw conflate my mockery with some kind of tacit approval? Is my message unclear? Have I been less than forthcoming? Have I unwittingly constructed my written thrashing of his self-important blog in such a fashion that upon a casual read it appears that I am in fact, as he puts it, his "biggest fan?" I have done much close reading of my own words, as well as a good deal of soul-searching (only some of which involved physically pleasuring myself), and have come to the relieving conclusion that no, I have not. The only reasonable answer I can come up with for Eric's bizarre misinterpretation of my intentions is that Eric Walkingshaw, married cat-fancier and 3-D fantasy board game enthusiast, is dumb as a bag of hammers.

Not in the general sense, of course; I would place a fairly large wager on Eric being able to beat a bag of hammers at a game of Trivial Pursuit, for instance, or at some sort of essay-writing contest (though the bag of hammers' 2002 entry, "Nail, We Are Brothers in This World of Toil" was quite eloquent). I'd even concede that Eric could score higher on an aptitude test. But when it comes to reading comprehension, I'm afraid Eric comes up short. While it remains to be seen whether a bag of hammers could prove its ability to read--its only form of communication besides the written essay, after all, is to shift its weight such that its contents rattle in varying tones--even if it couldn't, it would do better at understanding the written word than Eric has done in this case. The purpose of my blog is rather obvious. How? Let me count the ways:

1) The very first sentence I ever wrote on my blog begins like this: "Hello everyone, and welcome to my new platform for belittling Eric's self-aggrandizement."

2) Within the confines of my first post, I poke fun at Eric's nerdy interests, call him a "strange fellow," as well as an "aquatic rodent," and also expose his addiction to Wikipedia.

3) In my second post, I make the first of what is certain to be a massive litany of observations regarding the size of Eric's nose (it's big).

4) I also tease Eric about losing at fencing to a girl, and quite literally hope for a future, real stabbing of Mr. Walkingshaw to take place.

5) I pooh-pooh Eric's evaluation of several action/adventure films, all of which I found less satisfying experiences than he did. Granted, this is more a difference of opinion than an expression of disgust, with my opinion being that Eric's opinion sucks.

So the case seems pretty clear to me: I dislike Eric Walkingshaw. I express this dislike by mocking the words he writes in his blog, and whenever possible pointing out the enormity of his snoot. The only thing I can possibly imagine causing any kind of confusion is when I said "part of me wants to congratulate him;" but since I wanted to congratulate him on allowing his wife to practice murdering him, I'd hardly qualify that comment as anything approaching "fandom."

But I am a reasonable man--at least, that is what my therapist tells me when I break down in tears and threaten to run myself through with the meat skewer that I inexplicably bring along to all our sessions--so I will offer to clear up whatever misconceptions there may be about this blog by relating an incident from earlier in my own life, an incident which illustrates the difference between "popularity" and "a deeply held and immensely enjoyable disgust for another human being."

When I was in middle school, I found myself torn from the safe confines of a prepubescent world and dropped into the middle of a teeming morass of rampaging hormones and competitive jackassery. I was nearly destroyed by this maelstrom. Teased to the brink of--actually, often right over the brink of--girlish tears, I would while away the long school days by curling up into a ball in the corner of the room and fantasizing about growing wings and flying away from that horrible place, only to return with an atom bomb I had acquired on my travels and turn all those bastards into radioactive dust. But my innocent, childish fantasies could not protect me from the horrors of the real world, as I discovered one fateful day when a very popular brunette who was in my class came up to me in the hallway, looked me right in the eye, and said "You smell weird." And then she walked away. Now, I had two possible conclusions to draw from this encounter: one, that since a popular girl had spoken to me, no matter what she said this was to be taken as a sign of acceptance, and from that day forward I, too, would be one of the chosen ones, eating lunch at the same table and awkwardly fondling each other at the same eighth-grade dances; or two, she actually thought I smelled weird, and her telling me so was just an expression of her palpable disgust with my very existence.

Naturally, I chose to form the latter conclusion, which was both reasonable and the reason why to this day approaching brunettes fill me with a sense of dread and panic only relieved by the repeated mutterings of the words "everyone dies, everyone burns" in a hurried, hushed tone. However, inexplicably, when presented with what can only be described as an exactly parallel situation, Eric Walkingshaw chose to draw the former conclusion, and thus maintain his self-image as a man beloved by the people, a veritable demi-god who enjoys the worship of millions.

Which actually may be the case. Judging by the comments Eric has received on his posts, he is indeed a man of many friends. Why can't I have these friends? Why do they always tease me about my haircut? Why do they give me those strange looks when I leer at them desirously from behind my sculpture of myself with a penis growing from the back of my neck? It's all so unfair!