Which is to say, it's not really a friendship. Other ex-ships are bereft of pretense and discomfort. It's what makes them special. This one, on the other hand, is beset with pretense and discomfort. Don't get me wrong; this is preferable to hating one another. It's just a sad legacy.

I had to work to get here, too. My onetime dumper (who I will not name, for reasons that will become clear) has been reintroduced into my life in phases.

Phase One - It's the Devil!
This is the initial encounter. Best dispensed with, like removing a Band Aid.

Phase Two - Really?
Now she's starting to loosen up a bit, and she tells you select bits about her life. You sadly note that none of the problems she mentions—career, housing, family, men, finances, lack of ability to pursue what she really wants to do—would even exist had she simply meant it when she said she loved you. Everything you had once hoped she would accomplish for herself remains just hope. Diminishing hope. You say nothing.

Phase Three - I don't care anymo-o-ore.
You begin to notice her exhibiting the same self-destructive behaviors that drove you nuts in the beforetime. But now you both have the luxury of it not being your problem. Where was that back when you needed it?

Phase Four - Incontinence
As a certain point, if you're lucky, the demise of your relationship shifts from tragedy to comedy. For me, it wasn't when she told me about the "asshole alcoholic" against whom she had to get a restraining order. It certainly wasn't when he brandished a knife, chased her, or ended up in jail. It wasn't even when I found out he'd done this all before, to another woman, and had served 18 months for violating that restraining order. No. That's not funny. You question your retarded ex's judgment, certainly, but it's not like you wish this upon her.

"He must be incredibly hot," you say.

"He's literally an underwear model," she replies. "How did you know?"

"Because people generally don't give ugly psychopaths second chances."

And then I found the preening photos of himself he'd posted online. And that's when I burst out laughing.

I erupted at the sight of him. Suddenly the ludicrousness of my history snapped into focus. "Oh. My. God! I can't believe I lost a single night's sleep wondering what I did wrong to lose her!" I laughed. Apparently she was looking for a knife-brandishing, uneducated, alcoholic, underwear-model ex-con. My exact opposite.

What did I do wrong with her? Everything. I wasn't close, really. And thank Christ.

And thus did I send Lilly a huge care package of gourmet treats.

"You are amazing," read the subsequent text from her. It felt weird.

And I realized, with a jolt, that this was the first time a woman had ever directed these words at me without drips of sarcasm.

No, the real surprise to me is that Ohio State actually conducts performance evaluations of its employees.

I have watched this clip at least 20 times. I'm not proud. I'm just sayin.'

What goes around hath come around.

18 Best Pictures later, I find that I, too, have walked out on the winner. Not that The Hurt Locker offended or surprised me. It was more or less exactly what I expected, only boring. Around the fifth "tense" bomb-defusing scene, I found my mind wandering. When my mind drifted back, it was not kind to Hurt Locker. Jesus fucking christ, this is monotonous. Haven't I already seen this scene three or five times? I realized that I didn't care if the characters blew up. I realized that I didn't know the characters' names. I thought of them in terms of their archetype. That's the Guy Who Might Snap. That's the Trailer Trash. That's the Noble Black Man. That's the Guy On His Last Tour of Duty. I wonder what Dex is doing in her crate right now? Fuck this. I'm bored.

So I left with 20 minutes or so to go.

As much as I'd like to chalk this up to my barbarabushification, I suspect something far less amusing is at work. That Kathryn Bigelow's film would win, and she for Best Director, was a fait accompli ages ago. What a story! The first female director to win those honors! Against her ex-husband, even!

And indeed it is a great story. I just wish it seemed more earned and less ordained by people who very much like to congratulate themselves for setting the trends of proper thought. (Now that's getting the most possible mileage out of their high school diplomas.) Indeed, the collective praise for the film seemingly amounts to little more than "It was directed by a woman."

But maybe, I thought, Maybe I'm just reading too much into this.

And then it came time for the Best Director award. Expecting to see last year's winner, Danny Boyle, be the presenter as custom dictates, I moaned when the most self-congratulatory windbag of them all trotted out instead. Tonight, Barbara Steisand was delighted to tell us, the first woman director might win. (Pause so you can applaud) Or the first black director, which would be delightful too. (Pause so you can applaud) And when she opened the fateful envelope, she didn't merely announce the name. "Well, The Time Is Now," she intoned in bold title caps, thereby ensuring her own place in history as this moment is reshown. And then she announced what we already knew with certainty to such a degree, Steisand and not Boyle was presenting. Barbara Steisand, the Rosa Parks of female directors, slighted for Yentl because of her vagina and not because it sucked bilgewater.

Yentl, that is.

Enjoy your circle-jerk, Academy. You earned it. Me, I'm going to go watch Lost in Translation, by the vastly more deserving Sophia Coppola.

But one question remains: who'd you pay to take your GED test?

I can't be me.

Out of friendship.

When I was working for that cocksucking sleaze Ernest, I couldn't have cared less if I made him look bad. Heck, it was fun. But would I do that to Flo? To Christy? No, the friendship comes first, before my need to call out people's incompetence and disingenuousness.

This has led to the same exchange occurring over and over in my last ten years of work. Only the boss' name changes.

Annette: "Do you want to work with J.B. on [insert some horrible product]?"

John: "Do you want to rephrase your sentence such that you get a response you like?"

Annette: "Work with J.B. on it."

John: "Do I have the green light to handle him how I see fit?"

Annette: "Do I look stupid?"

1. I always ask permission before going off on someone.
2. That permission is never, ever, under any circumstances granted.

I didn't employ this the other night, however, as he was a volunteer and I was there in an official capacity. I felt like my hands were rhetorically tied. It was very much like when a girlfriend's parents spew bigoted crap.

"Honey, do I have your permission to—"

"No."

"But what if I only—"

"Fuck no."

How, you might reasonably ask, do racist remarks rear their head in a community meeting about dog parks, in a five-minute conversation between strangers?

Allie says it never happens to her, which given how hermetically sealed my life is (for JUST this sort of reason, I might add), surprises me. "It must be the way you look," cheerfully offers the #1 critic of my shaved head.

I'm not buying it. So I throw it open to you. (Note to Mike and d'Andre: bigoted things I say don't count.)

Ozzie. Freakin'. Guillen. Unhandled, unfiltered, unspellchecked. For the first time in my life, I 1) believe in God and 2) say the following without a trace of sarcasm: I can't wait for baseball season to start.

The other day, I couldn't find my ID, and I stood at the door and did the Keycard Patdown of all my pockets. I shan't be posting a video, but trust that this is the lily-whitest of all dances. A stranger held the door as he patiently watched a dork swat himself, and we shared a knowing look.

"Who on earth would go in there who didn't have to be there?" I sighed.

"Now I know you work here," he replied, gesturing for me to walk through.

Perusing Facebook, I saw that Mike had just fanned the group "Seattle Gay Scene." Specifically, it looked like this:

"Mike Pinkpoofter has become a fan of Seattle Gay Scene."

"You have become a fan of Seattle Gay Scene."

And then I tried to un-fan Seattle Gay Scene. Took me a good 20 minutes of combing my configuration to figure out that you have to open the fan page you've never before opened, then click "Remove Me As a Fan." 20 increasingly less amused minutes. 20 costly minutes.

"Poor little waggot," Mike chided.

Dirt knows I haven't taken a day off work in a month, so the offer was especially sweet to my ears. God, yes. I'll be right over.

"This is Brian," Dirt said, pointing to a stranger offering me a Cuban cigar.

"You're the computer guy?" Brian asked. "Got any degrees?"

Beware strangers bearing Cubans.

For the glacial next two hours, I smoked that Cuban and listened to Brian's business idea. He made me swear not to divulge it, but as you'll see in 29 words' time, absolutely nothing will come of my sharing it with a mass audience. Brian's big idea: people can use the Web to teach one another...around the world!

His patent was rejected, but he's resubmitting it.

"My friend the second-ranked quantum physicist in the world says this could be the first company in the world with a trillion-dollar market cap."

Maybe with a trillion dollars in venture capital, sure.

Over and over, he talked about the brilliance of his idea, about how he couldn't believe that he beat Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet to it. Eventually Dirt just got up and went inside, abandoning me to listen to the unremitting drone of Brian's self-delusions. "We're gonna save the economy and change the world," he said, shaking his head meaningfully, at least a dozen times.

In fact, I have now shared every last thing Brian said in two hours during which he talked unremittingly. As you might imagine, there was some repetition. Finally, he concluded with "So what do you think of my business idea, John?"

"Enough about you, what do I think about you?" I replied.

"Right," he replied with no self-awareness.

"Are you in Redmond?" she asks.

A stunning guess, considering I visit Microsoft's campus only about an hour a month.

"Yeah, actually, I am. How-"

"You sounded really pissed off."

In the Puget Sound area, we don't get much snow at all. I haven't seen a single flake this winter. Perhaps because of inexperience on ice and snow, the drivers here are not to be believed. They brake on inclines. They brake on curves. They brake because a cloud looks kinda like a teapot. I have no compunction about driving on snow back East, but here? I don't have a death-wish.