The short and simple explanation of what has just happened over the past few days involving Farkel and I is this. We are good friends. We joke with each other all the time. I made a joke about something that he was very sensitive about. I did not know it was a sensitive spot for him nor why he was sensitive to it. I thought his reaction to my joke was a set up by him to play a bigger joke back on me. I kept joking, he kept getting more pissed off while I thought he was playing along.
I felt I couldn't ask any of our mutual friends if he was serious or not because our mutual friends have just as sick and twisted senses of humor as Doug and I. They would love to work along with him to nail me. I would have loved that and laughed my ass off when they nailed me. Believe me, I deserve it, I mess with these people all the time and they would love to see me get a taste of my own medicine. To me, it was all a game. To Doug it was a little bit of hell having a good friend rip him a new one in public (personally I think the cell phone in the fish tank was some of my best work).
It was a huge misunderstanding that, not only were we not the same page, we weren't even in the same book.
We worked it out in e-mail and I apologized to him several times.
Doug and I are both professional in our particular forms of art. He is very passionate about his and takes it very seriously. I take mine for granted and don't take it seriously at all. I have the ability to take a joke about my art and he does not. I didn't know that. Now I do.
Some of you don't like Doug, I love the man in that guy semi-hug, three pats on the back, how about those Bears and Bulls, kind of way.
We are still friends. We worked it out but, I don't think the Doug and Dave show will be appearing on this network for a while. I think I will mess with another person in the mean time. I have Valis in my sights.
Doug started a thread yesterday to try and smooth things over a bit and let those who were concerned about all of this chill out a bit until we worked it out. I did not see the thread because I did not come to the board all day yesterday. I saw it today.
Doug has pissed a few people off in the past. Some took his thread as an opportunity to express their opinion about Doug's past comments and how they were made and who they hurt. I'm his pal, his friend, but I am also a great believer in what goes around comes around. That is why I don't comment in those kinds of threads anymore. It wasn't exactly a nice thing to do jumping on him, but, as Doug has said, we are all broken, damaged goods. Broken things don't usually work right all the time. That goes for Doug, me, as well as everyone else who doesn't have Doug on their Christmas card list.
Simon closed the thread before I had a chance to make a comment. I am making my comments here. I hope this thread doesn't get closed, but I'm not the one who owns the board and is holding the sewing needle. After a few years of watching the kids fight in his sand box Simon has gotten a little quick with his thread closing button. Who can blame the guy. He not only has two kids at home to take care of, he has a couple of thousand here to keep an eye on. I'm actually hoping this board drives him crazy enough to end up in a nut house somewhere on Devils Island. His wife is a real babe and I have always wanted to visit England.
Most of the wars here get heated because a person has made a nasty comment about another persons friend. We have all lost friends and family because of the religion that has brought us to this board. Friendships on this board are a very sensitive issue. We take our friendships that we have now, here, very seriously. We tend to have short fuses when it comes comments made to, or about our friends we have here because we all appreciate what REAL friendship is now. Not like the extremely conditional friendships we THOUGHT we had in the past.
We can't always know what pisses another person off on this board. All we know about other people here is based on what they have said in the threads. That is only the tip of the iceberg of who the person really is. Most of who that person is, is made up of what they DO NOT say or tell us on this board. That is what caused this problem with Doug and I and we both consider each other good friends.
People on this board seem to form strong friendships after they have talked on the phone or have actually met in person. Doug and I have talked on the phone several times and have meet in person. A misunderstanding still accrued, but our friendship is still intact. I don't think this new language of only written words on a monitor is the best way to get to know people. You can't see their smile, their frown, or their tear. But at least this board can introduce us to people who can end up being a life long friend. A start is a start.
You simply can't know everything about a person by what they say on this board. I learned that about TeeJay several months ago and made a big mistake. I have also apologized to him for that one. Not knowing everything about a person on this board is what causes a lot of the problems here. We react to a person based on very little information about them, so, we make up who WE THINK they really are, in our own broken little minds. We never will know everything about every person here no matter what we may think. It's something to think about.
I have learned something through all of this. I hurt a friend. I didn't mean to. He knows that now. If I meant to or not is not the problem. It is the simple fact that I did, and it was all a huge misunderstanding. Misunderstandings cause wars on this board. It's sad to say but, it looks like they always will.
The end.
Now, where in the hell is that little Photoshop hack Valis?
Dave
