Thought I would take a few long-winded moments to explain why I suddenly disappeared from this Era after a really great start, and why I suddenly got so sensitive & hissy-pissy in the Forums.
About 3 weeks ago or so, Mrs. Affy was assaulted outside of her new work place by the wife of her former boss of 15 years. I needed to take some time off from my late night insomnia and games to handle some issues in RL. Mrs. Affy is OK, (other than the fact she has had to be married to me for the last 27 years...) at the time of the assault she got some bruises on her chest, and lower neck from some serious poking and shoving, but mainly the attack was an emotionally draining event for my wife.
OK, yes, I know how that sounded above, I have gotten a few chuckles later about the "wife of her former boss" thing, yes, I smile at how that sounds. But no, Mrs. Affy was NOT sleeping with her former boss (as far as I know... HAHA) Essentially, my wife is a paralegal, or Certified Legal Assistant of many years, who worked for a local lawyer whom I grew up with and went to school with, and his wife was the office manager of the law office. After 15 years, and for all sorts of reasons we wont go into here from her boss and his wife losing their GD minds over money problems, and some racial and philosophical/political differences with them and us my wife left his employ to go work elsewhere in our little town. My wife went to work for the City of Williston (City Hall) and her former boss was the long-time Lawyer for the City of Williston. About 6 months after my wife went to work for the city, the City Council voted to fire her boss as the City Lawyer, mainly due to his erratic, harassing, and crazy behavior towards my wife, their new employee, and all other employees at City Hall, and some crazy over-billing practices, and, being a general smuck and know-it-all ding-a-ling.
Well, as I mentioned, he was in money problems and this loss of revenue equaled about 100K US Dollars per year (yes, that is correct, often times MORE than 100,000 $$ a year!), and they somehow fixated upon my wife and my family that this was OUR fault they were crazy, and harassing, and general malcontents of our quaint little town and got him fired as the City Attorney. So, a few days later after this incident, his wife decided to take it out on my wife and she is a fairly hefty, larger, foul mouthed kinda over-aggressive under educated heifer and her shoving and poking of my wife did some pretty good damage to the beautiful Mrs. Affy. One man intervened as my wife tried to retreat and when he placed his body in the way of my wife's former bosses wife she punched/slapped the man in the face! Well, he pressed charges and had her arrested, we filled out a police report to allow us to press charges later should we decide to.
As things go in small towns, I grew up with these people, they go to our church, and we have been friends for over 40 years, all that came to a crashing halt with this craziness. I was going to let it go (not press additional assault & battery charges), then the lawyer went after my son's business (you all know him as Cool Breeze in Q and Main) and kept pushing other things, trying to get my wife fired from her City job by making crazy lies and claims about her embezzling and stealing confidential files from his office when she left, etc. So, I had to act, and finally had to defend our family (yep, here comes 'Bad Affy'...). I am pressing charges for stalking, harassment/libel, assault and battery by his wife, and using the accumulated stuff from when he was her employer (emotional distress, verbal harassment), and all the erratic behavior to go after him civilly with a law suit, AND, an Ethics and Behavior case with the Florida BAR, which governs Lawyers in my state. He thinks he lost some revenue with losing his City of Williston Client. If this gets him Dis-Barred (unable to practice Law) he will lose ALL his revenue and clients.
Fun? Right? You can imagine how all this is going over in a small town. Suddenly long time friends are taking sides, saying mean and hateful/hurtful crap to me and my wife, blah, blah, blah so you can see old man Affy's sudden sensitivity to how people treat people....
Basically, life is too short, being mean and hateful, holding grudges and treating people in any fashion other than you would want them to treat you is suddenly a big topic for me. I left the US military because I did not believe the US military should be using our might to be the World's moral police back in the 90's (I was in Desert Storm, the Conflict in Iraq/Iran in the US Air Force). Did the US learn our lesson then? Heck no, we invaded Iraq in the new millennium, making the same mistakes, looking for pointless vengeance over the 9/11 thing in New York when we should be taking care of business at home. People in the US are struggling, our US economy is in the shizzer along with our World reputation (Karma anyone??) and with hard times comes financial distress, political unrest, AND...
PEOPLE TREATING OTHER PEOPLE LIKE THEY ARE LESS THAN HUMAN.
People can't help themselves sometimes, when times get tough they lash out at others. Remember what old man Affy says today, tonight or whenever you read through this book/novel.
Every major religion of the world, every philosophy that has endured the test of time all have one common Tenant, or belief, and they all go something similar to this:
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
In my religion we call this the "Golden Rule". It is rule numero uno, the prime directive, the one law/tenant that is there in case you don't get/follow any of the others moral laws/rules, then just try to do this one...
Imagine what a world that would be??
Love/Peace to all, even 'Bad Affy' as nasty tempered as he is at times, has to agree with this sentiment.
Have fun in the game, Have fun in your life!
Be aggressive, be strong/tough, but do it with respect. Aggressiveness without being hurtful or hateful is often the true measure of a person, no matter what the situation or competition. We all KNOW we have it in us, i.e. the Olympics, World Cup Soccer, etc. Why then must we kill our brother over a strip of land or some moral ideal, difference in customs/beliefs, color of our skin, different way we dress/speak, or whatever stupid thing causes a conflict? I do not know, but I know I fall far short of the very standard I try to explain here... I will do my best to work on that!
And, don't worry about Mrs. Affy or this crazy old man, we will be just fine.
I know we are OK - I have friends ALL OVER THE WORLD.
HAHA I feel a Poll coming on...
