Practice What I Preach? No Way, Not Me.

Blowhard: A person who talks much and foolishly or boastfully.
Jackal: A person who does low or dishonest work for another: from the notion that the jackal hunts game for the lion and eats the leavings.

Do you remember the saga of THE BLOWHARD and THE JACKALS? Trust me, I do, because it's another one of those sagas where I don't get my way. Unfortunately, I find that the definition of the jackal and the blowhard apply to me with some regularity. This is probably why they annoy me so much.

I had a meeting yesterday with THE BLOWHARD to discuss in greater detail the transfer of some of my responsibilities to THE JACKALS. As you might surmise, I didn't look forward to this. In fact, my preparation included trampling all over one of my cardinal rules: "Restraint of Tongue and Pen," or the more familiar "Keep Your %^*!!# mouth shut." I tell people to practice this rule and I intend to do so myself, but there is a certain distressingly irritating group of individuals (Note to self: do some writing to confirm that these individuals are mostly indistinguishable from own self) who bring out the worse in me, which is pretty bad and lurking just a millimeter below the surface.

Both of us tried to maneuver the other into a time slot and location for this meeting, which I didn't want to attend, that was personally convenient. I have to hand it to THE BLOWHARD. He hung in there. He's almost as much of a control freak as I am. But he doesn't have my finely honed skills in the ancient art of feng shui manipulation. He's good but he's no Horseface.

I should admit, I guess, that I spent a lot of time muttering and spluttering as I tried to direct him where I wanted him to go even though it made almost no difference to me one way or the other. I just wanted to be The Controller and not The Controlled. Frequently, when I get control of a situation I find that the outcome isn't to my liking after all. And I get upset trying to gain this end.

The point is that on the way to my meeting I returned a phone call from Mr. Ubiquitous. We laughed about it, and he told me to pray for the guy. I replied with a comment that is unprintable in even this profane blog. And as I was leaving the meeting, walking out into the parking lot, Shorty buzzed in, and we laughed some more. Shorty's shtick is writing, and he asked if I needed to do some and then make an amends. I was able to honestly say no, despite my murderous, self-righteous judging.

What makes the whole exercise difficult for me is that THE BLOWHARD comes by his moniker honestly. He reminds me of a smarmy televangelist dressed in a $2000 suit or one of those infomercial dudes selling one implausible scheme after another. As I listened to the unbroken string of bullshit coming out of this guy's mouth, I thought: "He really believes what he is saying." This from a guy who evades work like it's the plague, takes credit for anything good while shifting blame for anything that's a failure, and is so politically connected that you it's dangerous to screw with him.

It isn't really a lie if you believe it.