[McNally]

Originally Posted by Cretaceous Bob

One rule I have about people is if you're going to be emotionally frail, you'd better be fuckin' nice to people. If you're going to be callous and cavalier with your potentially hurtful words, you should be very thick-skinned. McNally has crossed this line by being a whiner who has his paper thin emotional stability completely destroyed by posts on a message board AND he's a bitter and angry jerk without regard for people's feelings.

You have a point here, Bob. I've never really butted heads with anybody in my adult life until I moved to New York. Usually I have an easy time getting along with people. The KATG social world turned out to be different than my pre-KATG life -- Suddenly everything I did or said was under much more scrutiny, and I didn't adapt to that very well.

The way Keith would tease Chemda, I tried to tease Chemda, but I was way too heavy handed about it. There were also some bad feelings behind it that I didn't initially realize were there. It's taken me a long time to sort out where those came from, because they really weren't justified, and I was surprised at myself for developing them: Resentment of New York, Chemda/Rellek jealousy, extremely different energy levels and different senses of life between me and Chemda. Living right down the street made us see each other more often than I saw most people in New York, which caused friction to build up more quickly. I'm not saying any of this is okay, I'm just trying to explain.

If you go back and listen to the aftershow where we argued, Chemda left the room after the main show, and I didn't understand why. You can hear me ask where she went. I was so oblivious that I didn't even know she was upset.

I don't know quite what my point is. I guess that I don't think I'm a particularly terrible person, but in this case I was incredibly unthoughtful and basically dumb. Once it came to light I tried my best to make things better. As another example, I've been thinking all night about this "time McNally shit on Chemda on the forums" that Keith has mentioned a couple of times, and I really can't remember what I said. It's pretty weird to be criticized for something and have no idea what that thing actually is. Sometimes I get those blinders on, so I definitely take their word for it. But it's hard to make up for things when you don't remember what they are. So, clearly I have to learn to be more careful about what I say, because it means more to other people than it does to me. Which, like you mentioned, is exactly what I was complaining about in that show, which makes it sound like I'm trying to have it both ways.

I tried to acknowledge the contradictions in that show. Jesse's commentary was super awesome, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts after you hear the full show as it was original put together. But if you're not into it, that's cool. A lot of times doing those shows helps me solidify my own opinions, and I think this one will help me be less upset about outside opinions in the future. It helped me realize that I do already have a pretty sizable number of people who like what I do, and that I should focus on them, instead of trying to get everybody on my side.