Remember when you were a kid and older sibling or neighborhood kid would goad you into doing something stupid by relentless teasing or a double-dog dare?

Remember what you told your parents when you were caught doing something stupid because of the situation that I described?

"He made me do it!"

Don't you just hate when people make you do things?

The reason that I am thinking of this tonight is twofold:

That damned Obama is trying to make us all purchase health care insurance. You haven't heard?  It's all over the news.  In fact,  I'm damned sick of hearing about it. I imagine that by now the Supremes, who look old and tired to begin with, are really tired of hearing about it also. After all, they are a crotchety old bunch and they already have their own health plan. Oh, sure, Their health care covers a buxom Swedish massage-and-aroma- therapist. What do they have to worry about? They are probably thinking "God, what a bore this person is. I just want to get out of here and a have a few slugs of Red Eye and take my nap".

The reason that I'm damned sick of hearing about it is that damned Reg Henry shut-down his blog on the Post-Gazette, leaving me and a number of other Reg-ulators with no choice but to join that damned Facebook if we want to tell people how pissed we are about thngs.

In fact, he made me do it. Join Facebook, that is. (Altough I already had a neglected account, truth be told. At least by shutting down "Reg on Wry" I nearly doubled the number of friends that I have with the Reg-ulators who still talk to me. I think that I'm up to twenty. My kids find that very amusing, but won't explain the joke to me.)

Now if I want to Catholic-bash, or spread my communist doctrine, or become embroiled in  some gender-based argument,  or just become embroiled period, I have to post *here*, where noone but Toadsly, ciejai, Jersey Joe, and mm44 reads posts. (And even then prob'ly to humor the crazy old guy.)

I wonder if Reg realized what he did when he deep-sixed his blog. There are probably lots of other bloggers like me with nowhere to go, and that's not a good thing. Me, and probably a number of otherr Reg-ulators, find ourselves lonesome. (Or is that "loathsome"?)

Reg has upset the natural balance of things; he's knocked the karmic wheel off the dharmic apple cart, and folks with only a tentative connection to reality can feel tossed into the abyss, or seek succor where they can find it, like lonesome Joe Buck in  this scene from "Midnight Cowboy":   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBy2MW-D9P8

Teachable Moment: Don't ever, ever engage another human being. (Kind of like the rule: Don't ever, ever talk to anyone on the bus. (That's how I met Mrs. pumpernickel.) ) You will become forever responsible for that person's actions. You will make him "do things" he never even dreamed of.

He'll go to seedy hotels seeking-out creepy old sidewalk evangelists.

He'll join Facebook.