[Wonderful Labs] The Spanky Best of Wonderful

[Wonderful Laboratories]

***********  There is no Wizard but Oz, and Moolah is his Profit... 
Mister Wonderful regrets that his time management skills rank somewhere
below a dead, bloated stoat's, but that's the price of faith.  Normal
query response *will* resume, but meanwhile here's one from four years
and several scores ago...


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: THEY WONDERED APART
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 


Mr Wonderful,

	I experienced a mutual breakup with someone (circumstances conspired
against us) and we both decided that we would still be friends.  I've
tried to contact this person a few times and they have not responded to
my correspondence.  I think they would rather not have any relations
with me at all.  I can accept that and won't push to the level of
stalkerhood or anything.

	My question is: Can men and women still be friends after an emotionally
charged, passionate relationship?

Definitely Dissed
_________________
Dear Mary Magdalen,

	Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure,
sure... I don't see why not. 

	Oh, you mean with *each other*.  Ohhh. Hmmm.

	Well, what you have to understand is that people get busy.  Doesn't
matter whether they're men or women, once a major figure is gone from
their lives, other things come along to fill in the gap.  Heh.  Sorry -
don't think about that metaphor too much.  You'll start crying.  I know you.

	You shouldn't take a lack of correspondence to mean that your paranoid
fantasies about the love and friendship being dead on the vine are true.
 "Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence," as my old friend Amir
used to say.  Of course, we used to hide his glasses all the time.  He'd
stumble around, trip over bannisters, walk through windows... certain
that since he could not find the glasses anywhere else, they *must*
still be on his face.

	Okay, here's the thing:  how many of your friends do you regularly
correspond with?  What percentage of the whole?  10%, 15%?  And do you
respond to every one of your friends who writes you?  If you do, you're
a damn fool.  Most of those jokers are just asking for money.  Or how to
get in touch with your ex-lover so they can get a shot in.  Lousy
turncoat bastards.  Don't even wait for the corpse to get cold, do they?
 Wait, wait, where was I?

	Okay, yeah.  You guys are still friends, it's just that you're the 85%
of friends that you don't talk to all that often, because you're busy
modern people fulfilling your destinies in your own way, apart from each
other, and that's perfectly fine.  

	If you're really *just friends*.  

	If you're harboring the hots for this person, I'd suggest rephrasing
the query.


************************
IT'S NOT UNWONDERFUL TO BE LOVED BY ANYONE
************************

-- 
Thought Pusher

	"Wilson describes himself as a 'guerilla ontologist,' 
	signifying his intent to attack language and knowledge
	the way terrorists attack their targets: to jump out from
	the shadows for an unprovoked attack, then slink back and
	hide behind a hearty belly laugh."

		-Robert Sheaffer, on
	Robert Anton Wilson, in
	_The Skeptical Inquirer_