It's been a long two and a half years. (Ssh! Quiet! He's gonna be controversial again!)

Frankly though, I'm feeling good right now. All these shitty things were happening to me, some at the hands of supposed friends, and I stayed quiet. The sole reason I stayed quiet is because I wanted to save one special relationship, and undo some of the ways that I had screwed up in. And hopefully, we're nearing an end to that process. In the meantime, the truth is coming out, and it's pretty cathartic.

I've lost a lot of friends over this intervening time, and thus OO has lost those people as well. But I've still got some good friends left, and more than one has suggested that this isn't really anything to feel bad about. They suggested that no matter what else this horrible time has been, it's been a crucible, that's separated the good people from the bad.

If I had a magic time machine where I could go back in time and prevent this all from happening, and we were all nominally friends, I still might go on a purge, since I'd know just what kind of people these are when the chips are down.

The Internet has never been famous for its good people, and that's why Our Oasis was formed. It was easy to separate out the "I can irrationally hate X more than you can" folks in the wrestling forums, and the downright psychopathic cyberstalkers doing every disruptive tactic they can to try to force the truth to disappear from the Internet (why does that sound familiar all of a sudden?), but not all of the bad people reveal themselves right away. Some can really seem like good people, especially when they're getting everything they want. Some of them certainly had me fooled for a while. And a lot of them have some good people out there fooled. Unfortunately, too many people just stop thinking at "Well, they're cool to ME" without ever looking at the evidence of how they treat other good people and realizing that good people wouldn't do that, no matter how cool they are to them right that second.

I've seen a lot of varieties of the not so good people as well.

I have a right to have whomever I want in my blog, they scream at me. It's true, but that's not the point. They certainly do have the right to have someone in their blog abusing that position and their name to attack a friend, or just rewarding that person despite all he's done to that friend, but you can't sit there and say that person's still a good friend if they do that. If one of your parents is hitting the other, you have a perfect right to say "Oh, well they're both my parents and I'm staying out of it." You're a pretty crappy son or daughter, and a pretty crappy person in general if you do that, but you've got a right to do it. And that's not even mentioning the idea of FACILITATNG the abuse... helping it happen, lending your name and resources to it. But I'm not allowed to say that's wrong? Yeah.

Others want to use me in order to feel better about themselves, whether through constantly evoking pity, even if none is deserved, or putting themselves over at my expense. There's an element of "shame on me" for not realizing that sooner, but I'm not going to allow that to happen at my expense from here on in. Please go get help so you don't need to do this any more.

Others have told me "Well, I'm not your friend any more because this friend is a better friend" even when I do far less to them with justification than they've done to me without it. Well... thanks for confirming you never really were my friend. It kind of makes you a shitty person to pretend you were this whole time. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

And one last one is pissed just because he doesn't want to be held to an apology like the rest of us offer on our own when we've done someone else wrong. Well... I'm sorry you didn't graduate Kindergarten like the rest of us. Have fun growing up, preferably away from me.

And what's the end result? I'm surrounded by quality people, who I know will be my loyal friends when the chips are down, and who know the same about me. And my friendships are stronger than ever with these quality people. And I thank these quality friends for their true loyalty and support, concepts utterly non-understandable to the other people.

On the flip side, there's a collection on the other side of the not so quality people. The funny thing about that, though, is that if they couldn't help letting me down, they can't help letting each other down.

Take for example, one recent incident from a while back. A-hole A decides to go post a whole online conversation from A-hole B without his consent. A-hole B is mad... mad, I tell you! But with good reason. Doing that is wrong, although "wrong" is a concept quite beyond the grasp of A-hole A. But in a way, it's almost funny, because A-hole B has infamously posted chat bits without consent before, and at least once put friends into a hell of a spot because they didn't want his precious little feelings hurt (without knowing he could care less about their's). Don't get me wrong, A-hole A is still a pretty major waste of life for what he did, but if anyone deserved it, it was A-hole B.

Now if you guys on the other side can actually be reading this without thinking "Side with Dave must be bad! Side other must be good! Urrrr!", carefully consider this. Your fellows over there on the other side each did something wrong by me. And what was I, a friend they had on the Internet. They somehow found rationalization that it was okay not to be a good friend, or even outright attack me. And what are you... a friend they have on the Internet. There is precisely nothing stopping them from hitting you with the same kind of behavior the second something resembling a reason pops up in their twisted little heads, just like The Misadventures of A-hole A & B above here. It'll be entertaining to us who turns on who first... who lets the other down first... because, I just told you so.

It might be less than entertaining to you though. For the sake of the friendship we used to have... watch your backs.

In the meantime, I'm blissfully insulated from psychopathic rantings, and so are my quality friends, who I couldn't even convince to check it out even in the name of a good laugh. But all the ranting does nothing but encourage people to come here and thus the distribution of this piece (which along with the other is staying on here until the end of time if I have anything to say about it) is nicely increased.

At least by everyone not driven away by incessant negativity, undefendable extreme opinions, and suicide threats whenever someone dares to disagree. I can't imagine that's many people.