Complaints Department

I started out Saturday annoyed over the issues with my Internet connection. In the morning the cell phone WiFi hotspot thing was working considerably less well than it had been before I’d gone to bed, and all of my Googling was for naught, as I couldn’t find any solid information on what I needed to do to get the Linksys router to work. I would have settled for just getting a direct connection from Hugin to the wall outlet to work, but I really wanted to restore connectivity to all of my computers.

Most of the information I found focused on getting a non-FiOS router to work with the FiOS router – essentially using the FiOS router to keep the Set-Top Box working while connecting another router with a better wireless signal to that and using that second router to feed connectivity to the computers on the network. That didn’t do me any good.

I kept thinking about how I needed to do some kind of workout – whether lifting/ab work or time on the elliptical – but also really not wanting to because of laziness and because of wanting to get out into the world and get my weekly shopping misadventures over with.

I was going to stop at Best Buy before going to the comic shop, but, distracted by my annoyance – which was rising due to all of the traffic – I breezed past the turn and, out of habit, headed to the comic shop.

Now that I’ve started working on building muscle I’ve stopped weighing myself. Even though I know that it’s because I’ve put on muscle and muscle weighs more than fat, there’s this gut-level reaction to seeing my weight going up – even as my waist goes down – that’s kind of discouraging. Discouragement is the last thing I need.

In any case, the results of diet and exercise have made me a little vain. Not terribly so – I’m prone to thinking that I still look fat, and the areas in which I see improvement make the areas that still need improvement stand out – but I do spend a fair amount of time in, quite frankly, amazement as I check out my reflection. There’s no way around it: while there’s a definite need for a qualifying statement*, I look awesome.

This has, of course, given me a little more confidence about my appearance, to the extent that I’ve started wearing tighter clothes, and if I see a woman looking at me I at least entertain the notion that there’s a possibility – however slight – that she likes what she sees**.

In particular, I’ve noted that the cute girl who works at the comic shop has been a bit friendlier of late. Not overly so – and not to say that she was unfriendly before – but just enough that I’ve found myself thinking “Hmm…”

Of course, there’s usually at least one other employee besides her working at the store, and multiple customers there, so I don’t really get a chance to have a one-on-one conversation with her. Given that I’d gotten underway a bit later than usual, I’d hoped that maybe I’d get that opportunity this time around.

However, there were two other employees there, and multiple customers. Still, I took note of how she – in my perception – almost pushed her co-worker out of the way and blocked him from going in the back to get my books for the week so that she could be the one to get them for me, which seemed promising. (Though it may have been my imagination. But then, she did seem annoyed when the co-worker kept trying to tell her which box was mine. Of course, that probably had nothing to do with me and was just her being annoyed about him assuming she didn’t know what she was doing. I don’t know.)

Beyond just saying, “There you go” when she handed me the books, though, she didn’t seem especially inclined to talk to me. I took my stack and did my usual giving the place the once-over to see if there was anything else I wanted to buy, and then got in line, planning to strike up a conversation with her once she started ringing me up.

And that was when I got treated to one of the clearest instances of The Universe just straight-up cock-blocking me.

As she was finishing up with the person in front of me, one of the other co-workers, a new guy, asked if he could ring me up so that he could get more practice on the register.

She said okay, and proceeded to walk away from the register while Cockblocker McNewguy cheerfully began ringing me up.

Mother fu-

…

It was all I could do to not just lose it, cast my hateful glare upwards, and scream, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I mean, seriously, this sort of thing happens all the time – if I go to a restaurant with a 15:1 ratio of waitresses to waiters, I’ll get the waiter ever time – but somehow this just seemed so over-the-top ridiculous that, amped up as I was on murder juice***, I could barely restrain myself.

As I’ve mentioned many times in the past, my continual references to “The Universe” – by which, I suppose, I’m basically saying “God” – are a rhetorical flourish. I don’t actually believe that there are cosmic forces conspiring against me, but sometimes…

Honestly, whether there is some sort of guiding intelligence behind everything – whatever you want to call it – or not, effectively, given our inability to communicate with it in any meaningful way, it doesn’t exist. You can hedge your bets and live your life as though it does, following whatever belief system works for you, and you can kind of squint and see ways in which this force is “communing” with you, but the results you’ll get, apart from how your beliefs make you feel, won’t be any different from what you’d get if you lived as though it didn’t exist. Bad things happening to good people and etc. I mean, you can’t call God on the phone and have a conversation in the same way that you can call your Aunt Petunia on Yancy Street or whatever.

Sometimes, though, I really wish you could. At the very least I wish there were a complaints department. “Yeah, first of all, WTF is with suffering? Second of all, did you seriously need to have that guy swoop in and cockblock me like that?”

Not that it did any good – it didn’t even make me feel better – after that fiasco at the comic shop, some really annoying drivers on the road, failing to find the router I needed at Best Buy, and all of the other crap swirling around in my head, I had a “last straw” moment when I got stuck at a light thanks to the aforementioned annoying drivers who seemed to be doing their best to make sure I got stuck at that light, and I looked up and said, loudly, “You know what? Fuck you.”

After angrily completing my grocery shopping, I headed home and angrily ate lunch, then angrily mowed the lawn. Then I angrily took a shower, angrily got dressed, angrily drove to Wal-Mart to look for the router, angrily discovered they didn’t have it, angrily drove to the other Best Buy near there, angrily got the same result, then angrily drove home.

I wasn’t quite so angry when I called Verizon tech support, and I was less angry after my Internet started working again.

Today I was less angry still, but I’m not in the greatest mood. Still having issues with the touch screen on the laptop, and with the Baltimore Comic-Con coming up this weekend, and the whole point of trying to get touch in working order being for the purposes of coolly showing off my artwork at the Con, my annoyance level keeps hovering dangerously high.

And I’m still mad about that new guy at the comic shop, but who am I going to complain to, other than to you?

*That statement would be, “For me, at least.”

**Last month I went to the eye doctor, and the office manager there – an attractive-ish woman my age or slightly older – commented on how much weight I’d lost. Later, as she was leading me over to the corneal mapping machine, she gave me a full-on elevator stare, and made no attempt to hide it. I have to admit that, much to my surprise, it actually made me kind of uncomfortable.

***That’s what I call testosterone. The increased levels haven’t had any discernible effect on my libido, they’ve mostly just made me really, really angry. Despite calling it “murder juice,” it’s extremely unlikely that I’d ever do anything violent, but my fuse has gotten considerably shorter, and I often feel on edge. Also, I just like saying things like, “Well, I’m whacked out of my mind on murder juice.”

Blocked! or You Probably Don't Want To Read This, Mom

Warning: Before reading this entry you should be advised that it contains gratuitous use of the word “cock,” and not in reference to the other term for a rooster. So if you’re offended by the word cock, you probably shouldn’t read this, because, seriously, the word cock is going to appear many times, though mostly in the form of the word cockblocker, as in one who blocks cocks. If cock isn’t a word that you want to see repeated over again – like this: cock cock cock cock cock – it would really be a cock-up, as the British say, for you to read this entry that’s positively overflowing with the word cock.
Cock.

I’m not sure when the phrase cockblocker entered the lexicon, and perhaps it marks me as naïve and less than worldly – bear in mind that I don’t get out much – but I first encountered the word in 2001.
Now, while I did not know that there was a word for it, I was, as most guys are, familiar with the concept, and when I did hear the word mentioned, I immediately grasped – so to speak – what it meant, and understood just how accurately descriptive a term it really was.
While the meaning should be obvious, a cockblocker is someone who, well, blocks your cock. That is to say that a cockblocker is someone who, through various means, prevents a guy from getting laid.
A few years ago there were a series of ads – I believe they were for Axe body spray – that described the various kinds of “game killers” that exist in the world. They were, of course, talking about cockblockers, but they couldn’t actually say cockblocker on TV or in most print ads. I’m not sure how many varieties they identified, but there were considerably more game killers in their classification system than can be found in my classification system for cockblockers.
However, they were using a different classification system, and, essentially, every type of game killer was simply a variation on one the three types of cockblockers in my taxonomic scheme.
Before I get into describing the three basic types of cockblockers, I’ll go off on a bit of a tangent and relate the story of how I first encountered the term.
In early 2001 I was living in Tucson, Arizona, and working as a desktop publisher for a local free publication on the afternoon shift from 4:00 PM to 1:30 AM.
One of the guys I worked with also worked part-time at a hospital, and despite the demands this placed on his time, he always managed to find time to cheat on his live-in girlfriend, who was also the mother of his child.
At some point he set me up on a blind date with one of his hospital co-workers. After what seemed like a successful first date, there were various obstacles that prevented us from getting together for a second, until I suggested that she come by my work some evening so that we could go out for dinner on my lunch break.
The girl that my co-worker was banging on the side worked at the hospital, and was friends with the girl I was attempting to date, so, upon hearing about our plans, she invited herself along so that she could spend some time him, and so it ended up being a double date.
We all went to a nearby bar and restaurant for dinner, which, as I was only about 6 months into my sobriety at the time, made me uncomfortable, which served to exacerbate my social awkwardness.
Added to that was the fact that the other three all worked together and had known each other for quite some time, so for most of the date I sat in uncomfortable silence while the three of them chatted merrily away about people, places, and events that I was completely unfamiliar with.
At the center of it all was my co-worker who, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was monopolizing my date’s time, sat there in the spotlight happily absorbing the attention he was getting from his date and mine.
When we returned to work, one of our co-workers asked how it went, and I said, “Well, he had two great dates,” to which our co-worker responded, “So, he was being a cockblocker, huh?”
“Yes,” I said, soaking up the word. “He was being a cockblocker.”
(For the record, I acknowledge my culpability in failing to hold my date’s attention, but the fact remains that my co-worker made no effort to shift the focus away from himself, even though it should have been apparent to him that I really needed him to do so.)
So that was my introduction to the term.
As time progressed, I began to notice just how pervasive cockblockery is in society, and eventually identified the three basic types, which I will now describe.

The Competitive Cockblocker:
The name speaks for itself. This is someone who will block your cock in order to clear the path for his own. He will do anything and everything in his power to ensure the successful deflection of your cock.
By way of example, several years ago I was in competition with two friends for the affections of a young lady. One of those friends, carrying the competition too far, actually told the young lady in question that myself and our other friend were gay, and were, in fact, a couple. It was a gambit that didn’t pay off, and one he completely denied engaging in, but it serves as a perfect demonstration of just how far the Competitive Cockblocker will go. To give the anecdote some closure, the friend who told the gay story later came to realize that he himself was gay, and my alleged partner ended up being the one to successfully navigate his cock past both of us, which is just as well, as it turns out she was a cokehead and managed to get him hooked.

The Oblivious Cockblocker:
This is someone who is not actively attempting to block your cock, but still manages to do exactly that. The Oblivious Cockblocker is totally unaware of the fact that you’re attempting to score, so it never even occurs to him or her to get the fuck away and leave you to it. The most common types of Oblivious Cockblockers are people who are drunk off their asses or who are extraordinarily friendly and chatty and just want to hang out and join in the conversation.
As a case in point, my aforementioned co-worker was this type of cockblocker; he wasn’t actively attempting to block me, but his need to be the center of attention and to feed his ego prevented him from getting out of my way.

The Malicious Cockblocker:
This is someone who deliberately blocks your cock for no damn reason other than the simple pleasure of executing a successful block. The Malicious Cockblocker is the worst kind of cockblocker, simply because the cockblocking is utterly inexcusable. At least the Competitive Cockblocker can be viewed as a worthy opponent, and the Oblivious Cockblocker is, well, oblivious. But the Malicious Cockblocker? Just a straight up asshole.

One could argue for a fourth type of cockblocker, namely the Protective Cockblocker. This is someone who is blocking your cock because he or she simply doesn’t want you to successfully hit your target because he or she wants to protect your target from you. The Protective Cockblocker could be the target’s parents or friends who view you as a morning after regret just waiting to happen, and so work to keep your cock at bay.
However, I would maintain that the Protective Cockblocker is merely a subset of the Malicious Cockblocker, and not a distinct variety in and of itself.
There is, of course, some amount of overlap between the three basic types, and it should be noted that while cockblocking is an activity primarily engaged in by the male of the species, women are often just as guilty of cockblocking, often for reasons that are utterly incomprehensible to the blockee.
In his comment on my previous post, Scott actually brought to my attention the existence of a sort of Meta cockblocker, which is what inspired me to write this post.
(That’s right; if you’ve found this entry offensive, blame Scott.)
I’ve dubbed this variety of cockblocker the Preemptive Cockblocker.
This is someone – a father, an ex-boyfriend – who does something, or multiple somethings, to mess up a woman’s head so badly that she develops a kind of tunnel vision that leads her to only be attracted to a certain type of guy. If you are not that type of guy, you will have no chance whatsoever with this woman, even if there are no cockblockers actively standing in your way. It’s as if she has a cockblocking force field.
It may even be that she’s not attracted to any type of guy, and will herself deflect anyone who attempts to get close to her.
This type of cockblocker is the most insidious and one for whom there is no way to defeat, as he is no longer physically present. It’s not really even possible to see that he is a cockblocker when he actually is present, as his behavior would more likely identify him as a douchebag. Thus, a Preemptive Cockblocker can only be identified after the fact.

So there you have it; my take on the cockblocking phenomenon.
Now, it may be that you view this as all being more than a little misogynistic, as, after all, some of the language used objectifies women as nothing more than “targets” for guided phallic missiles.
To that I would say, first of all, lighten the fuck up. This isn’t some serious academic treatise on social dynamics, it’s mostly a joke. Maybe you don’t find it funny, but not funny is not the same as misogynistic.
Secondly, any interaction between men and women in a romantic context is, ultimately, marked by sexual desire on the part of at least one of the participants, and, statistically speaking, the odds are that it’s going to be on the part of the male, and will, therefore, involve the male part.
Certainly it’s true that sexual conquest may not be the only goal – or even the primary goal – in such an interaction, but it will always be a component.
Because I was aiming for a kind of crude, lowbrow humor, I used the most crass terms possible, but you could just as easily apply my observations in a more high-minded manner, and could use more flowery language, describing the respective types of cockblockers as “Romantic Rivals,” “Romantic Obstacles,” and “Enemies of Romance,” or whatever else you can think of. Ultimately you would be describing the same thing: people who, through various means and for various reasons, prevent a man and a woman from forming some kind of connection.
At this point, I should probably outline some of the strategies for effectively circumcising circumventing the various types of cockblockers, but, as should be apparent to anyone who knows me, I don’t have any.
I suppose you could say that there’s yet another type of Meta cockblocker: the Self-Cockblocker.
In conclusion, I can only say that no matter how offended you may be by this entry, you should count your blessings, as, after all, I didn’t include visual aids.