On Friendship

"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity." Kahlil Gibran

We got to discussing friendship over tea the other night, and it occurred to me that I have many, maybe too many. Some dearer to me than others. Some have fallen by the wayside over the years, and many have grown closer and more cherished with time. Through it all though, I'd still like to think that if I ever bumped into any of the people I refer to as my "friends", I could pick up conversation with them as though we had never been apart.

There are very few things which annoy me to the point of my having to write about it,but having my friendship used for selfish purposes and personal gain certainly ranks way up there on the list.

Tonight's rant is about a guy I honestly once thought highly of and respected. He met me late last year and mentioned that he was looking for a place to rent, and as fate would have it a dear friend of mine just so happened to have the perfect home for him and his family. Before you could say "I'll take it!" the ink on the lease agreement was dry and he was moving in.
A perfect example of how goodness begets goodness, and positive karma attracts positive karma.
Or so I thought.

Within a month the cracks in his character began appearing, and now we're in a situation where he has defaulted on his rental obligation to the point of receiving an eviction notice.

All relevant and irrelevant excuses aside, here's my problem with this situation:
If you know that your character is wishy-washy (I looked this up in my Thesaurus and this is the best I could come up with) and you suspect that you have more flaws than the Eiffel Tower (pun intended), why in heavens name would you bring that to the table amongst friends?
If your'e going to be an asshole about your dealings, be they business or personal, surely you can have the foresight to be said asshole in the company of strangers who you don't have to face every other day at the local Spar or Post-Office. I mean even as a teenager I knew better than to date girls from my own suburb! I knew I was going to be an ass and dump them or be dumped at some point, and since I never wanted to bump into either them, their bigger bulkier dumber brothers or their licensed-to-carry-a-firearm dad's, I knew better than to date girls within the neighbourhood.
Surely that's common sense.

Be a dickhead, but just not around me. Or anyone I care about.
Now you've come to the adults pool in your Snoopy boxers, jumped in, frolicked with us, then rudely pee'd in the pool and left. Dude, you've just screwed the fun up for everyone.
Retard!

That's why I think once every so often, we should do an inventory of all the people we call friends, put all the names in a bucket, throw in some HTH, and purge all the crap that floats to the top.

Here endeth the rant.

In other news, I am seriously considering buying an iPad2.
Not because I need it, but because Steve Jobs and the good people at Apple say it will vastly improve the quality of my life. Apparently all that I am and all that I have been doing over the last 30 odd years is in fact truly worthless, because I have been doing it without an iPad2.
Turns out the Sony Playstation people who used the same marketing tactic were just setting us up for the iPad people.

I don't want my life to be worthless.