Yay for the Global Village

A few days back I put a post up here with so many typos it looked like something Nim the Chimp might have typed after smoking the evil weed (which he did do regularly in his young-chimp days but more on that story later. ) As I explained afterward, this happened in my attempt to write fast and get the heck out of town, a feat I accomplished by taking out an old piece and cutting off the hem and sewing on new cuffs  just like my mother did every September with the hand-me-down school uniforms we got from our larger more prosperous cousins.I just wanted to get to the beach – sob! -  and I did get there finally, where I sunned, ate, drank and kicked up my heels so much that when I popped open my laptop at midnight, well, the copy looked fine and dandy to ME: It was all a lovely blur.  Luckily blogger Brian Moloney of The Freelance Retort read it almost as soon as it appeared and fired off a quick note: “Dude!” he said. “Lots of typos today!”I fixed the typos quick as a wink and followed with a real mea culpa of a post the next day.In response to that Brian wrote in the Comments section of the piece, “Two dozen hail Marys (footballs are optional), four dozen Acts of Contrition, several hours of physical self-flagellation ... 14 hours of the 700 club followed by The Jersey Shore.”  Then, some 20 hours later, he wrote again to say 'So enough with the sack cloth and ashes already', and a few hours after that, when he had seen the encouraging things some nice readers had also posted by way of making me feel better, he said, “It’s funny to watch your people rally around you when you show some distress. You can probably get away with murder. So I’m sending you a list.”But here's what's really funny: It's funny that I didn’t know Brian months ago and now he makes me laugh every day and gives me fresh ideas to boot.I just wanted to add this as a kind of PS to my piece about the awesomeness of Facebook yesterday - it’s the global village, all right, just like we pictured it!  -  and also to mention how grateful I feel for all those lovely readers who see me so clearly, and in their generosity of spirit accept me anyway. So yup: the guy in the picture is practicing self-flagellation, the ancient spiritual discipline if that's what it is. As arresting a sight as that bright blood is, I'm telling myself  ‘Forget self-flagellation. Just move on and do better next time.’