Prescription for Peace

Happy New Year, darlings! Pretty Lady's second anniversary is upon us! Uncharacteristically, she cannot really find the words to thank you all, for your kindness, your friendship, your mentorship, your humor, and your lively, witty discussions. You have given Pretty Lady far more than you know.

In fact, darlings, you have given Pretty Lady the thing she has been seeking since time began; you have bestowed upon her Inner Peace. And now that she has glimpsed it, she wishes to extend this glorious, expansive, limpid tranquility to the wide world beyond. She does this in perfect trust and sincerity, with confidence that her message will be heard and passed along, to every corner of this troubled planet. Are you ready?

1) We must pay what we owe.

2) We must forgive our debtors.

And peace shall be upon us. Simple! Just like that!

Of course, just because attaining inner and outer peace is simple, does NOT mean it is easy. Pretty Lady herself cannot begin to imagine all the unpaid debts she must track down and remedy; she privately suspects that these debts may number into the hundreds of thousands, including the lunch invitation from the Asian coworker in 1992 (thank you, dear Cynthia!). The best Pretty Lady can do is balance her checkbook, send out a host of thank-you notes, and give stern instructions to the Holy Spirit to alert her of any grievous lapses.

Which is why #2 is so crucial.

For, darlings, if we go seeking Justice, in the form of Worldly Vengeance and Restitution, peace shall never come upon us. Pretty Lady rather doubts that she shall ever receive an adequate apology from any of her former partners in Codependent Dysfunction; she will have to take this as read, and Move On. (It is, in fact, her inchoate theory that moving to New York City brings out a person's most negative, self-defeating defensive habits to an exponential degree, rather like a toxic upheaval; she has seen this happen in both herself and in everyone she's ever known who moved here. Eventually we either get over it and move along, as competent and productive individuals, or we careen into the abyss of solipsistic despair and are never seen again. Pretty Lady gives it 50/50.)

So Pretty Lady urges you all to move with her into the Now, to embrace the Present, and to let the Past bury its dead. She suggests that all of us release the suicide bombs, the assassinations, the lies, the pollution, the disgrace, the scandal, and the slander; that we put a lid on the betrayals, the whining, the flakiness and the insincere promises. She looks into each of your eyes with the amazed wonder of an infant; she meets you all anew. And she is very pleased to do so.

Merry, merry!

Pretty Lady is Off for the Holidays, and may not be checking in, so she is taking this opportunity to say how much she loves you all, and will miss you, and will be back soon.

Meanwhile, she recommends the film Into Great Silence, to get you in a deeply peaceful winter solstice mood. Pretty Lady watched it yesterday evening, and was scarcely even concerned when the bathtub backed up.

Pretty Lady's Universal Healthcare Plan

Someone has nominated Pretty Lady for President! Thank you, David and Franklin!

Unfortunately, Pretty Lady has more sense than that. Presidential politics are terrible for one's complexion, as Hillary Clinton may attest. Pretty Lady prefers the Private Life, making draconian pronouncements from the sidelines. However, since her friends have expressed an interest, she will so far unbend as to elaborate upon her plan for Universal Healthcare, Unsocialized.

Part 1: Health. Care.

...Pretty Lady suspects that one very large reason that the "Healthcare System" is so stingy on Prevention is that it is so heavily interested in selling cures. That, and in covering its own butt; there is a reason that doctors these days compulsively order masses of expensive and, in most cases, useless diagnostic tests. They are not nearly so concerned about your financial well-being as their own, and medical malpractice lawsuits cost them money.

Part 2: Health Care, Part the Second

1) It is in the best interests of Society At Large to have healthy citizens, and as few destitute diseased persons dying in the streets as possible, spreading germs and and despair far and wide.

2) It is in the best interests of Individual Health and Economic Well-Being to seek out the best care at the lowest prices, and laugh in the faces of incompetent dentists who present them with deadpan $13,000 estimates.

So then, what is wrong with individually managed medical savings accounts, coupled with catastrophic coverage in a pool?

Part 3: Pretty Lady Gets Everyone's Knickers In A Twist.

Because what Pretty Lady proposes is, simply, universal government-subsidized health savings accounts.

Yes, she proposes that the government freely give its low-income citizens money, to spend upon their own health. Rather like EBT vouchers.

This, of course, violates all established precendents of Condescension, Patronization, and Punitive Reinforcement. It presupposes a dangerous Lack of Control, and irresponsibly opens up the system for instances of Flagrant Abuse by the least deserving among us. It amounts to a Robin Hood philosophy of robbing the rich to reward the poor.

Or does it?

The key of Pretty Lady's plan is that this subsidization will not be unlimited. Persons shopping for health care will be presented with the challenge of frugality; they will be forced to make their own decisions. They will try things and see if they work; if they don't work, and are expensive, they will try something else. Meanwhile, healthcare practitioners who charge exorbitant rates for nothing at all will be forced into another line of work.

Note, furthermore, that the government is not running this system. Note that Pretty Lady has said nothing at all about Medicaid, Medicare, or prescription-drug plans. The only 'insurance' plan which makes sense to her, as she has said in the past, is a universal catastrophic-coverage plan, payments to be subsidized below a certain income level.

The universality of this plan, moreover, is key; this obviates any need for layers and layers of bureaucracy, put into place for the sole purpose of denying coverage to people in need. Once denial is no longer an option, the wit and wisdom of plan-managers will have nowhere to go but toward the efficient managing of resources for absolutely everybody.

Pretty Lady blushes to admit that she likes her plan even better than the plans of her two favorite Presidential candidates. It seems to her that it takes into account both the free-market libertarianism of Mr. Paul's philosophy, and the universal compassion and social responsibility espoused by Mr. Obama.

The only questions which remains, of course, is: how do we pay for this?

Well, Pretty Lady has heard a rumour that the U.S. of A military budget is a teensy bit overinflated; it strikes her, frankly, as overkill. Were the country at large to heed the admonitions of both Mr. Obama and Mr. Paul, and refrain from intervening militarily in areas where we do not belong, it could conceivably free up a lot of resources, which could then be used for healing, rather than attacking.

Splendid musician, and still alive!

Lovely Kate Schrock has released a new album, which Pretty Lady thinks would make a splendid stocking-stuffer, for anyone on your Christmas list who is devastated at the loss of Dan. Pretty Lady met Kate at the Sidewalk Cafe on the lower East Side, several years ago, was captivated, and purchased her albums 'Dames Rocket' and 'Indiana' on the spot. They have been played thin, particularly on road trips when she is in an exaltedly solitudinous mood. Go! Thither! Listen! Purchase!

Dan Fogelberg, RIP

Whenever things in Pretty Lady's life have looked Black, black, black, during the last twenty years, she has been wont to play Dan Fogelberg's 1981 album 'The Innocent Age,' at top volume, and sing along. Halfway through the second song, everything is Fine.

Thank you, Dan. Well done.

Capture the moment
Carry the day
Stay with the chase as long as you may
Follow the dreamer, the fool and the sage
Back to the days of the innocent age

Storybook endings
Never appear, they're
Just someone's way of leading us here
Waiting for wisdom to open the cage
We forged in the fires of the innocent age

La la la la la la la la la...

Failure to Thrive

La-la-la-la-la, la la la la! Pretty Lady, she will have you know, just placed two homemade, cherry-free fruitcakes in the oven on Slow Bake, to the tune of A Winter's Solstice Reunion. This officially signals her entrance into Holiday Overdrive. All Scroogelike carpers, whiners, and holiday depressives please be forewarned, and keep your distance.

Pretty Lady has never been able to understand people who engage in such dismalness every December, simply because of Lousy Family Memories. It seems to her that if one's family of birth was lousy, the onset of adulthood is a fine and exciting opportunity to get another one. After the age of eighteen, she is fairly certain, a person is no longer a prisoner; a person may go where he likes, befriend whom she chooses, and decorate according to her own taste. There seems to her to be no excuse at all for voluntarily perpetuating Familial Dysfunction, one second longer than one is forced, by youth and economic dependence.

(In fact, she knows of at least one fellow who took to the streets of Mexico City at age 10, because of unsatisfactory nuclear family issues, and got himself adopted by a couple of gay gentlemen who took an interest in his mind. Very unfortunately, the family who could not be bothered to feed, educate, or cease beating him black and blue nevertheless felt that this environment was a danger to him, and sued to get him back. Then they recommenced the beating and the starving. Alas.)

Regardless of the existence of much misery in the world, then, Pretty Lady dares to be Happy. She is all the happier this year, because her nuclear household is unwontedly full of companionship, affection, and the building of indoor fountains. Pretty Lady finds that although the axiom 'You don't need a partner to be happy' is technically a true one, in her case it helps a lot.

In fact, she noticed that last week, upon returning home after a short absence, she found her partner slightly Moody. Wherewith, she showered him with diffident Food and Affection, and he perked up! Just like watering the garden! Pretty Lady had to admit that she was rather surprised. All too often, in past years, when she has showered a partner with home-cooked meals, casual backrubs, and a sympathetic ear, her partner has not perked up at all. All too often, she developed a habit of dumping a home-cooked meal on his doorstep, and running away, in order to avoid the inevitable Backlash--the carping, the whining, the Rage and Depression and Squirrelly Paranoia.

Pretty Lady is heartily thankful that the past is, indeed, past.

However, upon cautiously entering upon this new season of Comfort and Joy, it occurs to her that such episodes of Affection producing Squirrelly Paranoia are not exactly normal. The healthy human temperament, she is almost certain, requires Love in order to thrive. What then, does it mean when the application of generous helpings of Love to a test subject fails to produce symptoms of thriving?

Her inchoate hypothesis is that, in such instances, that person's Love receptors are occluded in some way. That Love is being given, but not received. This, in laymen's terms, is referred to as a 'block.' Just as a creative block prevents the ideas from flowing, an emotional block prevents the heart from believing it's true. This is a sad situation for all.

So what to do about this?

Well, first, Pretty Lady always recommends a Reality Check. It is always possible that what one perceives as Giving Love is not what is required by the receiver. It is no use expecting one's application of homemade fruitcakes to be received with cries of joy by a diabetic. More subtly, if one's little girl persists in an irritating infatuation with ballet, she will not thrive under a constant application of dowdy clothing and Serious Textbooks, no matter how much you think she ought to enjoy medical school. People are who they are, and the best of intentions will not change them.

However, once one's reality has been checked and double-checked, and the excellent fruitcakes are still being hurled over the wall with snarls of anti-capitalist rage, or deprecating little sniggers, it is time for a Major Check. Simply, it is time to Back The Hell Off. This is an exceptionally difficult task for the committed love-giver, as Pretty Lady is certain all her readers are; nevertheless it must be done. It is not good for the soul to hang around for much of this. As Pretty Lady can sadly attest.

It is quite possible that once one has Backed The Hell Off, that this may conclude as a permanent state of affairs. One is not a saint; one is unable, usually, to Heal the World. However, Pretty Lady is beginning to believe that if one Backs The Hell Off soon enough, before significant damage has been sustained to one's own love receptors, it is sometimes possible to merely watch, and wait, and harbor a quiet stream of love from a distance. Then, perhaps, the moment may come when a casual issuance of love goes unrejected.

Coming up next: How To Heal one's Own Blocks.

This Message Brought To You...

Pretty Lady had a lovely time in Pittsburgh! Dear Jean, Susan, John and Mary all conspired to make her trip as delightful as possible. It all seemed one big Whirlwind of Lights.


And on the way home, Pretty Lady got to be a Messenger of the Holy Spirit! Her cup runneth over.

You see, on the way home, the Holy Spirit saw fit to shred Pretty Lady's front driver-side tire, on I-80, in the dark and freezing rain.


This was no biggie. Although Pretty Lady discarded that ridiculous spare wheel a couple of years back, since it took up so much space in her trunk that there was no point in even having a 4-wheeler, she has that splendid modern convenience, a cell phone. Plus 24-hour emergency road service. Pretty Lady Remained Calm, and soon the expected angel arrived. The angel's name was Wally. He was prompt, courteous, and performed a quite elegantly heroic back-up maneuver on I-80 in the freezing rain. Pretty Lady commended him warmly. The Holy Spirit had no message for Wally, except 'Keep up the good work.'


Tires, said Wally, should ordinarily not come off in two pieces.

No, as soon as Pretty Lady's tire was safely replaced, the Holy Spirit whisked dear Wally off to another emergency, leaving Pretty Lady alone with an unfinished invoice. "It won't take long," said Wally. "Why don't you grab a meal at the Tannersville Diner?"

The Tannersville Diner, due to the promptings of Fate, decided to close three hours early. "The towing company has an office. You can sit there," said the Tannersville Diner staff, closing the door in Pretty Lady's wet, hungry, stranded face.

Pretty Lady returned to the office, which consisted of a short, grimy hallway, a door marked 'Employees only,' and a window, behind which sat an obese individual. This individual did not look up or acknowledge Pretty Lady's presence. He sat and grunted into a telephone, in an indifferent monotone. His conversation consisted solely of phrases like 'Nothing,' and 'That's not our service area,' and 'We can't be there for over an hour.'

Pretty Lady stood in the hallway.

After about twenty minutes she stated, 'My car is finished. Isn't there a way you could finish my invoice and let me out of here?'

'I can't leave the phone,' was the reply.

'I am perfectly capable of opening a door and fetching an invoice myself,' said Pretty Lady, testily.

Pretty Lady stood in the hallway.

After about twenty minutes more, she stuck her head through the window and stated, pointedly, 'Oh, I see you have an extra chair in there.'

Some mumbling gave Pretty Lady to indicate that she might borrow the chair.

Twenty minutes later, a tow-truck driver entered. 'You are here to process my invoice and release my vehicle,' Pretty Lady informed him. She hustled the man out to the garage, where he engaged Wally on the telephone and torturously made out the invoice.

While he was doing so, the Holy Spirit made some intentions clear to Pretty Lady. As directed, she returned to the dispatch office and delivered the message.

'I have something to say to you. You are a Slob. I have sat here for one hour and listened to you be rude to people in distress; I have watched you be rude to me. It is your choice to be a Slob. You can choose to live your life with grace, to treat people with kindness, to be a good person, or you can continue to be a Slob. It is your choice.'

Pretty Lady exited forthwith, and made her way gratefully back to New York, where her Gentleman Friend had made dinner, cleaned up, lit the candles, and put on a DVD. She has no idea whether the Holy Spirit's admonitions were attended to. This is none of her concern.

Where the Cool Artists Go

Pretty Lady hears rumors that some artsy sorts of people are going to some little fair thingies in Miami this weekend.

Pretty Lady, of course, will be in Pittsburgh.

She leaves it to you to decide Where It's Really At.

Picking One's Battles

Chris writes his own Authority Problem essay:

...Wilson's conclusions are somewhat different from yours, though. Rather than being somewhat confused and horrified at how difficult most people find disobedience, he found it quite natural and understandable. More importantly, he recognized -- which you, Pretty Lady, apparently do not -- the potential within himself -- within all of us humans -- to do the same.

To me, too, that's the most important lesson of the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments: Almost everyone, given the chance, would be a concentration camp guard. Maybe we all wouldn't be the most sadistic guard at Treblinka; but neither would most of us be the most compassionate, either.

A small example from my own life. I believe, and will quite passionately argue (with very little provocation), that the so-called security routine Americans submit to when traveling by airplane is not only not helpful but actively harmful. I believe that the humiliation of taking off our shoes and belts, and forcing people to carry liquids in quart-sized (not gallon or pint) clear plastic bags, is at least a waste of effort and at most designed to soften American citizens up for the next assault on privacy and freedom.

I further believe -- cribbing again from Robert Anton Wilson -- that the only truly inalienable human right is the right to say no and take the consequences. I believe that the only way to stop the nonsense of so-called airport security is for us, the people, to stand up and say no. To refuse to submit to it.

I almost never take an airplane anyway, so this is an easy stand for me to make. Except just last week my wife and I traveled to Las Vegas so she could receive a prestigious award. I agonized over how I would handle the security issue. And when the time finally came...I took off my shoes. Because...

Because. I can invent a lot of reasons. But, ultimately, there are always reasons. The human brain is absolutely unparalleled in inventing reasons for the things it does. Why sit idly by as your Jewish neighbors are arrested and sent away in cattle cars? Why administer deadly electric shocks on the orders of a man in a white coat? Why pile up naked prisoners and take a picture? Why take off your shoes at an airport checkpoint?

To me, enlightenment -- wisdom, whatever you choose to call it -- is understanding, truly understanding, that you yourself are not above this. Yes, there are always times and places where some individuals find the courage to stand up, and we'd all like to hope that we'd be like those people. But that's just hope.

Clap, clap, clap. Woo-hoo!

Pretty Lady has a few teensy little comments:

1) Pretty Lady's ego-self is, by definition, not above this. That is the definition of ego-self. As long as we identify completely with frangible little bodies, running around at odds with other bodies, we are not above this. This is why Pretty Lady works so committedly, if lazily, to transcend her ego-self.

2) There is such a thing as choosing one's battles, and degree of exigency, and seeking one's Tipping Point moment. It is unreasonable and hyperbolic to equate the taking off of one's shoes--so that one's beloved wife may have her well-deserved Fun Time In Vegas, instead of committing a futile one-man-stand against tyranny, getting jailed, and ruining her weekend--to the wanton torture of, perhaps, that same wife, or someone like her. As Milgram and Wilson point out, we are social, relational creatures, which is the very reason for the Authority Problem in the first place. If we were all self-aggrandizing narcissists, who threw gratuitous temper tantrums in airports for moral ideals which nobody around us is likely to understand or be influenced by, there would be no society to give rise to unjust governments, or, in time, to us.

2) a) Remember: contrary to popular myth, Rosa Parks planned her moment very, very carefully, buttressed by an entire Organizational Movement waiting in the wings. These Quixotic Individual Standing Up for Freedom myths do more harm than good.

3) It is quite probable that the simple wrestling with the shoe question, and contemplation of the issues thereof, would make you, Chris, a fraction less likely to sign off on concentration-camp warrants, should they cross your desk; which brings us to:

4) Once we know that such Authority Problems are a universal danger, how do we train our minds to recognize and resist them?

Well, it is said that the few German youngsters who found the notion of Hitler Youth to be boring and silly beyond belief, were home-schooled by permissive but intellectually rigorous parents.

And having an independent income helps, too.

For we cannot become enlightened all at once. First, we learn to Obey. Then we learn to understand the reasons for obedience. Then we learn to discern the circumstances where mindless obedience does not match up with those transcendent reasons; then, with much struggle and failure, we learn to act in accordance with those meta-standards, rendering obedience obsolete.

There is a lot more to this than mere Hope, Chris; frankly, it involves a lot of work.

Tsk, tsk

Pretty Lady is sorry to see that Voxy-poo is up to his self-indulgent little tricks again, and is bullying people with Asperger's. Of course, since the victims in question have Asperger's, they probably don't realize they're being bullied, but still, Voxy should know better. People who are struggling, in however dim a manner, with apparent ontological paradox, do not need someone coming at them with aggressively linear confrontation. The cognitive dissonance thus produced is likely to fuse their fragile little psyches even more determinedly shut.

Because, as Pretty Lady keep saying, over and over and over, it's a question of levels. Sometimes it seems to her that most people view the world as a fused, warty mass of physio-logo-psycho-emotiono sludge, and it is no mystery to her why they get so depressed. They persist in behaving as though any problem can be solved upon the same level at which it is created, which to her is obvious nonsense. To get perspective, one steps away. One steps away and regards the whole.

When Pretty Lady steps away from purported ontological paradigms which present her a sucker's choice, she notes a staggeringly obvious thing. That is, that the vast majority of persons who choose not to believe in God are, in fact, blazingly angry with Him. They are angry for the simple reason that evil and suffering exist. Since, on some level, they hold God responsible for this entire physio-logo-psycho-emotiono mess, they hold Him equally responsible for the evil and for the suffering. Their revenge is to decline to believe in Him. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo.

As if that helps.

Since, then, the obstacle to belief in God is, at root, an emotional one, one may argue Logos until the stars burn out, and nothing will have been achieved. One may have bolstered one's sense of ego-self, but as Pretty Lady has been explaining for quite some time now, bolstering one's ego-self is the whole entire problem.

So Pretty Lady shall, once again, put forth an ontological paradigm that eradicates the sucker's choice at the root, and see if those poor benighted souls like hers any better.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?

Right off the bat, here, we are presupposing that God is external to the equation; that there is God, and there is something outside of God to be prevented. This is unspeakably sloppy thinking. Pretty Lady dismisses this question on the basis of insufficient grounding.

Is he able, but not willing?

Pretty Lady recalls reading something about Free Will, in a document which purports to explain something of the motivations of God. She recalls that this freedom of will is allegedly bestowed by God onto those of His creation. So if we postulate that God is not separate from His creation, and has extended free will to that creation, then obviously the will of creation is equal and identical to that of God.

Thus the proper question to ask is, 'Are we able, but not willing?'

Then whence cometh evil?

Obviously, evil cometh from denying the will of God within us, which we are perfectly able to do, since our will is equal and identical to His.

So it seems to Pretty Lady that those persons who are permanently enraged with God over the question of evil are behaving in a similar way to that of Pretty Lady's former best friend, who, suddenly, out of the blue, accused Pretty Lady of 'taking pot-shots' at her. She was adamantly certain that Pretty Lady was out to undermine her, from motivations of envy and jealousy, despite a mountain of consistent evidence to the contrary. Moreover, she claimed to know Pretty Lady's motives better than Pretty Lady did herself, and declined to offer Pretty Lady an opportunity of explaining or defending her alleged 'pot-shot' behavior, but rather convicted and sentenced her without trial.

Pretty Lady's hands were tied, because there was nothing at all within Pretty Lady which could influence her friend's opinions, gleaned as they were wholly from the friend's own fantastic projections. Equally, when her friend offered to 'forgive' her for the alleged pot-shots, the offer was meaningless, because it presupposed the existence of a nonexistent offense which required forgiveness. Pretty Lady remained slandered.

Thus, Pretty Lady and her former best friend remain at outs, despite the absence of any concrete evil in their interactions. All that is required is for one of them to declare, 'But lo! I have made a mistake. I have committed an Error of Perception. You were not out to get me at all; it was only my own silly imagination.'

The Bar, Revisited

Darlings, Pretty Lady has seen the light; she has finally understood the reason for those silly little label things at the bottom of Desert Cat's posts. It was borne in upon her that, even if a person is cursed with near-total recall of every conversation she has had in this lifetime, ultimately she forgets in what month this conversation occurred. And the archiving function on her new template, not to put too fine a point on it, is dreadful.

So Pretty Lady was up till the wee hours on Saturday, doing that thing ex-librarians do best.

While engaged in this desultory Cataloguing of History, Pretty Lady's mind, naturally, wandered. It occurred to her that at times in every lady's life, she has got to do what she has got to do, whether it is wise or not. Specifically, there comes a time when a lady has simply got to wander alone into a bar, order a double bourbon or ten, and challenge a stranger to a game of pool.

Why has she got to do this? One may ask. One may not receive an answer. The mysteries of the wayward heart are singular and confidential. Pretty Lady does not concern herself with Motive; she merely concerns herself with Tactics.

For it is widely understood that for a single lady, a bar with a pool table in the middle of Brooklyn is the rough equivalent of a jungle in Deepest Darkest Africa, as regards the potential for loss of life and limb. Much bemoaning of this fact has been done, in progressive circles; however, the fact remains. And it seems to Pretty Lady that the focus of this bemoaning is All Wrong, from a tactical point of view.

The most outspoken of the Progressives, you see, have a tendency to preach to the persons least likely to listen; to wit, they preach to the Creeps. Moreover, they behave as though there were more Creeps out there than not--even that the vast majority of a single gender were possessed of Creeplike characteristics. It seems to Pretty Lady that the point of bifurcation, in these people's minds, boils down to Creeps, and Women.

Whereas Pretty Lady notes that a much more practical division is between Creeps, and Decent People.

A Creep, you see, is an individual who gloms on to a diminutive, intoxicated, pool-playing lady late at night and attempts to back her into a corner, or an alleyway, or his apartment. A Decent Person is the one who stands nearby, casually making sure the Creep's agenda is frustrated.

Do you see? This Decent Person is not a predator; he is not a chauvinist; he merely perceives that the pool-playing lady needs to let off a little steam, more than she needs to keep her guard up. He does not judge her for this. He does not question her ability to take care of herself. He merely hangs around, assuring himself that everything is okay.

It is a very great pity that some potential Decent People are cowed, by idealistic notions of Progressiveness, into the idea that looking out for one's fellow citizens is an offensive thing.

For as Pretty Lady has stated in the past, it is not that ladies in bars are incapable of handing a Creep's nether regions to him on a silver platter; it is that if the lady has friends around, she shouldn't have to. It is Pretty Lady's firm opinion that peace and safety are best maintained by invoking the minimum of fuss; plus, allowing a Creep to save face in a small way may prevent that selfsame Creep from coming back with a switchblade. It is always best to look at the bigger picture, before indulging in petty victories.