Good night and sleep tight Steve. I want you to get good rest. I care about you very much and I just want you to know that.

Steve, can you please come pay us a visit, because we keep running out of jam and it would be useful to have someone here whose finger can squirt jam. Very useful indeed.

I have to admit something rather horrible. I don’t usually do things like this. But I did. And now I have to come clean.

I got very, very angry yesterday at someone I work with. Extremely angry. No hitting, slapping, punching or other physicality was involved (or ever would be) and I used no profanity (and very rarely do). I just said some not nice things.

I apologized soon after, but this person had already decided to take the issue to a superior. (Of course, we had agreed between us that we would settle it like adults and accept apologies and work well together — I meant it, but “this person” didn’t … clearly.) So, today, unsurprisingly, I was asked about it. I did completely admit what I had done and expressed remorse. But then I went one step further and did my best to engender sympathy. I said things were difficult in my non-work life, that there were problems I didn’t want to discuss (but I made some broad allusions to things that are sort of true, but also pretty much not). Yes, I lied.

I lied to save face. I lied to get people not to be angry at me.

I can justify it by saying my lie made the situation better, which it did. I can justify it by saying the lie completely eradicated any ill will and put us both on a level playing field. Yes, I could, those things would be true.

I can even say the lie wasn’t really a lie, because much of it is based in truth. Is there such a thing as a half-lie? A quarter-lie? This was part way between a little white lie and a “real” lie, leaning toward the former.

Should I feel badly about this? If a lie ends up improving a situation, is it bad? Do I come clean and face the music? Do I just quit while I’m ahead?

You see, I rarely lie. Almost never. I’m no good at it (but I surprised myself today) and I feel badly about it after the fact — but, somehow, today I don’t. I believe in honesty, and that’s the truth. But I discovered something today — bending the truth, telling a lie, whatever you want to call it, can actually have a positive effect.

If no one is harmed, if the lie causes no further problems, is it bad?

And why do I feel like Carrie Bradshaw, writing boring rhetorical questions?

This is fantastic! Check out Banana Republican. [NOTE: No longer around. Sad. —Ed.]

Despite the irrelevant, off-topic rancor putrefying around my last post on this topic, here is a new discovery that adds another brick to the evolution argument.

“Scientists have unearthed the bones of a species of human never seen before.”

Proponents of intelligent design can, of course, say, “But it was created as a separate creature, not as an evolution from other humans.”

Whatever. And I can squirt seedless raspberry jam from the tip of my left index finger.