Like in the Pron Movies
This is the subject line for a piece of junk e-mail I received today. I’m gonna be a pron star when I get big misspelled tits.
This from Mr Anigans. Watch your back, in light (or dark) of the faith-based takeover. I might have to become a political activist; what's next--Smurfs are real? That's what I thought when I was four. Now I am many.
Yesterday when I was walking through the parking lot to leave from work, there were several cars idling in anticipation of other people leaving and opening up a spot for them. My car was in the back of the lot. I could feel the idles rise as I walked by, the drivers thinking I was going to get into a car near them. I wasn’t. My initial internal response was to smirk and laugh, "Suckers, and you thought you were getting a spot."
This response interests me. I’m not a mean person, as far as I know of myself, and as far as I’m told by others who know me. In fact, I’m more likely to extend the niceties so to be walked on rather than to bitch off and away coldly. The above has been my response to those cars before, though. Maybe those times I was just feeling grumpy, or maybe there’s a clear pattern, e.g., when I’m leaving after a dark day of work. Or maybe I’m a delusional rot-head daily offending the innocent, which could explain the recurrent askew responses people have to me when I speak, such as when I tried to tell someone I was going to Las Vegas and she said, "At least your boss won’t interrupt your work since he will be in Prague that week." Maybe what actually comes out of my mouth is equivalent to or worse than that thought in response to the cars, and people are too shocked to respond directly and so change the subject. Or maybe I’ve got Jeckyl & Hyde written through and all over me.
I’m (re)newly fascinated by the way different combinations of people affect each other. I’m affected and behave drastically differently depending on who I’m with (which I think I've blogged about before). Some people think I’m impossible to talk to (as I’ve been told and can sometimes sense); other people think I’m very friendly, easygoing, adventurous, a ham. I’ve been called all of these things and all of their opposites.
This morning one of the resident doctors was sitting down the hall waiting to be interviewed for some upper position. She’s the one to whom I raise the Hitler arm when I see her in the hallway, and she returns the gesture. I had to pass her to get to the printer dozens of times. Finally, I said to her,
"Are you a spy? You’ve been sitting here all morning."
She said, "How did you know?"
"Because I’m a spy," I said, "Don’t tell them I know you’re here."
And I returned to my office. If I had had this conversation with most other people here, for example, the woman in the office next to me, I would have gotten the Freak look and maybe nervous laughter. Some people seem able to talk to anyone. My distaste for small-talk, which I think is cocktail with my incapacity for small-talk, silences me involuntarily around people I wouldn’t be able to lightly have the above conversation with.
Where am I going with this? I forgot. I may be on the verge of another split-brain. I may be about to be four again. I guess everyone is varied within themselves and varying arms reach out in varying situations, and people are labeled by others accordingly varyingly. The unpinnable nature of things drives me loopy sometimes and today. Here's the word I've found for the recurring split-brain induced by this sudden explosive awareness of the unpinnable out from the otherwise even-keel:
Cyclotron: A device that accelerates charged subatomic particles in a spiral path by an alternating electric field in a constant magnetic field.
This from Mr Anigans. Watch your back, in light (or dark) of the faith-based takeover. I might have to become a political activist; what's next--Smurfs are real? That's what I thought when I was four. Now I am many.
Yesterday when I was walking through the parking lot to leave from work, there were several cars idling in anticipation of other people leaving and opening up a spot for them. My car was in the back of the lot. I could feel the idles rise as I walked by, the drivers thinking I was going to get into a car near them. I wasn’t. My initial internal response was to smirk and laugh, "Suckers, and you thought you were getting a spot."
This response interests me. I’m not a mean person, as far as I know of myself, and as far as I’m told by others who know me. In fact, I’m more likely to extend the niceties so to be walked on rather than to bitch off and away coldly. The above has been my response to those cars before, though. Maybe those times I was just feeling grumpy, or maybe there’s a clear pattern, e.g., when I’m leaving after a dark day of work. Or maybe I’m a delusional rot-head daily offending the innocent, which could explain the recurrent askew responses people have to me when I speak, such as when I tried to tell someone I was going to Las Vegas and she said, "At least your boss won’t interrupt your work since he will be in Prague that week." Maybe what actually comes out of my mouth is equivalent to or worse than that thought in response to the cars, and people are too shocked to respond directly and so change the subject. Or maybe I’ve got Jeckyl & Hyde written through and all over me.
I’m (re)newly fascinated by the way different combinations of people affect each other. I’m affected and behave drastically differently depending on who I’m with (which I think I've blogged about before). Some people think I’m impossible to talk to (as I’ve been told and can sometimes sense); other people think I’m very friendly, easygoing, adventurous, a ham. I’ve been called all of these things and all of their opposites.
This morning one of the resident doctors was sitting down the hall waiting to be interviewed for some upper position. She’s the one to whom I raise the Hitler arm when I see her in the hallway, and she returns the gesture. I had to pass her to get to the printer dozens of times. Finally, I said to her,
"Are you a spy? You’ve been sitting here all morning."
She said, "How did you know?"
"Because I’m a spy," I said, "Don’t tell them I know you’re here."
And I returned to my office. If I had had this conversation with most other people here, for example, the woman in the office next to me, I would have gotten the Freak look and maybe nervous laughter. Some people seem able to talk to anyone. My distaste for small-talk, which I think is cocktail with my incapacity for small-talk, silences me involuntarily around people I wouldn’t be able to lightly have the above conversation with.
Where am I going with this? I forgot. I may be on the verge of another split-brain. I may be about to be four again. I guess everyone is varied within themselves and varying arms reach out in varying situations, and people are labeled by others accordingly varyingly. The unpinnable nature of things drives me loopy sometimes and today. Here's the word I've found for the recurring split-brain induced by this sudden explosive awareness of the unpinnable out from the otherwise even-keel:
Cyclotron: A device that accelerates charged subatomic particles in a spiral path by an alternating electric field in a constant magnetic field.
A little faith in the cyclotron and those pron flick offers should start rolling in, all funded by Mister President, you blind narrow prick.
5 Comments:
i think my thought on the parking are "you lazy fucks why don't you park in the back and just walk"
i get the same attitude for people who see a long line at the exit ramp and rush to the front to cut in. every other situation requires you que up and wait. no one would tolerate that at the DMV.
btw-you do write like a demon....
What!!!??? Smurfs aren't real? Those three apple tall creatures are just cartoons?
I need to sit down. I'm overwhelmed...
I also despise small talk. Mainly because I'm awful at making it... And I hate when people ask questions that they don't care about the answers to, for example when I slaved at Borders and people would ask how I was then bark a latte order before I had time to say Fine Thanks. They didn't care how I was. Small talk is especially hard at work, even though probably essential to building a report. Even a simple "How are you" causes all sorts of problems. I'm always afraid to get the obvious answer... "How the hell do you think I am? I'm in acute detox, I sold my children for herion, I'm sleeping with my dealer and living on the streets." I feel I will run into the same problem in prison. I wish tere were a way to say disregarding all your problems and current situation, how are you? I guess that wouldn't give me an accurate answer though.
There is small talk revolving around weather, around the day, this is courteous small talk usually made with complete strangers, grandparents and coworkers. Then there is small talk, much like your spy talk, that happens between people who don’t really know each other but have both decided that common, “normal” small talk is not right for them. These are the “fringe” small talkers, it’s not that they, you, we don’t have small talk, it’s just that this small talk is usually odd and almost wholly fictional. As if to say, “We know small talk is bullshit, so we shall just lie knowingly to one another and not play at being interested in thunderstorms or the broken lunch room microwave.” Fuck the system.
I like your redefinition of small talk, Melissa B.
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