Gregarions
Thursday, 3rd June 1999Civilisation in General [NotS]
Okay, maybe it’s me, but….
Let’s entertain a scenario here for a moment. It’s two in the morning, and for whatever kooky reason, you’re awake, sitting alone in one of those abnormal restaurants which actually stay open after dark, and–just for the sake of argument–typing something important enough to bother typing into a laptop. We’ll toss in all the cool little assumptions: you’re sitting next to an outlet, so your battery isn’t melting away like an iceberg in Panama; you’ve got enough coffee to last you for several minutes, and aren’t yet considering hoarding the stuff lest the serverita neglects to ever come near your foodless table again; the ashtray is reasonably unfull, and you’ve got an extra pack of Camels; you’ve got a really great, if moderately sketchy, idea which you’re all set to write the hell down once and for all. What could possibly go wrong….
Possibly, something like this:
It was a dark and stormy night. The wind blew like an impoverished CrankWhore just released from prison into a dark and dingy alleyway. Bats circled overhead like small, leathery, mammalian flying things. And, suddenly– ‘Hey! Hey there! Hey! Hi! Sorry to interrupt, but–hey! Hi! Hey, is that a computer? That thing? There? It’s a computer, right?’
Now, let’s think about this for a moment. It’s a rectangular plastic thingy, about nine inches by twelve by two. It’s got a bunch of keys on it, and a big screen. It’s got stickers reading ‘Intel Inside’ and ‘Windows98′. It’s plugged into the damned wall. From this, we can reasonably determine that it’s a mustelid commonly referred to as a ferret.
Of course it’s a bloody computer! Idiot!
But, anyway….
It was a dark and story night…blah blah blah…And suddenly…and suddenly…um….
So at this point, whatever the hell suddenly happened is gone. And that’s bad. And that, from any idiot’s perspective, has got to be the exclusive fault of the gregarion.
| | Gregarion noun [gremlinism] Any member of a huge group of gregarious twits who can’t work out that, just because they never got enough attention as children, it doesn’t mean that any of the rest of us give a damn whether they exist at all. | |
Okay, so being, like, nice isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not something I’m personally very good at. And it always kinda creeps me out to confront a drippingly nice stranger anyway. But the simple practise of not being a complete and utter bastard all the time probably has a degree of merit.
Even still, there are limits.
If you’re walking through a door and someone, for whatever codependent reason, is trying to sneak through customs in your back pocket, it doesn’t take a hell of a lot of effort to sorta fling the door open a bit wider so they can make it into the building as well. That’s fine; I can handle that. Spotting someone trekking in from the neighbouring zipcode with three canes and a wheelchair, ambling like the wind, should not obligate you to assemble a tent and reroute your mail to this new physical address just to make sure they never have to touch that pedestrian door handle all by themselves, okay? That’s a limit.
Saying hi to someone is fine. Hi. Hello. Wuzzup. Nada. Cool. Later. Bye. The brainless patter which replaced logical interrogatives some fifty generations ago is fine, in moderation. But this hey hey there hi hey, can you hear me hey hello hey, I hey um hey hi incessant whining thing has got to be exterminated. Okay? Ignorance is bliss, but I can’t ignore you without your help. You’ve got to shut the bloody hell up somewhere in the first hour, or the whole I’m-not-listening rouse becomes satirical.
Or maybe…maybe this would be better. What if I just don’t wear a pin reading Ask me if this is a computer [which, thinking about it, would only lead to gregarions asking whether the pin were a computer] and we’ll take it as read that A) it’s probably a computer and B) it really doesn’t matter to anyone but me whether it’s a computer or a ferret or what. Whatever it is, it’s mine, and you can’t use it to read your damned EMail.
And on a sidenote about EMail: damnit, do NOT send me anything reading ‘hi im a swf19 i like cheese do you’ because my viruskillers read these things and assume that the Russians are invading, okay? It’s www.m-w.com. It’s free. Don’t come back until you’ve learned at least a thousand new words.
But about gregarions….
I’m not saying that I never want to talk to anyone in a restaurant. Hell, I’d love to talk to my server occasionally–especially within the first hour after I’ve run out of coffee. It’s that I don’t want to talk to anyone against my will. And the problem there is that precisely the sort of people I don’t want to talk to are the sort of people who are too damned dumb to figure it out.
For some reason, you can’t just tell them ‘leave me alone’, or suddenly it’s all your fault that they suck. Somehow you’re the badguy. Half the time, these vegetables will want to start a fight because you’re, like, ‘asking for it’. How am I ‘asking for it’? If I didn’t want to talk about how hot that really ugly drunk chick is, what in hell could lead these idiots to assume that I’m all for beating them up? Not that I’m opposed to beating them up, per se, but I’m really trying to write something on my ferret here right now.
And the alternatives to ‘asking for it’ never work. Here’s what really happens:
| | STOOPID: Hey, is that a computer? GREMLIN: Gavaritya nye Phanglaski. STOOPID: Wow! Are you from some other country? Do you like it in Am-er-i-ca? | |
So, that’s out. So’s this:
| | STOOPID: Hey, is that a computer? GREMLIN: Why. STOOPID: Jus’ wonderin’ GREMLIN: Why. STOOPID: Jus’ makin’ conversation. GREMLIN: Why, is there a shortage? STOOPID: Well, no; I jus’ figgered you’d wanna talk to me. | |
Which usually leads straight into ‘asking for it’.
So a big factor is that these idiots do this to me while I’m busy. Then again, I wouldn’t be sitting there if I had nothing to do. If I had nothing to do, I’d eat something, and then go find something to do. But I’m working on things. Sometimes, I may appear to stop working on things because I’m not actually typing. That might well be because I’m thinking [see m-w.com, under ‘thought'] which is this neat thing I do where I can sorta plan ahead a bit IF by some alarming miracle, no one decides I’m done being busy and decides that now is the time to ask after my ferret.
Look at this from my perspective: if I walked into Amoco, walked into the little bullet-resistant cage, and pushed you out of my way so I could stand there and ask whether that was a cash register, it might be kinda annoying, right? Like, it would interrupt things, and you wouldn’t get anything done. Granted, these are two entirely different vocations; you’re instantly replaced by a RadioShack model robot, while writing actually takes a modicum of thought. Still, just in terms of getting things accomplished when you’re hoping to have that happen, maybe you can see my point.
If not, imagine trying to get onto the freeway, but you can’t because some guy in a black Formula is pacing you in the slow lane, and you eventually have to give up and slam into the wall. Would that be intrusive and annoying?
Ah. I know what reflects this perfectly. You’re all set to shoot some sort of animal with your goofy semiautomatic rifle, and I show up with a bullhorn. ‘Hey! Hey there! Hi! Is that a Winchester? Is it? Huh? Hello?’
Remember: be nice and reply with a huge lengthy explanation or you’ll be ‘asking for it’.
It’s really pretty simple. I’m typing on a computer. I’m busy. I don’t want to talk. Even if I weren’t busy, I wouldn’t want to talk. I’m not interested in talking to anyone who’s too dumb to figure out on his own whether my ferret is, in actuality, a computer.
I don’t want to talk to someone who asks ‘what kinda books’. That’s the dumbest possible question I’ve ever been asked. What kinda books. The round kind. I leave the rectangular ones to all those other guys.
Okay. If you wound up at gremlin.net reading this because you ran into me at a restaurant and asked me something, you probably asked me one of these. This list, of course, might grow longer with time and stoopidity.
- Is that a computer
- What’s your shirt say
- Are you a drummer [it involves this thing I unconsciously do with pens]
- Are you on the in-ter-net
- Do you know who you look just like
- Do you know what time it is [which I could almost live with, but for the immense clock on the wall--the nice digital one, just in case you can't work out analogue]
- Hey wow man check this out is she hot or what
- Got any weed
- What’s a two-letter word for ‘three-toed sloth’ [answer: ‘ai']
- Did you go to school to learn computers [COMPUTERS101: Mastering the OnSwitch]
- Have you got a cigarette
I’m sure there will soon be more of those.
Not that I’m expecting this to do any good. Oh, maybe after the fact a few people will figure it out that I’m not deaf, it’s just that they’re inexorable dickweeds. But otherwise, it’s just going to keep happening.
Unless….
Maybe I could have a pin made reading ‘Ask Me about Amway’. That might get these idiots to leave me the hell alone.
What am I thinking. They’d probably just ask whose downline I’m in.
Of course, that’s just my opinion; your fault for asking.
–Gremlin