Hyppo and Critter: Maybe Vote

Inventive Guru: Trinary Listening

As a self-proclaimed “Guru of Negativity” one of my primary areas of interest and study has been, of course, the modern human communicator. And by using the term “communicator” I mean, of course, those who flap their gums creating a great wind. This is also sometimes known as a “giant sucking sound.” By the year 2012 ears had become obsolete as the art of listening had fallen on deaf ears. Or something like that.

As I pondered the notion that we had become a nation of assholes, I was eventually granted the gift of awareness. Abandoning the art of listening is a critical ingredient to becoming a great asshole. In fact, when one learns to stop listening that may be the pivotal moment of assholiness.

Tom’s Law #42
Assholes are persons where self-image exceeds reality.

Ever the optimist, I decided that necessity was a mother that needed nursing. Or something like that. So, in a fit of inventiveness, I hit the drawing boards on a quest to invent something capable of saving humanity.

The syllable gu means shadows
The syllable ru, he who disperses them,
Because of the power to disperse darkness
the guru is thus named.

— Advayataraka Upanishad 14—18, verse 5
Source: Wikipedia

The time had come to put my guru powers to good use. And I’m glad to say that I answered the call.

I call my latest invention: Trinary Listening.

Hyppo and Critter: Too Much Self

Hello in a Restaurant

My wife told me to be short when writing. I told her my height doesn’t change.

When I walk in a restaurant, I don’t expect much. But I do like to be greeted. A little eye contact. The word, “Hello.” This should be from the first person who sees me. If even a single employee walks by and gives me the “I pretend not to see you because greeting customers is not my department” then I become irritated.

I understand that employees in a restaurant may be busy. Hell, they may even not be poised at the ready saying, “Tom should be here any minute. Look alive, people!” All it takes is a second to say, “I’ll be right with you.”

Above all else I’m a reasonable guy.

Without eye contact, a greeting and a friendly “I’ll be right with you” I can wait about two minutes before saying (to myself), “Fuck this place!” For every employee who gives me the “not my department” routine you can take a minute from that time.

If greeted, though, I’ll happily wait five minutes or more.

Then there’s this other guy…

My wife and I were in the restaurant, already at a table, enjoying our lunch. A guy walked in. I’m not sure why but he caught my eye. It might have been the way he bellowed.

He strode in, stopped a few feet inside the door, which had just closed behind him. He then waited 1.5 seconds without being helped. No wait staff was in sight. Then he bellowed, “Hello???”

Every head in the restaurant turned. Forks dropped to plates. Everyone was stunned. What the fuck was going on here? It’s rather unusual to yell like that. Something must be up.

A waitress ran from the back. I watched the whole thing go down. I was zoomed in. I had the tunnel vision.

“What are the hours of the haircut place three doors down?” the man demanded. “Their door is locked.”

Ah. I see. You obviously saw our sign that reads, “We help customers from all businesses that are not are own.” Yeah, why don’t you go fuck yourself?

The waitress, who is naturally a nice person, tried to help. “You see, we don’t know about that. That’s like a whole other business. They don’t check in with us. We have no information.”

The guy angrily strode out.

This is the planet I live on. A planet where people like that exist. Then, as we were leaving, the guy came back in for more! I gave him laser beams of death as we fled the building. What an enjoyable meal. Speaking of meal, I would very much like to feast on his soul.

Hey, look. This was less than 500 words.

Start the Insanity!

If you’re anything like me, you spend an inordinate amount of time sitting around pondering your own insanity. Which, if you think about it, is pretty insane.

If you’re not like me, then what in the name of Zeus’ butthole are you doing here?

Let’s think about this problem mathematically. There are two possible conditions when we consider the question, “Am I insane?” One is insane, the other is not insane. (I guess there is also theoretically partially-insane but for the sake of this discussion let’s leave that out of the mix. For now. Mwuhahahah!)

With those assumptions locked in, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.

If one is insane, it logically follows that one will not be able to correctly deduce the state of their own state of insanity, therefore the activity is a complete waste of time.

Whee. This is fun!

Perversely it follows that even if you are sane, you can never be too sure, so you might think you are not. Yet another waste of time.

Thus I conclude that pondering one’s one sanity is probably not the most productive thing one might do.

But, every once in a while, you can get a sign you might not be completely batshit crazy.

Hyppo and Critter: Unrequited Dangles

How me-oriented are we as communicators? Allow me to introduce my newest creation. I’m calling it the “unrequited dangle.”

I’ll start with a real life example. This actually happened. I shit you not.

Person A: Someone very close to me died yesterday.
Person B: Did you see my new shoes? What do you think?

One person is feeling vulnerable and shares a delicate thought. They dangle the bait hoping to catch a sincere moment of intimacy. I guess. I mean, why else say something like that?

The other person may actually care about the speaker. It’s unclear from this example. Let’s go out on a limb and assume that they do. (The alternative is that they are merely a pure selfish asshole and, although likely, isn’t particularly useful to the point at hand that I’m trying to make.) Assuming the person actually cares, what just happened?

Their “me bubble” was so powerful that the pain and hurt of the other person did not penetrate. It simply bounced off. This me-oriented communicator is literally unaware of the message that was sent in their direction. In strict technical terms, communication did not take place.

My daily life is replete with these moments of unrequited dangles. Granted, most of these happen with people who are flaming assholes, but some are sincere friends and the assumption is that they actually care. What then? These damaged communicators aren’t even aware of what they do.

My wife and her friend are both really good cooks. They recently put out a seven-course meal for some friends. It was an evening of small plates complete with wine pairings. The way she told the story to me it sounded like an episode of Top Chef. Each dish was brought out, described along with the wine pairing.

As people who know my wife learned of this, an unintended science experiment was the result. In three separate cases, my wife was approached and asked about the seven-course evening.

In one case, she was only able to describe one dish, the first, before that prompted the person asking to interrupt and launch into a grand telling of a story of her own. That person never thought, at any point, to ever return to what my wife had to say. Score: 1 out of 7.

The second experience was similar, except my wife was able to describe three courses before the same thing happened. Score: 3 out of 7.

Now, here’s the wacky part. The third experience was with a gerbil. This young person is a friend of our son’s and has frequently graced the pages of this blog. He asked about the dinner and … get this … he listened as my wife described them all. All! Mothafucka! Score: 7 out of 7.

This gerbil, who figured prominently in The Adventure of the Raspberry Bar (still unsolved!), who has lived at home since graduating high school, who has a medical marijuana card and is on food stamps and has never held down a job – he was the only one willing to allow another human being the courtesy of relating the whole story when asked. My wife’s so-called friends came up woefully short.

Final score: 10 out of 21. That’s a scientifically-computed listening rate of less than 50 percent. Conclusion: Humans are doomed.

We all think we’re the center of the universe – and we treat each other just like that. Truth be told, however, we’re not quite as important as we like to think. Not by a long shot.

Infantile choices

This baby goes from joy to despair in six seconds

Some people think that you can choose your parents*. This morning, for some reason, I woke up thinking about this idea.

What would it really mean to make a choice like that?

And, if you could choose your parents, what else would you be choosing? How much information would you be given when making such a choice?

What might the process of this choosing look like?

Putting it into context (in other words, “me”) this is one possible imagining…

There I was floating in time and space. I didn’t know if it was heaven or hell. Maybe it was neither.

I was aware of my sense of self. I knew I was an incorporeal form.

Drifting, I ended up at a structure that looked like a car dealership. I made my way inside.

Before me there were choices. I sensed that these were all possible futures of me. Without knowing why, I realized it was important that I pick one. Somehow I knew it was time to leave this place and be moving on.

Each choice presented tantalizing partial glimpses. Even I knew that total awareness would have made the process of choosing completely irrelevant. What mystery would there be in that?

I could see different parents. Some looked nice, some not. Some choices presented wealth, others not.

Then, down at the end, almost hidden, I saw something that caught my eye. I turned to the salesperson who, previously unnoticed, was floating by my side. “What about that one?” I asked.

The salesperson’s aura flickered suddenly and brightly, flashing rapidly through amazing oranges and reds. What was it that had caused that reaction? “Oh, you don’t want that one,” it spoke to my inner thoughts. “That’s basically just there as a yin-yang kind of thing. Its purpose is to merely provide context for the other choices. It’s not meant to be a legitimate choice of i’s own.”

I was, of course, very intrigued. “Go on,” I emoted.

“You do not grok,” I heard in my mind. “That fate is not to be chosen. It is extremely flighty. Among it’s many problems, it has the ability to go from joy to despair in six seconds flat. Trust me, nobody wants that.”

“I’ll take it.”

And now you know the rest of the story behind how I ended up on this planet. I’ll be writing about The Pit of Joy and Despair in a future post soon. It’s from the owner’s manual for this model. Stay tuned!

* For proof, google the phrase “choosing your parents.” I was surprised by the number of hits.