Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Confuse people, be nice
Kind of a blanket statement but many neighbors, many people in general, if they're not nasty are at least indifferent, to be indifferent is not necessarily to be mean but a large chunk of the public falls into one of the two groups (or both). So I know this guy who used to live in a large city, neighbors today kind of keep to themselves and don't even say hi, many times you don't even know their names, just a big gray cloud of blah hanging over many sections of the country right now. So anyway the guy moves out to the country and on the second day a man comes up to him and says "good morning, how are you?" and he goes "what?" We had some storms last night, high winds, rain, a Dorothy and Toto watch for the upper areas and this morning the heat finally broke, so some older lady was walking in the street and goes to me "hello, good morning! Beautiful day, isn't it?" so I pause for a sec and then go "it sure is". Not used to it, like my friend says alot of people have a touch of I don't want to help you. I was talking to him at his job once and he went to ask a co-worker a question and he kinda grunted something piglike and kept walking and my friend imitates someone blowing an imaginary dart into your neck aka the societal insult. Used to go ice-fishing alot and I'm parking after a fairly decent snowfall and some guy comes out of his house and offers me his shovel so I can park better and I much appreciated such a rare act of kindness but for a nanosecond there you think maybe he's going back inside to finish his Cap'n Crunch in a skull and you're next. Women are known to blow the darts too so when one finally says to you in the library "you smell nice like you just got out of the shower" it takes time to register, you almost want to verify and confirm that it was an official act of niceness and maybe something more. So if you really wanna confuse the hell out of people be ye kind.
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Folks in the Midwest aren't as bad as in NY but not as friendly as the South. Maybe a happy medium. I suppose being nice doesn't have to be done in moderation though, huh, another exception to our rule.
ReplyDeleteIt's like when you have a mean boss and one day he's nice to you and you're still nervous like when is the tranquilizer gonna wear off and you start comparing your situation to the husband who abuses his wife but fits the classic pattern of being nice to her half the time. You think of the guy who likes to stamp his foot to scare the cat, you'd much rather have dealings with someone who is just straight-up nice.
ReplyDeleteIt's a NY kind of thing, a kind of collective anonymity, sexless in the city. What do you think of that Hartford incident, you know where the old guy got run over by a car and nobody really stopped to help him? People like this, you could be beaten up in the middle of the street on a nice day and you catch somebody looking through their Venetian blinds, just a peak mind you, and then the blind goes down and nobody comes out to help you.
ReplyDeleteI recently saw a rerun of the final Seinfeld episode, and basically Jerry and the gang go on trial for not helping a man who was carjacked (instead they stood there and made fun of him), and all the people whose lives they messed up came forward to testify. This happens in a small town of course. It's really about living selfishly, and it is a sad commentary on our society.
ReplyDeleteEver watch that other creation of Larry David, "Curb Your Enthusiasm"? In one early episode he's sitting there on the couch talking with his wife's friend but his pants keep bunching up where they shouldn't, there's alot of pants like this today, but she thinks he has other things on his mind, same kind of Seinfeld humor.
ReplyDeleteNever watched it, doesn't seem like I am missing much then?
ReplyDeleteMy girlfriend asked if I wanted to go see the Sex in the City movie and I watched maybe 2 episodes of that and don't see the attraction to that show either.
I've found Curb quite funny at times but for some reason it never really took off, now you don't even hear about it. When the WB11 here in NYC began running syndicated and sanitized episodes of Sex I tuned in 'cause I heard everyone say how wonderfully witty the writing is, maybe the couple episodes I watched were off episodes but I never got into the swing of it. It's written by two gay guys btw but like a friend of mine said about it once it's really all about four sluts in New York City. Maybe it's us, see previous blog "One Nation Under Prozac".
ReplyDeleteSo the big story in today's New York Post is new Governor David Paterson blasting NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. You see Albany wants to take over all those OTB parlors in the City but Bloomberg wants some kind of surcharge on them or something but anyway Paterson pretty much called him a temper-tantrum prone liar whom you can't trust when he doesn't get his own way, has hissy fits in private conferences but presents a more calm appearance in public, even compared him to the disgraced and former NY Governor Eliot Spite-zer saying of Spitz that when he got angry you didn't really know if it was contrived or he's really a psycho. WOW, strong words from our new governor. I'm beginning to like him more and more each day just for the fact alone of him talking straight and exposing the meanies and bad-mooders among us and this has been the whole point of my blogging about the mean people, ostracize them, bash 'em, criticize 'em, they've been ruining other people's days for too long now. Kudos cubed Dave! (maybe he's been reading my blog, dunno).
ReplyDeleteRefreshing to see someone in politics call a spade a spade.
ReplyDelete(Kudos cubed, I like that!)
It's really unusual to say the least, I really underestimated this Paterson guy. Imagine now if everybody took all the mean people to task but you'd need that group spirit first. Your advice is good to not let their misery suck you in but if everyone as a group got together to tell them what they think, yeah it's a fantasy but not if you had more people like Paterson.
ReplyDelete