Friday, April 6, 2001
Introducing a new facet of the weblog...
When I first started this thing, I planned to stick to links and only links. However, after some recent interesting events with work, I have decided to write a column on occasion. After doing a guest one a few weeks ago for the paper (which wasn’t published while I was on vacation due to it getting lost) and finding that the people who had read it actually liked it, I figure I should practice up some. I’ve pretty much always wanted to write one, but since the paper's having to cut columns thanks to our lovely recession, I’ll just take the initiative now.

I've also been admiring David Grenier's online column for awhile now and keep intending to put it on the side links page or a log list or something. He does good work, and I was liking how he combines the two aspects.

I’m sure pretty much all of my columns will be insane, as this one certainly is. But what the hell.

I'll be posting links like usual the rest of the time (I have a fat pile to get to at some point this weekend along with the design stuff I have to do), but once in awhile things'll be different. Hope you're entertained.

Friday, April 6, 2001
Etiquette Lessons
Not that I’m Miss Manners or anything—far from it. I actually started out the week finding out one of my teachers was pissed at me for doing homework during critiques, which I’m not at all apologetic about. I had little time to do it at home, critiques bore me greatly and doing the homework at least kept me awake. I don’t think she’d really like it if I stared raptly at attention for three and a half hours of “This is my project, blah blah blah” only to discover that I was really in a coma of zonedness when she called on me, whereas if I’m doing homework I actually listen to what they’re saying. It’s an odd quirk of mine that some teachers have failed to understand, even after they’ve called on me or seen me volunteer an answer while in the midst of homework. Just because I’m not staring at the picture or your face the entire two or three hours that you’re yapping does NOT mean my ears are broken. I heard you, I wrote down the crucial information, and I’ll probably get an A or B in the class. Yet they get all huffy and demand that I pay them full and utter attention because “that’s rude.” But come on, this is college we’re talking about. Students can’t stare at you the entire time because they’re taking notes anyway, they’re paying you to come here, so let them do what they bloody well want. It’s not your ass that’ll be in trouble for their actions. And yes, if people were doing other things during a speech of mine I wouldn’t give a damn. I sympathize completely because speeches are generally boring.

Back to my point of etiquette, I can be “rude” (or considered to be rude) on occasion myself. Yet somehow this week I kept stumbling across behavior that strikes me as even ruder than anything I may do. Stuff that’s downright offensive, but most of it seems to be fairly accepted in society, or at least if you objected to it being done to you people would gasp in shock and go “Gee, why are YOU so easily pissy?” So for today, I’m going to give you three etiquette rules for life. Please follow them or else someone out there, perhaps me, will eventually throw a raging screaming public fit.

Situation #1: Once upon a time, I used to be able to write e-mail to a friend of mine and be sure that he would write back to it ASAP. The boy checks e-mail about 4-6 times a day and is perenially looking for something else to do to postpone working, after all. Yet over the last year or so he’s, to put it bluntly, slagged off. I had no idea how bad the situation had gotten though until about Tuesday.

He’d gone out of state for work in March, which he normally does for about a month at a time. I’d written him a few e-mails asking when he was getting back, as I wanted to bug him to go to a fashion show I’m going to be in around the middle of this month. Did he write me back? Nope. Which ticked me off because I hate being ignored when I’m asking a reasonable question. So finally I caved in and called long-distance to ask what was up. Did he not know when he was coming back? Oh, that wasn’t the case, he’s returning soon. Did he get my e-mails? Sure. Then why didn’t he write back? He hasn’t gotten to replying to anyone’s e-mails yet.

And that’s when I found out that the dude has OVER SIX HUNDRED e-mails that he needs to reply to. This, y’all, is just insane. (And I have decided to never write him an e-mail with anything other than a URL in it ever again.) Unfortunately, this seems to be what happens to EverQuest addicts of my acquaintance.

But it’s not just him, though he certainly sets a record for Most Neglectful Response Time even while claiming he’ll write back. It’s several of my other friends as well. Three people have, as far as I can tell, outright refused to write back to e-mails sent to them any more for any reason. E-mail is only good for forwarding jokes, quizzes and “fight the Taliban” politics. Even if I’m asking something like “Hey, what’s your address so I can send you your Christmas present?”, I wait and wait and wait. Seeing as all of these folks live far off, I’d really like to not have to do the Checkup Phone Call and deal with the ensuing parental phone bill wrath, but can I avoid that? Noooooo.

Rule #1: If someone sends you e-mail, particularly e-mail that has a fairly urgent question in it, WRITE THE HELL BACK. Within a week, tops. Within three days is even better. The more you keep up patterns like this, the more people will think you’re a big ol’ flake. Would you do that to people who’d called you and left a message?

Situation #2: So I’m in this boiling hot bookstore the other day and I’m so hot I strip down to the tank top underneath my shirt. Which, unfortunately for me, catches the ogling eyes of a fortyish foreign dude right ahead of me in line. At first I don’t notice what he’s doing—he gives this cutesy “hi” when I come into line, I casually say hi back and pick up the syllabus we were handed today to read—but pretty soon I notice what he’s doing. Everyone ahead of him in line is standing facing the counter. He, however, is standing sideways and outright staring raptly at my boobs. I normally wouldn’t care if someone took a glance or not at my tits, but staring for a long time is just not a good idea. You might as well get “I’m a perverted moron” tattooed across your forehead for the good it’s gonna do you if you want to score with the chick you’re ogling.

I had no idea what to do about this, because not only is it not fun to throw scenes in public while you’re trapped in a line, there’s no real acceptable way in our society to not start something ugly by saying “Stop staring at my tits!” (Hey, you try it sometime and see how well it goes.) Unfortunately, this type—the er, socially inept type—seems to be attracted to me over all other men, so I already knew what he was trying to do. This was his incredibly bad way of trying to pick me up, only he was waiting for me to notice him outwardly first. I noticed that if I moved my head up slightly from reading my syllabus, his ears practically perked up, and he was clearly trying to ready a Line to use on me to get my attention. I decided to not give it to him by staring raptly at my syllabus for the next twenty minutes. I’ve never taken so long to read anything in my life.

Eventually the dude got called up to the desk, where he recited this long odd tale of having finally come in to pick up some stuff he ordered, only the order came in a month ago and he claimed he “couldn’t understand what the girl was talking about on the message. Would you like to hear the message?” he asked repeatedly while going on about how his service was going to delete the thing. I did notice that he did understand the salesgirl’s name, and when told that she had left the store for the day, he then claimed that her name was the name of the girl who was waiting on him right now. You get the picture, some screws were missing here. After this, he went to lurk in a nearby aisle while watching me get my purchases rung up, after which I ran out of the store before he could catch me.

I know there are a lot of socially inept guys out there who have no clue about how to deal with women. I’ve dated several of y’all. And this rule is for you: #2, NEVER ogle a strange girl’s tits for more than ten seconds. You can see the moral of the story here, because it didn’t get him the girl. I know you’re horny and desperate and clueless, but here’s what staring’s gonna do: It tells the girl that you have no clue as to social skills, you’re desperate and horny, and you’re probably gonna be that annoying guy who, if she ever dates you, will be desperately fumbling at her for a kiss at the end of the night whether she wants to or not. (And we’ll just stop with the rest of that scenario.) We’ve all done this at least once. We really hate it. Don’t be that guy. Optimally, when you’re checking out a girl it’s gotta be short and sweet. She can catch you glancing, but that’s it. And when she catches you, LOOK UP and stop ogling the tits and start ogling her face. For more on this subject, I’ll refer you to Eric Raymond’s sex tips, as he covers the process of geek dating quite well.

Situation #3: Lucky little me got into a free sneak preview showing of Bridget Jones’s Diary: The Movie Thursday. While most of the plot’s not like the book, the movie plot is very much akin to it and maybe even better. And it’s absolutely hilarious.

The movie also showed in gory detail the aspects of the book I related to the most: the dreaded “Why are you single?” attacks laid on Bridget by folks like her married friends’s friends and the awful Uncle Geoffrey. For those unknowledgeable of the book, the girl can’t attend a party without constantly being asked questions like “How’s your love life? Get a chap yet? Oh, you never seem to be able to keep any! Tick tock, tick tock, you’re not getting any younger!” Or even worse, “Tell us (Smug Married people), Bridget, why are there so many unmarried thirtysomething women? You’re all looking so pathetic these days.” (Okay, that’s not all the exact dialogue, but it’s similar enough that you get the drift.) The book says it even better, actually:

"How's your love life, anyway?"

Oh God. Why can't married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still having sex?" Everyone knows that dating in your thirties is not the happy-go-lucky free-for-all it was when you were twenty-two and that the honest answer is more likely to be, "Actually, last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little Angora crop-top, told me he was gay/a sex addict/a narcotic addict/a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo," than, "Super, thanks."

Not being a natural liar, I ended up mumbling shamefacedly to Geoffrey, "Fine," at which point he boomed, "So you still haven't got a feller!"

"Bridget! What are we going to do with you!" said Una. "You career girls! I don't know! Can't put it off forever, you know. Tick-tock-tick-tock."

"Yes. How does a woman manage to get to your age without being married?" roared Brian Enderby (married to Mavis, used to be president of the Rotary in Kettering), waving his sherry in the air."

What frightens me is that I get much the same treatment from my father’s side of the family, which consists of a lot of Montana redneck types, half of which got married at the age of 19 and the other half was constantly harassed until they gave in. I tried for many years to let them think I was gay, until my dad blabbed about who I’d been seeing a few times. But ever since I got out of high school, they can’t seem to think of anything else to say to me other than “So how’s your love life? Get another boyfriend yet?” Even worse, this year (my senior year of college), it’s turned into “tick tock” with guys. I was actually told that “I’d better start majoring in boys or there wouldn’t be any left!” If they ever saw the guys in college that were interested in me this year (see Situation #2), they wouldn’t want me to just hook up with any of them either. Unfortunately, since I’m not bringing the little scumbags home, they don’t believe me on this.

Which leads me to Rule #3: NEVER ASK A SINGLE PERSON ABOUT THEIR LOVE LIFE. If they bring up the topic, fine, but otherwise DON’T. It is NOT okay to ask this extremely personal question in front of a large audience to someone who might not want to share the details or lack thereof. The single person, knowing damn well that any answer that isn’t “I have a new boyfriend and we’re engaged” will only bring on a worse onslaught of questions and/or insults about their personal character, will be tempted into making up a complicated lie to shut you up a la any sitcom, or simply throw a raging fit and/or drink all of the liquor in the house.

If you genuinely care about your single friend or relative, please spare them that question. If there’s something you need to know, they’ll tell you. If you have to ask, the answer is probably no, and do you really need to go through the same old “you’re pathetic, you single ugly cow”-esque speech you gave them at the last holiday party?