Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Discombobulated Moments

The different brands of weird in this world perplex me, scare me and make in shake my head in one discombobulated moment.

Take weird No. 1:

40+ male who dresses like a 13-year-old and acts like your number one source for information. He is your expert at anything you might want to know.

And by golly aren't you lucky to be in his presence? Hopefully you have time though, he talks INCREDIBLY SLOW. So slow that instead of wanting to kill him to make it end, you would rather take your own life. He gets the simplest things wrong--even after you correct him a million times. He stares at you when you talk and looks like he's going through a dictionary looking for the right thing to say when he's talking.

Oh yeah. He returned to college at 40 + but couldn't finish his second year. He's in the same job that he was in 10 years ago -- and thinks he's king because of it.

Weird No. 2

This 40+ male is a cancer survivor (awe, warm gooey feelings), but he also regularly uses a tanning bed. He has a decent job, probably was once pretty good at it. He has ken-doll hair (read: it never moves, and is styled like Mr. Barbie's hair). He's monotone and expression doesn't change. He's creepiness factor is how needy he is. He finds nice women who won't push him away or tell him off, and latches on as a friend. He's the type of friend who asks why you didn't call, or why when you called you only talked five minutes instead of ten. You have to sit by him when you're in a group setting and god forbid you even talk to anyone else -- or heaven forbid, another man! He's possessive of you and makes you feel guilty if you don't give him 110 percent of your attention. When he doesn't get his way--he pouts--or worse, he uses the power he has in his job and lords it over you ... threatening to do something until you give in.

You've never seen his wife or kids. You have his work phone, cell phone, home phone, cabin phone. He's emailed you at all times of day and night -- so much in fact you wonder how he gets any work done at all. He takes interest in anything you are interested. He sends you cards, flowers, brings you lunch .. and then is offended when you ask him to stop because people might start talking.

Weird No. 3

This one isn't so much weird as annoying. This one is a male, not as old but just as needy. He always wants to talk, but it's never a conversation. It's him saying he doesn't like his life or he's bored or he misses his precious girlfriend who left him. Not once does he ask about you or pick up when you're not feeling happy. He makes irrelevant statements and talks "up" trying to sound smart. The problem is he's not smart enough to know you don't care or to pick up that you're kidding or are bored.

Since I'm randoming ranting ... I'll continue with recent pet peeves.

Don't constantly use my name in conversation. Especially online ... you don't need to say "Hi Stacey" every time we start talking. It's my dialog box, I know you're talking to me. "Real" conversations are okay to use names ... just not at every sentence--it should be a natural flow.

For some reason when online, names are more sacred ... you can open up the convo w/ a screen name: if it's just something you do or if you haven't talked to a person in forever--but not their name.

It always gets my attention when someone uses my name online ... and if they're just doing it ... it kinda ticks me off.

1 comment:

paco johnson said...

i'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with the name thing. I like to use names because i think it ads a personal touch to the cold and anonymous world of instant messaging. i'll try not to use your name anymore. i think it makes people feel better if someone cares enough about them to remember their real name, not just some alias that means nothing in the real world.