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Sunday, December 07, 2003

“Come talking that trash and we’ll pull your card.”
-NWA

hanging out with co-workers last night. place called The Trivia Bar? it had Trivial Pursuit questions on the table. not too much time spent on that concept. now that i think back though, i regret not having this one dude’s back while he was the victim of a verbal assault from some college professor at the end of the table. it wasn’t until after this professor left that my friend told me about some of the things he’d been saying. some highlights:

-the prof started smacking himself in the head with his own wallet when my friend mispronounced “dichotomy” (even though he used it correctly).

-he told my friend that, since he was so young (he’s in his twenties) he isn’t allowed to have an opinion on most subjects.

-he insisted that my friend didn’t know the difference between argument and opinion. this apparently was his main point all night.

it really angered me that i wasn’t involved in that discussion because i was distracted at the other end of the room explaining something to some another group of co-workers. this other group i was actually warned away from because they’d been known to “not just play Dungeons and Dragons indoors harmlessly, but to actually run around the woods with weapons” but since “Return of the King” is coming out this week, and no one in their right mind would probably go see all 5 hours of it with me, i’ll hitch a ride with the hard-core fantasy nuts. hell, if you were going to see “Backdraft” wouldn’t you want to hang out at Denny’s with some firemen afterwards and listen to them dissect the problems in the film? that’s what i’m saying. anyway, what was i talking about, oh yeah, i’m explaining to a group of co-workers down the bar about how there’s a certain time of day when all the females are standing in a certain place by their work-stations, and if you stand in a certain place, you can look down a row of asses and compare them all. as important as this was, it was no excuse for leaving my friend at the mercy of this fuck. not to Monday Morning Quarterback here, but here’s how it should have went down...with me involved:

-asshole jumps on my friend for mispronouncing a word and i instantly point out that when he was citing the ten commandments for an example he was not really citing the ten commandments. people always fuck this up. the ten commandments, the tablets that Moses brings down, are a bunch of goofy crap about feeding goats and wheat harvests. the “thou shalt not kill,” “thou shalt not steal” etc. are from Moses verbally repeating what he was “told” on Mount Si’nai. the stone tablets are ten things about farming (much more practical rules actually) and not the stuff that people argue to put in courtroom lobbies and school. these fuckwads who want to mix church and state with the Ten Commandments in schools ‘n shit don't even know what they actually say. they apparently never even read the Book. notice the capital "B." check it out for yourself: Exodus 34:13-28. good ammo against any zealot. anyway, he wasn’t a zealot, he was making some left-wing point, however, he still could have been blown out of the water by my pointing out that mispronouncing a word (while using it correctly) is nothing compared to parroting facts that are wrong.

-asshole tells my friend he’s too young to have an opinion on any subject. i then point out that, even though he’s in his early twenties, he’s probably fucked more females and punched more people in the face than the professor did at that age, and therefore he has more than enough experience under his belt to talk about anything he wants. actually, just looking at the crusty old fuck, i’d guess that the professor lacks experience to compare opinions (actually opinions about opinions, more on that later) with a thirteen year-old. sure he read more books but this is where i’d begin to steer the conversation away from “knowledge” and “facts.” this is my favorite tactic. a quick verbal spanking on the high road, then the inevitable journey to my favorite place: the low road. this reminds me of my parody of “Good Will Hunting” i wrote called “Good Ass Kicking” where they’re at the bar and the kid with the pony-tail spouts off all those facts and the hero challenges him to belching contest, then beats his ass, instead of that lame quote-duel. my parody was sadly eclipsed by their own parody in "Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back" oh well. bonus! other things i came up with first but can’t prove:

the car antennas shaped like lighting bolts. someone bent mine all to hell back at college and i would make creative shapes out of it to cover up the damage. years later these lightning bolts antennas were all over. my roommate Gary can verify my invention. also, i had a sun-visor that had a gash in it and i would store cds in there, years later guess what? new cd-holder visor. bastards. oh yeah, the wheel. i invented the wheel. i made one out of Legos when i was three, while Thus Spake Zarathustra was playing in the background. off track here, back to the bar scene:

-asshole keeps yapping about the difference between argument and opinion and forgets to do one crucial thing: offer an actual argument or opinion about anything BESIDES arguments or opinions! i would explain how tiresome this is by asking him if he likes to read books about books or go fishing for fishing rods or look at photographs of photographs. THEN i would give an example of an opinion:

the professor’s name was Lee so i would say “isn’t that a girl’s name? what’s that like?” and i would keep the conversation on his girlish name for at least the duration of 3 more beers.

so anyhow, this friend’s friend was the guy who brought Professor Lee out that night so we’re going to try to get him out again at some point and give him the verbal lashing he deserved. to be fair, i might not even be needed, since my friend also has a lot to say (it’s so easy to think about good shit later), but he was hammered and his mouth wasn’t moving as fast as his brain or he wouldn’t have even needed the back-up i failed to give him.

in unrelated news:

-Beefheart’s “Trout Mask Replica” rocks.
-The Cramps “Look Mom No Head” also rocks and is everything i hoped it would be.
-Cold’s “Year of the Spider” does not rock, in spite of the great album title and the promise of that excellent single “Stupid Girl.”
-i have pictures on my walls now
-i bought the new "Naked Lunch" dvd, Criterion Edition, even though my dvd player is broken because i'm stupid like that. i also have no love for Criterion because i believe they are over-priced scam-artists and not half the company Anchor Bay is. thing is, they had the actual movie poster on the cover (dude with a typewriter for a head) instead of the bullshit huge actor's face nonsense and i'm a sucker for the original poster every time.

and at the risk of sounding silly, like i’m offering an opinion about an opinion, here’s some trivia about some trivia: from a withered deck of Trivial Pursuit cards in that bar that looked to be at least 20 years old, at least half the cards i pulled from the box contained questions about Lord of the Rings. only one on the Ten Commandments. freaky.

::: david - 5:14 PM [+] :::
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