I'd thought I'd covered this somewhere already, somewhere at http://NewsoftheStoopid.com maybe. But that only does so much good, being written down; some people can't read, and can react only to whatever they hear.

Like the ones last night.

Don't ask why I wasn't set up to record this when it happened. It occurred to me at the time. I even said so, in fact. But it didn't happen that way, unfortunately enough. Still, it happened something like this....

We went off to a restaurant. Like usual. For the most part. Of course, my day had begun earlier, and really started to become fun when I coasted the car slightly too far into the garage before killing the engine and shutting the door; instead of bothering to undo all of that, I just floored the clutch with my starboard foot and pushed the car back by a metre with the leg I probably should have lost altogether when I fell to my death [almost, anyway] several years ago. My portside knee having never entirely recovered from that, something in there went sproing and mobility for the rest of the day involved a cane.

It's interesting to note how cripplefriendly my house really isn't. I'd never really noticed that before. I don't actually care very much; it's just noteworthy.

So I'm doing my IanMalcolm/GregHouse impression for the day: picking a floor to be on and staying there as much as possible; fine. About the time the Law&Order reruns came on for the first time [they run a few episodes before rerunning the same reruns again after the first bank of reruns], I got tired of being on the television level and called MondoHebe. He having nothing better to do [sleep and reading through textbooks and stuff being not better], he came over to pick me up on the way to VillageIdiot.

I did bring the laptop. I just never got it out of my backpack. Which, again, was unfortunate.

The conversation was pretty normal, for us:

HEBE: In all probability, regardless the opposition, they'll get their smoking ban after all. Not because they should, but because two in three people don't smoke; and they don't really care that anyone does, so long as no one does.

GREM: So, the laws are fine, so long as they support everything the observer wants to have happen.

HEBE: I think we need a law where everyone named Bob gives me all his money. Not because it's fair or logical, but because it would make me happy.

GREM: Or a law where all women eighteen to thirty are topless and thin, and the rest get burqas.

HEBE: For the children. If it's for the children, it can happen.

GREM: It's totally for the children.

HEBE: Kids should be able to fill up at all tits in the land.

GREM: Pay at the pump.

HEBE: Drivethroughs.

GREM: Lactivism.

And so on.

As all this is going on, the restaurant at large think we're at least extremely funny, and quite probably correct.

Then the joiner happened.

HEBE: I'd thought the Columbine thing sounded kinda clever until I really looked into it. Knowing all the facts, those kids really didn't know what they were doing.

GREM: They had no idea. They plotted out their little attackrun by modding Doom.

HEBE: Yeah, but...I wonder about the rest of the kids. What idiot hears gunfire in the cafeteria and then hides in the library for twenty minutes while the killers leave the school, and then come the hell back in to get everyone else?

GREM: New generation. They never saw Red Dawn and plotted out in advance how to call Patrick Swayze to come in and let them bum a ride to the Wolverine Compound in Canada.

HEBE: Well, yeah; okay; but...don't these kids all learn to kill from videogames now? Doesn't Grand Theft Auto teach them that?

GREM: Have you played Grand Theft Auto? It doesn't teach--don't get me wrong: it's hours of fun; but, in the end, at most, you'll play it for sixteen hours straight, get into your real car to go get milk, and discover halfway there that you're swerving through slow morons at a hundred and fifty miles per hour. It doesn't teach you how to use an assault rifle or--

TARD: [She's dressed in that SensibleChristworshipper denim motif, possibly fifteen, lurking in the Smoking Section (ignoring the sign requiring customers to be eighteen to smoke in VillageIdiot), and now shuffling across the carpet toward GREM and HEBE like yuppielarva ready to rant that she'd lost out in the PromQueen running to someone slightly more blonde] Could you not talk about that! We can hear you over there, and we don't appreciate having you talk about guns in videogames in here!

[beat]

GREM: Noted.

[beat]

GREM: Was there something else?

TARD: We don't want to have to listen to you talking about that.

GREM: You mentioned that. I got it. I digest information. It's kinda my job.

TARD: [Turning to retreat in a dejected huff says something more unintelligible]

HEBE: You were saying....

GREM: I was saying...something; then I was verbally assaulted and forgot what it was. Oh: Grand Theft Auto is training for nothing; it doesn't count. Same for some halfassed CounterStrike mod. They're games, not Basic Training for warfare.

HEBE: Right. Placing the blame more on a generation of morons likely to complain that, say, constitutional law fails to protect them specifically from angry people with education and erudition in eateries.

GREM: Yeah. When there's no actual crime, you have to blame the victim for failing to grok that. A good subject for the show, if I were recording right now; which I really should be.

Time passes; kilobytes are spared by omitting the downtime

TARD: [Failing to get up from her table this time] Okay, I asked you once--

GREM: 'Assaulted'

TARD: --and your conversation is still inappropriate and offensive.

HEBE: Many things are.

GREM: I'm offended by meretricious bombast; it's oddly chavy.

HEBE: There's a word you never hear anymore.

GREM: Which: 'meretricious' or 'bombast'?

HEBE: 'Shabby'.

GREM: Chavy. Chav. English thing. A backronym for CouncilHoused Adolescent Vulgarian. Alarming trend in which England is becoming America, making Sid Vicious look like John Gielgud.

HEBE: There's a guy who died at the right time. Ten more minutes, and Sid Vicious would have been asked to leave anyway.

GREM: Elvis stuck around for ten more years.

HEBE: You never watch Family Guy, do you. You--

TARD: WOULD YOU STOP TRYING TO OFFEND EVERYONE!

GREM: Don't say 'family' in here.

TARD: You've already caused a table to leave with your conversation!

GREM: I don't believe you.

TARD: Oh. You don't believe me. How else do you explain--

GREM: A priori.

TARD: --the--what--just....

GREM: If you ever want to concede an argument against me, just go all a priori; when an argument is supported only by 'think about it' or 'how else do you explain', it's already lost. Deities, aliens, whatever; 'think about it' translates as 'you're right; I give up'.

HEBE: So, here we are in Social Studies again.

GREM: Or Mock Debate.

HEBE: Heh.

GREM: You realise that, in Colorado, the misdemeanour of Menacing is upgraded to a Class Five Felony Assault?

HEBE: Seriously?

GREM: Silly me: I looked it up.

HEBE: You've read the laws? How could that ever win an argument....

GREM: It doesn't have to. It's not an issue until someone calls the cops. And they might not side with retarded minors smoking in restaurants after the curfew while assaulting everyone else.

The manager then shows up.

MANAGER: You guys okay here?

GREM: Largely.

HEBE: Except for the noise.

MANAGER: [grinning] More coffee?

GREM: Nah; I think we're gonna split anyway.

The manager shrugs, making it clear that we're welcome back anytime; then she leaves, saying nothing to TARD at all.

Hebe deciedes that it's probably his turn to get the bill; I get up, pull my coat on, grab the cane, and limp off to the men's room.

Within, one of the males from the TARD's table sees how crippled I am, and suddenly has nothing for me but pure shock. Which of course is about perfect. Then I'm off to the car without hearing another word from the insensitive, offensive, inappropriate criminals.

I'm not sure why I'm so bothered by all this. Probably for a number of reasons. When I was fifteen, smoking in restaurants near midnight, I'd never have cared about something like this; and no one I'd have known would have cared either. Even today, I don't care about it. Not really. Not to the extent that I'd make an effort to go assault someone over it.

People talk in restaurants. It happens. More and more, they talk to phantoms on mobilephones; but that's a separate issue. What counts is that people say things. In a lot of cases, I'll sit there listening to them, not disagreeing so much as simply knowing better. And still, knowing that a moron is dead fucking wrong about something, I don't bother getting up and going over to whimper about it. What would be the point? What could I accomplish? Even if I could teach these idiots why they're wrong and how to stop being wrong, I'd still be doing nothing much more than immersing myself in their deplorable little lack of lives. And I don't want that. I don't want to know these people. I know too many people as it is. I'm trying to downsize here.

Curiously, my alternative was actually covered while limping to the door from the car in the first place, when there were no morons onsite to learn from it.

HEBE: I'm also trying to understand the christworshippers' weird allergy to MySpace.com. Not that I can stand it either; but that doesn't warrant outlawing the thing. Have your space at MySpace.com; I don't want one; and I don't want to see yours.

GREM: No need. I've got a real website. When dumb things happen IRL, I can blogue them out to the world in a forum of my own design.

HEBE: Not that you ever do.

GREM: There's been an unprecedented lack of dumb things lately.

HEBE: That can't last long--two for smoking--stupidity is always out there, waiting to strike. Have you been following the latest attempt to ban smoking throughout the state?

More later....

Forgot to add tags for this stupid entry.