A Beautiful Mind

I found someone who actually talks like I do. Or rather, I found a character who talks like I do. In this movie, A Beautiful Mind, there is a mathematician called John Nash who is a big genius at the top of everything, yadda-yadda-yadda. Well, ol' John has issues talking to people. He doesn't do small talk. Well, he can't do small talk...at all. He fails so miserably that at an early point in the film, he gets himself slapped. I don't recommend the following pickup line:

He walks over to her, and after a long uncomfortable moment of silence, she finally says:

"Maybe you wanna buy me a drink?"

To which he replies:

"I don't exactly know what I'm required to say in order for you to have intercourse with me. But can we assume that I've said all that? I mean, essentially we're talking about fluid exchange, right? So could we just go straight to the sex?"

She sits there for a moment with the original smile kind of held on her face, and says:

"Well, that was sweet." *SLAP!* And she's gone.

How did he ask his wife to marry him? A-hem...

"Alicia, does our relationship warrant long term commitment? I need some kind of proof -- some kind of verifiable empirical data."

And her response, once she figures out what he just asked...

"I'm sorry, just give me a moment to redefine my girlish notions of romance."

What was a phrase that came up early in the relationship between the Queen and me? "Who talks like that?" I could only say, "I do." Apparently, I possess a certain propensity for spouting words that are far too long and/or complex for casual conversation. What is especially unfortunate about this inexplicable phenomenon is that I utilize these lengthy constructions for the simple reason of knowing those words first.

I even got ribbed about this at one point, and yes, I deserved it. I was working with someone who was giving me a hard time about writing a sentence that was six lines long and used six commas, but somehow was not a run on and grammatically correct. I do pride myself on grammatical correctness. So I had said something about trying to make things (um) "less long." And she comes back, "you mean, shorter?"

Heh, yeah, I mean shorter.

So I got a kick out of most of this movie since they guy is fairly stand-offish, remains fairly unemotional throughout, and just doesn't relate to people well. Now, let me follow that up by saying that I'm not a paranoid schizephrenic, and I don't see things that aren't there. And now, the Queen should re-read that last sentence again, because she just disagreed with me.

I'm not saying anything about multiple personalities, though.

And I'm not either.