A Little Too Social

I know man is a social creature. Without everyone else around us, most of us could not survive in any capacity. We each have our place as cogs in the great machine of our society, but there are times when the social aspect can be left aside without any detriment to the greater social order. Yet, there are people out there who simply cannot handle saying nothing to someone. They must make some level of small talk or ... well, I don't know. Their shotgun collar will explode or something.

We just want to cure your introversion. We love you.

In my life, I have come to identify these always-talkers, and occasionally take active steps to avoid them if I not in a talking mood. Most of the time, this is not possible, but when I have control, I take it. This is because most of the time the "conversations" occur, they are completely pointless, and only occurring to make some noise and keep their collars in check (cause they go off if there is silence for 60 seconds, I suppose). Surely, you've had this conversation:

"Hey, how are you doing?"
"Good, you?"
"Doing good. Thanks."

Move along. You never tell the truth in the response because let's face it, the person doesn't actually want to have a discussion with you. They just want to hear their voice to make sure it still functions. Perhaps I should launch into an actual discussion over my life and its various catastrophes, but I'm sure all my various spy capers and hacking escapades would turn their heads and besides, most of it is classified, like the time that I [REDACTED].

When do these conversations occur? Well, one of the weirdest is passing in the hall. It is literally only a few seconds in seeing each other. Read that conversation above and that's about as much time as you have before they're gone. Another is the break room, which is expected, but usually, I only in there for a refill on the water or if I'm particularly desperate, more Dr. Pepper while I sneer at the Diet Mountain Dew (ugh...). You know that story though. Again, though, it's literally and in and out for me while they do much the same thing while refilling coffee or whatever.

A more amusing one is in the elevator. The reason this is amusing is because I've ridden with one of the people with one of those sound-detecting shotgun collars with people from other floors on the way up. They will wait until the extra person leaves before they hit me with the obligatory conversation during the few seconds between the last person's floor and ours. And I was hoping for silence.

If only this were possible in my world.

The most awkward place this occurs? At the urinals in the bathroom. Not kidding. Men generally go to the bathroom alone, and there is a rule that no one talks about anything in there. You do your business and move on. I'm okay with the occasional discussion around the sinks during the hand washing phase (some of you may be unfamiliar with that piece), but while waiting for nature to work its way out, silence is the preferred option. Yet, there are a few guys out there who will inevitably strike up a conversation while you're standing there far beyond just what I have above. Like, they want to chat. Really.

So as to not be that terrible person I've mentioned before, I participate in their conversation. But seriously, it isn't necessary to chat over the urinals.

I know some people thrive on it, and I try to be gracious, but some of us relish that gold of silence, and really enjoy being alone with our thoughts. Conversely, we also like to fill our time with meaningful activities which includes meaningful conversations, so that banal three-liner needs to be abolished entirely. If you want to start a conversation, please do. I welcome originality, creative thoughts, and by all means, prove me wrong on something. And maybe I'm partly at fault for giving the non-answer, but when you only give me 3 seconds before you're out of my life, I'd rather you not say anything.

Images from Saw III and Doctor Who: The Vampires of Venice.

Skylanders Vs. Disney

A few months back I wrote about the next generation of Playstation vs. Xbox and how backwards compatibility should have worked its way into the systems. Here we have another choice before us in regards to the swappable games that are coming to the table this year. A couple years back, Skylanders swept the world and parents groaned at 32 characters priced at $10 each. The next year, they introduced Giants priced at $15 each along with a new set of characters. As such, a fortune was spent on these things.

Disney has decided, as Disney tends to do, to use this tech and make their own swappable game called Disney Infinity, which takes their extensive catalog of characters and makes them into figurines you can play with in their game. It's going up against Skylanders 3, called Swap Force, which takes that tech a step further by allowing certain characters to have mix and match arms and legs. The catch for this is that the new Skylanders games takes a new portal. It might or might not take the old characters (probably will), but that means for all intents and purposes, we (who did purchase the last two games) will be starting over since our old portal won't work on the new game.

With Giants, the old portal worked, and the game functioned as a sort of upgrade to the first one, so we just got the game with the included Giant but no portal, and simply built up the collection while using our old Skylanders. Now, with the need to start over, we're leaning toward the Disney game for its familiarity and just having a new game to play instead of a rehash of an old one. And since Skylanders was expensive to play, we will likely go with only one of the games since we'll want all of the characters. However, unlike the way we did the Skylanders, where everyone got whatever characters they wanted (meaning we have multiples of several characters) and maintained their one character, we're only going to get one set of characters for everyone to use. Cuts down on that expense and the question of who wants what. We see one we don't have, and we'll pick it up.

Will we get the Skylanders Swap Force eventually? I couldn't say at this point. We're kind of over it and looking forward the allure of the Disney version of the figurine game.

Terrible

You know how sometimes you look at horoscopes and numerological studies and that sort of thing, and they usually tell you something you want to see, and you nod thoughtfully and say, "yeah, that's me." Most of the time, these things are geared to our conceit and we always agree because the good and bad could apply to facets of anyone. So, when I saw one about superheroes, I was amused. My birth month gave me a Superman theme of goodness and truth and justice, which does actually fit me very well. Then it went on to the con side where it indicated extreme conceit and condescension which also fits me very well. Unfortunately, sometimes.

Sometimes, I do think I'm a rather terrible person, and it's always in retrospect because I never consider what I'm doing in the moment. I am actually a genius when it comes to intelligence. I think I'm kind of stupid sometimes, to be honest, but from a scientific perspective, I would be considered very, very intelligent in that I learn quickly and easily and can regurgitate most of what I take in (that'd be knowledge, not food, though I imagine I could be skilled at regurgitating food as well). This intelligence makes me very conceited and gives me a bit of a complex in that I know exactly how much smarter than you I am.

Admittedly, I do try to keep it under control when I help people so that they understand the concepts I'm trying to put forth, but a lot of the time, they come away feeling stupid, and people being how they are, it's my fault they feel stupid. Now, it isn't my fault they aren't smart to comprehend the concepts I'm giving them, but I'm the one in the hot seat for teaching complex math to someone who can barely find the numbers on a calculator (cal-cu-what? Go back to eating your glue.).

At my work place, people tend to take ownership of problems they deal with, and they get remarkably possessive about it. I don't care. If someone handles something sent to me, I scoff and shake my head at their impatience since the world won't fall down if it doesn't happen yesterday. In one such instance, I saw an email string where there was a problem, it got passed to other people because I had left for the day already, and then it got "solved" (using the term loosely since it was only resolved because it took long enough to get someone else on it that the only issue was a lack of patience to let something finish). This morning, someone on that string felt the need to ask me about it even though they knew it was fixed. I flat out said that I wasn't sure what she would want me to tell her about it since I had also read the email where it was done, and nothing more to do. I didn't know anything about it. I probably had "that face" that told her she was an idiot. I didn't mean to, but it really was a stupid question. Customer service will say there are no such things as stupid questions, but I assure you there are. If you ask the counter high schooler at McDonalds if they serve pasta, that qualifies as a stupid question. A) McDonalds isn't an Italian restaurant and B) if the answer were yes, I wouldn't recommend it because McDonalds is not an Italian restaurant.

On the flip side of terrible, I have some Star Wars cups on my desk, and in those Star Wars cups are some candy canes. These candy canes came out around Christmas a couple years back and have some images on the wrappers from the Star Wars series, The Clone Wars. I'm not a huge candy person, so my eating any candy at all is very, very slow (except perhaps Jelly Babies, which are scrumptious). Why do I keep these candy canes on my desk? To remind me of how terrible I can be sometimes, and how that affects people. Every time I look at them, I recall being in Wal-Mart with the Queen and her pointing how a box of these candy canes to me. I do like Star Wars, and I have been known to collect knick knacks related to the series, so her doing this is perfectly in line with me. Now, I have a tendency to think about cost more than desire, so in order to dissuade any notion of me wanting to buy this item, I derided the commercialism of the product and silliness of them only putting images on the wrappers when they're just candy canes.

Then I got them for Christmas.

You see, the Queen had already purchased said candy canes since I have an affinity for Star Wars, as I said. She told me this while fighting back the tears since she wasn't aware I would completely hate them, which I don't. I carried them around in my lunch bag for awhile, and then they sat on my desk at home before I finally packed them up and have them with me at work in those cups. Thinking about the situation even now hurts me. These rather innocuous items show me not only that she loves and thinks of me, but also that I am a terrible idiot sometimes and need to consider my words carefully because words can hurt.

I wasn't sure how this post would turn out, and it's gone down a rather depressing path, so I'll end it with this. Humanity is a social creature. Even the most antisocial of us need other people in our lives to achieve any level of happiness. I'm introverted by nature, and I can go enormous lengths of time without talking to anyone. In fact, most people think I hate them because I don't say anything, but the thing is that I get my socializing from both my friend at work (I believe I referred to him as The Mixer or something before) and from my family at home. I don't need much of anything else, but that does not negate anyone's status as a person. Some people need more than others, and I try to accept that.

It doesn't change the fact, however, that most of the time, I really do come off as a terrible person whether I mean to or not.