Skunk
23rd July 2009, 13:50
Here's one of the many things Margret has taught me: you might lose to a weaker opponent if they are faster; you might lose to a slower opponent if they are stronger; but you will *always* lose to an opponent who doesn't tell you the rules until after the game's over.
I was quietly sitting reading a book yesterday when Margret surged in, all insectoid with rapid, jerky, scanning movements and leaking urgency everywhere. She hissed with irritation, and then - brisk; insistent - said to me, "Have you seen the whatsit?"
This is obviously ludicrous.
There wasn't even a mime-clue to accompany the question. (The indicative waving of a foot, say, or that thing some people do where when they're asking for any object whatsoever they hold their hands apart to illustrate the general size of it - Mouth: "Have you got a stool I could borrow?"; Hands: "The top of a stool is about *this* big.") Now, it's hardly unusual for Margret to sweep into a room in the company of ludicrous, but I'm quick to see that the way she's done it here gives me the opportunity to Make a Point. So, at the speed of brain, I script the remainder in my imagination. This is how the whole exchange will play:
Margret: "Ssss... Have you seen the whatsit?"
Mil: "Yes."
Margret: "Yes?"
Mil: "Yes, but it's more impressive viewed from the air than when you're actually travelling across it."
Margret: "What?"
Mil: "Oh - I thought you meant the Øresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark. Were you asking about something else?"
Margret: "Ah, I see what you've done there. You've used the rhetorical device of a vastly unlikely assumption to wryly spotlight the preposterous lack of specificity in my question. Yes, indeed - that gentle arrow was well-aimed and much-deserved, Mil: you are brilliant, handsome and charismatic, and I will start doing some of the washing up from now on."
As I say, this is formulated and performed entirely in my mind, and so it takes only a flashing instant for me to view it, mentally. In Earth time, Margret's words have barely had chance to dissipate into the air and she's looking at me for a response. Thus, without any audible comma, I can begin the scene for real. It goes, *in its entirety*, like this:
Margret: "Ssss... Have you seen the whatsit?"
Mil: "Yes."
Margret: "No, not that." (She makes a geysering, 'You're useless, you are'-style sigh and strides out of the room.)
Pwned.
I defy you to come up with a way in which that makes any sense at all, other than as an exercise conceived *exclusively* to confuse, unsettle and defeat me for sport. And let's be unflinching about how utterly I was taken down here. Not only was my plan made to explode in the barrel, but I was *also* left completely baffled, *and* with A Point, now doomed to be Unmade, lying like a constricting weight on my chest, *and* I couldn't even carry on reading my book in peace as the words now no longer sank in; I read the page multiple times, but each time I got to the end I realised I hadn't absorbed a single thing I'd read as my head had actually been given over to repeatedly re-running our short scene and wondering, "Um... what just happened there?" Quite honestly, she might as well have simply marched into the room and tasered me.
If you like this sort of thing here's more:
http://thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com/
and sign up to the mailing list.
I was quietly sitting reading a book yesterday when Margret surged in, all insectoid with rapid, jerky, scanning movements and leaking urgency everywhere. She hissed with irritation, and then - brisk; insistent - said to me, "Have you seen the whatsit?"
This is obviously ludicrous.
There wasn't even a mime-clue to accompany the question. (The indicative waving of a foot, say, or that thing some people do where when they're asking for any object whatsoever they hold their hands apart to illustrate the general size of it - Mouth: "Have you got a stool I could borrow?"; Hands: "The top of a stool is about *this* big.") Now, it's hardly unusual for Margret to sweep into a room in the company of ludicrous, but I'm quick to see that the way she's done it here gives me the opportunity to Make a Point. So, at the speed of brain, I script the remainder in my imagination. This is how the whole exchange will play:
Margret: "Ssss... Have you seen the whatsit?"
Mil: "Yes."
Margret: "Yes?"
Mil: "Yes, but it's more impressive viewed from the air than when you're actually travelling across it."
Margret: "What?"
Mil: "Oh - I thought you meant the Øresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark. Were you asking about something else?"
Margret: "Ah, I see what you've done there. You've used the rhetorical device of a vastly unlikely assumption to wryly spotlight the preposterous lack of specificity in my question. Yes, indeed - that gentle arrow was well-aimed and much-deserved, Mil: you are brilliant, handsome and charismatic, and I will start doing some of the washing up from now on."
As I say, this is formulated and performed entirely in my mind, and so it takes only a flashing instant for me to view it, mentally. In Earth time, Margret's words have barely had chance to dissipate into the air and she's looking at me for a response. Thus, without any audible comma, I can begin the scene for real. It goes, *in its entirety*, like this:
Margret: "Ssss... Have you seen the whatsit?"
Mil: "Yes."
Margret: "No, not that." (She makes a geysering, 'You're useless, you are'-style sigh and strides out of the room.)
Pwned.
I defy you to come up with a way in which that makes any sense at all, other than as an exercise conceived *exclusively* to confuse, unsettle and defeat me for sport. And let's be unflinching about how utterly I was taken down here. Not only was my plan made to explode in the barrel, but I was *also* left completely baffled, *and* with A Point, now doomed to be Unmade, lying like a constricting weight on my chest, *and* I couldn't even carry on reading my book in peace as the words now no longer sank in; I read the page multiple times, but each time I got to the end I realised I hadn't absorbed a single thing I'd read as my head had actually been given over to repeatedly re-running our short scene and wondering, "Um... what just happened there?" Quite honestly, she might as well have simply marched into the room and tasered me.
If you like this sort of thing here's more:
http://thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com/
and sign up to the mailing list.