Freddogg Off The Chain

Let’s limit this treatise to human interaction. I think for every 20 people with Attention Deficit Disorder there is another one boring the living shit out of them.

People as a rule don’t listen or pay attention as it were because those doing the speaking allow it or don’t care, enjoying instead the art of listening to the brilliance of oneself.

And teachers are the worse because more than most of them are more boring than your Aunt Rose at Thanksgiving dinner talking about scalloped potatoes. But throwing aside all evidence that they are uninteresting doesn’t stop the pedagogical assault of drivel, deadly and interesting information about Hottentots and Medieval Feudalism like who really gave a fuck in the first place and did I mention “Henry James my ass”? .

I used to tell my students that teachers are the only group that will keep talking in spite of all the obvious biofeedback that everyone stopped listening a long time ago. Incessant talking is like vocal message and it is rather addicting. I’ve caught myself in “shut the fuck up” mode at times and I know I’m highly amusing in spurts of minutes but also the dumber my subject the less time I have to make an impression.


Can you imagine a person on the street asking for you expertise then looking away as you proceed to elucidate your experiential wisdom on how to block a car and change a tire on an inclined highway? You would stop and bark: ”Listen asshole! Don’t ask for my help then turn away breathing through an open mouth. There are people in the world better than you that don’t profit by a thing I have to say. I can go waste their time and lose most but not all self respect.”

I was sitting across the bar once—actually thousands of times- from two guys who were taking turns trying to make contrasting and irreconcilable points. They didn’t know that’s what they were doing but I was all over it not paying attention to content but to the behavior of each. One would speak and the other would just shake his head no and wait his turn. This just went on and on and I was paying rapt attention only because I wasn’t supposed to be.

And that’s the way most positional posturing goes, no one listens or learns anything. Sometimes when I’m in that situation I don’t shake my head from side to side but rather keep looking and listening and eventually the magpie becomes unnerved and says, ”What’s wrong with you? How come you’re not saying anything?”

I respond, "because you were talking and I was listening" and they usually come back and say “no, I think you were just being a smart ass” and I say, “ No, not at all, in fact, when we began this conversation I thought Bush was a Moron and I was concerned that we legitimized torture and the use of German Sheppard’s by Lesbian Interrogators on hotwired naked Muslim men . And I admit that NO End game was a concern of mine but not anymore. Now I agree with everything you said and every position you advanced.”

“Which was what?”

“Beats the hell out of me?”

I had a friend in college named Joe with a perfect 4.0 average. He considered himself a verbal logician and philosopher and said the only reason to accrue knowledge was so it could be used a weapon to beat people over the head with it. Joe was brilliant and unbeatable except he wouldn’t spar with me because I called him fat and weak and he said that was an --ad homonym—attack the person not the argument- which resulted in immediate disqualification for my sorry ass.

But one night Joe was into a deep political argument with Captain Mark Shavani, the head of security guards at Wyeth laboratories in West Chester where the rest of us worked for minimum wage hoping to bolster our savings accounts to triple digits. Shavanni was educated and tolerant, his wife Maggie was News Director for KYW News Radio in Philly.

Twenty minutes and Captain Shavani had enough of Joe and simply lamented “Look, it all gets down to a matter of opinion like everything else. It’s my opinion versus your opinion. All arguments come down to opinion.”

And then Joe said. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s a self referential, self negating, paradox. If all positions come down to opinion then so does that statement.’

Shavani replied “Go fuck yourself.”

By the way, what were we talking about?

Peace Freddogg