Ghomeshi: what once was cool

Strange and sad, and shows how blind we be

when we see

the epitome

of cool

is nothing much but drool.

We kept that parasite within our sight 

and glued ourselves and grew ourselves a spot

(and women sure liked him a lot)

We didn't see old photos of him much

from rocker days

though we sort of heard his group

Bare Naked something? - No,

it was that other one 

though he was Hip, we knew because he told us, 

he sold us on the look 

and forced the Like.

Jian Ghomeshi, Jian Ghomeshi:

this country's got a hangover

your name is on the bottle

we fell for you

sucked up to you

full throttle

full throttle

Little teddies

have big ears

they see too much

and smell the fear

Turn him to the wall

and it will all disappear

close your eyes, girl

and you will see no evil

Oh come host us, host us! - jack up

our national boredom! Your killer smile

dilutes our memories 

of Lester Pearson and Juliette

grey wool socks

and other national traits

Canada the sleeping virgin

is now orgasmic

 drowned in lubrication

a slow hot fudge slide

of seduction

Was there an end to his poses? his suitability?

His male model shine?

His entitled gleam?

His internal spotlight?

The batteries that never ran out?

The vibrator in his larynx

that sent us all into 

paroxysms?

And here, let's not forget this! 

It was great at the time.

Great!

Great. I, um. I. 

Things change. Do they!

But not the man, the slug on the sidewalk,

the slug in his pants, slimy

the thug with his hands, grasping

the punch

the blackening, the blueing, the pearly smile

the woman now on trial

for being his victim

the man

(if you can call him a man) 

ass-licked, ass-wipened, then kicked back down

and cheered and jeered at, back in the spotlight

 as he walks up the courtroom stairs 

CODA

Jian Gomeshi, this is what you look like

after the fall.

I see no glamour here, 

no glisten or gleam,

just the dead eyes of a thug

and those celebrated lips 

compressed into a line. 

Pictures of the back of your head

taken by your former fans

are now trophies of your downfall

they don't even need to see your face 

any old part of you will do.

This was not what he expected

you can see it's killing him

but don't fret over Jian

the man will survive

there is still room

in his mother's basement

and someone will surely take him on

as a security guard

somewhere

the last remaining video store in Canada

or perhaps he'll open his own 

s & m parlour

it could be quite popular

but you'll have to check your iphones

at the door

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Why do I think I'm the only one?

This was one of those rare things I shared on Facebook, mainly because it rang all my bells at once. These are "issues" that come up again and again, and not just when I'm trying to sleep.

But my second reaction was: wait a minute. You mean other people go through this? This must be a mistake. But why are so many people clicking "like"?

Don't tell me other people go through these things. No. It's not possible.

Could it be that MOST people keep up a good face, a brave face, even when (especially when) they are going through absolute, utter shit? Could it be that most people, if they are facing any kind of adversity, even the niggling stuff, answer the question "how are you doing?" with "oh, I'm fine"? Might this absolute imperative to present a strong front backfire when they're lying down with their eyes closed in the dark, rigid with anxiety and utterly vulnerable?

I talked to someone I'm very close to recently, and she told me about the trite things people sometimes say to her when they're trying to be helpful. "Oh, don't worry, I'm sure it will all work out for the best." "Something will come along." "Just be positive!" "Maybe it wasn't meant to be." "What's the worst that can happen?" - and, my all-time least-favorite: "Everything happens for a reason".

That's only a notch away from "it's all part of God's plan" on the suicidal scale. Perhaps followed by (and I actually heard this one once), "There but for the grace of God go I".

People say these things because they don't know what else to say. They're afraid they will say the wrong thing. Even if they truly do want to offer reassurance, it stops the conversation cold. It'll get better! Case closed. It also sends the message: I don't want to hear this. 

Deeper than that is a certain abhorrence, a dread that this adversity is somehow contagious and will rub off on them. So they have to quickly dispel it with bland-isms that don't help at all and even make the loneliness, isolation and shame (for facing problems/failure is innately shameful) more painful.

There's a creeping suspicion these days that when things go wrong, it's because of something you did or didn't do, thought or didn't think. This is all linked to that cheery, chirpy philosophy that "we can do anything we want and have everything we desire if we just try hard enough". If you have the right attitude or send out the right energy, the Universe will respond and shower wonderful things on you.

So if the Universe isn't showering (and why should it, when it is totally oblivious of your existence?), it must be you. If your dreams aren't falling into your lap, if you get sick or lose your job and can't find another one in the shark-infested waters of today's economy - well then, why? 

It can't be the fact that life can be excruciatingly tough, unfair, even destroying certain people who have every right to thrive.

I think in this slick sugar-coated age of social media and its narcissistic posturing, this kind of crap is getting worse. That's why it is so rare to see something like this, an admission of vulnerability, of fear, of irrational yet gnawing worry. It's rare to see such humanness, because no one seems to want to admit to it. If you can't sleep because your gut is in a roil, well, what are you doing wrong?

Which is why I had that knee-jerk response. Everyone else has got it together, don't they? Deluxe vacations, glorious birthday parties, reunions of families that are loving and always get along. Perfect-looking selfies with perfect teeth and hair gently stirred by the (electric fan?) wind. And in my case, because most of my Facebook "friends" are writers, fabulous book launches attended by hundreds of people, TV interviews, prestigious awards, etc. etc. And big fat contracts with huge publishers, not to mention very cushy advances. And let us not forget the most important thing of all: sales.

The middle two are my biggest concern, though.  Am I sick, or what? Why did I lose 35 pounds in 5 months, without dieting, when all my life I've had a weight problem? (And I could have done without the TWO phone calls I had this week about my abnormal kidney function.) Will we have enough to live on in retirement, when neither of us has an income? Maybe this affects "everyone" (and that's another thing that bugs me, the "everybody thinks/feels/does/has" syndrome that is supposed to stretch to include pimps, drug dealers, members of Isis, and people in a coma). But not likely. The "everybody thinks/feels", etc., thing is a way to make ourselves feel better because we suspect we ARE the only one, and that we're losers because of it.

After centuries of contemptous silence and raw fear, people are just beginning to talk about "mental illness", specifically depression (because terrifying things like bipolar and schizophrenia are still the province of horror movies and those celebrity "memoirs of madness" that everyone sucks up so eagerly), but most people have no idea how it annihilates self-esteem and destroys hope. You just have a negative attitude, that's all, and if you'd be more positive you'd feel better and wouldn't have to just languish at home on drugs, and could go back to work and be productive like everybody else. Everything happens for a reason, so for God's sake stop taking those pills and get back to work! Self-pity never got you anywhere.

Then again, maybe it's far more therapeutic to read something like this. It might make some people laugh, but it didn't make me laugh. It made me wonder how anyone else could be that vulnerable without being destroyed. 

My angst, my anger

I find it interesting, on this second day of the new year, that THIS is the post that probably drew the most likes on my page (53 and counting, when I normally get zero or one). It's not only just a share of someone else's post, it's highly critical of Facebook and social media mentality/narcissism. People are chiming in to agree with it, with one exception, someone who thinks it's brave of people to bare their souls like that. Hmmmmm. My brilliant Venetian vacation, my lottery win, my literary prize which I am sure I do not deserve, my new profile pic with my hair gauzily streaming in the wind (electric fan), eliciting ooohs and ahhhs, my telling people - oh so modestly - that complete strangers are stopping me in the street just to tell me how beautiful I am. And blah blah blah. Look at this, folks - look! My angst, my anger, my vanity, my conceit. There for all the world to see.

A new low in narcissism: Facebook quote of the day/year

Actual Facebook quote. Name withheld, though I don't know why:

"A complete stranger stopped me to say I looked beautiful. That hasn't happened in many years and it made my day."

To this person, I'd say: I wish that for just one time, you could stand inside my shoes. This is what you'd hear, and you'd probably find it intolerable:

"Hi, everybody. My beauty is so overwhelming, people literally stop me in the street just to tell me! Of course, this isn't the first time I've been stopped in the street. It used to happen to me all the time. So now I guess it has started up again. This makes my day, particularly since it is Facebook bait for dozens and dozens of gushing remarks about how beautiful I am. I mean, what else can they say?"

Who needs ipecac when you have stuff like this.

As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes

 

 
I used to call this "life". I used to call this "normal". I had nothing to compare it to, since the outside looked so perfect and so much energy went into maintaining it. I see now that a number of key people in my family of origin had narcissistic personality disorder. They were not arrogant power-brokers but sad, powerless people who desperately needed a facade of control, and had to suck the vitality out of the most vulnerable (youngest) members of the family in order to feel whole/alive. You don't get revenge against such people because they have more evasive/responsibility-escaping twists and turns than an octopus. But sometimes, if you just hold up a mirror, the narcissist will start to blink and primp in it as usual, but then the death rays coming out of their eyes will bounce right back at them. And that will be that.

Little Sexpot (short fiction)

It’s not that she wasn’t grateful. When you don’t get to go anywhere on a Saturday night because everyone thinks you’re a loser and full of shit, you should be grateful for any kind of social contact at all.

Or so her siblings thought. Her sister Noreen was thirteen years older than she was, and obviously Mum and Dad were going to trust her with her little sister's wellbeing. Besides, it was good for her to “get out”, much better than hiding in her room crying like she always did.

Her older brother Don had lots of friends too, and their wives came along, but that didn’t stop the “goings-on” that were considered to be all part of the fun. She noticed the minute she stepped into the babble and funk of these parties that she was the mascot, younger than anyone else by ten years or more. Was she game? A target? Who knew, but what she did know was that she was supposed to be grateful.

There was an obnoxious creep called Shivas, but after a while she figured out that it wasn’t his real name, that it came from his habit of making a certain drink called a Shivas Special. Chivas Regal and one ice cube. Another was Tang crystals dissolved in vodka.

They were all quite interested in seeing how the mascot would react to having her glass filled and refilled. After all, she was allowed wine at home. Lots of it. Her parents didn’t frown on her drinking and even seemed to think it was “good for her”. Her brother and sister waved the banner of booze at every opportunity, insisting it was an unalloyed good, even when they woke the next day vomiting and ashen.

The party deteriorated over time, got louder, with people bumping together and the smell of pot wafting under door-cracks. Once she felt a hand, someone’s hand, didn’t know whose. Then her brother’s best friend started smiling at her. She looked the other way. Like the Ugly Duckling, she just didn’t believe it at first.

But then he sort of beckoned with his eyes. Come upstairs with me. Upstairs?? His wife was over in the corner flirting with her brother like they always did. Did she dare to do this, could she sneak up with him and –

This is how it always happened.

It happened because her brother’s friend was a really good kisser. He knew the spots to touch. Her body responded like flame, though she felt overpowering shame at her reaction. She knew she wasn’t supposed to feel this way, to feel anything at all. But she also knew she had caused this, somehow. He managed to convey without words that he had always found her attractive and not mousy or fat.

All she knew about sex she had learned from books, the books stashed in her father’s bureau drawer under his underwear and pajamas. When her parents were away at choir practice, she took them out. They were very clinical and  did not deal with passion or pleasure, as if those sensations did not belong in the field of sex.

But she knew about erections, because he was pressing his against her body with force. Her heart beginning to race, she wondered if she would be raped. She wondered if she should fight back, break away. But the truth is, she loved the attention.

“Hey, you two!” a voice came up the stairs. “Get down here, will you? Quit messing around.” It was a woman’s voice, and at first she wondered if it was the man’s wife.  When she came downstairs, stumbling a little, she saw it was her brother’s girl friend, her makeup badly askew. The woman grabbed her around the waist and squeezed: “Little Lolita,” she crooned. “Little sexpot.”

The booze continued to flow. Her sister held court in an astonishing display of vanity and narcissism, “looking after” her little sister by ignoring her and handing her over to the good graces of Shivas and his endless noxious drinks. People made less and less sense. She felt more hands on her and didn’t know who they were.

She remembered trying to tell her sister about what was happening to her at these parties, what was being done to her. Done to her by married men with their wives in the next room (or even the same room). Her older sister rolled her eyes a bit and said, “I don’t know why you’re so upset! You don’t seem to have any friends your own age. This way you can have a social outlet with the grownups.”

When she told her a little bit about the seductions, she shook her head.

“Are they having sex with you?” For one second, concern seemed to flicker in her eyes.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re exaggerating. I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little smooch and a snuggle.  Look, we’re trying to include you and I really think you should be more grateful.”

Much later, she read about something called Walpurgis Night, a sort of witch’s Sabbath with hideous swarms of demonic figures that swept through communities leaving blackened wreckage in their wake. But this was supposed to be an advantage for her, a social outlet!

How many 14-year-olds wouldn’t give their right arm to be included in a group of adults with full-blown adult privileges?

She would go home after midnight, stagger into the bathroom and throw up all the Chivas Regal. The next morning, pale as a spook, she would throw up again, with her mother hearing her but saying nothing.

Her mother knew. She knew everything. Wanted to be rid of this social liability, to hand her over. Keep her happy. Later that day the family received a bouquet. She knew it was from her brother’s friend, the one who had pinned and groped her. It couldn’t be anyone else.

”Had a great time last night," the sloppily-written tag read. "See you next week."

It was not signed. Incredibly, her parents did not ask who had sent it, but put the pink roses in a vase on the table. 

Twenty years later, the family was absolutely horrified to learn that Little Sister had joined AA. It was a total disgrace to the family, who had never had problems like that and never would. It was obviously an act of hostility on her part. They could never understand why she wasn't more grateful for all they had done for her. When she began to see a therapist, it was even worse, for that implied that the family was crazy. Then they decided that SHE was the one who was crazy, and the matter was closed.

Post-script. Some years later my brother's friend, the one who liked to send me roses, lost his job and all his money and (finally) his wife, and shot himself in the head. I suppose these things never end well. For me, they never end at all. 

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Another one of those nauseatingly narcissistic Facebook things

Yet another actual FB message, echoing three or four hundred I have read lately, tossed off to casually announce one's wild popularity as a human being, and thus dragging everyone else's mood down as they realize what pariahs they are:

"I've caught up on all my emails. I shall now bask in this small accomplishment for the thirty seconds it will last."

Translation: "OMG, I just have SO many friends! SO many people love me that they SWARM my inbox with messages of worshipful adulation. I just can't keep up with it all, and if I take a breath for 30 seconds, I am simply inundated. Please! Please, all my slavering sycophants. Give me a chance here! Give me a second to breathe! Curb your adulation for a couple of minutes, and I promise to favor you with a one- or two- word response (one word for every 500 of yours). What can I say? You are truly my fans, and you are precious to me. Now KNOCK IT OFF."

Facebook: "I have so many friends, I'm SWAMPED!"

Actual Facebook post from an actual Facebook friend, actually read by me this morning.

"What is going on with FACEBOOK? I'm getting inundated with "friend" requests. If you have referred someone to my page and I've declined, I apologize BUT I only have just over 200 "slots" left. Please invite your friends to follow my FB page, "like" my Watchdogz page, and check out for my website which is coming out late next month. They can also view my book trailer (please repost the link). Thanks to the many authors who have connected with me and lent me some good advice, shown me some phenomenal reading material, and have been "friends." I hope you will continue on this journey with me."

For reasons that have to do with self-preservation only, I will withhold the name of the person who wrote this Facebook post. But I think it's a brilliant example of casual, tossed-off narcissism expressed as irritation: oh, those pesky fans of mine! Why must they overwhelm me with their petty requests to be my friend? As if they think they are close enough to my lofty status to "friend" me. I'm almost at the 3000 upper limit, for God's sake. Have they no manners? Don't they realize that the last 200 friend "slots" must be filled by people I love, cherish and see face-to-face every day (just like the other 2800), not to mention people who are good for my career? I have forgotten how to refuse friend requests, by the way, which gives me a very good excuse to complain about it here.

But then comes the topper. This whiny  post which is so disdainful and even contemptuous of her fans then switches to blatant advertising for her new web site and her books. Then her tone seems to miraculously settle down, maybe because this message has been sent out in one form or another about 50,000 times. Having prepared the ground by letting everyone know what a literary superstar she is, she then moves in for the kill.

I see this sort of thing all the time on FB: sometimes phony irritation about those pesky people who debase themselves with abject adulation, sometimes phony humility ("I don't know how this ever happened - it seems impossible - I know I probably don't deserve it - but GUESS WHAT, guys! I just won the Giller Prize. Yippee!"). One strange one I saw went sort of like, "I hate having to do this - it just tortures me every day, but I HAVE to do it, it's part of a writer's burden. My publisher insists that I promote myself, so it's not my fault. They insist I talk about the, no, I won't say it,that I announce to everyone, not that I want to, my nomination for the Gasbag Award for 2015."

There are twists of double, triple and quadruple meaning here, all of them veiling a narcissism that causes a level of nausea in me equivalent to spraying an entire can of Reddi-Whip in my mouth at once. Nobody's straight about it. The petty foot-stomping over all those presumptuous fans is the worst, but I've also seen things like, "I apologize to all my friends in advance. I'll be taking some time off Facebook for some much-need R & R. Be back in an hour." One went, "My email is down and is going to be down for the next half-hour. Please message me on FB - not all at once, please, I can't possibly get through them all! - or email my overflow email, or my overflow-overflow email, or just sit there and miss me for half an hour. Or better yet, go on my fan page or buy my book on Amazon and give me five stars. OK?"

The published authors are snooty, the "famous" published authors who actually have an income are astonishingly, headshakingly vain and narcissistic. I don't know how many times I've seen links to artlcles such as, "Why it's so heartbreaking to fail as a writer," which consists of a few paragraphs about what it's like to be hopeless loser who never gets anywhere because they don't know what the hell they are doing. Then comes the REAL article: how I beat the curse of being a hopeless loser and got a $250,000.00 advance on my next novel that isn't even written yet. So what the hell is going on here? "Yes, OK, I know how it must feel to be a total failure, happens to the best of us, and it might even have happened to ME, except, you see, I know what the hell I'm doing. And you don't."

Say what you mean, people. If you're a failure, poop it out. If you're successful, march around with a banner. Just don't be so goddamn devious, please - you are making me sick.


Post-blog blob. Just thought of something that happened quite a few years ago at a writer's workshop. A novelist, best-selling by Canadian standards - i. e. a few thousand copies - was telling us all about the perils of fame, and what a nuisance her fans can be. She told us a story to illustrate this. After doing a reading from her latest best-selling novel featuring a dysfunctional Canadian family living on a broken-down prairie wheat farm in the 1800s, with the mother giving birth to a stillborn baby in the barn, etc. etc., a fan came up to her and said, "I just wanted to tell you that your reading brought back all sorts of vivid memories for me. Your character Mac McMackintosh reminded me so much of my great-grandfather and his stories of the Great Grasshopper Plague of 1892." 

The author looked at us in horror with a sort of shrinking-back, dread-mixed-with-disgust body posture and said in a whiny voice, "I don't want to get involved with these people and their traumatic memories! I have nothing to do with their dysfunctional families! I don't want to hear about how my work triggered whatever-the-hell in them. That's none of my affair and they should know that." (Eye-roll, shrug)"Honestly." Composing herself, rearranging her poofy

hair and straightening her I-don't-really-need-these glasses: "Besides, it was crickets."

BLOG BADDA-BOOM! A follow-up to the follow-up to the quote from my anonymous friend's Facebook page. I am sure she has no idea of the staggering level of narcissism and entitlement expressed in her post. But it would be no fun without it!:

"Wow, this has been an eventful 24 hours. First of all, I have had to decline so many friend requests the past week as I have been swamped. Unfortunately, some people are not happy about this. I invite everyone to follow my FB page, "like" my Watchdogz page, and keep an eye out for my website which is coming out late next month. Facebook places a 5,000 person limit on "friends" and of course, we know this can be difficult. As of writing this message, I have 188 spots left and have been trying to carefully select people who I feel will genuinely be supportive to me as an author and will continue on this journey of my mystery/thriller adventures."

"Over the last couple of days, I have sadly lost a longtime "personal" friend who has accused me of "poaching" from his friend list to develop my own friends and demanded that I cancel them from my account. I value all of my FB friends and I have contacted each and everyone of the formerly (I have blocked him from my page) 60 mutual "friends," that we shared and advised them of the situation, inviting them to "unfriend" ME if THEY so desire. This individual is attempting to get me "banned" from Facebook and has launched a very vicious attack on my integrity. I would like to say, I value all of my friends, am responsive to their thoughts and comments and do not wish to intrude on people who think otherwise. Please feel free to "unfriend" me if you so choose (although, I hope you won't) as I am also feeling strained by people requesting to join my page that I have had to regrettably decline.

Phew! I thought, that I would enjoy my retirement and hopefully entertain some people with the stories (that my personal friends all know) I love to tell.

Blessings to all,

Narcisse A. Nonnee-Mousse

P.S. This is my book trailer: 

(removed by blogger)

You know, I have all those same problems, but I have decided to raise my maximum number of friends to 7 billion, thus taking in all those poor Third World souls who need my enlightenment. Sorry this is so long, I just had to include that last, noisome entry. The author, having been unfriended by me, now must scramble frantically for a replacement to top up her list. Such a hemorrhage! Oh well, she told me I could do it.

P. S. to the P. S.: This doesn't deserve a post on its own, but it's yet another example of "oh God, poor me, I'm in such pain because I just have SO many people reading my stuff!" It's backhanded narcissism, but what dismays me is how many likes and "oh, poor baby" comments she got on Facebook. Sharyn Wolf wrote some sort of memoir about being a shrink (!?) whose marriage broke up, and oh God, more than 250 (NOT 249, NOT 251, though it's likely up to 2500 by now) people sniped at her for writing such a shallow useless thing. ONE person said she liked it, but it was Cher, so it kind of negated all the criticisms. If you believe in love. . .

Sharyn Wolf Oh, sadly, this is true. I had more than 250 comments--a surprising fight between a bunch of people who thought I should be drawn and quartered against one kind soul who claimed that English teachers don't have to publish a novel to teach writing. I read an interview with Cher about a million years ago, where she said that with 50 great reviews, she only recollects the few horrid ones. I learned recently that we cling to those because our brain is velcro with the bad stuff and teflon to the good.

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

The hate crime no one talks about

Oh yes. Oh, yes, Captain Kirk, and his noble soliloquy in perhaps my fave original Star Trek episode, Miri. The one with all the kids on that planet, you know, all by themselves cuz the adults all died, and they get all gross when they hit puberty and Yeoman Rand's leg looks like a major cigarette burn. I watched it at 13, tape recording it as I usually did on our old reel-to-reel Webcor with the fan-shaped microphone. Kirk wasn't ridiculous then, he wasn't a joke, he wasn't a buffoon and to date, he had done no Loblaws commercials. Kirk was just Kirk.

But his immortal line, "no blah blah blah!" has taken on a special significance in my mind over many decades of observation.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Happens so often I want to yip with irritation. In fact it happened yesterday:  we're in Denny's eating our veggie omelettes with hash browns, when I hear a familiar drone coming from behind Bill's seat.

Umbumummm-bumbumbummm-bumdabumdabumdabuuuuuuuum.

I -

UMMM da bummada bummda. Mm-mmoom-dah! Da bomada bomadadamda bom.

A - 

Bum BUM DA dum dum, demda dum! Dem -

So you get the idea by now. It was one of those totally one-sided conversations you constantly overhear (without meaning to: this is hardly eavesdropping, as I would have loved to shut out all this blathering) in restaurants or theatres or other public places. 

One person is blathering on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and - sorry, my hand just fell off - but as this blathablathablathablathablathablatha goes on, all of it self-referential, all of it self-serving, all of it self-entitled, all of it related to the blatherer's intense suffering at not being treated like a crown prince/ss, I can sense the listener/receiver's blood volume being slowly, slowly, and surely sucked down and siphoned out.

When they leave the restaurant, the blatherer will be hugely inflated with self-righteous helium and all ready for the next deadly gas attack, but the victim (for that is what it is) will be but a pale shadow of his/her former self. She will be so anemic, you'll be able to see through her. She'll have to go home and lie down for a month or more, maybe get a transfusion.

But the thing is, they'll still go out again next week for lunch. The same thing will happen all over again. He or she will tell the same pompous, pointless stories, the same tales of persecution. No one even notices how soul-destroying the experience is. The entitled one will be bursting with hemoglobin by now, ready to explode like some honey-forced queen bee or ruptured giant termite. The victim will now weigh 37 pounds. Doesn't matter how many pancakes she puts away.

I heard it yesterday and I heard it at the mall food fair the day before with a similar booming, thrumming, droning male voice, this time with some sort of European accent. Bom-bomda-BOMmmdaa-bommmm-daBOMmada-bonga, etc. etc.

This is not a conversation. This is a monologue. The monologuist has no idea that it isn't a conversation and in fact thinks he's a very good conversationalist, very smart and sharp. His blathering about camping equipment or the plumbing in his house or his car troubles or the asshole at work who got the promotion he should've got (or his bitch of a wife, always a favorite) strikes him as scintillating discourse sparking a lively debate, an exchange of witticisms rivalling the Algonquin Round Table in sheer witti-blah-tudinous-ness.

He doesn't know, because his brain is made out of shoe leather and his psyche is about as penetrable as a block of obsidian. I would like to start carrying a baseball bat around with me to play whack-a-mole with these characters, but there are just too many of them, and besides, then *I* would be considered obnoxious and antisocial, hitting these poor innocent guys who weren't doing nothin'. 

This is abuse. The endless, boring, repetitive blathering with only the occasional squeak out of the audience/receiver/victim/codependent masochist.  This person NEEDS this sort of ego-stroking, this constant reinforcement of his (or her: one of the worst I've encountered is a her, droning on for 45 minutes about her Grade 11 science teacher and what he wore to class) innate sense that his every word is interesting and useful and even enlightening, when in reality it's a torrent of horseshit more horrific than the result of opening Mr. Ed's stable door.

There is nothing to be done. Stay away, that's all I can say to you, try to stay away and not call them friends. A friend does not stick a drinking straw in your jugular vein and begin to vigorously suck. Blatha-blatha-blathata-blah.

I don't know if this codicil belongs here, but I might as well tack it on. It's the self-proclaimed expert who charges into a room full of chemo patients and bellows, "TAKE MILK THISTLE AND YOU WILL BE CURED!" The person so sure of (his or her) convictions that they force them on others as absolute, unassailable gospel truth.

One doctor I know is a doozie. Educated, an "expert" on many things, in fact famous.

"Illness means you've repressed your emotions."

"No, you mean: I believe illness means you've repressed your emotions."

"There's no debate about this, it's simply true."

"So everybody else, everyone who believes something different from you, is completely erroneous and full of shit?"

"I didn't say that! Don't be so defensive. It's just an opinion."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"Because it's an opinion that happens to be true."

"Jesus, don't you hear yourself? That's total arrogance!"

"Obviously you have issues with authority figures."

"No, just with YOU, asshole!"

(That last line was fantasized, but isn't it great?)

I once attended some sort of workshop (it had something to do with my sick and dying church trying to manage a last-minute, futile resurrection) where the facilitator said, "Tell me the difference between these two statements: Divorce is terrible."

(Slight tremor in the room, caused by minute vibrations from the divorced people trying not to spit at her.)

"MY divorce was terrible. Which statement is easier to accept?"

Wa-a-a-a-al.

But people don't do it that way! They stride in and say, "Everything happens for a reason/God never gives us more than we can handle/It's all in God's plan." This person has never suffered a major hardship, and in fact has led a charmed existence.  God's will has been, at least up to now, a piece of cake. (Secretly she/he thinks it's because she prays a lot and "surrenders", so God favors her.) But never do they say, "I've come to believe that - " or even, "It's my conviction that - ". No, they just take one of those thingamabobs they used to tamp down powder in a cannon, and casually shove it down your throat.

"I was about to die in a car crash, but my angel saved me."

"God must have intervened."

"It was meant to be" (but NEVER with reference to anything negative. Only positive things are "meant to be". No sense of entitlement here.)

"It was God's plan that little Timmy survive being run over by an express train 47 times."

Oh yes? What about this couple over here, dying of grief because God DIDN'T save their son? What about the man whose wife actually did die in a crash? Didn't she believe enough, didn't God love her enough, didn't she have the right mojo or put enough on the collection plate?

It's really just more BLAHBLAHBLAH, of a particularly toxic variety. It's toxic because it is so un-thought-out, so carelessly said. So smug. So entitled ("see, God loves me enough to pull me out of flaming wreckage. What's wrong with you?")

I wonder sometimes if even half of what people say is really considered, or if it just pours out of them like so much raw sewage. They snag on to jingles, axioms, homilies, catch-phrases, churn them around unexamined, and spit them in your face. They never preface these statements, just jam them up your nose as "fact".  It's easier than thinking, easier than feeling empathy or compassion or any of those dangerous things that require a little stretching of the soul.

The blatherers of the world are verbal thugs. When you see one, whether it's in Denny's or the hardware store or your local church or synogogue, whacking the palm of his hand with a lead pipe and wearing a smug self-involved smile, there's only one thing you can do.

Ru-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-n!

"You had me at hello"

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