Inane Party Blather

How many holiday parties have I gone to? Not that many, it's not like I'm in high demand. Maybe four or five, tops, and a few office functions. And as usually happenns, when you get disparate folks together, in the era of PC when you can't tell jokes or are afraid of generating an equal opportunity complaint, there just isn't that much to talk about. Instead, it's hollow, meaningless, absolutely inane crap. Here's one that I overheard last week:

A: "Man, it sure is cold."
B: "You got that right, man. Really cold."
C: "Yeah, it was sure cold this morning."
A: "Yeah it was."
B: "Uh-huh."
C: "So cold it froze my bird bath. Solid."
B: "Man, that's incredible."
A: "Solid!? Really? Man, that's cold."
B: "Yeah, and icy, too."
A: "Yeah, all that ice out there . . ."
C: "I saw some on the street the other day and . . ."
B: "You can't be too careful about ice in the street, you know."

That's the point where I stepped in and said, "Yes, this is what happens in the winter time, this coldness phenomenon. It's regular and seasonal, and should be anticipated." Then I moved on to the next stupid knot of unimaginative folks, this group talking about shoes. I just stood there in silence, marveling at the jaw-dropping mundanity of it all.

The admission in the Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" is spot-on: "When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed/Say something once, why say it again?" Now, that's not a psycho talking, that's just someone who has some common sense, and actually puts it into practice. My interpretation of the song is that the psycho killer comes out when all of his common sense is so constantly trampled upon and ignored. Hell, I'm halfway there most days when I get out of bed.

My sister hosted a party at her place, and for once she had the food ready on time. Good chow, and lots to drink. Her friends are a bit weird, but I just hung by the fireplace, in a comfy chair. My folks were there, and had brought a lifelong friend around, a woman who had the serious hots for me when I was a teenager (and she was in her early 40s), and on a number of occasions way back when came as close to seducing me as she possibly could, without actually saying the words or taking the actions necessary to clue a dumbass 16-year-old into the possibilities awaiting him. It would've been fantastic, D, if only you'd had some imagination and a little bit more conspiratorial drive.

(I tried to make something happen after my divorce, sending her a short yet direct "I've had the hots for you since . . ." letter. Never heard a thing, like it never even happened. The poor, boring thing.)

But I digress. D was there, and she's always been a pretty outspoken Democrat-liberal, the kind of person that my oldster parents, getting more and more Republican and conservative by the day, absolutely despise. Her perceived Democrat squishiness on every issue just drives my parents nuts. Me, I'm seriously divergent from my parents on most political issues, but they could never call me squishy or soft on any issue. I know what I believe, and I've actually thought about why. We differ, and that's that.

So, D comes over and opens with, "Your father tells me that politically we probably have a lot to talk about . . ." a clear invitation to actually have a conversation. Okay, now that's what I'm interested in, that's what I'm talking about, the opportunity to talk about something interesting, intellectual, of substance, where there are ample spaces for different opinions and smart insights, mutual respect, to learn something as well as get a chance to put your own ideas out for consumption and review. Now that's what I relish, an adult conversation on adult topics. That was great, and I was primed.

And she just sat there. Okay, I started off. Abortion is too much to jump into right away, and after all she's a Catholic. So why not the death penalty. That's a good one for who comes down where, and why. But all of her answers were stock, all of them going, "I could just never do that to a person." I asked about murderers of children, rapists of children, and it was, "Oh, I could never make that kind of final decision about a person." And I asked about serial killers, the sane and deliberate ones who murder dozens over periods of years, and again it was the, "I just couldn't make that kind of decision . . ." blah blah blah. She had no reasons behind her opposition to capital punishment. There was no moral stand, no ethical foundation, no framework of facts of personal beliefs other than she just couldn't do that to another person. Okay, that might suffice, to approach it from a totally empathetic point of view, the "do unto others" approach. Okay, that's valid, to a point, but she had no ideas, no concept, hadn't even thought about any of the hypothetical issues involved. I asked her how she could be considered a responsible citizen for not having a developed opinion on this? Oh, she'd decline to be on a death penalty jury. Okay, how does that serve society as a whole? Well, she'd serve on another jury? But what if everyone wanted to pick their own juries and court cases, where does that leave the jury and judicial system?

Over and over I asked polite yet pointed questions to draw her out, to hear where she was coming from, seeking that intellectual challenge, hoping she'd actually say something that would challenge me to put my views into context and into order for understanding, maybe even question my onw points. But no, she had only stock answers. She was just full of air, of TV talking heads sound bites that she'd heard and liked, the aural equivalent of something shiny that you pick up and put in your pocket. And when challenged, she'd just say the same things over and over, pulling a George W. Bush, attempting to mask ignorance and unwillingness to engage with a shoddy facade of resoluteness and stoic surety.

So I just let it all trail off, listening to the folks next to me talk about how they couldn't wait for "American Idol" to start up again in January.