Saturday, May 8, 2010

Subverted Sentences Shut Me Up

So. Flaws. I have plenty. For the sake of brevity, let's focus on the linguistic/communication ones.

Not that I'm particularly proud-to-the-point-of-sharing, just acknowledging. . . well, there's somewhere to start. I overuse the word "just". Just a little. In sentences like that. I suppose it's used to express the smallness/irrelevance of things. It's a fluff word, but compare: "'What did you do yesterday?' 'I murdered a guy.'" with: "'What did you do yesterday?' 'Y'know, I just murdered a guy. . .'" The latter seems like an insignificant point, the next question asked in that conversation could be "What do you want to have for lunch?", but I digress.

I also have a habit of trying to complete other people's sentences, as a sort of either a.) show of my *obvious* mind-reading abilities. b.) a mental power move, nonverbally communicating that the person who started the sentence has a predictable way of ending their sentences, and that thusly I am better than them. (Subconsciously. I'd never say that to anyone, I honestly have no idea why I do this, but pseudo-pyschoanalyzing my own behavior is one way to stop other people from doing it and finding something legitimately horrible and pyschoanalzable. I don't even know if I have such qualities, I guess this is sort of a subconscious precaution.) or c.), the option I'd like to choose: I'm just (there's that word again) overeager to express to the starter of the sentence that I understand what they're trying to say. I like having an understanding of people. Not that I want or expect people to be predictable, I just (damn.) like to be able to. . . understand. Explaining skills French The Llama.

That being explained as well as I can explain it, when someone DOESN'T complete their sentence in the way I answered it for them, it's embarrassing. This doesn't happen often, at least I think not. I only do this when the sentence has one logical/obvious ending. Erm, I hope. Example: (Fictional and over-exaggerated, I wasn't aware that this was annoying to people until my mother pointed it out. That was a while ago and I'm trying to stop this, really.)

PERSON: "Sorry I didn't call you, but my dog--"
ME: "--chewed your phone and broke it. It's fine, I understand."
PERSON: "No, actually, Archibald was killed in a horrible car accident and I was at the cremation ceremony and had my phone off in mourning. Bitch."
ME: *awkward pause*

And, in regard to How Much I Share With People, I think I'm somewhere between you both. I quite enjoy telling people stories/imparting my general knowledge upon them, but eventually (sometimes soon after, depending on how insecure/insane I'm being that day) I start to think:

*side 1 of self* "God, I should stop."
*side 2 of self* "But no, I shouldn't, because there's more I have to say. Anyway, they're still listening, so it's fine. Right? Wait, Are they just appearing interested out of politeness? Who cares?"
*side 1 of self* "No, srsly, SHUT YOUR FACE ATTENTION WHORE!!1!!!!one"
*side 2 of self* "The other half of me is a troll? LULZ. Noooo, someone is paying attention to me and I LIKE it. Hence I *may* be said attention whore. I don't know. . . nor do I care. Except kind of. Except I shouldn't. Except I should, because being a self-professed attention whore is BAD and is a trait that must be CORRECTED, yes? No? *explodes*"

This inner dialogue can go on after the conversation has stopped, because that's just (grrr) the type of thing I worry about after the fact; whether I should have stopped approx. 2 sentences ago or whether I should have started at all.

And this is why I love the Internet, I can go on about whatever for as long as I feel necessary. Thank you, Internet, and thank you, people who read this. :D

3 comments:

Vita said...

I think most people worry about how they're viewed, maybe more than they let on. It would be great if everyone would acknowledge this, thus allowing everyone else to calm the heck down, but I doubt that will happen, so... you're not alone.

Vita said...

OH, also, this is unrelated, but:
Remember how on your other blog you were talking about how Jenny McCarthy is, in fact, an asshat? In US History we learned about this senator from the 50s called Joseph McCarthy who basically just called a lot of random government people communists, which freaked everybody out (because it was right at the start of the Cold War & everyone in the USA was like OH SHIT COMMUNISM). ANYONE, he was also an asshole, but was eventually censured from Congress largely by his own doing. So perhaps there's still hope that Jenny McCarthy will somehow be shut up because of her own unintelligent words.

Renata said...

Ahem. I believe "asshat" is in fact masculine. She's an assbonnet. ;)

(But yeah, there's hope.)