Michael watches this show Jon & Kate Plus 8 on The Learning Channel (check your local listings). For those of you who have not heard of it, it is a reality show about two thirty-somethings raising eight children, one set of twins and one set of sextuplets.
Michael: It’s a good show you watch it.
Me: Like you, I can’t stand children.
Michael: Well I don’t like serial killers but I watch movies about them and the critically-acclaimed television show Dexter.
Me: Huh.
Michael: I wouldn’t want to parent or kill…
Me: I have feeling you’re bound to do one of those things in your life.
Michael: …However, I appreciate the drama, pathos, and character development in art involving parenting and killing. When I watch Jon & Kate Plus 8, its like watching a horror movie especially from the standpoint of the husband…It’s something I would never want to experience.
Me: Use of “however” is one of the signs of an inferior writer.
Michael: We’re having a conversation.
Me: Who said we weren’t? I mean if we weren’t I would have to go back and take out all these contractions.
Michael: You’ve lost me. But anyway, I don’t like sports and I find sitting through a sporting event incredibly boring but I watch the critically-acclaimed NBC show Friday Night Lights. And I read Charles Dickens which is full of insufferable children…It’s about drama and pathos.
Me: There are a lot of contractions in this!
“If the better is the less vulgar and the less vulgar is always that which appeals to the better audience, then obviously the art which makes its appeal to everybody is eminently vulgar.”
-Aristotle, Poetics
Once in high school, in one of Michael’s classes, the teacher mentioned the BTK killer whom had been recently captured. She pondered aloud what BTK was acronymous for. Michael quickly replied, “Bind, torture, kill.” One of Michael’s classmates later informed him that his knowledge of the BTK killer and the manner in which he said it was “creepy.” Michael had learned the meaning from CNN.
Once in high school, Michael was sitting at a table with two girls. One of these girls he was very familiar with, the other not-so much. The girl he was not-so familiar with was eating an apple. Michael looked at her and said, “Eating an apple is a very visceral thing.” This time Michael immediately recognized that the manner in which he said this and this view was “creepy.” However, it was unintentionally amusing, and the girl he was more familiar with was especially amused and it increased Michael’s bond with her.
Once while campaigning for a New York state congressional candidate, Michael after looking at all the people in the campaign office, and considering how cold upstate New York was in the winter, said to his illustrious compatriots of the Cornell Democrats, “It would probably be easier if we all just illegally voted than campaigned.” Michael’s compatriots were confused by Michael’s level of cynicism. An upper-level campaign worker also heard Michael and she was only semi-amused and shhd him in an awkward manner.
Michael often wonders, “Who are those other guys in Coldplay.” He then uses Wikipedia to find out; he then promptly forgets.
Conversation Michael once had:
Girl: You know Lauryn Hill is racist.
Michael: How can she be racist she’s friends with Zach Braff…Who’s whiter than Zach Braff?
Girl: I read she was racist.
Michael: That’s like saying I hate Catholics but I’m best friends with the Pope.
Girl: I think you can have friends with differing beliefs and still hate those beliefs.
Michael was and is ambivalent about this particular interlocution. While he was funny–people laughed. He mentioned race which he is loathed to do. And the Girl figuratively walked away thinking she was smarter than Michael. And she thought Michael was a very trivial, irreverent person. Irreverent is good on occasion but not trivial.
Michael hates Carlos Mencia. Saying Beaner does not make you edgy. Isn’t that relevant to the aforementioned incident?
“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.”
-Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
