John Noble (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jackofallgeeks) wrote2006-05-02 04:21 pm
jackofallgeeks) wrote2006-05-02 04:21 pm
Entry tags:
Stupid People Make Me Angry
Not unrelated to earlier posts...
There's this girl, we'll call her Mary, who I met on one of these sites and began talking to. At first things went pretty well, but after a while... At first it seemed like a strange Curtis-esque social inability, in that it seemed she could speak of nothing expect in that it had moral or theological implications. Which is all well and good, but as with Curtis and video games and random geekiness, there's more to the world than just that. Things got slightly worse as her grandfather became ill and later died, whereby she seemed to expect I knew exactly what she was talking about, even though she was making very little sense at all, and treated my like a complete imbecile when I couldn't find the Newport News Obituaries online.
In case any of you weren't aware, being treated like an idiot is something I can't abide.
So we stopped talking for a long while. I mostly figured it was just her dealing with grief and while a friend doesn't pull back when their friends hit rough times, I was only just getting to know her, and I thought it best to wait until things settled down before continuing.
So I IMed her last night, and withing five minutes I knew it was a mistake. She started questioning why I never had quotes from this saint or that pope, because those were usually more inspiring -- to which I said (1) I simply haven't stumbled upon anything I felt pertinent from them (nor have I looked, really) and (2) it's not really my intent to 'inspire' so much as to get people to think, or at the least convey my mood.
This morning I left the last lines of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" (this is the way the world ends/ not with a bang but a whimper) as my away message. I came home and found two messages from Mary: "t.s. eliot was very antichristian was he not" and "i don't think he had the rapture in mind did he".
This is a great example of what I was saying in point one, with the Curtis-esque ineptitude! Yes, yes, the words do say something about the end of the world, but... Gah! I really don't think Eliot was talking about the literal end of the world there, for one thing, and what does that have to do with being antichristian even if he was? I don't think there's anything particularly antichristian by saying the world will literally end in silent despair. But even on top of that... The man wrote "Murder in the Cathedral," and at the very least that was 'non-antichristian' enough for my highschool (which was particularly Catholic) to require it as required reading. So I have to wonder, has she ever read anything by or about Eliot, or is she just attacking him (rather pointedly, too) because of the one line that I quoted in my message?
Just... rahr, the anger.
There's this girl, we'll call her Mary, who I met on one of these sites and began talking to. At first things went pretty well, but after a while... At first it seemed like a strange Curtis-esque social inability, in that it seemed she could speak of nothing expect in that it had moral or theological implications. Which is all well and good, but as with Curtis and video games and random geekiness, there's more to the world than just that. Things got slightly worse as her grandfather became ill and later died, whereby she seemed to expect I knew exactly what she was talking about, even though she was making very little sense at all, and treated my like a complete imbecile when I couldn't find the Newport News Obituaries online.
In case any of you weren't aware, being treated like an idiot is something I can't abide.
So we stopped talking for a long while. I mostly figured it was just her dealing with grief and while a friend doesn't pull back when their friends hit rough times, I was only just getting to know her, and I thought it best to wait until things settled down before continuing.
So I IMed her last night, and withing five minutes I knew it was a mistake. She started questioning why I never had quotes from this saint or that pope, because those were usually more inspiring -- to which I said (1) I simply haven't stumbled upon anything I felt pertinent from them (nor have I looked, really) and (2) it's not really my intent to 'inspire' so much as to get people to think, or at the least convey my mood.
This morning I left the last lines of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" (this is the way the world ends/ not with a bang but a whimper) as my away message. I came home and found two messages from Mary: "t.s. eliot was very antichristian was he not" and "i don't think he had the rapture in mind did he".
This is a great example of what I was saying in point one, with the Curtis-esque ineptitude! Yes, yes, the words do say something about the end of the world, but... Gah! I really don't think Eliot was talking about the literal end of the world there, for one thing, and what does that have to do with being antichristian even if he was? I don't think there's anything particularly antichristian by saying the world will literally end in silent despair. But even on top of that... The man wrote "Murder in the Cathedral," and at the very least that was 'non-antichristian' enough for my highschool (which was particularly Catholic) to require it as required reading. So I have to wonder, has she ever read anything by or about Eliot, or is she just attacking him (rather pointedly, too) because of the one line that I quoted in my message?
Just... rahr, the anger.
no subject
She noted that Eliot was in a time between World Wars, and that society had lost a lot of hope and faith in the wake of the horrors of war, and "isn't it so great that we had people like X and Y to pull us from that malaise." Yeah, that line gagged me for the sugariness -- not a direct quote from her, but very nearly. I responded that he was a man wounded by war, in a time wounded by war, and that the worst that could be said is that he didn't have a lot of happy things to say -- but that doesn't make him a bad person, nor does it make the truths he speaks any less true.
And, frankly, I don't think there's anything "anti-christian" about doubt or questioning or any of that. but that's a whole 'nother conversation for a whole 'nother time.
no subject
Just so. ::nods::