I recently spent a week with people afraid of independence. Afraid of controversy. Afraid of thought.
Shit, I'm presumptuous. I'm assuming that people's avoidance of intellectual topics means they've avoided the topics consciously. Maybe the topics never occurred to them.
How many times can you talk about:
- the weather
- the taste of the food
- what your boyfriend/wife/husband said/likes/does
- any random sensation that happens to impinge on your senses
I was recently on a week-long business trip. The better terminology, however, might be "controlled experiment", since it consisted of spending six full days with three of my "nice" coworkers.
I put "nice" in quotes, because the consensus of world opinion is that anyone who fails to offend others is a "nice" person. And "nice" is considered a positive attribute. To me, "niceness" drives me up the fucking wall.
Being around nice people makes me want to slash my wrists in boredom. Or, if I'm staying in an air-conditioned hotel in San Jose, it makes me want to jump out my window. Or sunburn myself to death. Is that possible? If I ever killed myself, it would be in an amusing way, I can tell you that. Imagine the newspaper headline.
TRADE SHOW EXHIBITOR FOUND DEAD NEAR MARRIOTT POOL WITH THIRD-DEGREE BURNS -- STOMACH UNSCATHED THANKS TO HALF-READ COPY OF CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY'S "LITTLE GREEN MEN"
Nice people never say anything controversial. They're so... they're so... well... they're so goddamn nice.
