The real world, fully staffed as it is by depressingly rendered humans and callow beasts, overstocked with wearisomely ugly buildings and harassingly odiferous plants, has managed to disappoint me again. When you reflect, if you are one of the paltry scattering of humans even able to muster enough sobriety of thought to reflect at all, upon the great length of time that the real world has been operating, and the almost total lack of delivery of return on even the modest and simple expectations of average people that it has managed to sustain for that entire great length of time, and the unfathomable depths to which the expectations of reasonable people have plummeted to by this time, every year surpassing a new nadir of expectation, and you reflect that I myself have devoted my life, as have greater philosophers than I, to finding the lowest, truest form of expectation, the bedrock expectation that can not be dug under, it should be surprising to you, astonishing, a miracle, that reality has managed to limbo under that low low pole. But I am not surprised. And perhaps that is the truest philosophy; to be unsurprised by unpleasant surprise.
I attended a meeting with the Flounder the other day, at my Arby’s, to discuss ground rules and acceptable conditions for the duel, as he has, unsurprisingly, accepted my challenge to game for total rights to the parkland. The day after the meeting, after my turkey and avocado sandwich had filled me with a temporary sense of emotional security, I attempted to calmly assess the meeting and gave it a score of 50%. Full disclosure; I score meetings by benefits to my life’s work. I have evolved the philosophy that any meeting with other human beings should net a positive impact on my work greater than time spent alone, or I have wasted my valuable time. So I compared this lunchtime meeting to a typical lunch taken at home. Since I consumed food, which I would do at lunch anyway, I awarded the meeting 50 points. I typically read while I eat at home, and since reading comprises a vital part of my life work, I score reading time at 75 per hour. With this scoring system, lunch, with its delightful combining of reading and food, represents the maximum efficiency possible in the course of the day, even more than composition, which I score at a straight 100.
I could not read at the meeting, unfortunately, so I could not award those points to the meeting. I could award the meeting points if my interactions at the meeting had given me insight or inspiration that I could use in my writing. But the interactions at the meeting, with people who I have interacted with many many times before, offered no new experiences at all, I don’t think I heard any person at the meeting actually say words that I had not heard them speak many times before. The interactions attained the surreal, almost meditative quality that listening to the same song looping over and over might have. The flounder compulsively joked as always, but at this point I truly believe that I have heard every story and every joke that his limited ouvre has to offer, like an old comic strip compilation from an artist who could only ever write for local community newspapers.
Gerald complained about his food and felt his usual inexplicable need to describe whatever self imposed dietary restrictions have lately absorbed any excess mental energy he has left unused after reading graphic novels and discussing graphic novels with unhappily adult graphic novel fans online. The Flounder did not speak to Gerald at all, but chose to confine his social interactions with Gerald to the occasional nauseated grimace at the repulsive food economy that developed between Gerald and Duane, a sort of trickle down interaction similar to relationships the homeless might enjoy with a pastry restaurant and it’s dumpster. I was compelled, as a socially conscious citizen, to express my curiosity as to what level of pay Duane had accepted, as an institute employee, that left him so enthusiastic for the condiments scraped off another diners sub sandwich. This light hearted jab was not accepted with the grace and secure ease of old, sadly enough, and the Flounder felt the need to fish a few miserable quarters out of his pockets and pass them to Duane with that same level of exalted pride that a billionaire might feel at the ribbon cutting for his foundations first charity hospital. Duane’s sad eyes gleamed with a pathetic eagerness as his thin fingers snatched at the coins with rattlesnake speed, and I felt the now familiar weariness overtake me, the disappointment I have begun to feel with the caliber of even my enemies/ former friends, much like batman might feel to find Robin has turned to crime, and to have his concomitant feelings of betrayal overwhelmed by a thrill of challenging fear, a zest for the impending battle of wits with an opponent trained by himself and obviously impelled by dangerous mental aberration, and then to find, to his sickening and soul numbing disappointment that Robin has not debuted as a master villain, but as a clumsy shoplifter, sometimes jaywalking for thrills.
These desultory emotions sapped the pleasure of what I had built up in my expectations as a sort of preliminary Mano a Mano of negotiations and veiled insult, the beginnings of that delicious gamesmanship that drives all high caliber thought. I had to console myself with the curly fries and chicken cordon bleu and an order of jalapeño poppers that I placed to punish Gerald. His sad eyes, lazer focused on each popper as it traveled to my devouring mouth, provided the only non-physical pleasure of the meeting. I even offered some to Duane, but the Flounder one upped me by gleefully asserting that his employee had “eaten plenty” and shamelessly demanding that Duane return the quarters. I ceded the point. I had brought my finely honed debating techniques to a mud-wrestling match
Sperberspeak 