March 14, 2008

• a funny thing happened – w/favorite comment

  we were leaving applebee’s, you know, the neighborhood bar and grill, and someone (me) said, “man, coffee sure would be nice.”

  rob said, “there’s a starbucks right over there.”

  i said, “would anyone instigate opposition if i were to suggest starbucks?”

  mark said, “i would, but i won’t.”

  “huh?” i said.

  “you said, ‘would you,’ and i said, ‘yes, but i won’t.’”

  it was a case of semantics. mark is one for semantics. he was pointing out that i neglected to insert a time modifier into my question. he was communicating that there might be a moment where he would wish to instigate opposition to our going to starbucks, but now was not that moment. he wanted to reserve his right to oppose at a later date, if it so suited him. modifiers are important. another member of the band, the one with asperger syndrome, also has mild neurosis when it comes to clarity and meaning wed to linguistics and logic. he becomes extremely agitated at restaurants when the wait person asks if, “everyone has everything they need,” or if, “everyone is good.” we know he becomes agitated because we hear him mumbling under his breath, “poor african children,” and “clean water, food, shelter,” and such, and, “no, everyone is not good, in fact, we have all sinned and fallen short…none is righteous, no not one….”.

  you see, modifiers can be useful and advantageous, especially when you wish to bring food to those who have ordered it without the subjection of pauline quotations.

  so, i said, “ah, semantics.”

  mark responded in a bizarre, sing-song, rapper voice, “we are semantics, here are some antics.”

  we laughed. this was funny. it’s funny because ‘semantics’ and ‘some antics’ sound similar, and there was also the fact that mark’s amusing comments about semantics were in themselves antical. antical is not a word but it should be. or would it be anticle? my point here is that bwack, our drummer, then said, “hey, there’s a starbucks.”

  which is funny, because he wasn’t joking.

  he often does this. he has a magical power enabling him to selectively offer his attention only to those things of interest to him. he exhibits this skill often. if you ask him a question, like, “hey, bwack, where did you get that cool comb,” there will be a two to four second pause, and then he will look up and say, “huh?” or, sometimes, he will offer an answer that is very near to being completely unrelated to the question, like, “hey, bwack, would you like fruit,” followed by his signature two to four second pre-response pause, then his reply of, “beef?”

  a slightly more embarrassing, yet infinitely more revealing, real-life example would be telling you of the time we [band] were all sitting quietly backstage in a green room, each of us typing with solitary resoluteness on our computers, when hogan, our violinist, abruptly broke the silence by passing a large quantity of gas. four seconds later, bwack says, “huh?”

  i’m sure you can readily see this power is versatile and advantageous, but i assure you it is difficult to wield.

  for him, bwack, our drummer, it is effortless. and also, it has become a running joke – the two to four second pause with the interjection of either unrelated or already covered information. so much so, that when he, bwack, our drummer, said, “hey, there’s a starbucks,” we assumed he was being intentionally amusing by submitting such a self effacing comment, as if he were unaware that the previous conversation about semantics, of which he was a lively participant, had not had ‘starbucks’ as its impetus.

  but he was not. which, upon realization, brought to us infinitely more amounts of funny. i mean, we laughed pretty hard. it was but one more demonstrative example that our beloved bwack’s attention shifts from one topic to the next solely at his magical behest. it will forever remain unclear as to what was occupying his mind when the first suggestion of starbucks and its proximity presented themselves, but, he did confirm that coffee was a good idea.

  here is irrefutable evidence that bwack’s “huh” moments have been long standing.

  

  magical. he is a professional wizard and this is incontestable scientific proof.

  favorite comment: “Why don’t you capitalize the first letters of your sentences? It drives me crazy!” from APolizzi

  • 1:14 am
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