While I was grouching about things you can't talk about

I came across this.  (disclaimer: I find her comics generally quite disagreeable, in the same way as Venture Bros., because I feel like I'm getting hit with a hammer the whole time.  except the one about the alot is good.  I told you I'm grouching!)

Ending conversations: it's a mess!  Conversations are generally a mess!  And yet, talking about it makes it worse.  Now every time you're in a conversation you might be thinking, in addition to all your other neurotic thoughts, "I hope I'm not doing one of the four levels of conversational entrapment."

I'm torn.  On the one hand, I don't like talking about the weather.  Or about where you're from or what you do, because that's the three-line conversation you have with any old person.  I want to get to the point, to maybe connect on some other level besides the weather, so I can build the maximally meaningful relationship with a person that I can have in the short time I have to talk with him/her.  And so that he/she finds me interesting.

But then I ask, What would Wayne Coyne do? (it's usually a pretty good heuristic.)  And then I think, SIDETRACK, I meant to mention another thing: talking about dancing and cheering.  See, the Flaming Lips show last Monday was nice, but Wayne spent the whole goddamn time yelling at everyone to cheer more and go crazy.  That's not how you make people cheer more and go crazy.  In addition, sort of relatedly, if you're complaining about why more people don't dance, you're doing it wrong.  I don't want to hear about how everyone is too much of a hipster to dance anymore.  (see last post.)  But that's neither here nor there.  Grouch grouch!

Anyway, so I ask myself, "What would Wayne Coyne do?"  And then I also ask, "What would HH do?" by which I really mean "what would the Buddha do?" because I don't know the Dalai Lama from a postman, and maybe "What would Thich Nhat Hanh or Shinzen Young or Matthieu Ricard do?", and the answer is generally: they would talk about the weather.  They would be totally fine with it.  Because having a conversation about the weather is fine; having four conversations about the weather in a grocery store is fine; getting barged in on by a pseudo friend is fine (and it's your responsibility to end it if it's not).  Shoot.

(writing on blogs forever instead of filling out grad school apps is not so awesome.  so it goes.)