ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

To begin, I will define the term “douche chill”.  This is a term that describes the uncomfortable feeling of vague embarrassment you experience on behalf of someone else for their behavior, which was awful in some way.  Usually douche chills are the result of someone’s completely misbegotten efforts to pretend to be something they are not.  And usually they have chosen something completely stupid to pretend to be, thinking that other people will find it cool.  Instead, other people get douche chills and stop inviting them to do things.

I have a couple of specific people in mind, since I’m discussing the topic.  The first one is a guy that my coworker friend and I met in the Baltimore airport last summer, who lives here in Kansas City.  We chatted with him on the plane and had a funny conversation.  We all traded business cards.  Later, there was a half-hearted effort for us all to meet up for dinner one evening, but it failed because it turned out he had been detained overnight at the Milwaukee airport for being drunk and disorderly.  At this point, this man was an extremely entertaining train wreck to us, so while my coworker friend did not contact him herself, she did read his e-mails and reply in a polite/friendly way.  Because they had traded phone numbers when we were arranging the dinner outing, he had her number.  He drunk dialed her a couple of times, said stupid shit about how he was seeing this other woman for a while but he hated her fat ass (a topic well known for impressing other women), and also talked about how he had smuggled marijuana through Canadian customs.  She did not have the appropriately amused and delighted reaction to this that he was looking for, so he was hurt and embarrassed that she didn’t relate to his nice story.

Later, because she and I are constantly polishing up our internet-spying skills (which draw only upon publicly available information - it would be unacceptably invasive to pay for information about other people), we discovered that he had created a dating profile on an online dating site that allows nonregistered viewers to look at people’s profiles.  Occasionally, we look at his page to see if anything else amusing crops up.  The first time we looked, he had answered “no” to the question “Do you do drugs?” so that was pretty entertaining. Some gems from his profile:

“Life is not about the breaths we take, but about the moments that take our breath away” - a great friend shared that wisdom with me.

Oh, really?  I’m curious what specific great friend shared that “wisdom” with him.  Since I’m pretty sure I have heard that before and that his “friend” did not really come up with that.  Do people who spout these stupid cliches really think that they come off sounding profound and original?  They sound like fortune cookie robots who would rather steal sappy slogans from the inspirational posters in the local junior high school than use regular language to describe their feelings.  Do they really think other people have never heard this shit before?  His ideal mate:

Must love to explore new adventures and not be afraid to fail.

Being comfortable with failure is a must for anyone considering a relationship with a person who probably goes around telling people, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” I’m not cynical. The concept can still be true even if the delivery is a big fat red flag. I hope there aren’t too many women out there who misinterpreted his hackneyed Mr. Sensitive bit as being deeply profound and caring, because:

You must have a profile picture to contact this user.

This really drives home how much he meant all that stuff about personality being meaningful.

The other person I have in mind is this guy from Wichita who has been posting lately on my friend’s blog and obviously thinks he is being flirty and witty, but I have decided that I think he is a big, stupid loser.  She is involved in renaissance festival drama (in all senses of the word) and I think that is how she met this person.  I think he is starting to bother her, but she is too nice to say so, so instead of responding to his attention with the correct amount of derision, she has replied in a friendly way.  Unfortunately, I think this only encourages idiots like him.  I hate people who try to show how much geeky knowledge they have about some “alternative” area of interest, not realizing that it is much more mainstream than they think, or that what they read about it on Wikipedia might seem inadequate to someone actually informed on the topic, so they try to claim some kind of undeserved rebel street cred for going off the beaten path.  Only, what they have chosen is more like the Bataan death march.

These are the people who try to use phrases they heard somewhere to recycle the same tired points everyone already knows about something.  For instance, she wrote a blog post about how she had recently seen the Ken Burns “Civil War” documentary series (an odd coincidence since we had just finished it too), and this guy responds with a long-winded diatribe, concluding that, although this is shocking, the Civil War was fought based on more than just slavery!!! Now, that is some controversial shit he is coming up with.

She wrote some post about how she does not like Boston.  He responds:

Ha. Even though lead singer Brad Delp is dead, it seems you can’t get away from Boston.

BTW, Boston guitarist Tom Scholz has a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. Most of Boston’s debut album was recorded in Scholz’s basement.

- Rock n Roll Geek

I don’t know how to describe specifically what it is about this post that annoys me so much, but it’s almost kind of a Gestalt thing.  Presenting any one of these facts on its own might not be so bad, but in concert they make him seem like a complete poseur.  If I had to pin it down, it’s the mention of all the names and facts related to the band, in combination with his attempt at casual delivery (”Ha”).

I give it very good odds that this guy did not know most of the facts he provided about Boston until he researched it on the internet after reading her post.  I guess it just annoys the shit out of me when people are more concerned with impressing you by showing off than they are with having an interesting conversation with you.

There is also something that irritates me about people who go out of their way to brand themselves a geek.  It’s like people who think they are allowed to make up a nickname for themselves.  I guess if that’s your thing, it’s OK to enjoy it once someone else gives it to you, but it’s not yours to bestow.  But I kind of feel that if you have to go out of your way to identify your personality “template” to other people, it is probably a poorly manufactured fraud to begin with.

She wrote a brief blog entry about how she was in the computer lab one day and it was really quiet, and suddenly someone began operating a saw or something in an adjoining area, which sounded very flatulent.

Gee, I need a girlfriend who is as easily entertained as you.

All of this brings to mind a haiku:

When you live alone
Farting ceases
To be funny

Read:  “I need vagina…can you help?”  That is not a haiku (5-7-5), although this is not my point.  I hate his awkward courtship behavior.  I hate his behavior even more in light of the fact that a few weeks ago, he wrote a comment on a post she wrote about the books she read last year and said:

The only reason to care about how well-read you are is if you’re worried about how well-read others think you are. If you don’t care what other people think, then it doesn’t matter what you read.

Only, he provided his name as “Anonymous” and I guess it wasn’t an accident based on how he also provided his e-mail as “anonymous@trashymail.com”.  The thing about IP addresses, though?  They will betray your best efforts to mask your identity using a clever online disguise.  So I’ve spent the last couple months laughing at him as he tries to kiss her ass and outdo himself with every blog post, since he thinks we don’t know that the one bitchy comment on her blog came from him.  I’m halfway surprised he hasn’t posted again to defend her against himself.

I talked to her about it today and she remarked that he has been messaging her on Facebook, too.  She started a 101 Things list too, and apparently one of the items has something to do with meditation.  He wrote and offered to introduce her to his “Zen master”.  I think he really meant the “Zen master” in his pants.

Her:  I wonder if he’s ever going to get the hint that I’m not romantically interested in him. He sent me his phone number over Facebook under the pretense of being concerned about the severe weather in the area.

Me:  “Hunh, hunh, if you’re scared of the tornado…here’s my number.”   He wants you to go squat in his basement with him while he picks lint out of his underpants.

I posted back to his haiku comment tonight:

Secret commenter
Betrayed by IP address
Hint: from Wichita

I like to pretend to myself that he will be dismayed to learn that we are not the idiots he took us for.