sort of

Ever notice how academics and so-called articulate people use "sort of" in a manner, and just as habitually, that is similar to the use of "you know" by their more plebeian counterparts?

A Spy in the House of Ah!

I am sitting at a coffeehouse on the east side. I live on the west side. I grew up in a housing project on the west side (of another city), went to college on the east side (of this city, its environs, actually), lived a short time in an urban east-side neighborhood here. This place is sumptuous, with Craftsman (or is it Arts & Crafts style? is there a difference?) furniture and furnishings. I (typically) go to church on the east side. My spiritual mentors meet weekly on the west side; in fact, West End is emblazoned in their name. I do not speak the east side language, though I can. I do not dress the east side style, though I can fake it (but they would know). I once owned an Audi (used); still, they knew then and would know now. If I were to quote Kierkegaard and Goethe, hum Bach and Berlioz, all while attired from head to toe in Ralph Lauren, underwear too, still they'd know. They'd know I was a west sider; they'd know I was a spy in the House of Ah! (All apologies and kudos to Anais Nin, for one of the best titles ever dreamed, which I have borrowed and adapted.)

p.s. Is it always the same cultural-class split vis-a-vis East and West? Someone once claimed to me it was based on the inconvenience of sun in the eyes of commuters. A cute theory, but not likely. Let's see. Manhattan. Upper East Side, definitely more high-brow. Berlin. West is definitely more upper-crust. So, not much of a theory to go on because I do not have much empirical, or any other kind of, data.

The Portals of Peccadillo

Want to know what peccadillo pisses off Pawlie? Solipsistic Portal Syndrome. Picture this. You're in a grocery store, one that does not have automatic doors, or at the entrance to some sleek corporate HQ, or on the way to divorce court, or at the DMV, or the ER, or to a job interview, et cetera ad nauseam. Pick one. Some fat-ass or Twiggy-ass or pear-shaped ass or Ordinary Mortal advances before you. He or she opens the glass panel. He or she opens the door and keeps walking, solipsistically not bothering to acknowledge your human form or its fragrance or stain or aura or perhaps even its mysterious repulsive force field. No. Oh no. Solipsistic Portal Syndrome, or SPS, only admits the self through the doors of life. Said person opens the door, advances, lets said door close, and keeps walking, even though you, dear reader, may be millimeters to the rear of this ogre.

I have sometimes sarcastically said, "Thanks" to such narcissists. (By the way, did you know sarcasm means "flesh-cutting"? Deservedly, in this case.)

I want to shriek at these ingrates, "Can't you pause, turn around, and hold open the feckin door, you feckin feckhead?!"

But I don't.

It's not just the idea of opening a door. Of course, I can open the door on my own. It's the smug solipsistic sarcastic self-absorbed savage lack of courtesy of such twats.

I wonder if Ralphie encounters aspects of this.

And don't get me started on Littering and the End of Civilization.

(There, I feel better already. Incidentally, can anyone give me a better word than "peccadillo"? This, to me, is a quasi-major offense, not a trifling one.)