tuesday rant - 3rd edition

Pretentious people.

Want to see me come unglued and start having uncontrollable eye twitches? Make me spend ANY amount of time with someone who either thinks or acts like they are better than anyone else because they went to a better school (or any school) or have a bigger house or a better job or they got to see Journey on tour and sat in the front row.

I don't believe I would ever get to the point of physical assault. I may consider it; there have been times in the past when I thought how nice it would be to feel their bones crush. But no, for me I've found the best way to deal with these people is to ensure their complete undoing.

How you ask? Simple. These people have one chink in their crappy armor. Themselves.

Instead of ignoring them or popping them in the temple like I want to, I pull them closer. Keep them talking. For these people every word out of their mouth is yet another dent in the hard exterior shell that covers their soft yellow underbelly. I've been known to keep doing this for months on end until I find a weak spot. Once this is located, I exploit the crap out of it to my complete and utter enjoyment.

Case in point:

Recently, I traveled on business where I was required to attend a dinner meeting with a guy who is ranked on page one of my pretentious log. Being from the south and specifically from Texas I was apparently well below his status level and he made no attempt to mask it. For me this caused a large set of crosshairs to appear on his forehead.

There were maybe 200 restaurants within a 10 mile radius of where we were located. Now, where would you take a backwoods guy from Texas if you really wanted to show him how big you were... hmmm... Sushi! Take him to eat Sushi and talk about how you just love to eat with chopsticks. That would be GREAT!

Wrong asshole. What this pretentious prick didn't realize is that I spent close to 3 years living in Japan. I've been there. I speak-a-da language.

I said nothing, even when he made the comment that he hoped I would enjoy it and not think it was bait. "I'll try anything" I said with a smile, thinking of how much fun this was going to be.

I sat in the restaurant listening to this prick talk endlessly about how much he enjoyed this particular place (a stereotypically bad example of a Japanese-like upscale restaurant). I fumbled with my chopsticks and stared at the menu like I was going to need a burger later.

Finally when the waiter appeared and this prick sat up to order... I asked in Japanese if the waiter spoke Japanese (he did- at least as well as I did) and I proceeded to order. I even ordered a drink for the idiot next to me (still in Japanese) which the waiter considered quite funny.

I occasionally think of the look on his pretentious little face at that moment. Hey, what’s that... looks like you have a chink in your armor right there...