Years ago, when I was living with a different husband, the husband and I went to a Silva Mind Control scoop-em-in-and-hook-em-up seminar.

What I took out of that seminar is that what you write about and what you care about and what makes you flinch and what makes you cry or yell or laugh is what interests you, what makes you tick.

The Silva folk had you think about someone you knew well.

What did you really like about them? What about them irritated you all to heck? Ten things for each list.

The upshot of the lists was that what you like and appreciate and what irritates you all to heck are all things that matter to you.

If someone twitches their foot and foot twitching doesn't ping your consciousness, you'll never mention twitching feet on your list of like/irritate/hate.

If what makes you twitch are people who are chronically late, you will probably mention that the person you're profiling is chronically late, if they are.

Back a day or two ago in Usenet land, someone made a crack that struck me all wrong. Still does. He's now backstepping around the pile of warm stuff that oozed out of his psyche. I don't care if the crack was intended as a troll. The crack was a reflection of who the person was. One wouldn't make the crack if it wasn't handy, somewhere in the psyche.

I think wotzizname Gibson probably had Jews on the brain before he was picked up for DUI by a Jewish cop and spewed his memorable spew. I think whatzizname Michael Richards had a fizz on his brain when he lashed out at the comedy club.

You don't lash out about things that aren't already stewing on your brain. You must've seen someone lash out at something and you just didn't get it. You said, huh?

We used to have to deal with a family member who'd make weird attempts to annoy us and get us twitching and spitting. She'd do one of her gotchas and we could tell she was trying to get us to twitch. We'd sit there and wonder, what is she trying now? Why does she think what she's doing would upset us?

We'd think for a while and then ... Oh ... that's it. Silly girl.

She'd do off-the-wall stuff intended to annoy. Well, she'd be annoyed if someone did something like that to her and she was so self-centered she didn't realize that what annoyed her might not annoy others. She'd hope we'd whine and complain and raise a fuss and storm out of the family and behave badly. We let it go. What's "stuff" anyway, crazy girl.

She was so self-centered she never could understand that what she did reflected more about how she ticked inside than it ever had anything much really to do with us.

She was avaricious and expected everyone else to be. She was suspicious of everyone because she knew that everyone should be suspicious of her.

She's no longer part of the family due to circumstances changing. The only thing I really miss is having a front row seat on her soap opera life. Boy, that girl had a weird view of how people should treat each other. I would love to see how her world view impacts her life these days -- how many friends have deserted her, how many tradesmen have cheated her, how many people are just being mean-mean-mean to her. I would love to know what's going on in her life, but not enough to get back in contact with her. I'm curious, but not enough.

In a similar fashion, the personas that people assume on Usenet ooze with things that they are aware of and care about, things that make them tick or tick them off.

I'm the girl who rummages up URLs. I'd never affect the persona of someone who cared about pink shooz. What? Or someone who cared about The Bulls. They lost last night? What?

Next time, watch what people pay attention to, what they react to, what sort of button pushing really sets them off and you'll see what's important in their lives. You'll also see that people who push buttons pick buttons that they care about. People talk about, act out, or conspicuously avoid things that they are most concerned about. If the subject didn't make their nerve endings twitch, it would never occur to them to even notice.

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:24 AM|| |