Yo, Tech Answer Guy,
My Grammie Paw-Paw used to tell stories about standing in bread lines during The Great Depression. She told us young-ungs (that was the noise she made when she tried to pick us up – maybe she should have stopped before we turned 35) about how the lines were so long, people would often lose more weight shuffling forward in them than they would gain from the food they received at the end of them! How the gurgling from empty stomachs up and down the line sometimes sounded like the chorus at Minsky’s. One time, she was in a bread line in a blizzard so bad that when it cleared, she found she was standing on a steamer ship about to set sail for Shanghai!
Good times.
We didn’t believe her, of course. Why would anybody choose to starve when they had credit cards?
Then, there was the fake virus that led to the hoax small business meltdown that led to me losing my job as a short distance trucker. I was told that it was because restaurants didn’t need me to haul packets of mustard, ketchup and pickled sheep’s intestines to them because they were closed. I knew it was really because our Chinese overlords shanghaied all our condiments to use for nuclear reactor fuel, but whatever the reason, I found myself without an income.
Of course, I refused to accept any unemployment insurance, because my name is not Karl or Gottsadlylowmarx, and, anyway, red is not my colour, if you catch my driftnet. For a week, anyway. If I wanted to keep my trailer, I had to accept the UI checks. What the hell – when my wardrobe changes, I can always avoid looking into mirrors. Unfortunately, UI doesn’t cover food and Netflax, so braving the line it was.
I learned a valuable lesson: Grammie Paw-Paw was an optimist!
One time, the guy behind me was spouting off about politics, saying things like “President McDruhitmumpf’s whole fallacy is wrong.” If the dude wanted to be fitted for a microchip straitjacket and flung off a fiscal cliff, who was I to argue? Still, I couldn’t allow such ignorance to go unchallenged – it might have swayed other, weaker people in the line – so I punched him in the ghoulies. As he lay on the pavement, panting, I argued, “How’s your fallacy now, pal? Hunh? How’s your fallacy now?” I’m good with the clever repartee like that.
In my defence, I was manhangry. That’s short for “hangry while being a man.” That’s short for “being hungry and angry while being a man.” Jesus Louise…is, there was so much meaning in that one word, I almost mistook it for being German!
Anyway, when the cops came, he was panting a lot less and able to explain what had happened. Which makes me wonder: should I have punched him in the throat instead?
Sincerely,
Alex from Rolodex
Yo, Lex…is,
I know what the term “manhangry” means. Thanks for the man-on-mansplainin’; I haven’t had somebody do that to me since my brother The Science Answer Guy spent thirty-four minutes explaining why the sky is blue. Thirty-four excruciating long minutes from my life that I will never get back. Unless eternal recurrence is a thing, in which case, crap.
No, you should not punch somebody standing near you in a food line in the throat. Or, the ghoulies. Or, the time card. Violence is the last refuge of the argumentatively incompetent. That is right there in the Macho Code of Manliness, after the section on how to use a stick shift and before the recipe for the perfect barbecue sauce. (That’s not man-on-mansplainin’, that’s reminding you of something you know but may have forgotten, or may not have fully understood, or may be ignoring because it’s inconvenient.)
The proper way of dealing with people we disagree with is to swallow our anger until we get home, then channel it into building a birdhouse. Or a doghouse. Or an outhouse.
The point is to channel your hanger into something productive. That way, you don’t get a criminal record (or add to the one you’ve already started), and birds get a home.
Building birdhouses is Macho Code of Manliness approved.
The Tech Answer Guy
If you are a dude with a question about the latest technology, ask The Tech Answer Guy by sending it to questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Just remember: some people may consider language a technology, but if you can’t work on it with a monkey wrench, a screwdriver or a phaser, it isn’t a technology in any meaningful sense of the word!