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Nightdragon meets the Yankee Pseudoscientist

July 15, 2002 ~ 8:41 p.m.

Today I met the sort of person who let me know that this was not going to be a good day.

While at the photocopier, paying close attention to the piles of exam scripts that I was dutifully reproducing, I heard a series of throat-clearing grunts at the front counter behind me. A polite �excuse me, sir� is an essential prerequisite to kick off a successful customer service transaction, at least when I�m in charge. �Ahem� just won�t do. So I ignored the dude at the counter until he learned the proper way to get my undivided attention.

Once he figured that much out, he requested a glue stick. I gave him one. Then he asked for scissors. I handed him a pair. Then, moments later, disturbing my job once again, he handed me the sheets he had been cutting and pasting and asked me to photocopy these pages for him. I politely informed him that this was the Undergraduate Office, not a copy shop, but told him where the nearest copy shop was.

�Huh! Well, no thank you, buddy,� he replied in what sounded to me like an upper Midwest accent. Then he just tittered irritably.

My arrow-tipped tail was twitching with anger, but I said nothing and returned to photocopying the exam scripts. I had a job to do, and damned if I was going to let him ruin it for me by losing my temper with him.

Things got worse. Colleagues of his joined him at the counter. I soon realized that they weren�t even students. They were visiting representatives of some leftist American society, the Ministry of Global Peace or whatever the hell they called themselves, who�d set up tables in the foyer of the building.

The rude dude began telling them, in as irritatingly loud a voice such as I�ve never heard, about some global tax plan authorized by the American government to help fund oil interests or some similar highfalutin conspiracy theory, and that he was actually a physicist who�d had the chance to interview people across the world about this tax and what it meant to them. In fact, unless my memory fails me greatly, his conversation went something like this:

�So there�s this tax that�ll affect the entire world, where people�ll be paying this outrageous tax for the government and stuff, funding the oil interests. Now, I wouldn�t be complaining if it were a sensible tax � you know, to provide the world�s six-year-olds with condoms or to help fund efforts to commute the sentences of violent criminals, but jeez � oil companies!

�Did you know that I�m a physicist? That�s right! I�m a physicist who just so happens to dabble in political psuedoscience in his spare time. Yeah! I�m awesome, don�tcha think?

�Anyway, I trekked to all four corners of the earth � yeah, that�s right, fellas, the world is flat, and you oughta listen to me �cause I�m a loudmouthed know-it-all who thinks his shit don�t smell � and I talked to a whole buncha people about this tax. Well, I didn�t so much talk to them as much as I talked over them, but like that makes any difference � mine is the only opinion that matters.

�So, did I tell you that I�m a physicist? Yeah, that�s right! After many years of intensive research, I�ve determined that shutting my mouth is a physical impossibility. Yep! I got a whole team of scientists who�ll back up that theory too. Boy, I really love the sound of my own voice, didja know that? Huh? Didja, didja?

After listening to this drivel for about 15 minutes, I did not care that the man was a fellow countryman. I wanted to rip his head off and hurl it back across the Atlantic where it belonged. And I wanted to lock his colleagues up in a padded cell for having possessed the sheer stupidity of taking this guy seriously. The stultifying ignorance of this so-called scientist made my head spin. I had lost count of my copies and had to start the confounded job all over again.

Worst of all was the fact that he never even stopped to ask me where I was from. He must have known. The fact that I possessed an accent nearly similar to his, while not once did he take that into account while demanding the use of my photocopier, irritated me beyond compare. What a self-absorbed bastard.

There are times when the phrase �Yankee Go Home� sits rather well with me. This was one of those times.

� M.E.M.

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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.

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