2002-07-11 - 1:16 a.m.

This is going to sound conceited or boastful, and (as always) whiny, but it honestly isn�t meant that way.

This is going to sound pessimistic. This is going to sound like more than just an observation.

Everyone in the world is stupid. The minute anyone intelligent looking opens his or her mouth, nothing comes out but blah blah blah.

Nobody talks about anything important. Just trash. Putting down friends. Complaining about classes. Discussing the events of the very recent past or predicting the events of the very near future.

Nobody (myself included) flexes the �ol brain muscle enough to get a real good workout. There�s no need to.

And anyone who dares talk about something greater than the sum of the day�s events ends up coming across as a pompous windbag.

At least, that�s how see those people.

Maybe I just haven�t met the right people. Maybe I�m not overhearing the right conversations on the train.

So it�s either mental atrophy or talking out your ass to look smart. Maybe that�s why I say weird things all the time�I don�t want either.

I dunno. It�s pretty sad that I live in America�s center for both higher education and medicine, and still, the people around me sound like idiots of the moron variety.

When I go to a party, people talk about a) themselves, b) hip-hop, or c) nothing.

No conversation lasts more than a minute. No conversation is allowed to develop. The minute either participant runs outta stuff to say, bam, there�s a support group friend waiting right around the corner. Or someone plays a danceable song. Or someone butts in.

Or, most commonly, the subject is changed, like the card game W-A-R, until someone wins.

I think that people feel uncomfortable talking about stuff. It�s too challenging. Once you step out onto unfamiliar territory, it�s possible to lose your way.

And once you start talking about anything even a little challenging, there�s the whole aforementioned pompous windbag factor going on, so if you�re going to talk about something challenging, you have to make sure only challenging for others.

I dunno. Maybe I�m just sick of discussing hip-hop and the recent and minute details of other people�s lives.

It�s not like I�m Good Will Hunting and all of my friends are troglodytes and I need to move onwards to some place where only eagles dare to fly and what not. My friends, or people I meet, and so on, are not stupid. If talking was as socially acceptable, or as risqu�, or as necessary as, say, having a piercing, then I�d be living in a city of enlightenment.

Talking is obsolete. Talking is superficial. Talking is the same thing as wearing a Star Trek T-shirt to a Star Trek convention�there�s no need. Everyone gives everyone else the benefit of assumption. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we�re all smart. There�s no need to prove it.

All of us come from non-trash backgrounds and none of us come from super-rich backgrounds. We all like good music. We all have the same opinions on film, race, politics (liberal), clothes, food, and what�s annoying. All of us were that one downtrodden and misunderstood kid in each of our high schools, picked on by the jocks, who are all presumably working at some gigantic carpet factory right now.

We�re all against cell-phones, even though most of us have one.

Friendly debating should, of course, be avoided at all costs. It creates negativity. Smile! We�re all friends for the time being. Why rock the boat? Friendly debating invites possible exclusion. It ruffles feathers.

We don�t need to know that much about each other.

And why have a discussion when we can dance instead?

OK�I�m sounding like a pompous windbag. If I was sitting on the subway, reading my book, and some jackass sophist read out loud what I just wrote, I�d want to strangle that ostentatious prick with one of his own upright bass strings.

But I don�t care.

OK�so not everyone in the world is stupid. I didn�t mean that. But it has gotten to the point where I (for argument�s sake, someone who is �smart�) never ever ever ever ever have an opportunity to practice being smart.

I�m just like the runner that sits around all day and eats McDonalds, and only runs for the occasional bus.

I don't want that. It's not enough for me to fall back on my nerdly past, to reach back a little whenever socially necessary, and spout some philosophic conclusion that I fought for and then reached ten years ago, which has by now been rendered generically unanimous and therefore assumed and therefore obsolete.

I'd rather talk.