We're Fresh Out Of Smarm, But Grenades Are Half-Price

From: HellPope Huey X <radiopopeNOraSPAM@hotmail.com.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.slack

I found myself idly wondering the other day, as I all too often
do, where one could find the dividing line between simple bad
manners and smarminess. We haven't quite reached the "Death Race
2000" level yet, where actual homicide is the norm and not just a
weekly program on Fox, so most folks either work at refining
their contempt or blow minor blood vessels trying to rein it in.

I address a certain portion of the problem by writing this crap.
It has one distinct advantage, in that I don't have to look at
anyone while I say these things. Those who don't like it are
welcome to perform upon my person an act that is illegal in
Arkansas. How they think they can catch anyone performing it
outside a certain kind of dank arcade is beyond me, but if they
ever figure it out, shotgun sales will rise considerably. That's
saying a lot in a place where a shotgun is the traditional
4th-grade graduation gift.

Mr. Webster defines smarmy as "flattering in an oily, insincere
manner." This hardly seems adequate to cover the extremely broad
usage to which the word has been put ever since Monty Python was
fresh and dewy. I usually envisioned smarmy and a punch in the
mouth as being a logical one-two sequence in nature, so I had to
think on it a bit. Not that I wouldn't LIKE to punch a few people
in the mouth, sometimes on a daily basis, but that would be
wrong, usually. I believe that the term has mutated because it is
something of an onomatopoeia, although the face often made while
expressing it can resemble many other things, including
bemusement, rage, insanity and gas.

I don't think most people have the energy to be truly smarmy.
Oily and insincere, you bet, but flattery is not only gathering
dust in the corner, its getting a bad name from its replacement,
"bullshit." At least flattery had the veneer of an attempt to be
sociable, but bullshit just lands on your shoes from the git-go,
works its way into the cracks of your waffle-stompers and hangs
on for days at a time. Unlike dog crap, you can't dig most of it
out with a stick and use the garden hose on the remainder. Worse
yet, it often builds up in layers until the bottoms of your shoes
become rounded and you have to throw them out. Its a bad idea to
ask someone if that face means they're merely disgusted with
their lot in life or about to go onto a berserker rage. It might
tip them over into the latter.

Good manners are lauded in song & story, but face it, they're
often both an affectation and a luxury. Consider that when Furby
was the Christmas toy rage, all that went out the window. No one
seeking OR selling the cursed, yammering things was exactly
oozing holiday cheer. I've seen nicer faces on two lions fighting
over the last dead gazelle carcass at a dried-up watering hole
during a drought in the African veldt. Just as the Bible is often
misused as a blunt object instead of an instructional guide, so
too are good manners turned into smarminess because they've been
run too long like a car denied adequate water and lubrication.
And Lord grant that we always have enough lubrication, ahem!

With my luck, some celestial subordinate will screw up the bar
codes and I'll end up in friggin' HELL, paying for the next guy's
sins because the work load finally stripped the threads of the
angelic accounting department. And they'll all be smarmy about
it, too.

Being an advanced model of biped, I try to do better than mere
tit-for-tat, but I just paid $1.25 for a button that declares "Do
I have 'fuck with me' written on my forehead?," so you know where
*I* stand. What part of "get away from me or I'll stuff your
colon with your diced brain and turn it into a Twix bar for
zombies" don't you understand? I'll try harder if you will, but I
see you cussing like a 12-pack of proverbial sailors when you're
driving, just like me, so don't put on them airs, you unctuous
weasels. Have a nice day, you (head explodes "Scanners"-style
just as he hits the 'Post" button)

HellPope Huey,
Take the last toxic waste train to Clarksville,
I'll meet you at the defenestration

"One of the most serious problems in planning against American
doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do
they feel any obligations to follow their doctrine."
- from a Russian document

"What's wrong with a little hey-hey?"
-Frank Sinatra as Danny Ocean in OCEAN'S ELEVEN

"You become a cha

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Original file name: We're Fresh Out Of Smarm, B... - converted on Friday, 29 June 2001, 22:32