the art of conversation

I think dehydration is what you call it when you have an, ahem. episode and you want to pass it off as no big deal, after all the solution to dehydration is to drink water and that seems simple enough,  I remember Pence from when he pushed that bill where you couldn't sue a person for discriminating against gays and then when that caused a furor he walked it back so that he ended up pissing off both sides of the question.  Basically a dud, but standing next to Trump he looks like a wise statesman.  This Kaine guy I don't know at all, couldn't tell you right now without going to the wiki what state he is from.  The Bernie people didn't like him, but what the hell if you are throwing in your lot with the big girl there is no point in being picky.

The wars, ahem conflicts, we get involved in do educate America about geography don't they?  Remember when we backing the contras, those latter day George Washingtons, in Nicaragua? Nobody knew where Nicaragua was, but really wasn't south of Mexico enough information?  There are those itty bitty countries around the Panama Canal and then there are those bigger countries on the mainland where the people either loll around on the beach in bikinis and speedos or slug it through the mountains with a half ton strapped to their backs chewing coca leaves to beat the band.

The thing about this truce is, and I haven't examined it, we are backing the nice (not Al Qaeda or ISIS) rebels and Russia is backing Assad.  The idea is that I think both sides will take time out to pound ISIS and Al Qaeda, but still the US and Russia are on different sides.  It's like when Old Dog said we were bombing six counties.  I could only come up with three, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but maybe the six was including areas where we are flying drones.


It's good to know the faults we have in conversation, so that we can try to curb them.  Myself I suppose that I argue too much, but then that is part of me, it's what I consider conversation,  If you don't like to argue then don't talk to me.  Another thing I do is correct people, sometimes I am like that annoying kid with his hand in the air who wants to show everybody how smart he is.  The example I think of is one day me and my sister and brother-in-law were driving to my nephew's house in Crete and my brother-in-law said something like maybe it was named after the Indians who used to live there, and I knew he was confusing Crete with Cree, and I, of course, pointed this out.  Immediately I realized what a jerk I was.  What difference did it make?  I made my brother-in-law look a little dumb and myself look like a jerk, and how did any of that contribute to reasonable people discussing reasonable things reasonably?  Anymore I try to keep myself from doing that, but I am not always successful.

Here's a kind of paradox.  In a conversation most people want to do most of the talking, and yet when you are listening there is a chance that you might learn something that might be useful, but when you are talking you are just hearing stuff you already know.  So why do people want to talk so much?