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- Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!cleveland.Freenet.Edu!al677
- From: al677@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jerry Cosyn)
- Subject: Dr. Cobweb's Asylum
- Message-ID: <1992Aug27.182821.14549@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
- Sender: news@usenet.ins.cwru.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: slc10.ins.cwru.edu
- Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)
- Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 18:28:21 GMT
- Lines: 78
-
-
- The Basket Case wandered in and started haranguing us with his
- usual opening gambit. It was his assertion that a frisk search should
- replace the handshake as the standard form of greeting, thus cutting
- down on the rampant paranoia, xenophobia and suspicion which he
- insists are at the heart of all the violence in the world. As usual,
- he tried to pat us all down right there in the day room, which was
- pretty ridiculous since we were all wearing standard issue greens,
- with no pockets or anything. It took him awhile to harry Snuffles
- into a corner, which turned out to be good for me. Dr. Cobweb came in
- just before The Basket Case got around to patting me down and made him
- sit down so we could start the session, so I was spared a close
- encounter of the ticklish kind.
-
- As soon as the session started, Snuffles jumped right in
- complaining about The Basket Case always touching people, putting his
- hands on them. The Basket Case retaliated by explaining yet again how
- necessary it was, which prompted shouts from Scowling Dave (about the
- invasion of his personal privacy) and The Politician (about speaking
- out of turn). By the time the doctor got them sorted out and quieted
- down, I was safely out of the picture, ignored and forgotten. In
- sessions, that's my favorite role.
-
- After spending some time tossing around the delicate social
- nuances of ritual frisking, the doc made the mistake of asking The
- Smartass if there was something he'd like to bring up. Now, the rest
- of us know better than to ever ask The Smartass anything, and
- especially not an open-ended question like that. But the doc, he
- doesn't get to spend nearly as much time around the ward as we do, and
- he hasn't caught on that it's always a good idea to ignore The
- Smartass and just count yourself lucky if he doesn't interject
- comments from the side, uninvited. So he led with his chin, so to
- speak, and we all rolled our eyes in the five seconds it took The
- Smartass to ease the front legs of his chair back onto the floor,
- uncross his legs and lean forward on his knees before he drawled out
- his Major Concern.
-
- "Well..." he said slowly. "Now that you mention it, there is
- something that's been sorta bothering me. I want to know why it is
- that every time you buy a box of crackers or cereal or something like
- that there's always this big damn deal on the box about how they have
- this great reclosable top, with the nifty keen little tab-and-slot,
- but when you go to open the damn thing they've got it sealed up with
- some kinda space-age NASA glue that's stronger than the cardboard box,
- so you gotta tear the whole damn lid off, nifty little tab-and-slot
- and all. Why is that do you s'pose?"
-
- Dr. Cobweb said maybe that question was ranging a little too far
- afield, because right now we really should be discussing the
- interactions of the group and dealing with our own individual
- situations rather than taking on the far greater burden of dealing
- with the dynamics of an entire society. But The Smartass was warmed
- up now, glowing with a light of his own, and hopped right back in
- before anybody else could say anything. With his engine already
- running, he began to spume in a noxious frenzy.
-
- Wasn't it true, he wanted to know, that the reason we were all
- there was because we had specific difficulties dealing with the
- situations encountered in daily contact with our social matrix? Well
- then, take TV commercials. TV commercials are a pervasive form of
- daily contact with our social matrix -- hell, they even reach us in
- here where we're almost isolated. So it seemed legitimate to him to
- bring up the topic and discuss it and deal with it because he had a
- lot of questions about TV commercials that needed answers. Like did
- anyone ever actually have the nerve to give a Ronco product to someone
- as a gift? And how about that black guy advertising those special
- nifty blacktop basketball shoes, where he's talking about how there
- are no rules and those guys are hopping around some inner city parking
- lot with a basketball? No rules, he says, and he's telling ghetto
- kids that they need a $90 pair of shoes to play basketball in the
- street; what kind of message is that supposed to be?
-
- By the time the doc got him shut up, the session was over and I
- was able to slide out and get to the nurses' station first so I had my
- choice of pills, but I think maybe I took the wrong one, because I
- slept right through dinner and missed the Parchisi match. I gotta
- remember to break the blue pills in half from now on.
-