Steven Hawkings

I get to work at 7 AM. It has it's advantages over getting in at 8AM.

There are not many people in the office at that time and it's a good time to settle in and get started working. It's pretty quiet, so I can get into a good frame of mind before the day gets loud.

But some mornings, it's already loud when I get there. Not because there are more people.

Sometimes "Larry" and "Curt" are excited to tell each other stuff. "Randy" is always involved in the conversation, but I never hear a word he says. Presumably, Randy is not a loud-mouth obnoxious asshole.

I'm about done with the word "mansplain," which is too bad because I read that it just made it into the dictionary.  It seems like blogger doesn't know this yet because it's got a red squiggly line under it as I look at it, indicating it is misspelled.

But these guys manspain at each other some mornings. Really loud. Back and forth.  Sometimes they ask Randy for verification.  I don't hear what Randy says, but they both hear him and the mansplaining continues.

You know what that means? They could all talk to each other at Randy's volume and I wouldn't hear them. They must want me to hear what they are saying.  They are clearly out to impress anyone within earshot (roughly a quarter of a mile). That's the ONLY reason to talk that loud.

Anyway, yeah. So what? They talk loud and it's annoying.  But this morning I was glad I heard this stuff. 

Sometimes, when I'm reading, I marvel at the imagination it takes to write a good story.  The work it must take that I so easily take for granite [sic]. 

I will read a few sentences and stop and consider if I think I could have come up with that in a million years.  Not if it was complete fiction. 

That's why I enjoyed this terribly dumb conversation.  I learned a couple of things I didn't know while hearing some of the stupidest shit ever.

So there was talk about the NIT tournament and the Minnesota quarterback getting traded.  Then it turned to talk of that one song by Pink Floyd and how amazing it was because Steven Hawkings [sic] sang in it.  Ok - I know his name was "Stephen Hawking" but I'm pretty sure if these guys decided they were a disruption and should just pass notes, they'd spell it "Steven Hawkings."

But I did not know Pink Floyd had a song (feat. Stephen Hawking).

So the conversation went like this:

"No, Curt. I know the song you're talking about, but it wasn't Pink Floyd. It was that one song.  It definitely wasn't Pink Floyd."

"No Larry. It was definitely Pink Floyd. And Steven Hawkings was talking on it."

"Hang on Curt. I remember. It was that one song called "Behind Blue Eyes"

Now when I heard this, I was not thinking of the song by "The Who." I was thinking of the song "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel.  Now I'm not going to say that Peter Gabriel was the best singer, but he did not sound anything like the synth voice thing Stephen Hawking used. So I was confused.

Then Larry said, "Who sings that song, Randy?"

Silence. Then, "Oh yeah - that's right. The Who. But it was somebody else doing that song."

At that point I went to get a cup of coffee. Actually, I take my own coffee, but I have to rinse out my cup each day. That's what I went to do.

When I got back, they had it all figured out. Larry had clearly consulted "teh goggle box"

 "So here's what it was.  Limp Bizkit did "Behind Blue Eyes" and in one part, they couldn't get the real Steven Hawkings voice, so they got an impersonator. Pink Floyd actually got the real Steven Hawkings's voice. So we were both right."

Silence.

"Shut the fuck up Randy. You know what? You got [sic] a big mouth!"

I can only imagine what Randy said. But I bet he is a quiet mansplainer.  There's always one.  I like to think he whispered something like, "No you're both fucking idiots.  That wasn't Stephen Hawking's voice. He had no voice. It was synthesized speech. Morons!" 

God bless Randy.