I was just in a conversation at Johanna's about how exactly you say 'no thanks' to people you just don't want to dance with because they're not fun. There is lots of good advice, some even quite realistic, but the consensus is that what we really need is the Klingon Cloaking Device, or something like it.
Is there potential for miniaturising the Ministry of Defence Invisible Shed? (Article includes photographer's impression of how the shed might look in action).
May I point out that a portable 'device' would painlessly solve the delusional dancer problem without the need for explicit conflict, of which women are generally wary. There is the problem of creeping up on people, but as long as we all have one it doesn't seem too bad.
I did, indeed, once bob right down and crouch behind two chairs at an outdoor festival, keeping very still and thinking invisible thoughts, and hiding from someone who sticks his bottom out, wiggles his arms, rubs his feet on your tights as though he'd found a nice, scratchy tree, and generally makes me go "Ewwwww". It cost me at least an extra half hour of waiting in the cold for a dance, too. I don't know which is more ridiculous, the thought of him wondering where I'd gone, or the thought of him looking at the top of my head and deciding to leave it. Anyway, it was undignified, but it worked.
In my view, research should concentrate on the bracelet-borne, on-demand, Somebody Else's Problem Field. If it could hide an upside-down Italian restaurant full of murderous alien robots in the middle of Lord's during a Test match, surely hiding a hedgehog who asks no more than a pile of warm leaves cannot be too hard. So much more useful than an iPod, which just hides everyone else.
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Make Me Invisible, Please
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5 comments:
You are just so very clever. Although it does remind me of another - albeit, not so nice - technique, of smilingly passing off the tanda to a "friend" standing next to you.
All kidding aside, why is it so hard for us to just say "no thank you"?
There is generally a surplus of women wanting a dance. This is bad. It means men with bad technique, bad hygiene or bad manners can get away with too much .. and keep on getting away with it. More women saying "no" to bad men would mean men needing to seriously augment their game.
(Note this already happens in the other direction, bad women just don't get asked to dance.)
Hilarious MsHedgehog...
It's like I've said before, all of the basic manners and "being polite" applies to tango, all that we all learned in kindergarten, including "when all else fails, hide". I forgot about that one. I can't stop laughing.
I must say I am guilty of this too. I have avoided a woman's cabeceo by pretending not to notice, high-tailing it to the men's room, and hiding out there (in a stall, feeling like an idiot) for an appropriate amount of time.
It worked.
Human nature is so very...hmmm...interesting.
Good one...
Anonymous: the problem with having a surplus of women is that even when they say "no", men have a lot more choices to dance with, while the women have less and less partners.
The decision then becomes about whether or not to dance at all or to dance poorly.
Heh. In BsAs we have the opposite problem. Avoiding being asked is the easiest thing in the world. It's like the default position - if you're just sitting there, noone's going to ask you. Instead you have to be quite active to get an invitation. More at some places than others - at Nino Bien all you have to do is glance around a little and someone's going to cabaceo you. But in other places you have to work quite hard, and that doesn't come naturally to me. At the moment I need some kind of de-cloaking device!
I'm better suited to the way we do things in London - I have no problem saying no. Except to friends, but hey, they're friends, you can't say no to friends (unless you have an actual reason for not wanting to dance at all).
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