2001-01-17 - 986032796

Who's Who Cheat Sheet
Who I Read

On the internal soundtrack: "Movin' Out", Billy Joel.

NOTE TO GOOGLE USERS: If you got here searching on "Josie Moran", try "Josie Maran" and you'll have much better luck. There are some nice pictures of her here.

Earlier this week I signed up for someone else's notify list through notifylist.com, and was ecstatic to find that it is ridiculously simple -- give an e-mail address, then click on the link in the verification e-mail, and you're done. No protracted signup for the service and sign in process to join other lists by that service. I've avoided signing up for notify lists in the past because I didn't want to deal with that. I've got an account and OneList but can't remember my login name or password. I hate OneList.

Anyways, I feel bad when I see the hits of people checking the site for a new entry that hasn't yet materialized, so I decided to make my own notify list. I have one whole person on it now! Yay me! Maybe I should sign Poindexter up for it, since he can barely remember I have a journal. Jeez, I could be talking about old boyfriends on here and he'd never know it.

So I was thinking about quiet people yesterday. I'm not talking about shy people, I'm talking about people who by nature are just quiet. They disconcert me. I can never relax completely. I obsess over conversational lulls. "Are they bored? Am I talking too much? Do they even want to be here?!"

I talk a lot, myself, and ramble all over the place, but I also really like to listen. I try to ask questions and not to monopolize the conversation. But maybe I'm scaring quiet people away with all my rambling. If I'm hanging out with someone who's also a rambler, they just take the floor when they need it; maybe quiet people need me to shut up for longer than three seconds.

On the other hand, what the hell am I supposed to do when I'm talking to someone who answers in monosyllables? Am I not asking the right questions? Somebody goes on a vacation to Europe, they get back, I ask, "How was your trip? What did you see?" They say, "It was nice. We saw lots of stuff."

I pause. They seem to be finished. I ask, "What was your favorite thing that you saw?" The response: "Hmm ... probably the cathedrals."

And? And? Do I have to keep questioning them? "What cathedrals? What denominations? What did you like about them? Are you a big cathedral fan?" Then I feel like I'm giving the third degree. Maybe they don't WANT to discuss their vacation with me.

More talkative people will just take that question and run with it in whatever direction they want to go. I'm much more comfortable with that.

Quiet people also tend to also be less facially expressive, and I never have any idea what kind of mood they're in. I come from a very loud, talkative, expressive family and I'm not good with the more subtle cues. I'm guessing that in this situation, I need to get to know them very, very well, and then I will be able to "read" them a little better. I hope.

One of the big attractions to Poindexter was his expressiveness. There's a lot going on in his facial expressions and mannerisms. A lot of times, I can tell just by looking at Poindexter what he's thinking, and I can definitely gauge his mood. I can tell when he's making something up to pull my leg. It's pretty subtle, though -- I think someone who didn't know him would believe him. I told him that sometime he should tell a complete but plausible falsehood at a party and let me see if I (and the other person) pick up on it.

Anyways. If you are a quiet person or well acquainted with one, please help me out. Give me clues and hints as to how I should draw out a quiet person (or whether I should just leave them the hell alone).

I'm getting a kick out of the referring URLs in my logs. The most common ones are "Josie Moran" and "ticklish pedicure". The latter perplexes me: are these people thinking about getting a pedicure, and worried that it will tickle? Or is it foot fetishes?

The most disturbing one yet: "+mother-in-law +ass". No, I didn't mention those two words in the same context.

I'm also curious about the ones searching for hirsute females or hirsute legs. I wonder if they come here expecting I'm going to talk about my hairy legs in an erotic context, or if it's fellow hairy-legged women looking for their follicular sisters.

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