I'm reading this book on Tom Waits right now. It's not all that great, and there are multiple inaccuracies littered throughout, but I'm reading it... well, because. Anyway, there was a passage about his earlier years about how he used to just write down whole dialogues of conversation he would overhear. (I mean, I'm sure millions of other people have done it before, so it's not like it's this novel concept he created that I thought everyone should hear about... but I'm giving you a little backstory in order to stretch this out a little longer. I've got yours and maybe two other people's attention... I'd like to keep it for as long as possible.)

That got me thinking about the idea that maybe I should do it. Whenever I attempt to write any piece of fiction, I usually tend to include lots of dialogue (or sometimes only dialogue), since it's the thing I find most enjoyable to write and it allows me to gloss over exposition, which I'm not very good at. Unfortunately I'm not as great at writing dialogue as I'd like to be (so according to me, I suck at exposition, I suck at writing dialogue... so really why do I even try), because I find myself writing stuff that's both too-realistic and not-realistic enough. (And by that, I mean... I tend to have people say things they'd never say in real life, but I also include a lot of filler words.) So I figured that eavesdropping might be fun, might allow me to grow somewhat, might give me some good ideas for things to write. All that good crap.

The only problem is that I type slowly and write slower. Which means that I could possibly document every fourth sentence in a conversation. So essentially this whole idea had a pretty quick death. I could try hanging out with Mavis Beacon, but... no.

Anyway, if I could... I would have written a couple conversations overheard.

The first one I heard at Hard Times, and it was pretty simple. Two college guys were having a pretty in-depth conversation about anarchism. And the guy who dominated most of the conversation (or... the guy who was louder and thus made it easier for me to overhear) was discussing at length about his amazement that there were no anarchist groups in the Twin Cities area, and then subsequently about the various challenges he would encounter if he were to try to form his own group.

What stood out to me was that this was the most straight faced conversation about congregating anarchists possible.

I mean, the guy was pretty articulate about his thoughts and ideas about the whole topic, so obviously it was something he's talked about before. And thus, he probably is aware of the apparent oxymoron, and most likely tired of hearing about it. (And would probably condescendingly explain your errors if you dared to mention it.) So I guess that it's not at all remarkable that it was a pretty normal conversation...

But STILL. THERE'S SUCH AN OBVIOUS JOKE THERE.

And in my haven't-really-given-anarchism-much-thought mind, I cannot comprehend how a discussion about forming an organization of anarchists does not include at least one small mention of that obvious joke. Even an annoyed mention of how stupid that ostensibly oxymoron is would have sufficed. BUT THERE HAD TO BE SOMETHING. I just couldn't imagine it not popping up in the conversation anywhere.

Except that it didn't. And it happened.

I would say that it blew my mind, but that's kind of a stupid thing to say. So instead I'll say that it made me re-examine everything I thought I knew to be true about the entire universe.

(Or, it was interesting to me. And that's about all.)

Another conversation happened earlier today, when Sara and I went to Panera Bread (we were trying to go to Chipotle, but... disaster struck somewhere and they had to close. It was sad). We sat by a table which had two ladies discussing business. Actually, it was really only one lady talking, attempting to show the ropes to this other lady. I didn't really catch what type of business they were actually talking about, but all the pamphlets and training books on the table included the words "incredible business opportunity", so it was obviously of great import.

I actually would have really liked to document this conversation, because the one lady obviously had a knack for salesmanship (which I am particularly poor at emulating) as she detailed this strategy that essentially involved convincing others to pursue this incredible business opportunity. But I also felt kind of bad for the gal being trained in the ways of this incredible business opportunity, because it was obvious she did not possess the gift of gab like her counterpart did.

I imagine that she's going to give it her best shot, have her plan on how to get people involved in this amazingly legit business deal all laid out, then have it all completely backfire on her--resulting in immediate regret over the time and effort devoted to this thing. I thought about maybe popping into the conversation and telling her that the whole venture wasn't worth it. I mean, I didn't hear every single detail to this conversation, of course, so this might all be fine and reputable (it seems to have worked out pretty well for the lady who dominated the conversation--including an all-expenses paid trip to London), so obviously I didn't pop in. And even if it was kind of an elaborate rip-off/waste of time and money, she would probably have to find out the hard way instead of having some skeptical stranger butt in.

If I wrote a story involving this episode, though... I totally would have butted in. I would have yelled to the entire restaurant about the scam. And then thrown all the training materials up into the air. And then the almost-conned lady and I would have stormed out of the restaurant and ran off to a park or something. And then we would start a pick-up game of hoops with inner-city youth, and in the process discover what life is really all about.

Basically, I should never write. Ever.