{"id":803,"date":"2009-07-27T09:34:21","date_gmt":"2009-07-27T16:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/?p=803"},"modified":"2025-05-23T17:33:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T22:33:50","slug":"monday-july-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/monday-july-27\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ll Show You What’s New – Monday July 27"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2948062648_79be272433\"<\/a> My idea is for everyone to stop saying “What’s new”.\u00a0 This is to include clever variations like “How’s your summer going” “How are things” and “How’s it hanging”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There are several problems with this line of opening dialog. First of all, it’s a very confrontational way of socializing. The other person is forced to come up with something clever to say and carry the conversation that you insisted on starting in the first place. Maybe if you had just said hello, you and the other person could have just stood quietly, sipping your drinks and enjoying each others quiet company. Instead, you tackled their knees and stuffed the conversational ball in their mouth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Second of all, if you are the kind of person who uses the “What’s new” opener you are probably also the kind of person who doesn’t a) really listen to the answer and b) doens’t have anything to say when you get asked the same question. The person will answer with a three minute story about their father getting cancer or their kid winning a science fair, then ask you what’s new and you’ll reply “Oh nothing really”.\u00a0 You probably resent the person’s good news and feel burdened if they tell you bad news.\u00a0 That’s assuming you listened past the first three words.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sometimes when people ask me “What’s new?” I reply “Oh thank god you asked.\u00a0 I woke up about a month ago with a swollen glad in my groin.\u00a0 I didn’t think anything of it until about 10 days later, when a huge boil popped up on the back of my leg.\u00a0 Have you ever seen a really huge boil? No? Well I can assure you it’s not pretty.\u00a0 (Ugh thanks again for asking I really needed to get this off my chest.)\u00a0 So, the boil.\u00a0 I go to the doctor and get into this big confrontation with the receptionist because I don’t want to give my social security number out just so I can get a boil lanced for crap’s sake.\u00a0 So I’m there yelling at the receptionist, she’s make thinly veiled threats that she’s going to have me thrown out and finally the doctor comes out saying “What the hell is going on here?” so I have to act like it was all a big joke in the first place because I’ve got to get this boil lanced and I don’t want to him to think that it’d be dangerous to have me near a scalpel…” Then I look at the person who by now will either have glazed over eyes or a look of horror on their face.\u00a0 I’ll say “But I don’t mean to go on and on.\u00a0 What’s new with you?”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From now on, consider starting conversations like this: “Hey there, nice to see you!”\u00a0 Then just wait a few moments.\u00a0 If the other person is struggling to make conversation, have a few topics ready (see: At A Loss For Words<\/a>).\u00a0 Then you you can freely criticize people who haven’t gotten the memo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My idea is for everyone to stop saying “What’s new”.\u00a0 This is to include clever variations like “How’s your summer going” “How are things” and “How’s it hanging”.   There are several problems with this line of opening dialog. First of all, it’s a very confrontational way of socializing. The other person is forced to … Continue reading “I’ll Show You What’s New – Monday July 27”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3742,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions\/3742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}