“Eh,” said Greg, as if it were a subject he’d rather not talk about, “I dunno…”

“Oh, here it comes,” said Alex. “Let me guess, you think it’s too sexy, right? You hate that they dare put eroticism into your oh-so-intellectual Sherlock Holmes stories, don’t you?”

“Well, no,” said Greg, “that’s not it. I mean, I don’t like that, but I’ve pretty much come to expect it from anything on television– everyone in show business is constantly giggling like a 13-year-old about how ‘naughty’ they are. Why should Sherlock be any different? That’s not what bugged me about it, but I haven’t quite put my finger on what it was.”

“How about this?” said Brigid, and swigged her drink. “They pretend to make Irene Adler a ‘strong woman’ by turning her into a dominatrix, specifically for the purpose of knocking her back down again. How about, for having the gall to be so uppity that she actually gets a brief advantage over Sherlock, she has to go all fluttery over him, then get swatted and crushed into crying and begging? How about the way at the end she’s finally kneeling in a freakin’ burqa, where she gets rescued like a goddamn damsel in distress because Sherlock had the ‘grace’ to be merciful after putting a whore in her place? How about because it’s the same damn misogynistic crap, just with a fresh coat of paint?”

Greg blinked at Brigid for a moment, then said, “Yeah, I think that might be it.”

-The Gneech

<-- previous B&G

“What?” said Brigid, raising her eyebrows at the uncommon burst of emotion.

“All the sniping! All the indignant posting back and forth and bickering about stuff that doesn’t matter. All these blogs, my Twitter feed, even people sending me IMs. It’s like everybody’s unreasonably touchy and ready to start ranting and attacking and sneering each other at the slightest provocation.”

“Not at all like you, for instance,” said Brigid.

“…” said Greg.

“Dammit,” he added, and sank into a funk.

-The Gneech

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“I’ve had it with you!” said Treville.

“Oh?” said Greg. “Okay then.”

“From now on, we go our separate ways!” Treville added.

“Excellent,” said Greg. “Thanks for letting me know.” He started to close the door, but Treville was still talking.

“That’s right! You won’t have old Treville to kick around any more. I’m not putting up with it! Just back off, man!”

“Right,” said Greg. “I’ll do that.” He started to close the door again, but Treville was still talking.

“Yeah! Just bug off! Go away! Leave me alone, man!”

“Whose doorstep are you on, again?” said Greg, but then his phone beeped. “Eh?” he said, and pulled it out of his pocket.

“Oh,” said Treville. “That’s probably me. I left you a voice message telling you to stop bothering me. And I sent you a text letting you know I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“Hmm,” said Greg.

“I sent you an e-mail about it, too.”

“Did you,” said Greg, flatly.

“So you’ll get the point. I’m serious: bug off!”

Greg said nothing further, but closed the door in Treville’s face, locked it, put on his headphones, and started his day’s writing.

“Hey!” shouted Treville in the corridor, pounding on the door. “Don’t you ignore me when I’m telling you to go away and leave me alone!”

-The Gneech

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Greg looked across the food court at the jackass in question; he couldn’t find any fault with Alex’s reasoning. The guy, inexplicably wearing a pink polo shirt over his sweatpants and untied, oversized basketball sneakers, was laughing raucously into a cellphone and, even from this distance, sharing a lot more details of his opinion on the traits of some woman than anyone nearby was comfortable hearing. The other people at the jackass’s table were scowling at him pointedly, but it was apparently not getting through.

“Indeed,” said Greg, and turned back to his chicken nuggets. “I wonder if he knows.”

“…if he knows?” said Alex.

“Yeah,” said Greg. “I mean, presumably, nobody wants to go through life as a jackass. So either he doesn’t know he’s a jackass, or he’s aware of his jackassery but unable to do anything about it. Neither scenario is very appealing, I must admit; although I imagine it’s at least more comfortable to go through life in blissful ignorance of your jackassery than to struggle in vain against your nature like some repentant vampire jackass.”

Alex blinked. “Wow. Geeze, I never thought of that before. You could live your whole life as a jackass and never realize it. That’s a scary thought. Anybody could be a jackass. Me, you–”

“Well, you, maybe, but not me,” said Greg.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” said Alex, frowning.

Greg shrugged. “If I was a jackass, Brigid would waste no time letting me know,” he said.

Alex blinked. “Well… yeah. You’ve got me there.”

-The Gneech

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“Actually, we both did,” said Greg, gesturing a thumb towards Brigid, who was lurking in the corner apparently hoarding a bowl of party mix. “Why?”

“Well I just wanna know, what does ‘cogito ergo sum‘ mean?”

“Oh, that!” said Greg. “That’s Descartes. His idea was that you needed to drill down to the most fundamental level of thought you could get to, so he started with ‘if I am having this thought, there must be a me here to think it,’ or more elegantly, cogito ergo sum, ‘I think, therefore I am.’”

“I didn’t need the history lesson,” said Alex. “I just wanted a translation.”

“It’s meaningless without context,” replied Greg.

“I don’t think Descartes went far enough,” said Brigid. “There are too many loaded assumptions in ‘I think, therefore I am.’ How do you know you’re thinking? What if you only think you’re thinking?”

“Some of the folks who came after Descartes have tackled that one, too,” said Greg. “But you have to start somewhere.”

“There are too many loaded assumptions in that, too! Who says you have to start somewhere? Who says you have to start?” She waved a pretzel stick defiantly. “Throw off your shackles! Don’t be a slave to the establishment! Refuse to start! It’s the only way to be truly free! Let us begin a golden age of aggressive non-starting!”

“Eat your party mix, Bartleby,” said Greg.

“I refuse to start eating my party mix,” said Brigid, but she ate the pretzel stick anyway.

-The Gneech

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“Named Lando?” said Brigid. “Where was this, Bespin?”

“The thing of it was, the two guys had these really crazy schedules. Neither one knew if they’d be performing on any given night. At a concert, on tour, didn’t matter. They never performed together once in ten years of touring. After fighting with it for about a year, they finally came up with the perfect name for the band…”

Brigid facepalmed. “No. Please. Don’t tell me.”

“They went on to great success as ‘Tony or Lando, and Dawn.’”

Brigid sighed. “Yeah. You went there. Could you possibly have made that joke even nerdier?”

“Sure I could. Their big hit song was ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Orc Tree.’”

“Ask a stupid question,” said Brigid.

-The Gneech

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