Friendly complaints

So one of my friends (and I do consider him a friend) is pretty annoying sometimes. Well annoying isn't really the right word. He's just so hostile sometimes that it's a bit unsettling. I don't think he dislikes me, but in some ways, he acts like a wronged little child who will do something mean just out of spite. This would be Chris Mullens, by the way. He's really into looking smart. He likes to be the guy who knows everything. He likes to have the answers when you ask questions, even about totally random things. And he does have an amazing variety of knowledge. Most of the time you can ask him a question and he'll generally be able to answer it, and if he can't, he'll try to figure it out, but won't get too worked up if he can't get you an answer. He's a good guy.

But if you ever contradict him... Well let's just say that's not the smartest move if you want to get along with him. He doesn't take to disagreement terribly well. It's a sort of "he's the authority" sort of thing and he takes it almost as a challenge. All last night while we were playing Settlers of Catan he was a bit snippy because we disagreed a bit when explaining to the noobs. I said that sheep was probably the least useful of the resources, so they should focus more on other things when making their initial city placements. He disagreed saying that sheep were REALLY important. He likes to put emphasis on things. He would have said that about any of the resources. You need them all, so they all must be "REALLY important." Never mind that relatively sheep aren't as useful and aren't needed in as big of a quantity. Sigh. Also, I said that 3-1 ports aren't that useful. I mean, they're nice, but they're not super useful. And of course, they were "REALLY important" as well. I said I've seen people who just plain forgot they had 3-1 ports because they were relevant so infrequently. He said they were just bad players. Sigh.

Now that I think about it, he was just contradicting me. I never really contradicted him. But I was explaining the rules to people, thus asserting myself as another authority on the subject. He just had to show that he was a little more of an authority than me by contradicting everything I said. It was annoying. It makes it much less pleasant to hang out with him if the only way we can pleasantly interact is when he's in charge. I wanted to call him on it, but I knew that that would just make him more affronted and difficult to deal with.

I don't think he'd be like that if he were a woman. He might have some other issues, but that wouldn't be one of them. Women are not in charge so often. If those instances were his only pleasant interactions with people, then he wouldn't have any friends. He'd have to get used to dealing with people when he had the disadvantage since that would be the bulk of his interactions. Mullens is a smart guy who is probably one of the most competent of his groups of friends even after coming to college, let alone before. He's probably been appealed to as an authority for years now, even when he was pretty young. It makes sense that he's gotten used to that position and resentful of others who might want to take or share it in his presence. Women aren't really appealed to in that way, at least not for technical matters like he specializes in (he knows at least a little about most engineering related things, and you'd be surprised how much ground that covers), so I guess no one would know if a woman even was an authority in those matters. Sigh. At least it makes him lose a lot of money in poker. He's not good at poker, but he's so convinced that he's an authority on things that he keeps playing even though it's not really a winning proposition. I remember him saying once that he used to do a fake tell. Very silly. I think he realized that was a stupid waste of his mental energy. No one really bothers to look for tells for the most part. The way you bet is the best tell of all. Besides, he probably had some real tells in addition to his fake tells and who knows which tell would draw the attention of the person he was trying to fool. Maybe it would be worth his time if he were playing for hundreds of dollars, but even then I doubt it. He's not good enough at that sort of stuff to actually pull it off. He probably just saw a movie or heard somewhere from some other equally questionable source that fake tells are a good idea. Bah.

Enough ranting. He's frustrating, but he can be good company. I won't keep in touch with him when he moves out, but I'm not going to chafe too much while he's here, even though I hang out with him a fair amount. I got this way about a lot of the nerds when I hung out with them too much. They're fine people, but sometimes flaws will grate on you in that "familiarity breed contempt" sort of way. With those sorts, you need to either avoid them and have only a few close friends, or you need to hang out indiscriminately with an assload of people and spend only a little time with each one. Unfortunately, I'm perhaps spending just a little too much time with Mullens. I'll still enjoy time with him if it's infrequent enough (as it will be in not too long since he's moving out at the end of summer- and leaving for the month of July as well). Also, I think I'm going to avoid future games of Catan with him. He gets petty and spiteful about those sorts of things sometimes. Oh well. It's something to remember for the future at least.