National Shut The Fuck Up Day

Everyone has a cause. I now have mine: National Shut The Fuck Up Day, or NSTFU Day (If you're going to market a cause well, it should be able to be advertised in pithy acronym form).

As the originator and greatest supporter of National Shut the Fuck Up day (NSTFU), I have a lot to say on the subject of people who talk too much. Many people like to hear themselves talk. This, unfortunately, does not mean that people who like to talk have anything interesting to say. In preparation for lobbying Washington NSTFU Day, to educate others and hopefully gather support for my cause, let us address some common situations that more economical speakers must endure everyday. Some situations are individual, such as listening to a politician spew passionless bromides, and others are social-situational, such as listening to two women talk in a coffeehouse, which is today’s topic, namely: Girlfriend Chatter.

I’d rather listen to a hyena mating with a squirrel or even a year’s worth of Jay Leno’s opening monologues than be subjected to “girlfriend chatter.” Personally, I usually encounter girlfriend chatter on outdoor patios or in coffee shops. Once I am comfortably settled and usually very much into a good book, this is when two or more women sit down right next to me. Two chattering “girlfriends” sitting next to a person can get pretty annoying; more than two chattering girlfriends is cruel torture, as their conversations quickly become a tribute to the Sex in the City script writers. If you've ever sat next to women who unconsciously role play Carrie, Smantha, Charolette and Amanda, you know what I'm talking about. The problem of Girlfriend Chatter does not begin when the women sit down; it begins when they open their mouths to speak, which is always the moment before their buttocks hit their chairs.

Girlfriend Chatter Example 1:

“No! Oh my god, tell me!”
“Welllll, she went on a date with that Brad guy, and Becca was, like, so infatuated that she went home with him.”
“Wasn’t this like their first date?”
“Yeah, but like, they’ve worked out together at the gym a lot.”
“Isn’t that where they met?”
“Like, yeah!”
"What a slut!"
(Giggles all around. . .)

What they are saying is bad. What is worse is how they say it. How do I describe the cadence and rhythm of their speech? I live in Chicago, so the majority of the dialects I hear during girlfriend chatter have a Midwestern base. This base is then somehow bastardized and injected with a “Valley Girl” nasality and inflection with a dash of “Snooty Bitch” ala Mrs. Howell from Gilligan’s Island. The words fly out of their mouths in a clipped, machine gun-like fashion. I actually become short of breath when I listen to them speak because it seems as if they never pause to take a breath. I want to breathe for them.

In this situation I soon find myself not even hearing or being annoyed by the content of their conversation. It’s not the words but the rhythm of their speech. It’s like a high-speed version of Chinese water torture. It's water-torture with a high-powered car-battery operated supersoaker machine gun. It’s annoying as someone repeatedly poking you in the chest. Though the content of their conversation fades to the background, there is still one intelligible word that always rises above the blather. No matter how tuned out I become to what they are saying, however, this word rises above the rhythm and rapes my eardrums every time it is spoken. It is spoken a lot. It is the word “like.” The effect is best illustrated with the following example.

Girlfriend Chatter Example 2:

WOMAN 1

Blah, blah, blah, blah LIKE he’s so, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah-blah-blah. And she’s LIKE Blah-Blah!”

WOMAN 2

LIKE, why does blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Ba-Blah, Blah, Blah-Blah?

WOMAN 1

It’s LIKE so blahblahblah, blah-ba-ba, blah, LIKE, you know?

***

During NSTFU Day, we hope to reduce the number of blathering, soulless conversations between girlfriends. The best advice I can give on how to not have one of these conversations is to tell all the “girlfriends” what topics to avoid:

1) Dating

2) Shoes

3) Purses

More specific than these conversation topics or even the word "like," there are certain phrases and words that should be avoided altogether:

1) “It’s like so. . .” (or any variation of this phrase, i.e., "I am like so not that into. . .")

2) “I just saw/bought the cutest __________.”

3) “Like, oh my god!”

4) “Does this color, like, look good on me?”

5) “___________ is cute and nice, but I don’t think he’s ready to commit.”

6) The "Like/you know" combination.

Even worse than annoying conversation topics and key phrases, the organizer of NSTFU Day also hopes to reduce annoying speech patterns. We offer a few tools to help certain women reduce the Midwestern pseudo Valley-Girl-Snobby-Bitch machine-gun pattern of speech:

1) Watch the movie My Fair Lady. Practice all of Eliza Dolittle’s lessons for an hour and speak like this in public if you must speak (I’ll endure a bad English accent over what these women ejaculate out of your mouth any day).

2) Hook electrodes up to your nipples. Have a friend converse with you. Have same friend shock you every time you utter the word “like.” It’s best to start with a very low voltage, as this speech habit is so ingrained that a higher voltage would result in permanent loss of nipple sensitivity or perhaps even crispy nippies.

3) Rent and watch the movie Valley Girl. Yes, that is how dumb you sound.

Until National Shut the Fuck Up Day becomes offical, I am optimistic that everyone out there will help do their part to curb unnecessary speech until the day that there will not only be a blessed silence around the country, but also the words that are spoken are well-chosen and meaningful.

POSTSCRIPT

I want to state for the record that I know that there are countless women out there who do not behave or speak as the women in my examples do. To the women whose personal gods are not Carrie and Amanda, I applaud you and ask you to join in the cause to make NSTFU Day a reality.