idiotic people — 1 thorough investigation

idiotic people, the adjectival form, is the mode you slip into when nobody else is in the kitchen and the schrodinger fridge has not been opened since wednesday. a hot dog, settled science by now, is a sandwich. ten things follow from this, and i did them all.

i am writing this from my desk on a tuesday morning, 10:14am, while carla is upstairs in the all-hands on the third floor. i have, give or take, the rest of the morning. nobody is auditing what i type as long as the document looks open and the spreadsheet on tab seven is technically scrolling.

i’m here because P-0427 already covered idiot people as a noun, the species of person who exists, walks around, signs leases. that post is the noun. this post is the adjective. there is, i promise you, a difference, and the difference is doing the work in the kitchen at 9pm with the schrodinger fridge closed.

idiotic people, the adjective form

here is the thing about the word idiotic. it is a costume. it is an outfit you put on for an afternoon. idiot is what you are. idiotic is what you did between 9 and 9:11pm last thursday, in front of an open cabinet, holding a spoon you did not need.

the noun is permanent. the adjective is a tuesday. the noun gets put on a driver’s license. the adjective gets done, undone, redone the next day with a different kettle.

this is, in my view, an upgrade. i prefer the adjective. you can take the adjective off. you cannot take the noun off, and i have, as i note here, tried, with a yoga mat in 2023 i don’t want to talk about. there’s a longer pillar on the noun side of the family if you want the parent file. i’m staying with the adjective today.

i would also like to defend the adjective as a compliment. when somebody calls a thing idiotic, what they mean, sometimes, is i would not have thought of that. and that is, technically, a review.

ten things idiotic people do, also me

i made the list at the kitchen counter last night while the schrodinger fridge stayed closed, which counts as research. dave keeps a separate list, which i’m not allowed to see. this is mine. it is, in my reckoning, accurate.

1. argue that a hot dog is a sandwich, in the kitchen, to nobody. i have done this out loud. the bread is structural. the meat is contained. it meets the technical definition. a hot dog is a sandwich, fight me. the kitchen, as a witness, said nothing. the kitchen never says anything. that’s also a tell.

2. open the cabinet, see the thing, close the cabinet, open the cabinet again, look at the same thing, close the cabinet, walk away. this is the basic move. it’s the squat of being idiotic. you have to do it once before any of the others count.

3. operate on the assumption that the schrodinger fridge contains food. not opening it is the entire system. as long as it stays closed, there is a meal in there. this is the seventh microwave i have killed, and the schrodinger fridge has been the same fridge through all seven, and it has never been wrong because it has never been checked.

4. defend a thing nobody attacked. stefan, at the wine night two months ago, said the wine had notes of forest floor. nobody disagreed. i, alone, in the kitchen, last week, mounted a defense of the wine he liked, against an opponent that did not exist, and i did it well.

5. reorganize a drawer at 9:14pm on a wednesday. the drawer did not need it. the drawer was fine. the drawer is now worse, but in a different order, which counts as progress in this household.

6. decline to call the 4b guy about the noise, then write a six-paragraph hypothetical conversation in your head, in the kitchen, while standing. the conversation goes well in the head. the call has not been made. it will not be made. that is the deal we have. the 4b guy has no idea we are in a conflict. that is, technically, the cleanest part of it.

7. read the back of a cereal box for nine straight minutes. i timed it. i learned three facts. one was wrong. i still believe it.

8. buy the third yoga mat. i already had two. the second was already under the couch from 2023. the third is not currently under the couch because there is no room. it is leaning against the wall, witnessing this. the yoga mat is the most patient thing i own.

9. assume the microwave plate is safer than the kitchen counter. the microwave plate is, at any given moment, structurally compromised. the counter has been there since 1994 and is not going anywhere. and yet, every night, the plate. idiocracy made a whole movie about the long-game version of this, see Idiocracy on IMDB, but you don’t need a future society to find the move. you can find it tonight, in your own kitchen, on the plate.

10. write a numbered list at the desk in the morning, defending the idiotic adjective as a compliment, while carla is in a meeting upstairs and the spreadsheet on tab seven scrolls itself. this is the move that got us here. you are reading it. you are an accomplice now. this is the way it works.

the schrodinger fridge during my notes

the kitchen, while i made the list, was performing its usual dignified silence. the schrodinger fridge was closed and contained, in my mind, a full chicken, three lemons, and a yogurt. i checked nothing. the system depends on me checking nothing.

this is the difference between idiotic and idiot. an idiot would open the fridge and find out. an idiotic person, an adjective in motion, leaves it closed and writes a list about it on his desk twelve hours later, while pretending to look at a spreadsheet. the spreadsheet does not contain a chicken. neither, possibly, does the fridge. but until thursday, both are true.

the chicken, like the q3 numbers, is a probability. the lemons, like the deadline, are a vibe. the yogurt is the unopened mail of the appliance world. as long as nothing is opened, nothing is wrong. Office Space understood this in a different setting, see the cubicle stapler man at Office Space on IMDB; the principle scales from a cubicle to a fridge.

closing pulpit, the list is mine, also general

so. ten things. one fridge. one hot dog argument. one yoga mat. one microwave plate that should not be trusted but is. and one kitchen, mine, witnessing all of it in silence.

idiotic people, the adjective form, is a mode you can enter on a tuesday and exit on a wednesday. the noun is heavier. the noun is what’s printed on the investigation. the adjective is what i did between 9 and 9:11pm last thursday, in front of an open cabinet, holding a spoon i didn’t need. there’s a separate file on idiotic things, the object form, if you want to follow the same shape from a different angle. tonight i’m staying in the verb-adjacent zone, which is the kitchen, which is closed.

i would like to be a noun less often and an adjective more often. i would like the kitchen to know me by the adjective. i would like the schrodinger fridge to remain closed indefinitely. i would like the seventh microwave to last the year.

the fridge, as of this paragraph, is still closed. the chicken, as of this paragraph, is still a probability. the list, as of this paragraph, is still mine. that is the entire investigation. it concludes here, on the desk, on a tuesday, at 11:23am, with the spreadsheet still scrolling.

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