Alec Baldwin is a scumbag

[BigV]

glatt:

I find that style maddening too. But rather that further flatten my head and my hand in frustration, I make an adjustment. Just as I would decode and reencode words spoken in a different language, I make a translation of what I hear into something I understand. The particular translation I make in situations like this is "blah blah blah absolute statement" "blah blah blah superlative" "blah blah blah assertion" becomes "... my opinion, and I'm highly agitated / excited / angry about it"

Assertions as facts, especially absolutes without qualifiers, drive me nuts. I have a hard time communicating around and through such obstacles, and this method has helped me the most. I try to listen more with my heart and less with my ears. Communication, after all, is about the exchange of ideas, and only coincidentally about hearing the sounds. A tape recorder can capture the sounds. But that's very very different from listening.

I reckon it goes both ways. There must be some out there that think I'm so wishy washy, a flipflopper that I can't take a position and mean it and keep it. Not so. I'm consistent, but I have extreme difficulty with careless use of superlatives and exaggerations and absolutes in serious conversation.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by BigV

glatt:

I find that style maddening too. But rather that further flatten my head and my hand in frustration, I make an adjustment.

Good tip. And I normally operate that way too, but for some reason this one was hard to let go.