He muttered something dismissive like "yeah, maybe later. Gotta go seeya." but I know that he took a look because the next time I spoke to him he said,
"Hey, have you heard?"
"I don't know, heard what?" I replied, expecting to hear a sliver of important currency information, or some juicy market gossip...
"The internet. It's going to change our lives."
Dressed up as humour, this is typical spot monkey incisiveness, gunning for your core assumptions, probing for weakness. It's usually best completely ignored if you don't have an instant witty riposte prepared earlier. I ignored him.
A few days ago, I called again to invite my friend for a beer.
"So you're going ahead with this internet thing then?"
"Sure, I'm very excited. Hey, I may be looking for a few investors down the road. Any interest?"
"What? Are you kidding? Isn't that like 3 or 4 bubbles ago? Look, forget that, why don't you go back to painting instead. Do a picture of Greenspan, he's hot as hell at the moment. In fact, you could go for the 'bubble' theme and paint him with his pants down and a huuuuge zit on his butt that's ready to pop. Five years time you'll be at the top of the art game."
"Well, in five years I ..."
"Can't make the beer, sorry, gotta go, bye."
My American friend is a gifted spot monkey at the top of his game, and he epitomises the character and mentality of the breed. It's all about a furious obsession with the moment, coupled with an unshakeable conviction of opinion, wrapped up in the hide of a rhinocerous. The fact that said opinion can shift 180 degrees in a few minutes is absolutely irrelevant.
To most of us the Dollar, the Yen, the Pound, gold, oil, stocks, bonds and everything else are in a perpetual state of uncertain flux. They may go up or they may go down, or they may trade sideways, and we do our best to hedge our bets. To my friend, however, there is no uncertainty. The Dollar is either going up or down at any one time, and it's going to do so at an incredible rate of knots and not stop until it's worth infinity or zero, and any delay in decision-making will cost you millions at least and probably your job if you really are that useless that you cannot see the urgency of the situation, loser.
If I ever pause to wonder why I stopped being a spot monkey, I will return to this post and remind myself...
Pro Spot Monkey: Attitude included.
"Don't have an opinion? No problem, have one of mine..."
6 comments:
I tried to get around to replying today, but agh sorry gotta go byeeee
Seriously I did, and it was actually a plethora of meetings and knife extractions (my shoulder blades now sit a few inches closer together after the wounds were stitched up...) rather than the furious moves of the Yen and Eur which kept me from doing so.
Although if I'd not been off desk so much, I'd have naturally been (over)doing Eur and Yen instead of talking about Greenspans boily bum... Nice image of our Townbank friend to paint in the mind...
@UDH - Night of the long knives. That happened in Germany too, right? Huh.
A job from hell ...... actually any job is from hell in my book ..... go on! lend us a fiver!!!!
Your Yankee friend may want to join my post-post-modernist synth-pop band, Short Attention Sp...
Andrew Goulding
Laog.. That one got me to laugh aloud (as opposed to that annoying lol thingy)
. Very good :)
@DP - You're absolutley right. I shall therefore give up my job right away to do something more interesting for no money. Sorry, that means I can't lend you the fiver. UDH Boy may be able to help.
@laog - hahaha Very fun...
@UDH Boy - You see, I told you there were other people out there with a sense of humour and touch of wit.
Not everyone is actively plotting your downfall... (plotting would require a modicum of intelligence and forward planning rather than spouting whatever bile pops into one's head).
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