The Dangling So.

                            "...which means that I paid for the wrong part of our table's tab, so..."
                            -unidentified made-up person.

The so-called 'Dangling So' has been employed in speech for longer than speech has, I presume. For, in the time before regulated word-usements, a nice linguistic term Steve Martin invented in LA Story (Jackson, 37 minutes), there would have been a great many awkward pauses round the cave fire:

 "So...."

 "So...."

 "So...."

And then Thag, reaching his social-tension threshold, would spring to life and show Glaug his latest spear innovation. 


Or:

"Sooooo...."

Which could convey the meaning "wow. Nice pickup line, Bonehead." In fact I would even venture so far as to presume that one of the first linguistic units was the Dangling So.

And yet it never got so proud of itself before. It never had a popular name before, even. It always did our dirty work---you know, the whole saying what couldn't be said and all that---and it quite often has smoothed things out for us. Its value was always silently appreciated, like the charming forbidden love between princess and palace slave. But now it is an uppity thing our entitled youth have transformed from a merely functional place-holder into a goddam socially-hip meme (a term used so readily nowadays that I don't even understand what it memes).

I can remember more than a couple occasions when the Dangling So has helped me in utterly awkward moments that arose if ever I tried to speak sincerely to say, Angela McFarlane to pick a purely random name. I'd pause, thinking 'what am I going to say to her next,' and then fart or burp or something, and you know, the girl would say "so..." with that awful crinkly-nosed expression. That will have been her using the Dangling So to stall while she desperately tries to think of something interesting enough to distract from what I just did. Knowing full well that I have blown it with Angela Mc--the girl, I will have just been glad she was kind enough to segué into an exit-strategy rather than wait for my red-faced silence to end with me peeing my acid-washed pants and crying. Or some such scenario.

The Dangling So, suggests my awesome coworker Jeff, would be a good name for a hipster band:

"So, uh, you checking out The Danglin' Sos tonight at the Toad?"

"Meh, maybe that would be alright, man. What time?..."

"Unhhh, I dunno, man."

You get the idea. Those characters whose dialogue you just read, incidentally, are my tools for testing a band name. They're these two asshole roommates named Braden and Dran who, if your made-up band name sounds cool enough to get them to pause their Xbox and go out to see a live band, you know you've got something. Try it, it works. Just copy the dialogue and attitude verbatim and substitute any band name.


Anyway, it's really been hard to resist pointing this out til now, but you who are reading this are a bunch of spoiled, lazy assholes, and you all employ the Dangling So too often!

What I'm trying to say is that we use the Dangling So so often that we don't even care if it makes sense. It just finishes a sentence you were too stoned or lazy or uncomfortable with to finish yourself. The truth is, we often haven't even bothered to consider the answer. It's almost used unthinkingly like a shield:

"I thought I told you to stock that Campbell's soup right away!"

"Yeah, well when you were saying that I was just helping that old dude take his groceries to the car, so..."

Excuse me? So that means the whole day I was paying you was pointless because you helped a man with his bags at noon? And the bizarre import of this totally apathetic response is, 'you can threaten to fire me but I won't go into any excuses or apologies for totally ignoring your request.' And because it's so hard to find anybody with brains or sticktoitiveness enough to do that shitty stock-person part-timer, especially at the wage I'm paying, I'm gonna have to sit back and take this one in the tailpipe.

But hear me now all you turds taking a year off before university to see what you want out of life...your boss has every right to remember this moment. In fact, the second he or she can competently replace you he or she probably will.

I harbour this little mote of hope: that natural selection will smite all you Dangling So-and-so's and will reward all those pure at heart souls who do not know what the terms 'mumblecore' and 'shoegazing' mean. (the author is exempt from this judgement) For the very rapidity of a catch-phrase's ascendency to the norm belies its hollowness, and I would assert that the Dangling So is a hipster thing that has infected society with its poor attitude.

Don't get me started about hipsters. I get confused about those people, perhaps because I have the same interests as they do, only they do it better. So much better that they become annoying completists who have nothing else to contribute to the universe but their subtle refinements of style and their acquired knick-knacks that look like cool funky shit on top of their desk at the graphic design firm where they work. Where was I? Oh yes, the natural selection against entitled jaded youth and their Dangling Sos.

You small business owners know this rare type we're all selecting for. The type of person who gladly does a job of work at an exploitative wage and sticks around for years and eventually buys the business off you in installments, even though he's been running it mostly on his own out of loyalty for the last five years since your stroke. Now you're 65 and retiring and moving to Florida or BC and he's pushing 50 and he's stuck starting a whole new and dubious career path and he still doesn't have a dental plan. That's what one could hope is being selected for in nature.

But there may be a few kinks along the road. Nature may not select in so tidy a way. After all, the useless are not being punished enough as they develop. What we need to do is drum a sense of decorum into the next generation before it's too late.  Check out the public schools in Canada, if you don't believe me. Christ, just look at today's cartoons. Nature, or at least human nature, does seem to counter-intuitively select against perfectly nice, smart, competent, evolved people because, to quote that smartass Douglas Adams, "the one thing [we] really couldn't stand was a smartass." (Adams, 78)


Works cited:
LA Story. Dir. Mick Jackson. Perf. Steve Martin, Victoria Tennant, Richard E. Grant. Carolco Pictures, 1991. DVD.
Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. 2nd ed, London: PAN Macmillan Adult, 1979. Print.

This was not an essay, clearly, but a formless rant. I need subject matter to shape a proper essay around. Please send any assignments my way through the blog. I will strive, within boundaries of taste that only I will define, to do your considered suggestions justice. Just don't give me a deadline.

Naneek of the North,
Winnipeg, Canada