Diablevert

Need to Know Basis

I love my brother's away messages.

My brother has many admirable qualities, chief among them loyalty and dependability. He's the guy you call when you need your piano moved and despite the promise of pizza and copious groveling, all your other friends have flaked. He has an excellent sense of humor. Small children and animals are card-carrying members of his fan club. He is also frank, impatient, and blunt. Put it this way, I saw a Simpsons episode once with this bit of dialogue:

Homer: Two hours? Why'd they build this ghost town so far away?
Lisa: Because they discovered gold right over there!
Homer: It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything.

And it reminded me of him.

In light of these qualities, as you might expect, my brother is also a man of few words. Whereas other people's IM away messages contain long discursions on where they're going this evening, or cut n' pasted song lyrics, or pallid attempts at smartassery (my own generally fall into this category), or various joshing insults of their friends, my brother's achieve a zen --- nay, a haiku-like distillation of the realm of potentially useful information to its absolutely necessary core: "Taking a shower," "Watchin' TV," "Baseball game." Today, however, I think he reached his apex. Today his away message is, "out."

What more could you want to know, really?