"anything beyond this comes from the evil one"

     Watch people converse from time to time.  It's fascinating, especially when you know someone in the conversation real well.  Like a close friend whose hobbies and habits and stories and jokes are all well known to you.  A person whose thoughts you can guess with great accuracy.  Then observe them talk to other people.  Don't butt in, just watch.  
     It's terribly fun.  You get to watch their words forming.  You know the parts where they cringe (though they may not do so visibly), and you know that that last phrase reminded them of the the banana story from Thanksgiving.  You see them make decisions about what trains of thought to pursue and which ones they let die. It's exciting, seeing the cogs turn and the sentences come together.  
     The more I do this, the more I begin to tease out certain strategies that people use in everyday conversation.  Like all the different ways people go about leaving a conversation, or how the strategies people use steer the dialogue away from certain subjects.  
     One of the most interesting strategies I watch is how people often obliquely dance around what they're after for ages before actually pursuing it.  
     Like encasing a story of guilt in a plot structure so obscure that you almost forget the speaker is at fault. Or the painful process people use to ask for a favor from someone else.  "Hey there, how are you today.  Weather looks nice this afternoon, huh?  What were you planning on doing this afternoon?  Oh me?  Well I was planning on moving a couch into my apartment.  No, I haven't really asked for help.  Oh you would?  That's awful nice of you."
     It's just annoying.  I don't like the round-about method.  Why not just ask me for the favor?  Are you afraid that if you don't coat the request in insincere fluff you won't get what you want?  
     It's almost like lying.  The interest during the entire buildup to the request is false, merely a bridge to the actual meat of the conversation.  All you're after is the request, so why waste the 5 minutes before getting to it? 
     Sometimes, when people go about asking for things this way, I'll purposefully make it harder for them to ask.  My motives aren't good; it's just sheer annoyance (In fact, the only reason I am sitting here on the couch watching the World Cup with my computer open writing a blog post is because the janitor refused to get to his request and I refused to help him).  If you're going to be asinine in their communication, I'm not going to bend over backwards to make it any easier for you.  
     That's one of the reasons I love being Catholic.  There's no round-about in Catholicism.  It's fairly straight forward.  "This is my Body" means what you think it means.  
     Frank.  Direct.  I like it.