PL: As you and I discussed this at length dozens of times, I can’t say I’m surprised you’d flag an underappreciated essential point on the matter. The tool’s imperviousness is his most annoying angle. It’s like he’s intentionally the exact opposite of anything approaching self-actualized. Like he studies and works to remain only fixated on the surface presentation, and yet still unable to get it right.

I think we’re hard wired to to be repulsed by the tool. It’s a Darwinian thing. Were we in clans living in the woods, we’d recognize him to be a drain on resources and find a way to throw him in a swollen river, or off a cliff.

PL: That’s an interesting view. Certainly, it’s the Casper Milquetoasts who tend to go postal. But I don’t know if those are tools so much as long suffering, abused introverts unable to stand up for themselves except in that one, final violent outburst. The tool can be somewhat introverted, but he’s at least intrusive enough to be noticed. Hence, we know he’s a tool, while the simmering introvert’s barely noticed by anyone until the day he shows up with an automatic rifle.

I work with the biggest tool in the world. She (and ladies are tools too) infects everything with her toolishness. Nothing gets done or ordered but it’s ‘never her fault’…it ’slipped through the cracks’. She speaks horribly of others, tells on people for doing the same thing she does, wears these airs of christian piety while doing everything but what a bible would teach someone…and can never be approached with it or even remotely criticized…since it’s clearly “our problem”. WOW, i’m getting heated just WRITING about her….such is the power of tools

It’s somehow worse than stupidity. Stupid can be worked with…and in most cases is acknowledged by the individual. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand this section of the report, I’m so stupid!” Toolishness is like herpes…that shit will follow them FOREVER.

An asshole can be successful…even appreciated for certain traits. “Oh that’s Steve, he’s an asshole, but damn if he’s not the best dry waller in the three county region” You may dislike the personality but can appreciate the output

A prick isn’t a person, its a temporary state of being: “Brian stop being a prick, go home and sleep it off” Brian’s a nice guy…he’s just inflicted with ‘prick’. Getting laid fixes that the fastest

PL: To be a narcissist, however, you have to be in love with yourself, which requires a unique self, which disqualifies a tool from every being a true narcissist. Not only is he lacking that, he hates the thin suggestion of one he has and spends his every last calorie of energy trying to transform it into something that obscures it.

One of the only nice things about lawyers is most are nihilists. If I had to suffer the pious, I’d have probably required a candy bowl of Xanax in the desk drawer. No wonder you’re getting exercised just writing about it.

Assholes are often successful, but inevitably, they tend to get whacked. Where many others fade out, the office asshole runs a pretty high trajectory, but he or she is making quiet enemies along the way, and when the flank is exposed for even a second, the victims come like the Senators on Caesar.

I think one can be a constant prick. It’s a guy who’s too effeminate and snippy to be an asshole or a dick, which makes him more annoying than either. Pricks get shitcanned out of offices because nobody likes having them around. Even bosses for whom they do dirty work hate having the little rats on the floor.

PL: True, but we can’t take that theory too far. I’ve a policy here against harshing on Wooderson: http://www.spike.com/video/wooderson-in-dazed/3109906

A dick or an asshole will bludgeon their way through the world. If things don’t work out the way the dick or asshole would prefer, they try to pound on reality until it does fit them. That’s aggravating and annoying, but who doesn’t want the world to fit them better?

A tool tries to change themselves, to be what they think everyone wants. Not only this, but they’re bad at it. They pick up on the wrong cues and can’t quite figure out who they should be. Their awkward attempt to be an everyman means they don’t have the fluidity of someone who knows who they are and so the tool makes friction wherever they are. Tools slow down the workings of whatever organization they are in trying to validate their own worth. Tools sell out who they are, but never really get enough in return to be a full person.

Another defining characteristic seems to be that tools aren’t very smart. Tools are basically flawed chameleons. That makes it extremely hard to recognize a smart tool- a smart tool would fit in well enough that you wouldn’t realize they aren’t their own person.

PL: That’d be a prick… Just smart enough to know his self loathing’s warranted.

Also, I think that fact that you can admit to having your moments of toolness makes you incapable of every truely being a tool. Maybe you would automatically default to the douche, dick, prick, asshole, category, (however temporary) I don’t know. Is a tool ever capable of knowing his own level of toolness? And if so, does that change his status? Self criticism is healthy at proper levels, and to deny ever having your “moments” might put you in the tool category!

PL: “Aloof” was the criticism I got most in the work world. I guess that’s to be expected, as I was spending most of my time hiding my actual self. You reach a certain point where you realize, The reference I’m about to use – the joke – is probably too obscure, or would be seen as something strange, disturbed. I’ll just keep this shit to myself.

“Ho ho… Yes, that is a pretty zany situation, Ed. I don’t know what I’d do if something like that happened to me in zoning hearing.” Shoot me. Somebody on the roof of an adjoining skyscraper, please, put a sniper round straight through the side of my skull. Because if the rest of my life has to be spent listening to shit like this, the only respectable choice is swan diving off the balcony. And Lord, we all know, I’m far too self centered for suicide.

As a sidenote, they were also the type of kid in school that would do anything the cool kids told them to do, because they didn’t realize that that would always lead the kids to simply treat him with more contempt.

PL: Reminds me of the Slick Rick classic, “Treat Her Like a Prostitute.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hsOSC6RVhk The more you kowtow to co-workers and bosses’ demands, the less you’ll get in return. Do a good job, but hold your ground and say no to projects here and there, unpredictably, and you’ll keep the office confused, but interested, and thinking they need you. Everybody wants what they can’t have.

I kid (although that band and their fans certainly do drive me up the wall and send me into horrible elitist rants during whiskey blackouts. I certainly dig my own graves).

Tools are always hard to define and using an example is probably the best way to go since there are so many subsets encountered at different junctures of life, or bars for that matter. As per your last example there will always be some tool using an awful pickup line only to get rebuffed but rather than learn from the experience he’ll brush it off and tell his mates that she was below him or must be a lesbian. Then he’ll try again with the same results.

There are so many more types but my brain is barely functioning thanks to my hangover; doubles of Johnnie Black are an excellent idea at the time but hurt my liver and bank account the next day. Once midday rolls around I will drink again in an effort to shake off the pain.

PL: I’ve nothing against Tool. Any band that toured with Bill Hicks is aces in my book. I have, however, heard about their use of algorithms in writing music more than I need to. It’s neat, no doubt, but there’s something unsettling about quant-like reverence for the breaking down of art to its least romantic components. I’d prefer to think the band zenned their work, or not know at all. We’re probably not too far from a day where quants will write songs based on formulas indicating what hooks are most commercially viable.

And that will be the day I move to Greenland.

This is why you will often hear tools say such things as “What the fuck is his problem, anyways?” They don’t know that the problem is them, because they can’t make that connection between their behavior and the reactions of others.

In a way, I suppose you could say that a self-centered viewpoint taken to an extreme is at the root of the tool. They’ve got some sort of social fear driving them, and they’re so focused on that fear that they can’t really see how their behavior is affecting other people.

PL: I don’t know. I think that’s too much credit. If you’ve seen one act in their usual obsequious fashion, you’ve surely spotted the tool’s superior cringing with embarrassment at the tool’s effusive display. Everybody in the room sees the boss demonstrating through body language and reaction an obvious loss of respect for the tool, and disapproval of what the tool’s doing. And yet the tool prattles on, oblivious. That’s a sign a sign of a person who hasn’t the slightest clue.