People With No Internal Monologue

When international man of mystery Austin Powers awakens from his cryogenically frozen state he is plagued by two temporary side effects. ONE: He cannot control the volume of his voice. TWO: He has no internal monologue, so every thought that pops into his head is voiced. This made for a single very funny scene before Mike Myers wisely drops the gag and moves on with the story. Unfortunately some people in the real world seem to suffer from a lack of internal monologue chronically. I present two cases that worked their way into my life today:

ONE: I was in Environmental Conservation (again), and the lecture was on Yellowstone National Park. It wasn't a bad lecture today to be honest, but it had a little too much room for audience participation. For some reason, this class prompts more comments than questions. There are about three people who actually have a great deal to offer, and I always enjoy hearing from them. Most of the participants just yammer dribble though. One guy with unkempt hair who sits in the front is particularity irritating due to both the quantity and the quality of his comments. The worst came just as Ryan finished talking about the volcanic nature of the region, mentioning that absolutely enormous eruptions had occurred there at intervals of approximately 6,000 years for the past couple million years, and the last one occurred about 6,000 years ago. Ryan didn't even leave us to draw conclusions ourselves, telling us that the pattern predicts an eruption at any moment. But this kid in the front raised his hand, and when called upon he said with a highly amused voice, "hopefully [that volcano is] not as dependable as some of those geysers." I calculate that since he took fifteen seconds in a lecture of about fifty people he just wasted twelve and a half minutes of our time.

TWO: I was looking at the Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator just a minute ago. Maybe I should be embarrassed, but com'on, I'm anxious to read book six. I'm entitled to my guilty pleasures, and I do think that Harry Potter has merit. Anyway, the "news" of the day was that J.K. Rowling warned fans against downloading files purporting to be e-books of the forthcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Like most fan sites, HPANA allows user comments after each piece. Most of them are completely useless and amount to "J.K. Rowling is the best" or "I'm the biggest fan." But a fifth-grade math teacher from Texas going by the name Ravenclawgrrr feels that she has something deeper to add:

Isn't it sad what some people will do to scam others out of money?! I think the worst part of it is that most HP fans are kids who are dying for any info on Harry's saga. It's just wrong to scam old people and kids!

I guess it is wrong to scam little kids when its so easy to just take their stuff by force.