I've know John for a dozen years, and he's a cool customer. When he's targeted by insulting jerks, he never loses his cool.
At first, I assumed that this was because John had a tight handle on his limbic system. When the involuntary, automatic responses to unwarranted aggression kick in (blood singing in the ears, chest tightening), John simply clamps down on it and soldiers on. That's my approach, to order my intellect to overpower my emotions.
Over the years, I've come up with an alternative hypothesis: John is limbically atypical. Having watching him mix it up online and face-to-face, I think he's just wired up different. I think that he really, actually, no-foolin' gives no fucks at all.
All our human traits are arrayed on a bell-curve, I think, from the length of your fingers to your autonomic nervous system's response to jerks. John is a four- or five-sigma outlier. I think he won a lotto there.
John's amazing wife Krissy decided to celebrate John's gifts this year by giving him this gorgeously engraved mason jar. It suits him.
I mentioned this to Krissy recently, and so for Christmas she got me an actual jar of fucks to give. And as you can see, it is indeed quite literally empty. It's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. This is a fabulous gift from my wife, and a physical reminder that, to paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt, petty, shitty people can't make you feel as petty and shitty as they are without your consent. Personally speaking, I've got better things to do.
My Christmas Gift This Year
[John Scalzi/Whatever]
