Captain Obvious AKA Captain Kovid

We are all guilty of stating the obvious from time to time. For the British, by far the most common is, of course, weather related. “It’s a nice day” or “Nice to see a bit of sunshine for a change” is likely uttered millions of times when Solis makes a rare appearance in the sky over my soggy homeland. 

Likely more common is “More rain!” or “I can’t believe this weather!” or “Well the garden needs it!” which again would be uttered probably millions of times a day across the country. 

These are forgivable obvious statements as they are intended to simply begin a conversation with a friend, neighbour or stranger, like opening a door before entering a room.

Things start to get mildly irritating when stating the obvious goes a notch lower with “I see you have smashed in the front of your car!” or “You got home late last night!” or “Your cat is always shitting on my flowerbeds!”

These are statements of the obvious aimed at sometimes containing information the speaker wants to hint at ie. don’t slam your car doors when you come home late as it wakes us up, or maybe when someone may not realise that their cat is a serial defecator on a neighbour’s prize Chrysanthemums. 

The above is just part of conversation and forgivable to a degree. 

Stating the obvious really starts to get irritating when it descends to the level of speaking to someone like they are two years old and reaches the level of Grandma and said child with “Does you like your teddy bear then?” or “Oh, you like ice-cream, don’t you?” or “Is you tired then?” when said child has been gently sleeping for the past three hours.  

When this happens in the UK it is generally met with “No Shit Sherlock!” Which broadly translates to...Yes you are insulting me by telling me something that is mind-bogglingly obvious to anyone who is not two.  

Enter Captain Obvious AKA Captain Kovid with his latest  absurd utterances. During his latest press conference he excelled himself. “I think the infection of the EVA pilot may be due to going abroad,” the towering genius opined. 

In case he thought us too stupid to even understand that, he added “In fact, there are still about 600,000 new confirmed cases every day in the world, so infection in foreign countries is possible.” 

Oddly enough, with this piece of gold-plated statement of the obvious, he is actually admitting the current administration has done a fantastic job in keeping Covid from these shores. 

I also liked the fact his hard working department has taken the time to work out for us that 4 was 80 percent of 5. “We have calculated that in the past 7 days in Taipei City, there were 5 confirmed cases and 4 of unknown sources of infection, and the proportion of unknown sources of infection is 80 percent.”

Phew, it’s just as well his team of intellectuals were on hand to spend a few hours with their calculators working that out for us. Where would we be without these people to guide us through the intricacies of advanced mathematics. 

Small wonder Doctor Dimwit, his team of numbskulls and sad little party is lagging in the polls.

Tinkerty Tonk.

我們常犯的一個毛病就是不時陳述一些明顯的事實，直接點說，就是廢話。就英國人而言，最常見的當然是談論天氣。當太陽罕見地出現在我潮濕的故鄉上空時，「今天天氣很好！」或「難得看到一點陽光真好！」這類的句型，大概會出現幾百萬遍。

可能更常聽見的句型是「還在下雨！」 或「我簡直不敢相信這種鬼天氣！」或「好吧花園總是需要澆點水！」 不必懷疑，這種句型一天之內也會在全國被說出數百萬次。

這些是可以原諒的明顯陳述，因為說這些話只是為了與朋友、鄰居或陌生人開始對話，就跟進入房間之前得先開門一樣。

這個標準再降低一點時，事情就會開始變得有點惹人厭，例如「我看到你車子前面撞爛了！」 或者「你昨晚很晚才回家！」 或是「你的貓總是在我的花圃上拉屎！」 。這些明顯的陳述，有時包含了說話者想要暗示的訊息，那就是當你回家晚了，不要用力關車門，因為會把我們吵醒。或者暗示你跟自己的貓不熟，不知道它是總是在鄰居種了得獎菊花的花圃上連續排便。

不過以上也只是談話的一部分，在一定程度上還是可以原諒。

當說廢話的程度下降到把對方當成兩歲小孩時，那就開始令人火大了。就像老奶奶對小孩說，「你喜歡你的泰迪熊嗎？」 或者「哦，你喜歡冰淇淋，是嗎？」，或者「那你累了嗎？」，而她說這話時，那個孩子在過去的三個小時一直安安穩穩地在睡覺。

這種情況發生在英國時，通常會遇上「當然呢，福爾摩斯! 」(No Shit Sherlock!)這樣的反應。翻譯成白話就是：對，你正在告訴我一些對任何不是兩歲的人來說都是令人難以置信的廢話，那就是在侮辱我。

說到這裡， Captain Obvious，又名 Captain Kovid 最近的荒謬發言不得不提。在最近一次記者會上，他又超越自己了。「 長榮機師的感染我想是有可能因為到國外去，」這個自認智商高聳雲霄的天才如此發表了他的見解。

接著好像他擔心我們太愚蠢了以致無法理解，他補充說：「目前事實上全世界大概每天還是60萬確診案例新發生的，所以在外國感染是有可能。」

奇怪的是，通過這個顯而易見的鍍金廢話，他實際上是在承認現任政府在阻擋 Covid 於境外方面，做得非常出色。

我也喜歡他辛勤工作的幕僚，花時間為我們計算出4是5的80％這件事。Captain Obvious 說，「我們統計了一下臺北市在過去7天確診案例是5個，不明感染源是4個，算起來不明感染源佔比是80%。」

呼，他的知識份子團隊花幾個小時，用他們的計算機為我們解決這個問題也不錯。如果沒有這些人來指導我們了解複雜的高級數學題，我們恐怕會茫然失措。

也難怪這位才智黯淡的醫生和他那不聰明又可悲團隊，在民意調查中總是落後。

 Tinkerty Tonk。。。掰掰