Your Death By Metaphor Quizo Update

You know what I don't get?

Neo-Nazis.

And it's not just that Nazis are clearly, you know, evil. People have been making the evil choice for as long as there have been people. I make the evil choice all the time (though not THAT evil). No, what I don't get is why you'd want to be a Nazi NOW. I mean, aside from the obvious social problems it would cause - you can't really go to the bar on a Saturday night and when some woman you're hitting on asks you what you do say, "I'm a Neo-Nazi!" and expect any sort of success - I find it a strange choice mainly because, you know...

The Nazis LOST.

I mean, by becoming a Neo-Nazi you are basically saying, "I support a losing side." WWII isn't like the Super Bowl where if you lose you head over to the Maginot Sideline and tell Suzy Kolber, "well, we fought hard and tried our best, but we just couldn't pull it out late in the war. Full credit to them, the Allies are a very talented squad. They've got great depth on offense where they're very stong in the air and on the ground, and when we thought we were mounting a real comeback at Bastogne their defense just made a fantastic goal-line stand. They deserve to win. All we can do now is go home, process the loss, and get ready for World War III next year, Suzy."

No. This does not happen. If things like this did happen, during the last Super Bowl Bill Belicheck would have had to go back to his own locker room in the fourth quarter and blown himself up once he realized the Giants were winning. Which, admittedly, might not have been that bad. But really, if you're going to make the evil choice at least make one that has SOME measure of longevity like Maoist Communism or the Sith. Nazis have no game. None. And that head coach of theirs is NUTS.

Moving on...

I went to New York this past Saturday for a friend’s birthday. As my car is dying a slow, wheezing, sputtering death - I am convinced it has the car equivalent of pneumonia, as though there are communicable automotive pathogens - and I truly, truly despise taking the last train out of New York on a Saturday night, an exercise in misery if there ever was one, I convinced my father to lend me his car for the evening. My father's car now has in it the GPS unit my mother got him for Christmas - guess who installed THAT - and I have come to the conclusion that GPS is to cars what DVR is to television: once you’ve used it you can’t imagine living without it.

The best part about the GPS is when, after leaving, I realized that there was a backup on the NJ Turnpike stretching from Exit 6 to Exit 8. That’s about 14 miles of stop-and-go traffic, which we do not endorse when driving anywhere, let alone New York. I had to go against the directions of the Garmin, and I was talking on the phone to my Dad just after this happened.

“It got a little pissed when I wouldn’t get off at the Turnpike. It actually told me to get off at Neshaminy and make a U-turn to go back to the Turnpike before it recalculated for 195,” I said.

“Yes,” my father said. “She gets very strident if you don’t follow directions. Even confused sometimes.”

“She? You call it she?” I said. I realize that the GPS unit synthesizes a woman’s voice, but “she,” really?

My father said, “yes, she. I enjoy personalizing the technology.”

“It doesn’t have gender, Dad,” I said. “It’s not a Cylon.”

After waiting for almost 40 minutes to get through the Holland Tunnel – which, as I predicted, my car never would have survived – and then trying to hack my way through Tribeca Film Festival traffic in downtown Manhattan, I finally got to said birthday party. When I found the birthday girl she handed me a carton of cigarettes she had picked me up in England. Woohoo! Imported cigarettes! I loves me some Silk Cut.

I asked, “what do I owe you?”

“Fifty bucks,” she said.

Now then:

0.25 seconds after I heard that I thought, “wow, that’s a lot more expensive than the last time someone got me these.”

0.75 seconds after I heard that I thought, “actually, the local price is probably the same from last time and the amount I’m paying now is likely the result of the dollar’s severe loss of value against foreign currency the last several fiscal quarters.”

Unfortunately, 0.5 seconds after I heard that I SAID, “50 bucks? You’re the worst drug mule ever.”

It occurred to me in that moment that the differential between how I perceive the things I say – i.e. as a lighthearted, well-meaning joke 98% of the time – and how the people I am saying these things to perceive the things I say – i.e. as the cruelest utterance in the history of language – may explain a large percentage of my difficulty in dealing with other people.

I maintain that my innate need to make jokes all the time is the sign of a deep, altruistic desire to please others by making them laugh and brightening their day. Most of my ex-girlfriends would say in the moment just before they BECAME ex-girlfriends that I use verbal chicanery as a way to put up emotional barriers and keep people at a distance. In these moments I tend to say to my ex-girlfriends things like, “you’re too drunk to drive to your boyfriend’s house” or “what do you mean you and your boyfriend are getting married” or “it’s not my fault your fiancée is CLEARLY a homosexual.”

(It’s a long story.)

On the way home from the birthday party I was listening to an audiobook which is a different title from the deadtreebook I’m reading and for a moment around exit 10 I was suddenly possessed by this wracking feeling of guilt, as though I were committing some strange form of book-adultery. I then realized that I am dangerously close to completely losing my mind, if in fact being worried – seriously, legitimately worried – about “book-adultery” isn’t a sign that I already have.

Also, I have another calculus exam next week, so if you're gazing at the night sky this weekend and see a star suddenly wink out, that's just me studying.

JLK