What do these two objects have in common? They elicit from me a rage typically reserved for old plow horses and children you don’t realize are deaf. It’d be nice if the design teams for both were locked in a room and forced to listen to Alanis Morissette on an endless loop. Not a whole album. Just “You Oughta Know” for 72 hours without relief, without food, without light or bathroom breaks, see if we can’t push them to that point where people start giving up on God and begin carving pentagrams into their chests and thighs.
That would begin to approach the level of annoyance I experience every time I go into a restroom and see another one of those stupid electronic sensor dispensers, one of those self-righteous carbon-footprint-minded machines that’s going to give me 3 inches of paper before demanding in petulant silence that I wait 5 seconds before waving my hand again. Who the hell does this device think it is? Now I have to prove how bad I want my hands to be dry? It’s not enough I gotta dance for the Man at work, now I’ve got to dance for you too? I don’t like to start my day off swearing, but every morning that’s exactly what happens. I can give it to you word for word “…Gimme the f#%@ing paper you piece of s%*! a$$ f@#$ing whore! Do you have any idea what I could do with twenty five seconds and a sledgehammer? I will break open your face and take what is mine, laughing at your high-minded “green” designers as I walk out the door… Don’t test me b*$%#, I will end you!”
That’s a lot of anger to hold against an inanimate object, feel kinda spent just typing that. Have a strong urge to go pray somewhere and try to get my life right. But those dispensers really do make me mad. In the last six months I’ve been to my first strip club and in the last six months I’ve walked in upon a freshly destroyed paper towel dispenser; was disappointed beyond expression to find I was more excited by the sight of shattered plastic entrails than ice cube lathered nipples. The only thing that distracts me from my hatred of modern paper towel dispensers is the Subaru Outback.
My buddy Ryan Connor does a fantastic bit about Subarus, and ever since I heard it I can’t help but notice when I see them on the road. I live in Takoma Park, the San Francisco of the East, a haven for hippies, unchecked liberal aggression and stores where you can buy iridescent pantsuits for your unchecked liberal dog. There are a lot of Subarus in my community. I’d say at least 1 out of every 6 cars is an Outback and no less than 6 out of 6 of their proprietors drive like tourists in their own neighborhood. How is it possible to look so hopelessly indecisive at every single green light? Don’t you come home this way every day? Do you really need to look both ways 8 times before pulling out of your driveway? How do you make yourself drive 5 miles under a 10 mile-an-hour residential speed limit? Do you have to stop and debate grocery acquisitions with your wife at every last stop sign and speed bump?
It must be something in the design that makes owners drive like this. It would make sense, there’s something perverse about trying to make a station wagon “sporty”. It’s ridiculous, like racing stripes on dress shoes or old ladies who love displaying cleavage and hate bras. Whatever it is, their driving makes me want to toss babies into burning oil drums, and I only say oil drums because I have no idea where to get my hands on a boiling cauldron. Despise those cars so much… realized tonight if I heard the Obamas drove one, I’d actually consider voting McCain. It’d be me, Juan Williams and Mike Paul; the only brothers that confuse America more than O.J. To hell with terrorists, Tony Rezko and Reverend Wright; being associated with a sport utility wagon is a scandal that does not go away.
So, if you are a paper towel dispenser or a Subaru Outback and you are reading this right now, you’re probably wondering what can you do to make the peace, to quell this terrible animosity? Can’t guarantee anything, but one of you destroying the other would be a terrific start. Style points will be awarded for anything that takes more than two hours and involves humiliation, the desecration of graves, or gratuitous use of the word “whore”.
My name is Mike and I’m not always sure what’s going through my head either.
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