today I am like Illya Kuryakin

[truepenny]

matociquala pointed out to me some time back, when she had perhaps been watching more Man from U.N.C.L.E. episodes than she ought, that Illya has this habit of getting out on the passenger side of the car, even when he's the one driving. He doesn't do it every time, but often enough that one is drawn into speculation like a moth into the embrace of a 100-candle chandelier.

Today, I found an explanation which I think is not the correct one. I went out to the car this afternoon and discovered that both doors (of a 2-door hatchback) were frozen shut. On the driver's side, the lock was inoperable; the passenger-side could be unlocked, but not opened. Thanks to heres_luck, her screwdriver, and her superior body mass, the passenger-side door was yanked free of its icy deathgrip, and I crawled across and unlocked and bodyslammed open the driver's-side door by brute force.

This, however, was not the end of the saga. In the process of scraping the ice off the car (a winter maneuver made even more exciting by the fact that the rear defroster died some years back, so clearing the back window is another installment of the Heroic Story Of A Woman And Her Ice-Scraper), I discovered that not merely the lock of the driver's-side door, but the latch was frozen into immobility. Ergo, while the door could be opened from the inside, it could neither be opened nor unlocked nor locked from the outside. (Usually, I'm very fond of the fact that the car will not let you lock the driver's-side door when it's open--it saves one from that horrifying moment of hearing the door clunk shut and realizing that the keys are still. in. the. ignition. oh. damn.) So every time I got in or out of the car, I had to pull an Illya and crawl through from the wrong side.

It looks a lot more graceful when he does it.

And, of course, given this nuisance, my errands were three in number. To the department to finally, finally give my director the revisions I've made to the two worst chapters of the dis, where life was made more hideous by people behaving like unmitigated morons in the parking garage. To Walgreen's (better living through chemistry), which was, remarkably enough, the least fraught and stressful of the three. And to the Post Office.

Yes. The Post Office.

I would at this point to enter a plea of temporary insanity, because frankly I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know how long I stood in line because I refused to make the mistake of looking at my watch, but it was long enough to read every sign at least twice and start a mental jeremiad on the subject of The Cat in the Hat.

The Cat in the Hat was never my favorite Seuss book, but I was very fond of it, and I was even more fond of the animated cartoon. Just as I was and am passionately fond of the animated Grinch. The recent mania for live-action versions of the Seuss books appalls me anyway, and I think the make-up designers for Cat should be taken out back and shot. And then staked through the heart, just to be sure.

But even leaving that aside, and leaving aside the questionable taste of using the Cat and the goldfish and Thing 1 and Thing 2 to sell postal services, if they're going to do it, could they at least for the love of God and his troupe of flying monkeys hire someone who can write doggerel that scans?

Seuss's scansion isn't hard. It's not meant to be hard. It's meant to be so maddeningly catchy that you find yourself reciting it extempore to random passersby. It's meant to be something that small children can jump up and down to. But the fact of its obtrusiveness means that you can't fudge it. You're either on the money, or you're on your ass on the floor with some very strange creatures laughing at you. And given both these things--that it's (a.) easy and (b.) noticeable--I find it both irritating and embarrassing that whoever wrote the copy for the USPS could not even do a good fake Seuss. It's acutely painful to be stuck in line for subjective aeons with nothing to do but look at unscannable capitalistic couplets exploiting characters whom I love and who would never have anything to do with such a lame-ass use of the English language.

I didn't have a very good afternoon, in case you were wondering.

But I do want to say, here in public, that the people who work the counter for the USPS are some of the nicest people on the face of the planet. The guy who stamped my envelopes told me he'd had 30 hours of overtime in a two-week period and that didn't look likely to change any time soon, but he still wished me luck with my submissions. I would not want their job, but I am so very grateful to them for doing it, and for doing it graciously.

I'm home now, and it looks like a good night for staying in.

Comments

Post Offices pseudoseuss

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Isn't it awful? Hate it.
Also hate Mike Myers' Cat's eyelashes. Checked the book the other day just to be sure. Nope.
Also, no lines such as "Dirty hoes!" in Seuss, even if Myers *was* referring to a gardening implement.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Hmm.

You know, that's probably it. Habit picked up in Moscow, no doubt *g*

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Because I am a commenting fool today, I feel compelled to note that being the driver and getting out the passenger side door, in a car made in the late 1960s -- doesn't that automatically mean stabbing oneself in the sensitive parts with the gearshift? Perhaps Ilya was a masochist after all. Or just perverse.

Also, due to Mad Magazine, I cannot help but call him Ilya Nutcrackin. It's a thing.

I have a friend who can write leftist/socialist political screeds in Seussian scansion at the drop of a hat. Even aside from the cackling it inspires, I find it a comfort.