Thoughts on making sweet, tender, love to the system
There I was, out for an innocent April morning Segway ride, when I rode across some rather troubling graffiti. “F*** the system,” it announced. I politely asked the graffiti to elaborate, to perhaps tell me which system it referred to, as well as which definition of the word “f***” it was using. I was very polite. I did not raise my voice, or use an angry tone. I was merely curious. Yet the graffiti’s response to my inquiries was a blithe “f*** the system.” Miffed, I sped away to grab some breakfast.
To my dismay, another piece of graffiti greeted me at the entrance to Bob’s. At first I thought it was a shapeless black object meant to convey the painter’s frustration with his or her low level of artistic skill, but then I realized it was a platypus. Curiously enough, this development only raised more questions. Who painted the platypus? Why is the platypus so upset with the system?
I called up one of my good friends for help. “Barack,” I said. “Have you heard about these angry platypuses?”
“I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about, Michael. And I think the plural is ‘platypi,’” he answered.
“Yeah, you would. But I just checked the OED and both are acceptable. Actually they list ‘platypuses’ first so yeah. But maybe you’re smarter than the OED.”
“This is why we don’t hang out anymore, Michael. Anyway, I have to go drive Sasha to taekwondo, I’ll talk to you later.” So no luck there. I was going to have to find someone else to help me with my mysterious platypus problem.
At lunch, I overheard a few people talking about some kind of “black sheep” graffiti around campus. I segwayed over to them, knocking over a few chairs and one stroller. After a bit of conversation, they informed me that they had assumed the graffiti creature was a sheep. I pulled out my National Geographic Little Kid’s First Big Book of Animals and showed them what a sheep looked like and what a platypus looked like, and they immediately agreed that I was right.
I hate to leave my readers with an uncertain ending, but I’m afraid I have to in this case. No one can say when or where the platypuses will strike again. What are they after? We can only hope that it’s our systems they want to f*** and not our loved ones.