TERMINAL LAUGHTER

In a development as unbearable as it is overdue, a local twenty-five-year-old acquaintance of yours starting getting it recently. Citing a newfound interest in punk rock music, Noam Chomsky, and the ineptitude of the Bush II administration as foundational to her new, gratingly mid-adolescent worldview, this friend of your roommate’s friend has been halting otherwise pleasant strings of conversational Simpsons references lately in order to insert her own still-budding opinions on U.S. foreign policy and outdated popular culture.

“Blah blah blah Dick Cheney,” she said while leaning forward as if it indicate her seriousness, before adding. “Something something weapons of mass destruct-blah.” Despite your long held understanding of her as a normal, perfectly inoffensive individual who listens to bad music, watches uninteresting movies, and reads only magazines, your associate—who you’re not even all that close with, really—has recently started asking you for book recommendations.

“I’ve heard Atlas Shrugged is pretty good,” she said, pronouncing it “At-last,” before your eyes glazed over and you stopped listening completely.

Despite you and your real friends’ best efforts to re-direct the conversation to the episode of Seinfeld where George eats the eclair out of the garbage pail, your acquaintance was unrelenting, blathering on for minutes about how 9/11 was a controlled demolition and how the Catholic church’s stance on abstinence within the clergy is “inherently hypocritical.” She then proceeded to ask if you had “any good documentaries” she could borrow.

“She’s been really fucking annoying me lately,” your pal Brian commented. “Doesn’t she get that the rest of us were saying stuff like ‘opiate of the masses’ and reading the Coles Notes for The Communist Manifesto in high school? I mean, how old is she? Like 30? I heard she just bought a London Calling tee off the Internet!”

Sure enough, days later she would pop by your apartment again, for god knows what reason, wearing a tastefully pre-faded shirt emblazoned with the cover of the Clash’s seminal 1979 album. “Have you guys ever heard this record?” she asked coyly, clearly oblivious to the fact that it’s number 8 on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Rock and Roll Albums of All Time and everybody and their goddamn aunt has not just heard it but whistles the bassline to “Jimmy Jazz” at least twice a week. She then went on to ask if “you dudes” have ever seen “This Is Spinal Tap,” again uneducated to the reality that everyone you know had seen the movie before they turned fifteen and that most people just call it “Spinal Tap.”

Reports from high school friends of this girl you don’t even really know suggest that while the rest of you were listening to punk, heavy metal, and progressive rock music, reining in potential acne breakouts, and plotting the best time to start a cafeteria food fight, this chick was dancing around her bedroom to FM radio and dating boys. Other sources suggest that she didn’t even start smoking until she was 21.

“It wasn’t down in, it was sort of on top. Above the rim!” one of your good-time buddies interjected, as a means of rejuvenating the basement apartment’s energy.

“You my friend have crossed the line that divides man and bum,” your buddy Pete rejoined.

“You dudes seen Arrested Developments yet?” she asked, and you wondered how long it would be before one of you moves out of town.