Perhaps it stems from the shame any Swede must feel for his mother tongue, the sound of which resembles the gurgling boil of a lung-shot sniper victim as it trips off the tortured muscle. Just try to pronounce the name of any featured product while meandering along the show floor maze that accounts for half the lost citizenry featured on America’s milk cartons. It’s the surest way of clearing your sinuses, and makes Hebrew sound lyrical in comparison. La Chaim.
I’m not sure when the primal crawl back to the cave began, but I think the wunderkind Steve Jobs had something to do with it. We are now, a few short decades since the conception of the shit-faced Happy Mac, awash in icons for every desperate message possible, from that of the low coolant alert to the suggestion that I might have just been exposed to radioactive contamination.
I have more than once wet myself at the entry to a public restroom door after an overly long stop to figure out if I might possibly bust in on a woman with a dress hiked to her hips. By all means, compadre, have fun with your paintbrush, but follow up with any common word for “guy”, capiche, puta?
Jesus H. Christo, I’m starting to feel like a damn ditto-head. If you can’t read the language of the road, you should not be behind the wheel of a three-ton projectile. You passed the driver’s test, n’est pas, Horst? Stop! No Left Turn! Your Lights Are On, and when you try to start it up in the morning you’re going to get nothing but that clicking noise.
Note that when you are driving toward Miami, the sign says “Miami”. It’s not a Peter Max caricature of pink flamingos shitting on flamboyant Cubans from the tops of palm trees. So why must I consult my owner’s manual when a light on my dash begins to glow, seeming to indicate that my car would have really good reception were it a cell phone?
If you can’t spell, put a voice chip in my ride, you ancient, white, bankrupt assholes. What would it cost you for the technology now? Eighteen cents? A Tonka toy gives me more usable information about itself than my Beemer does. Hell, I’ll pay extra for a sexy hooker voice to coo at me: “Meine liebe schein, you just left your key in my ignition hole, and I’m holding on to it until you give me a super-fine wax job!” Miss Leni can come bundled with the deluxe interior lighting package for all I care.
An idiot light on my dash announces that I am an idiot. I have no idea if my brakes are preparing to fail or if my car is just happy to see me. And the Bavarian Uber-Tinkers whoforcenitalltogetherfrompeecesundparts won’t let up with the crypto-messages. Masters of micromanagement, they terrorize me with an alarm that goes off when the ambient temperature drops to 37 degrees Fahrenheit. You know why? Because water can freeze on a bridge surface at that temperature, given the proper atmospheric conditions.Wunderbar! And dunkeshein for the tip, Hans! Now how about a foghorn when der dew point matches der wind chill, just for shites und giggles.
When they do speak my language, it’s still cryptic. “Check Engine” for what reason, exactly? Oh, that’s right. Only a certified wizard with the proper magic wand can tell me for a cool C-note that the last grease monkey to fill the tank didn’t tighten the gas cap to Arian specs, der Dumkopf!
Back at the fjords, minimalist Euro-designers have decided there’s no point in attempting to speak to its New World consumers. It’s as if they intended their merchandise to be assembled by preschoolers. How much could these global entrepreneurs possibly be saving by not printing the words, “Make sure you don’t tighten the screws too tightly, because we used inferior materials to manufacture the piece of shit you actually intend to let your newborn sleep in”? And how do you say, “Bite me, Sven, you lazy lingenberry swiller,” in precious little icons that will take him half the next war to decode?
I know one thing. These guys are so cheap that if there are eight hundred fourteen pieces of hardware included in your Skrotum business hutch kit, you wont have a single sparelockenvasher left over once it’s finally assembled, so you know some braided ponytailer will be logging overtime counting every last piece out into hermetically-sealed snack bags. What they gain by saving an ounce of hardware they must certainly spend on the going meeneemuummwagen at theweejeetfaktorie.
I’m guessing the problem is this: these guys have chopped all their fingers off in the woodshop trying to figure out how to make furniture that requires only a hex wrench and three times the amount of Elmer’s glue they provide to assemble. As a result, there’s nobody around able to type out legible instructions, so they get their dyslexic kids to draw the pictures during lunch break at the branestormskoolen.
After the three days it took me to construct a kitchen pantry puzzle from the Smegma line, cockroaches commenced to dismantle it with the corrosive effects of their excretion. Next time I think I’ll just take out a home equity loan to have some Ethan Allen monstrosity delivered in one fully assembled piece. The tip for the deliverers alone would pay for a double bed from Stockholm, but who cares? It beats the cost of three years of therapy.
There. I’ve had my say. Now all I have to do is save this thing. No, that’s clip. Shit, that’s paste. What’s this? Undo typing? Damn! You know what? Screw it. Just screw it. Try saying that with icons.
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