Veil the World Black
24 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in General Ironic Situations, We Should be Enraged About This Tags: "Minister's Black Veil", American short stories, black banner, Google, horror, Nathaniel Hawthorne, PIPA, Puritan, SOPA
Earlier this month, SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) infuriated millions of Internet-users, and frustrated just as many intelligent Internet-savvy individuals. Among the issues presented to the advocates of the bill was the notion that once these restrictions were constructed, the worldwide web would become somewhat of a tangled net as people would create new ways of bypassing the restrictions. Wikipedia was temporarily shut down, and Google placed a black banner over their icon in solidarity. That same day I was instructed to read ‘The Minister’s Black Veil’, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. One of the first great American novelists, Hawthorne used a single major symbol in each of his works to represent a larger idea. In ‘The Minister’s Black Veil’, a Puritan community is shocked and horrified when their minister appears with a black crêpe veil over his face. Throughout this short story the community becomes more and more scandalized, wondering what secret their minister must be hiding from the world under his veil. They are horrified at what could have been hidden, as the veil evokes terrorized shudderings during his powerful but calm sermons. The veil itself has such an effect on the people that the minister’s own fiancé comes and tries to make him take it off, fearing their relationship might be compromised because of it. The minister refuses and later dies with the veil intact.
The similarities between Google’s black banner and the minister’s black veil is astounding. Both used the black covering as a sort of announcement, a declaration of a higher and a more transcendental purpose, one being sympathy and solidarity, the other being isolation and guilt. When accessing Google’s website for the first time the day it put up the black banner, and upon seeing the strangely blank ebony rectangle over what should have been the jolly ‘Google’ sign, I also felt a bit eerie. Just the absence of a constant in my life was jarring enough, but to be replaced with a plain black box? It was horrifying, to say the least. My heart beat faster, and I immediately wanted to look away, much like the puritanical people wanted to look away from the minister’s black veil.
Just the fact that both these instances were meshed together on the same exact day was ridiculously ironic. It was as if God had proclaimed, “Veil the world black”. And it was so.
The Escapade
14 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in General Ironic Situations Tags: Anacostia, bad GPS directions, Chipotle, Georgetown, lost, Malcolm X Avenue
One of my good friends drove me everywhere yesterday. Let’s call her Melanie. She picked me up from work and drove me to a party, then to lunch, then home. But between those simple stops, there was an inordinate amount of laughing uproariously, shivering unstoppably, and becoming lost.
When she parked her car in front of my temporary work place, the sun was shining and her sound system was throbbing, pounding out the bass into the frigid air. Having no inkling of our later experiences, I happily hopped into the passenger seat and strapped in. Melanie lowered the music, turned up the bass and we were on our way, swinging out onto the road and singing at the top of our lungs. After arriving at the party, we proceeded to enjoy ourselves, and when it was over we jumped back into her BMW to go to a Chipotle in Georgetown. Before finally finding the restaurant, her wacky GPS took us through Reagan National Airport, through switchbacks and on side roads. Suffice to say it was interesting.
Lunch was fantastic; thick burritos, the warm restaurant and more laughing. Another one of our mutual friends had joined us (we’ll call him Josh), and the conversation moved at a quick pace. My tongue stung from the spices in my burrito as we walked back to this car that I was beginning to grow fond of. The little machine had sheltered me from the biting cold, and rolled us all over the city. One cannot hope to keep ones emotions separate from this car, I mean, its name was Hans. On our way to drop our friend off at Josh’s house, we got lost again. This time in the Anacostia, on the Maryland side.
Now, the Anacostia can be a nice place-albeit in the bright light of day accompanied by a police escort. Since it was nighttime, and lacking the no doubt useless police escort, we huddled together inside the car and passed a Swiss Army knife back and forth. When Melanie’s GPS decided to quit being a piece of crap, it lead us to a relatively open space inside one of the rundown neighborhoods. A large man with a uniform walked imperiously over to our now sedentary car and motioned for us to roll down the windows. We looked around at each other, eyes wide and hearts practically beating out of our chests. After what seemed like hours, we rolled down the windows, praying silently to God for mercy. Melanie threw up her hands and shrunk down in her seat, explaining herself quickly, “My GPS took us here, I promise. We were looking for Malcolm X Avenue.” The man quirked an eyebrow and realizing that she was probably telling the truth, leaned over and gave her directions to the avenue. He told us that the area was off limits as well. Barely pausing to roll up her windows, she tore out of there, and attempted to reconcile the man’s directions with the path highlighted on the GPS. It wasn’t possible, so we decided to go with his advice. Eventually, and with help from Josh (“It’s that way! That way!”), we turned jerkily onto Malcolm X.
Breathing hard and giggling out of the repressed shock of being alive, we managed to drop off Josh outside his house. Later on, over the Wilson bridge, Melanie and I laughed together and then she said it would be hilarious if Josh had left something in the car. As soon as she finished her sentence, her phone rang. She picked it up and I watched her face tighten in the rear view mirror. With a sinking feeling I heard her say that she couldn’t talk right now; she was driving. She told the person on the phone to call me. I immediately picked up on the fact that it was Josh. Sure enough, he called me and explained that he had left his skates in Hans’ trunk. I explained we couldn’t turn back, and I hung up to call my brother and ask him if he could possibly pick up the skates from my house and bring them to my friend- who had a hockey game in Reston in two hours. He said no, he couldn’t because he was in Manassas. A few desperate phone calls later we decided that Josh would pick up his skates at my house on the way to his game. Then Melanie turned a sharp corner at the prompting of her GPS and promptly popped a tire.
Hearing the sound, and feeling Hans tilt to the right, she parked on the side of the sketch side road and got out, cussing and waving her arms. I got out and we muddled through a half hour of absolutely nothing: no one stopped to help, although every minute a car would pass right by our stranded party. Melanie called her father, her coach, and we attempted to find the toolbox. A nice old man stopped and helped us jack up the car but since we didn’t have a lug wrench or anything, we had to wait for her father to come. Josh, called me and we directed him to our new location. Eventually Melanie’s father came, and then Josh with his father also came, and we slowly changed the tire.
After everyone left the scene, Melanie and I sat in the car and moaned. Then we looked at each other and laughed. She took me home and my family fed her and compensated her for gas and lunch. Poor thing. Josh texted me later that night and said his team had lost the game. Such was the end of our escapade.
