Slashing

Ben asks a simple Friday question — a little thing designed to tease the palate and make misanthropic houseplants use wildly inappropriate metaphors.

The friendly, English-speaking extraterrestrial you run into outside your house is asking you to recommend the one book, movie, or song that explains what humans are all about. What do you pick?

Well sure — nothing like throwing together a quick dissertation while I’m waiting for the floor to dry. (My last one took a little longer — five years, more or less — but had the disadvantage of having math in it. Math is hard.)

A book? That explains the human condition to an alien? That’s hard. There are tons of books that try to explain the human condition. I haven’t read any of them, of course.

But a song? Strangely, that’s a little easier. And I’ve heard a few songs. And I was attacked by an exploding Acura with the license plate CRAZY today. And an incredibly creative musician died this week. So okay.

I’d tell the aliens that, while humans can be intelligent, friendly and decent they can also be… not. Which brings me to the song — Nash took a nice little song about obsession by young men in neckties and kicked it up a notch (BAM!) and made it about madness, horror and electric mandolins.

The floor should be dry by now.