Justin Erik Halldór Smith

Thomas Friedman Clogged My Toilet

Justin E. H. Smith

A few nights ago I hosted a reception for an old friend, a respected scholar and most recently the author of Citation Techniques in Duns Scotus. We were celebrating the sale of the 100th copy of his book.

Now ordinarily this sort of event is attended by only the dustiest of academics, so you can easily imagine my surprise when a former colleague of mine --a newly minted global-justice theorist who left academic philosophy in order, as she put it, to 'work the Davos circuit'--  showed up accompanied by the prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

The two of them had just come from the opening session of the ‘Mini Davos’ forum, which this year my adoptive city had the honor of hosting. My former colleague (let us call her ‘Juliette’) had just led a session on ‘The Universal Right to Clean Water’, in which her performance was judged by Stephen Harper, Desmond Tutu, and Bono alike to be of ‘Oscar calibre’.
“Water,” exclaimed Bill Gates, “now there's something people can get excited about.”
“She's gonna take this act all the way to Switzerland,” Bill Clinton himself was heard to say.

I had already known Friedman to be a small and twitchy man, and was now able to confirm that this is at best a mild understatement. Yet almost immediately I sensed that there was something unusual, that this man, however awkward he may ordinarily be, was at this very moment in a tremendous amount of discomfort. “It's a pleasure to meet you Mr. Friedman,” I said smoothly and, I hoped, with just the right amount of ambiguous sarcasm. “I'm a big fan of The Lexus and the Olive Tree. It really captured the moment. When I read it I was like: forget about On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense, it's Friedman who's really got his finger on the pulse.”
“Thanks,” Friedman groaned. “Call me Tom.”

This was all he managed to say, after which he just kept standing there, sweating and wincing. I imagined Juliette might be able to bring him back to life if I were to disappear, so I excused myself and went to mingle among the other guests. Things were proceeding as usual. Reginald, it seems, had read Gunther’s new book, Kenelm Digby’s Qualitative Corpuscularianism. The babysitter-deprived and therefore absent Gunther, Reginald reported to the crowd’s amusement and surprise, had based his study almost entirely upon The Nature of Bodies of 1644 while completely ignoring the Discourse concerning the Vegetation of Plants of 1661.

Thirty minutes in or so, when I simply could not stand to see my most distinguished guest suffering anymore, and when conversation with the others had weakened from Digby to dental insurance to daycare, I leaned in and, in a whispered tone, asked Juliette what was wrong. She knew the man better than I did, after all, and I had long known her to be what Nietzsche would call a penetrating 'psychologist'. Was she ever! Thomas Friedman, Juliette whispered to me discreetly in the elegant Ciceronian Latin she still retained from her years as a scholar of Imperial Stoicism, was in the throes of a fluxus ventris.

Maureen Dowd Is in My Bed

Justin E. H. Smith

Maureen Dowd is in my bed. I can tell it's her. That shock of red hair spilling across the pillow, those red high heels kicked haphazardly onto the floor.

What is she doing in there?

I'm going to have to wake her up and ask her to leave. She'll think I'm afraid of intelligent women, but that's not true. My wife is very intelligent. In fact, that's just the problem: Maureen Dowd is not my wife.

Come to think of it, where is my wife? Did I shift possible worlds, into one in which I --or should I say my counterpart-me?-- am married not to my wife, but to Maureen Dowd? Did my wife somehow metamorphose into Maureen Dowd while I was out getting her more flu capsules, like some Gregor Samsa, though facing an infinitely more gruesome fate?

I suppose the only question that really matters is: am I now married to Maureen Dowd? Whether this marriage was sealed through world-shifting or through metamorphosis is of little interest, except perhaps to the metaphysicians. Perhaps they would tell me that in the latter case we're basically looking at a cosmic annulment by reason of change of substance. I married my wife after all, not my wife-or-whomever-my-wife-might-turn-into.

I'm just going to have to wake her up and get to the bottom of this. I hope she doesn't talk like she writes. That would be unbearable, especially if, metaphysically and legally, she is in fact my wife. Then I would have to put up with it. I would say: "I seem to have shifted possible worlds or something, for I don't recall ever marrying you, Ms. Dowd." And she would reply: "What a pretty pickle," or: "So, darling, is it going to be Taming of the Shrew, or more Mister Magoo?" or some other rhymed literary reference that I'll feel I ought to understand, yet won't.

The thought of it sickens me. I don't dare wake her up. Maybe I should go back to the pharmacy, buy some lip balm or something, and when I come back everything will have returned to normal. I probably triggered this with something I did, some minor twitch or gesture that set the universe on a different course. Could it have been the flu capsules? Is this some red pill/blue pill thing? Wait. These pills are red and blue. What would set things right again? Burt's Bees? Gold Bond? Vapo-Rub?

Judith Warner Is in My Head

Justin E. H. Smith

Judith Warner is in my head, and she won't leave. She's been in there for three weeks. Now I don't mean I've been thinking intensely about Judith Warner for three weeks. I mean she is actually in there, perceiving the world through my eyes, seeing everything I see, peeing standing up when I pee standing up. Seeing it all.

Let me explain. This is not like Being John Malkovich, where the parasitic consciousness takes over control of the host body. I need to make this clear: Judith Warner has no control whatsoever over my sensorimotor system. She has to sense whatever I sense, and do whatever I do, whether she wants to or not. She doesn't like Ravioli-O's? Tough.

How did this come to pass?  Those who know me will know that I suffer from obsessive-compulsive symptoms, including the irrepressible desire to swallow whenever I see the letter 'A' and to feign a sort of half-spitting, half-vomiting motion whenever I spot an 'F'.  I'm out of my gourd, but we knew that already. The question now is: How did Judith Warner get into my gourd?