It starts so very innocuously. But there, lurking beneath the surface, is a pit of despair so filled with terror that it is only whispered about by decent folks, and spoken of in hushed tones around the campfire as a warning to the young. "Oh, honey, I think I'll get some curtains to replace those wretched flowered ones in the dining room. You know, something simple that will go with anything." And so it begins.
That cruel mistress called Home Improvement has ensnared you with her promise of "simple curtains" so quickly that you are irrevocably trapped by the time you can even begin to realize your folly. The "simple curtains" are installed and the flowered ones are relegated to the Salvation Army heap with little ado. "Well, that was easy enough, wasn't it? I can't believe it took us that long to do that!" you might say with naive optimism while standing back to appreciate your handiwork. But as your eyes pass over the rest of your dining room, into the living room and kitchen, you begin to sense that something is very amiss here. Eyes narrowed, you keep going back over your old living room curtains that now appear very dusty, the smudges on the wall which have leaped out of nowhere, the picture on the wall that has drifted slightly askew, and the carpet which appears to have contracted the mange. In vivid contrast, the new curtains almost sparkle in their brilliance and modernity. Simple? Indeed, madam. Indeed!
Thus you find yourself in the throes of the dreaded Natural Law of Incongruent Decoration Age. When any new item (N) is placed in close proximity to non-new items, the non-new items (nn) look worse by a calculable rate which is represented by the following equation: Where N=$17.99x4+C(cost of curtain rod), nn=10, and B=the badness of appearance of nn: B = N x 1jillion to the power of nn divided by pi.
This is our story. I can only hope that by sharing it, you and your loved ones may escape the ensuing trauma that we have been subject to for the past many months. I will try to find the strength to finish it before Home Improvement has a chance to mete out its campaign of total punishment upon me.
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