It’s been 60 years, and the Holocaust still sucks

Christina, Nathan, Ashley and I watched The Pianist, a film about one man’s struggle during World War II, and it’s hard for me to say it was a good movie. We saw an old man dumped unceremoniously from his wheelchair off a twelfth-floor balcony by SS guards, we saw lines of Jews shot for daring to question where they were being taken, we saw countless other abominations and crimes against humanity. And so, despite the fact that the acting was superb, the camera work and cinematography flawless, this one won’t be getting five stars from yours truly. Is it too much to ask that I not feel awful about mankind during a film? Let me elaborate by means of an anecdote.

Our apartment is renowned for its desserts. We make pies bursting with purple berries, chewy oven-hot cookies by the dozen, and cakes so succulent civilization as a whole is not prepared for their consumption. Last night, we sealed a pineapple upside-down cake into the oven just before pushing play on the movie, and three dozen atrocities later when the timer rang, no one wanted to eat any. OK, we did, but I would go so far as to say that the cake was less delicious as a result of the movie. Any movie that lessens my enjoyment of our fabulous dessert ensemble, regardless of its positive attributes, loses points in my book. Plus, it left us pondering some tough questions, like “were there any pleasant Nazis?” Besides the token kind lieutenant that helped the pianist while he was in hiding, it seemed like they were all assholes. Nathan and I discussed this, and it seems like there had to have been a good number who didn’t enjoy their jobs quite so much. I don’t care how effective Hitler’s brainwashing propaganda was; a few must have survived with some portion of their sanctity for human life intact. Or maybe not.

I don’t usually post results from online tests, for a couple of reasons. First, most of the tests you find online are inane, and suffer from the same problem as much of the internet itself: they were written by scatological-minded fourteen year olds who speak with so little authority they make Pauly Shore seem like Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Second, I like to think of this site as something more than a blog, something which both surpasses blogs at the blogging game and at the same time belongs to a completely separate category. Too many blogs are dominated by test results that reflect next to nothing about the person who took them and have next to no relevance to the person who reads them. Apologies to the people at whom I’ve implicitly leveled the Finger of Shame, but this is how I feel.

It is therefore with a heavy heart that I feel compelled to post links to two such inane online tests, with the promise that I will do so only very, very infrequently in the future. The first alleges that I have a histrionic personality disorder, which sounds really cool, like I might in fact be from the future or part of a secretive government agency. According to their website this means that I “use grandiose language to describe everyday events,” which I must admit strikes pretty close to home. The second says that I’m 35% geek, which I’d say is pretty close. My only real problem with this result is that I don’t see how it’s possible for anyone, even the most socially inept, Star Trek-loving, never-touched-a-woman, bucktoothed introvert to check more than half the boxes. I’m one of the staunchest proponents of geekhood you’ll encounter who’ll be able to describe the points of his platform without compulsively straightening his pocket-protector, and I say to you now that the level of geekhood required to boost one’s score about 50% is more than socially crippling; it requires that you spent the first 20 years of your life immersed in some sort of geek-pod, surrounded by pop-culture artifacts and shunning friendship just as fiercely as the sun. I don’t wish that on anyone.