On the Horns of a Double-Fandango Dilemma (Cigar Smoke 12-6-07)

I was in my doctor’s office the other day reading the April 1972 issue of Popular Mechanics in which they predicted we would all be flying around in our own little personal flying machines by the year 2000. Very interesting article. The same issue had the global-cooling prediction story. Those guys were dead on, huh?

Anyway, I finished that magazine and noticed a current copy of Newsweek in the magazine rack. I don’t know how a 2007 magazine got into a doctor’s office. I think a senile patient brought it in and forgot it. (Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being senile. I’m senile. All my friends are senile. We like being senile. At least, we think we like being senile. We forgot what it means.)

This is where my double-fandango dilemma started. The first horn of my dilemma was that I had canceled my subscription to Newsweek when it published that phony, hyped-up story about our Guantanamo guys peeing on the Koran. (By the way, my cancelation rocked Newsweek’s financial world.) If a person cancels a subscription to a magazine, should that person read that magazine in a doctor’s waiting room? It is a dilemma.

Somehow, it just seems wrong to me to read a free article that you used to pay for. If you have lost respect for a publication and have stopped buying that magazine, why should you read one of its articles just because you have the opportunity to do it and it won’t cost you anything? What are you going to say to yourself? “Self, that sure was a thoughtful, well-written story from a publication I have lost respect for. I got a lot out of it only because I didn’t have to pay for it. Ha, ha. I showed them.” Is that what you say to yourself? I don’t know. I think my self just might pee on me for that.

So what did I do? I read the article. Not because it was free, but because it was something I was interested in. And I have no standards or moral consistency and I’m weak. I think my fly’s open too.

The story was about Amazon’s new digital reading wonder-gadget called the Kindle. I happen to be interested in buying a Kindle. It’s the first wireless book-reading gizmo that allows you to instantly download books for $9.99, and Amazon has supposedly perfected the screen so it mimics an actual page of type in a book. They say you can read it at the beach with no glare. That’s pretty impressive. If those bullies would only stop kicking sand in my face, it would be perfect.

So I read half the article and found out some semi-cool stuff that the Kindle can do. It has a built-in dictionary and you can subscribe to magazines online and it doesn’t need to be synched to a computer, and it has little bitty legs and can walk to the store and pick up some Bud Light. It’s pretty neat.

But just at that exact halfway article-reading point, my doctor called me in. It was a checkup. He wanted to check to see if my wallet was still in good condition. So, in a split damn second, I jumped onto the other horn of my dilemma. (It hurt. I still have dilemma horn scars.) What should I do with the magazine? Should I just leave it and forget the rest of the Kindle article, or take it home?

My mind was racing. (My body turned that over to my mind years ago.) Would “taking home” the magazine mean I was stealing the magazine? Should I ask the receptionist if I could take it home? Should I rip out only the pages I need? Should I go poo-poo in my pants from indecision?

I cleverly avoided my final decision by placing (hiding) the Newsweek in question between two health magazines that probably will never be read. In fact, people hope those magazines will be stolen. They hire people to steal them. It was the perfect place to just keep it hidden for half an hour until my appointment was over, and then I could make a reasoned and considered decision as to whether I would steal it.

I went in for my examination. My wallet was in top shape, so the doctor let me out. Told me to keep it full of hundreds and to see him as often as possible. “Thanks, doc. You ever fix dilemma scars?”

So I went back to the waiting room, and I looked both ways — I’m not sure why, maybe there were IRS agents or FBI guys — and I went over to the magazine rack and sneakily sorted through the pile and found my hidden copy of Newsweek still there. I had it in my hand; I had to make my final decision. Was I going to steal this magazine from the doctor’s office? Was I going to steal a magazine I had stopped subscribing to? What kind of person am I?

So I made my decision. Holding the magazine in my hand, as I got to the door I said to another guy sitting in the waiting room, “It’s my magazine. I brought it with me.” I couldn’t believe I said it, but I did. And I said it loud enough that everyone in the waiting room could hear me. The guy by the door didn’t say anything. Nobody said anything. Nobody even nodded or smiled weakly. Nothing.

So, my sometime loyal readers and readerettes, what have we learned from this pissy little parable? We have learned that when you are on the horns of a double-fandango dilemma about stealing something, it is clearly best if you lie as well.