Niall Post Two: Levers and switches
Niall: (From the backseat:) Where is your side flying car person lever switch?
(Pause. Usually his Foster Wallaceisms are parsable with enough work. Nope, bailing!)
Joshua: What?
N: Do you have a side flying car lever switch? I like to look at it while I’m riding in the car.
J: What are you talking about? What lever?
N: A sideways flying car lever! Does your car not go on wheels?
J: No, it goes on wheels.
N: Where’s the sideways flying car lever switch?
J: What does that do when you pull it?
N: It’s a switch, Daddy.
J: OK, what happens when you flip it?
N: The car goes up.
J: What, like, up in the air?
N: Yes, up in the air, up behind the sun and behind the sky! Do you have a straw on the bottom of your car?
J: No.
N: The straw helps you go up.
J: Niall, cars don’t fly.
N: Not without the switch!
J: Have you ever been in a car with the switch?
N: Yes.
J: Has anyone ever flipped it?
N: No.
J: Why not?
N: (In a tone he may have learned from my dealings with sub-literate customer service operators:) Because then you go up behind the sky!
J: Oh, sorry. And that’s not convenient?
N: No, that’s not convenient.
Email subscription
February 10th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Side flying car person lever switch (209)
(209) Don’t ask.
February 10th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Was there supposed to be an image or something there, or are you insane?
February 11th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Niall, cars don’t fly.
This is precisely the sort of inside-the-box thinking that prevents you from being cast as James Bond.
February 11th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
This is precisely the sort of inside-the-box thinking that prevents you from being cast as James Bond.
That, and my persistence that James Bond shouldn’t be driving Nazi cars. But that’s just me, I guess.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
So Bond is allowed to have sex with hot Soviet spies, but not drive German cars?
I think I see where your priorities are, 007.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Indeed. But given that I drive an Audi and have gotten no nearer than a cathode ray tube to any of the bitchy Russian women after whom I long, you can tell I’m all over the map on this one. I’m sure you will grant, however, that any such arrangement of affairs is superior to driving Detroit and marrying Topeka…