STEREOTYPES

Recorded at a support group for stereotypes:

- Thank you all for coming, and welcome to our first meeting. I’m the British bloke with bad teeth stereotype, and I’ll be your moderator. Please introduce yourselves, starting with you, sir.


- Sure. Hi, I’m a Jewish Stereotype. I spent years thinking I was a big nose, until another jewish stereotype — a miser — pointed out to me what I really was. I can’t say I’m happier than before, but at least I know myself deeper now. Thanks for listening.


- Good evening, nice to be here. I found out recently that I’m a female stereotype, not that dumb blond I thought I was. I’m having a hard time adjusting to the idea. I didn’t mind at all being that dumb blond: she was real sweet and had a good heart.


- Thank you. Who’s next?


- I guess me. To be honest, I came here just out of curiosity. I’m black, as you can see, but I have an average size penis. So I can’t be a stereotype, right?


- I disagree. There’s more than one way to be a stereotype. I’m a Muslim and I’m not a terrorist, so initially I don’t fit the stereotype. But I’m a woman, too, and a bad driver. That’s what makes me a stereotype.


- What about me? I hate sports, but I’m not gay.


- You may be a closet stereotype.


- Hold on, everybody! How do you know for sure if you’re a stereotype and not the real thing? If you’re the lazy Mexican stereotype, what makes you different from a real lazy Mexican?


- Okay, folks, I think we’ve had enough for one session. If any of you knows an Asian stereotype, please invite them. It’d be great to have at least one of them in our group.

WIRE HANGERS 

Wire hangers live only as long as it takes to go from the cleaners to your house. There, they are replaced by nice, thick, plastic or wooden hangers. That’s when wire hangers realize that they’re not real hangers, just their skeletons.


If only they could see the lovely circus sculptures Calder was able to make with wires just like them, or imagine a readymade created by Duchamp with nothing but hangers.

Unfortunately, hangers don’t live long enough to travel and visit museums and galleries. So what they do after you no longer need them is head to a landfill and join other hangers where they tangle lovingly as only hangers do, and wait for the rain and the rust, and rot.

MOTORS

Perhaps the most psychotic of all machines, motors repeat themselves compulsively. This behavior generates heat and friction, wearing out their parts and ultimately destroying them.


To prevent motors from grinding themselves into piles of molten metal, they’re infused with heavy oils. This will delay, but not prevent, their collapse.


Motors are bipolar; they’re either dead quiet or very loud. They can’t start or fuel themselves, and keeping them clean is a challenge: incontinence sets in early, and fluids will leak.


Like mechanical junkies, motors depend on explosive liquids or deadly electrical currents to be functional. The way they see it, motion is violence; they don’t believe things like clocks and music boxes can be powered by such delicate and quiet mechanisms, and without releasing any fumes. For them, it’s got to be a hoax.


The tormented lives of motors are followed by equally inglorious endings, corroded and abandoned in junkyards, their gaskets worn out, their shafts unable to turn.

APPENDIX

A part of the body nobody needs.
The part of a book nobody reads.

"The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him."

                  Russell Baker

Hello, my name is Laurence Klinger and I live in Chicago. This blog is about objects, their secret lives, and what they go through by having to live in the same world with humans.

Every week I will publish an article, relating the misadventures of everyday things like umbrellas, keyholes, cotton swabs, and magnifying glasses.

I encourage you to post your own stories and/or create dialogues with other objects.

Enjoy!