I'm not very good at building or fixing stuff. When things break, the question I usually ask is "If i don't get this fixed, what's the worst that's gonna happen?" And then I ignore it and hope for the best.Maybe it's because I'm Jewish. We're not the best at being Mr. Fixit. You don't see a lot of Weinbergs working down at The Home Depot. "This hex wrench here, it's very good for publishing newspapers...or escaping persecution." I think Jesus was the last Jewish carpenter. We saw how that worked out and said, "Yeah, um, let's try accounting."
The only tool I really know how to use is a level. And a level's not very useful if you can't actually build anything. Plus, it's tough to sound manly using a level: "Oh yeah, that thing is totally straight. Straight as fuck. Straight...just like my sexual preferences!" Just doesn't cut it.
My incompetence is made worse by the fact that my girlfriend's dad knows how to build/fix just about anything.
He recently came to our apartment and built us this incredible shelving unit that's all beautiful and fits perfectly in the space. Meanwhile, all I can do is hand him stuff and pick up anything that drops. When he asks me for help, I hear a parenthetical "(jewboy faggot)" at the end of everything he says. "Can you hand me that hammer (jewboy faggot)?"
Then he brings in the heavy artillery: a pancake air compressor. Contrary to what I thought at first, this is not used to shoot pancakes at people. (Sounds like a great way to feed the needy though, huh?) What it does do: You hook up different attachments to it, and it becomes a drill, or a nailgun, or a how dare you fuck my daughter machine. I swear that's what the setting on it said: "How dare you fuck my daughter (jewboy faggot)." It was a very anti-semitic and homophobic piece of machinery.
Anyway, he finishes drilling and nailing and builds this amazing thing and I'm left with the ladyfolk to do all the women's work at the end. We paint the thing, clean up the sawdust, and take our tampons in and out repeatedly. And then dot our i's with hearts. And try on Ugg boots. And watch Gray's Anatomy. And complain about how hard it is to find a good man these days.
Then I brought out the level and declared, "Oh yeah, that's way straight."
