Thursday, December 11, 2008

Dear Mr. Burns


Dear Mr. Burns,

The six months I spent as your assistant weren’t so bad. You provided me with a consistent spring of private entertainment, which became increasingly public as I became more confident with my personal judgment of your character, and felt more comfortable communing with co-workers and friends on this account. Turns out my initial impression of you was as entirely astute: you truly are one weird fuck.

Your semblance to Mr. Burns, of the Simpsons, is uncanny. (When I shared this fact with friends, it was all too gratifying to affirm the array of expected questions: Is he bald? Yes. Liver spots? Yes! Slimy voice, hunched back, bony, fragile frame? Yes! I kid you not when I tell you he used to say, “excellennntt” more than just every so often.)

Your semblance, also, to the retarded man that stood on the street corner outside the rehabilitation center is similarly uncanny. It was a good day in the office – or at least one that solidified the growing bond between my co-workers and I - when I realized I was not the only one who mistook you, on multiple occasions, for this mumbling man on the street. Beneath his over sized, flat rimmed baseball cap, it was easy to confuse the two of you. The similarity of your perpetually nervous and overly concerned faces that would allow you easily to pass as brothers, matched perfectly your equally petite statures- physiques that appeared ever more slight under the extra-large, faded parkas you both sported, regardless of the weather. The only certain way of telling you two apart on the street was the item flouting your parka only, and not your dear look-alike's: none other (could there be a more geeky accessory? For a grown man? Oh, well, I suppose neither of you were fully-grown…) than a mini, Paul Frank backpack, dangling monkey and all. Mr. Burns, if it wasn’t for your adorable backpack, the rest of the office and I may never have known the difference between you and muttering Moe on the corner.

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