Life Is The Hardest Commute Of All
You know that moment when, having been jammed up against the door in a crowded car, you sense your station approaching and pivot to face front and suddenly see yourself in the harsh, unflattering reflection of the train window and are forced to confront all that you are, the sad lump of skin and meat that you carry with you each day and are mostly successful at not thinking too much about? That near-simultaneous feeling of disgust ("Oh, God, you") and resignation ("I guess this is what I've got left to work with from now on") and the wearying comprehension that the difference between who you think you are and who you're really hauling around in the eyes of everyone else can be plotted on a graph to express the number of days you have left in this world? You don't? Liar. Anyway, there oughta be a German word for that! I mean, there probably already is, but I mean something a little more specific than "leben."
The word is Bernhard.
When you find the word, can you also work out its opposite? You know, the one to describe what it feels like when everyone in your life insists that you're fine, you're so great, la la la look at you, there can't possibly be anything wrong while you're practically screaming at them to just fucking help because it isn't fine or normal to feel this way and nothing is at all okay?
You don't? LUCKY.
@jolie TAGS: TWO CAN PLAY THIS GAME; OUT-BALKING ALEX BALK; GONNA GO DRINK SOME BLEACH NOW THANKS; PISTACHIOS ARE DELICIOUS
@jolie <3 u, bleachie!
I AM NOT A LIAR.
lol balkan lump haha lol
I just want Alex to be happy. How can I make that happen? Can I make a donation somewhere?
@Mike Dang@twitter Don't ruin it for the rest of us.
@jolie I guess those bears won't be getting any Harry and David picnic baskets after all. Sorry, bears.
I commute with a flap hat and geisha fan.
Windowschtupping?
I got my eyebrows done last night, so I keep catching my reflection and thinking gosh, who is that handsome drag queen?
But if you drive yourself to work, then you're the prettiest girl in the whole wide car.
I've had similar experiences, except I always notice how kick-ass my hair looks.
This is why I don't stare at myself in the bathroom mirror after 4:00 am anymore.
that moment when, having been jammed up against the door in a crowded car, you… are forced to confront all that you are
Hm, yes, I would suppose that the Germans did have a word for that.
@NominaStultorum best example of Godwin's Law?
@NominaStultorum Too soon.
The Gegenstandswortgemachenheit you're looking for is the Balkgeist
It's better if you look in the window, wonder if the damage to your complexion and svelteness of form can be directly traced to your professional level of alcohol consumption or just the aging process, get off the train, go to work, and have a surprise visit from your Scotch distributor, thereby restarting the cycle. I guess I'm saying you need more pre-work whiskey because it makes me feel better. So.
@DainCurst Whiskey …or morphine?
"Once, when a young man, I espied in the street the profile of a face that was very displeasing and repulsive to me. I was not a little taken aback when a moment afterwards I found that it was my own, which, in passing by a place where mirrors were sold, I had perceived reflected from two mirrors that were inclined at the proper angle to each other.
Not long ago after a trying railway journey by night and much fatigued, I got into an omnibus just as another gentleman appeared at the other end. "What degenerate pedagogue is that that has just entered," thought I. It was myself: opposite me hung a large mirror. The physiognomy of my class accordingly was better known to me than my own."
In honor of Ernst Mach, I propose to call it Machenfreude.
You will always look 12 years older in a subway window reflection. It is a special kind of hell down there.
there might be a good one-word germanism that i can't think of, but the 2 word version is definitely "Heulendes elend." Really rolls off the tongue, too.