It's satire, you jerks.
September 26, 2005
TO: Spiderman
Subject:
AN OPEN LETTER TO SPIDERMAN
FROM THE SANITATION DEPARTMENT OF NEW YORK CITY
Dear Spiderman,
First of all, thank you very much for all that you have done for New York City and its inhabitants. We all feel safer knowing you are out “webslinging” among the skyscrapers of New York for violent criminals, tentacled super geniuses, hovering color-themed goblins, et al. No one can argue that.
However, I would like to draw your attention to what may seem at first a trivial issue but which when seen in its proper perspective will perhaps cause you to reconsider your primary mode of locomotion.
You get about the city by means of the aforementioned “webslinging.” And it’s fantastic to watch. It always amazes me when I hear nearby police sirens and there’s an audible gasp from everyone on the sidewalk. I look up and there you are swinging away. Used to take my breath away, Spiderman. But then one day, about a week into my tenure as a sanitation worker, I started asking myself all these crazy questions, like, “What happens to those web lines of his? Do they dissolve right away? Are they dangerous if left alone? Who has to clean them up?” It turns out I do.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to remove a superdense organic polymer with the tensile strength of a steel cable from the underside of an 17th century Rhineland gargoyle 83 stories up without damaging the building or the gargoyle?
No, I bet you don’t. You’re a superhero. You don’t have time for all those niggling questions, questions like, “At what rate do open-air activated enzyme strands biodegrade?” or “How many chisels have to be lost to attempted web removals before the city starts making sanitation workers pay for it out of pocket?” or even, “What happens to one of those sharp, heavy tools suspended hundreds of feet in the air when the web they’re attached to finally dissolves months later?” The answer: it plummets to the earth and maims Ronald P. Devlin. That’s me, Spiderman. Just as you can’t recall the location of every web you disease our city with like so many gangrenous capillaries, I can’t recall the hundreds of cleaning tools I’ve now lost to your arm snot. Heck, I can’t recall a lot of things these days, but that happens when your brain is given an impromptu amputation by plunging construction tools.
In a way, though, I should thank you. You see, since the accident, I have been bound to a motorized wheel chair and unable to move any of my appendages. I even have a machine that breathes for me! That’s not the thank you part. The thank you part is that I won a sizable workman’s comp reward and, after recovering consciousness, have had the “leisure” time to become the President of the sanitation worker’s union Local 117. Yeah for me.
And I couldn’t have done it without the razor sharp focus newly imparted to me by the crushing loneliness imposed upon me by complete immobility. Thanks Spiderman! (Before you ask: I dictated this letter by blinking my eyes in Morse Code. So I guess I fibbed a little about being completely immobile. Woopsy.)
But it’s not just the people of New York you’re hurting. Your glue-ropes are like enormous roach motels, trapping thousands of birds and squirrels every year, and on three recorded occasions, horses. Yes, horses. “How did horses get stuck in my webs?” you ask. We don’t know. But that’s ok, we’re not detectives. We’re sanitation workers. Our job is to clean up average every day messes, you know, like this completely common scenario: a beautiful chestnut pony walks under one of Central Park’s historic bridges and manages to become entangled in some of your home made projectile wrist-jizz left to dangle from above. The beautiful equestrian rears up in terror, tragically, ensnaring and twisting itself ever further, until it eventually is pulled off the ground by the shear elasticity of your web. It bays in terrible agony as the weight of its own body begins to cause its own skin, hair, and even superficial muscles to be ripped right off its body and onto your adhesive death vines, leaving a grisly tithe ot your complacency, and forcing a hundred little girls and boys who had the misfortune to pass by just then to witness the aftermath and cry aloud, “Why does that horse have no skin on its tummy, mommy? Why can I see its rib bones poking out, mommy? Mommy, why is foam coming out of its mouth? Why are its eyes rolling back in their sockets, mommy? Why are the police pulling out their guns, mommy? Why are ravens pecking at its dead eyes mommy? Why am I never going to sleep again mommy Why WHY WHY?”
I bet you’ve never had to listen to those questions. Well we have.
Listen, this has been fun, but I must wrap things up. My eyes are beginning to redden from the constant friction inherent in my particular form of communication… if you know what I mean (wink wink). Please note the effort involved in actually having to communicate “wink wink” and the ensuing explanation.
A couple final thoughts though… if you were really a Spider Man, wouldn’t it be more accurate for the webbing to shoot out of your ass, like a spider? It would be more fitting considering you’ve been shitting all over our city and leaving the employees of local 117 to clean up after you for years now.
Also, I know it fits with the “cleaning up the streets” metaphors that superheroes and Republicans enjoy using so much, but could you refrain from leaving recently captured miscreants cocooned in New York City trash cans. We get it. They’re filthy criminals and you’ve put them where they belong. In the trash. Very subtle. I guess your spider sense doesn’t go off for belabored metaphors.
Anyway, that’s it. Thank you for your time and attention in this matter. Oh, and my kids think you’re the greatest.
Cordially,
Ronald P. Devlin
The Sanitation Department of New York City
posted by The Crespo @ 11/03/2005
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