Pickle Zombie

For the record, self-referencing apology comics are for “newbs.” I just thought it was funny.

What the fuck is up with doors?

On the surface, a simple device. Naught but a wall on a hinge. The hinge of course is of the convenience of getting it the hell out of my way when I want to pass through the barrier it’s designed to penetrate. Now, I understand that some of them choose to be more wall-like than others in the interest of security. The ones that really drive me nuts are the ones that are deployed by well-wishing architects, with my best wishes in mind, and then co-opted by the building’s actual owner and then corrupted into something maddeningly unuseful.

Department stores are the most frequent offenders. They often have two of the contraptions slapped on to their exterior. Of course, whilst I have my infant son supported on my right arm, I will tend to want to open the door on the left, because the opposition of forces between my arm and the standing weight of the portal itself, when applied to it lever on the fulcrum of its bolt, is most efficient that way. The meaning of life is not so difficult a riddle when you’re a tall plank screwed to a bolt that’s swinging on a hole screwed the wall. It’s to swing open and swing closed again.

Only it doesn’t. It stands there stubbornly, with a face full of easily breakable glass holding it back from being an effective wall, and a store owner with head full of rocks preventing it from being an effective door. The other door opens just fine while an uncomfortable twisting of my wrist, which removes security as a possible motive for this incongruity.

Doors mixed with hydraulics also enrage me. I can understand such a device at a business, a machine for closing the door for careless customers. But residentially, I find the idea defunct. I can’t count the number of times my computer bag got caught on the screen door as I left for work because I didn’t assume the proper dragon stance to hold it open with my heel while I locked the door that mattered.

Our new apartment building should win some kind of Olympic award at this sort of thing, though. Some plaque extolling even the architect’s blatant disregard for reason in field of wall penetration. At the front of the building is a tiny room into which you can go to gain access to the building via buzzing. This room is no more than six feet across in any direction, and has two doors facing the outside world. One of them is always fucking locked. But it’s a moot point in this case, because the side that faces the interior of the building only has one door. The icing on this terrible, cancer-ridden cake is that the door they locked is the one that aligns directly with the sole door on the other side, forcing you to travel an extra six inches to make up the diagonal.

Gold.

Ja.