It is official. Law and Order has made it impossible for me to leave my house, ever.
Specifically it is Law and Order: Criminal Intent, but let’s not point fingers here. The point is that I will have to live as a hermit for the rest of my life, and also, it has made my dream of being a hobo impossible because hoboes live on street corners and on Law and Order, if you live on a street corner, you are almost guaranteed to die.
In fact, on Law and Order, if you live anywhere in the New York vicinity, and are: pretty, ugly, young, old, rich, poor, a drug-dealer, an anti-drug crusader, a prostitute, a CEO, black, white, Asian, a nun, a heretic, a billionaire’s wife, child, nephew, uncle, or second cousin sixteen times removed, or, as far as I can tell, breathing, you are, at some point, probably going to be murdered.
It’s basic mathematics. There are something like ten thousand episodes of Law and Order, because it has been on television for approximately a hundred years. In each of these episodes, at least one person dies. Sometimes two or three or twenty people die. If you average that all and multiply the number of episodes by the number of victims on each episode, you get….
Um….sixteen trillion dead people.
My math might be a little off on this one, but the point remains. There are only slightly more than sixteen trillion people in New York, which means that, theoretically, according to Law and Order, everybody in New York City should be dead by now. And yet, they persist in being in New York City and living in New York City and telling the rest of America how much better New York City is and how much more urbane and cool. This just feeds my theory that New Yorkers are probably zombies, but I digress.
The point is, with that many dead people in every episode, and with such a wide variety of victims, it’s starting to make me nervous to leave my house. In about half of the episodes, leaving their house is exactly what got the victim killed in the first place. If they had just stayed in, maybe ordered in some pizza and watched a nice crime show, it never would have happened. They would still be alive and kicking and telling the rest of the world how much better New York City is than them.
On the other hand, I am also nervous to stay inside my house. The other half of the victims on Law and Order are killed inside their homes. If they had just gone out, maybe gone out for dinner and seen a nice movie, they would still be alive and kicking etc. etc.
You can see my problem. If I stay in, I am in danger. If I go out, I am in danger. I have no sanctuary. I am slowly but surely becoming a nervous wreck. Since I started watching the show, I have begun the process of creating defenses for myself to make my house marginally safer, which include checking every door sixteen times a night to make sure that they’re all locked, pulling down the shades, considering maybe buying sixteen security systems, considering buying a very large, very loyal German Shepherd, possibly named Garbanzo, to sleep next to my bed, and also keeping my cell phone close by me while I sleep so that I can call the police if anything bad happens, or if I suspect that anything bad might be happening, which may or may not include my sprinklers going off.
Actually, I don’t think that the last precaution actually does all that much. From everything I know about police officers, they never show up to the scene of the crime until after the victim is dead.
Of course, all my knowledge of police officers is gleaned off of Law and Order. So possibly my sample is a little skewed.
What I really need is to actually marry a detective. As far as I can tell, detectives never have their homes broken into, and they are never killed, unless their contracts are up and the TV producers need a way to get rid of the character. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment