Image and geekitude

Maureen Dowd's got a piece in the NY Times this morning about New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio eating pizza with a knife and fork. (If this puzzles you--the idea that a columnist for one of the nation's papers of record is writing about eating pizza--you obviously do not understand one of the central tenets of being a New Yorker: Thou shalt not eat pizza with a knife and fork. Seriously.) What it's really about is personal image and politicians, how one slip up can bring into question whether or not a pol's carefully crafted public persona is as genuine as they want you to believe it is, and how delicate walking such a tightrope can be. The headline is "Tines that Try Men's Souls." It's an excellent piece, wry and carefully observed. At the same time, the headline showed me what geek I am. Why?

Last year, I read "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge, a sprawling first-contact novel with brilliantly conceived alien races, one of which the human protagonist refers to as the Tines because of their long, razor-sharp claws.

So when I saw the headline, "Tines that Try Men's Souls," my first, confused thought was "Dowd's writing about science fiction?" and then "What? Aliens in Gracie Mansion?"

Yes, I'm peculiar that way.

ETA: My favorite comment on the Dowd piece: "God gave us fingers and hands to eat pizza. It is written in Genesis. Eating pizza with a knife and fork is clearly forbidden in Leviticus and warned as a sign of the Apocalypse in Revelations."