If You Don't Get It, YOU Don't GET It.

Hello and Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool, that strange and unpredictable venue where I solicit you for personal anecdotes or observations on a subject of my choosing, the best responses to which I will write about next week. Today’s subject is things that make you go …. wait, what?

The photo above was taken early Friday afternoon in the parking lot of a two-star hotel in Morgantown, W. Va. It is, needless to say, the back of a truck. For those with puny “enlarge” function, here is what the stickers say: “Certified Pussy Wagon,” “Give Your Balls A Tug Tit Fucker,” “Big Truck Little Penis,” “Wubba Lubba Dub Dub,” “I (Luv) Guns Titties & Motorcycles,” “GFC,” “Only Chevys,” and “I Tongue Punch Fartbox’s,”

Immediately after taking the picture, we noticed there was a someone behind the wheel. It was a nice, friendly-looking, well dressed, middle-aged lady. She drove off.

Wait, what?

So that’s what I’d like you to address for our use next week. Moments that were confusing, maybe representing some sort of failure of communication you have seen or experienced, or watched as others were confused. Sometimes there is no explaining it; sometimes there is, but it just sorta immediately eluded you. Take yesterday, right here in the Gene Pool, where we published this photo, from Wheeling:

We commented on the club’s unfortunate slogan, which we implied was hilariously stupid. Most of you understood why, but several did not. You said, in effect, “Wait, what?” So, here’s the explanation: Sleazy guy goes into a strip club, his brain a fevered froth of fantasy, of lustful anticipation, only to be confronted with the painful reality of human physical imperfections.

Here’s another example of WTF, an older one that ran deep. The headline at the top of this column is from a famous radio/TV advertising slogan of the early 1990s, by The Washington Post, seeking new subscribers for The Washington Post: “The Washington Post. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.” It may have been the all-time grandest commercial in journalism about journalism, but it required adroit and very specific word emphasis by the voice actor / narrator. (Consult the headline on the top of this column. That’s how it had to be pronounced) Still, it was so subtle that some people … didn’t get it.

It was a reference to the just completed Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill Congressional hearings, which left many women confrontationally dumbfounded about how ignorant some men were about ingrained sexism in the workplace. “YOU just don’t GET it.” The later ad for the newspaper was using a clever adaptation of the same idea: “If YOU don’t get The Post, you just don’t GET all the important things that are happening around you.” Got it?

A lot of people didn’t. And the best proof of that came many years later, when The Post tried to return to that great slogan of yesteryear, but by that time their advertising agency was made up of people who had been mere children during the Thomas-Hill hearings, and who had NO idea what the slogan was supposed to mean, so they dimwittedly directed the new voice actor to pronounce it this way: “If you don’t get it, you DON’T get it,” which made no sense on any level in any context to any human being on Earth. The ad campaign quickly marinated in its own incomprehensibility, and died.

So that’s your challenge today: Send in your best true examples of “wait…what?” that you have either experienced directly or watched happen to others, or to everyone. You may interpret this challenge broadly. Send your stuff here:

And now for our Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Elon Musk. Yikes. Here is a man who has been elected to nothing ever in his life, and seems to be suffering through some levels of autism and/or borderline personality disorder, yet who also seems to be suddenly crafting American economic policy through bribery and bullying. Oh, and just yesterday, he tweeted his support for Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) neo-Nazi party.

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Okay, thanks, see you next week. But first, a final photo from our trip to West Virginia. In our time in Morgantown, we encountered only one statue. Here it is, right in the middle of High Street, in downtown.

Yes, that’s Don Knotts. Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife from the Andy Griffith Show. The guy who was so mistrusted he was only allowed to carry one bullet. The WTF is that he grew up in Morgantown, and is apparently its most famous citizen. (Second is Hoda Kotb.)

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