StoogeNotes: Kafka’s Metamorphosis

When I was getting my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Beverage Therapy with a minor in Condometry, I did not have all that much spare time to devote to classes.  Needless to say, I definitely did not have time to read all of the fucking books I was supposed to read for those classes.  I did not even have time to read the goddamn Cliff Notes.

So, I usually just talked to people who had already taken those classes and asked them what the books were about.  In this way, I could get an entire semester’s “reading” done over a few beers and a bag of weed.

For all you youngsters reading my blog, please do not take any unintended messages away from this.  While it’s true that I graduated from an Ivy League University with honors and today have an awesome job and am, in general , a bigshot at whom women throw themselves because I am considered A Good Catch, it’s also true that I never experienced the pleasure or gained the wisdom that those classic works of literature had to offer.  Furthermore, I never got the edumacation for which my trust fund so dearly paid, and that is why I am so stoopid today.  Meanwhile, I constantly worry that The Man will one day realize just how insanely ignorant I am of literary classics and will, as a result, take away my expense account and the secretaries and interns who give me blowjobs every day.

All that I’m saying is — and this is for you kids out there — there is really only one lesson to be learned from all of this: if you are willing to share your dope, you never, ever need to read a book.  Please don’t read anything more into any of this.

Now, I know that some of you don’t have any dope to share, because you are poor, or because your parents sent you to some fucked up redneck bible college in Texas or Tennessee, or because you are afraid of violating the conditions of your parole.  There is no shame in any of that, except for those of you attending the redneck bible colleges.

Stoogepie to the rescue.  Again.

Because I am a Major Celebrity, I feel like I should give something back to society in addition to my court-mandated hours of community service.  So from time to time, I will post StoogeNotes™.  These are ultra-condensed versions of classic literature.  These summaries are more than enough to get you through a class about a particular piece of literature and, if you are creative, will even get you through an essay.  And they will take, like, five minutes to read.

And you don’t need to be in school to enlighten yourself by reading these summaries of classic literature.  Bringing up classic literature is a great icebreaker at parties.  And I have found that many women bring up classic literary figures as a sort of benchmark at clubs and bars to decide whether you are, indeed, worthy of fucking them up the ass later that night.

Today’s StoogeNotes™ selection is Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

Summary:
The story opens when this dude, Gregor Somethingorother, awakens from a night of wet dreams to find that his nose is full of cockroaches.  Not those huge American cockroaches, but those little, disgusting German cockroaches like we have here in New York City.  See, the story takes place in Germany, so it is those nasty-assed little German roaches that are up Gregor’s nose.

Pretty much, most of the rest of the story is Gregor thinking about having cockroaches up his nose.  Really.

Finally, because it is hard to breathe with all those damn cockroaches scurrying around up his nose, Gregor goes to the doctor.  After Gregor fills out a lot of paperwork because Germany has socialized medicine, he encounters this really hot, sexy German nurse.  He eyes the nurse lustily while thinking about titty-fucking her, but he just tells her that he has a horde of roaches up his nose. 

The sexy nurse tells Gregor he should just blow his nose and hands him a handkerchief, because Kleenex had not yet been invented when this story was written.  Gregor blows his nose and about a billion cockroaches stream out and Gregor dies.

The End.

Questions your professor might ask:  Were the roaches up Gregor’s nose a symbol of something else, like snot?  Or were they just, you know, roaches up a dude’s nose?  Also, what’s up with all those fucking roaches up somebody’s nose?

Trivia to impress your professor, especially if she is a hot teaching assistant:  In Kafka’s original draft of Metamorphosis, the sexy nurse tells Gregor to lay down and she then attempts to kill the cockroaches up his nose by stomping on them with her stiletto heels.  That is how Gregor dies at the story’s end.  The publisher of the story demanded that Kafka rewrite the ending because stomping on a person’s face with stiletto heels was an accepted medical practice at the time in Germany and, in fact, is still a common feature in German porn.  The publisher did not want to infuriate the medical community and lay readers by implying that stomping on someone’s face was dangerous.  So, Kafka changed the ending to have Gregor simply blow his nose, which all Germans knew might just kill a dude.

That’s it for this installment of StoogeNotes™.  Next time, who knows what fucking story I will summarize?