Ask Emily: 02-05-2003

M. Harker, m'dear,It should be obvious to you at this time in your life that there are many enigmas of which humankind has little understanding. These mysteries cover a broad spectrum of fantastical and usually complex ideas, such as the existence of retirement homes in an age where the elderly should be forced to work in slave-labor camps in exchange for being allowed to remain alive. One such mystery is that of the bear driving the car in that one episode of the "Clerks" cartoon in which the cartoon is finished in anime-style by the Koreans or some other group of people who are different from me in some obvious physical way. The thing about this that you need to understand here, buddy, is that there is a lot of dispute as to the actual quote concerning said bear. One example is, "Who is driving? Bear is driving! How can that be?" Yet another reads, "Who drive car? Oh no, bear drive car! How can that be?" This is truly hard to understand, because in our experience, bears don't usually even drive cars, however, it is clearly obvious that a bear is behind the wheel in this scene: Another problem concerning the bear enigma is that there might be multiple bears driving various cars that we need to be aware of in order to properly examine the bear-driver situation: These multiple bears driving different cars may account for the varying interpretations of the bear-quote from the "Clerk's" episode. The actuality of a bear driving a car is something we don't really need to deal with on a day to day basis, so if I were you I wouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about the logistics of an ursine creature behind the wheel. You sounded pretty upset in your letter, so I'll just take this time to say that it is highly unlikely that your life will suddenly turn into a horrible anime parody where you find yourself being ferried around in a car with a bear at the helm. As we move into the 21st century, however, magnificent advances in genetic engineering have been made such that it is entirely possible (as far as I can tell) that a race of super-bears might arise and that, in time, they may evolve to the extent that they are fully capable of driving cars. Obviously I am no expert in the field of bear-metamorphosis, but I hope that such a day arrives sooner rather than later so that I can write my Ph.D. dissertation on the fact that Kevin Smith is a visionary with telepathic powers and who has predicted a glorious future for all of mankind.

The part of that cartoon where the Transformer turned from the vehicle into the robot with the people still inside was the best.