If You Make Things, You Are My Brother, Chapter XVII: The Roentgens Are Not Related To Me Or Any Other Regular Human Woodworkers

So my friend Gerard, who lurks in the opposite top corner pocket of the continental US, and imparts his English as he indulges in his pixel Jupiter Complex from there at American Digest, raining well-deserved bolts down on various varlets, sent this little trifle along. The Roentgen’s Berlin Secretary:

My old familiar Ben Franklin is erroneously credited with saying that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Of course the actual quote, “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy,” is infinitely more elegant, but the point stands either way. What is the Roentgen cabinet in my email inbox proof of?
 
I make furniture, after all. That, that –that thing–in the video is just like furniture, in the same way that a Victoria’s Secret catalog is the same as a date with Tom Brady’s wife. Or as my other familiar, Samuel L. Clemens once observed, “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” So I must struggle to find le mot juste, or more accurately, les mots juste. Here goes:

The Roentgen Berlin Cabinet is proof that God hates me, and that Gerard wants me to take my own life with my own hand.