Maybe It IS Rocket Surgery!
Q&A with Bonnie Biv	December 8, 7:23 p.m.

Nothing sucks the fun out of witty repartee like having to describe why it’s witty. 

However, I am not above explaining tightly mixed metaphors to my dozen unknown readers out there, because frankly, I love you guys. (Even you who will eventually grow to hate me as much as the blinged-out ladies in my neighborhood, and visit me only for the adrenaline rush of cursing me mute.)

Plus, I sentimentally appreciate occasional cluelessness. My twinkle-eyed grandmother needed every joke explained too. And it might be genetic: I once had to rent three 1970s movies just to comprehend one Simpsons episode.

But I digress...

I’m sure you are familiar with the extremely overused cliché taunts “It’s not rocket science” and “It’s not brain surgery.”  If you're not: climb out of your bomb shelter and interact with the human race. These timeless phrases are uttered almost as often as "let's touch base."

According to today’s Wikipedia listings, the two different nouns are defined as follows:

Rocket science: an informal term for aerospace engineering especially as it concerns rockets which launch spacecraft into or operate in outer space.

Brain surgery: an informal term for neurosurgery, a discipline of medicine which provides the operative and nonoperative management … of disorders of the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems. 

As you can see, both terms are basically slang – probably originated in the 1950s – for labyrinthine activities. Today they are used figuratively to convey the overall complexity of a given endeavor.

By injecting evident sarcastic tone into “It’s not rocket science” or “It’s not brain surgery,” the speaker is able to turn meaning around and communicate, “It should be as easy as pie* to even the most dimwitted dolt.”

Through a clever combination of the two boorish chestnuts into one purposefully retarded insult, “It’s not rocket-surgery,” the writer of the toilet paper query apparently felt she was able to dish double abuse toward her husband, as in, “Really, honey, can you TRY not to be such a lazy dumbass?”

In truth, she probably either accidentally crossed the metaphors or she stole the ironic expression from movie dialogue, where I do believe I've heard it before. I can respect that; my inspirational lexicon is crap-comedy as well.

Rocket-surgery. Eh—I like it. And so, it shall now be one of my own vocabulary bon-bons.


*While I'm at it... Wikipedia defines pie as a baked food with a baked shell usually made of pastry dough that covers or completely contains a filling of ... [blah blah blah].  

For those of us who consider a kitchen to be an extension pod of some culinary version of purgatory, pie-baking rates right up there with rocket-surgery. Hence the expression "easy as pie" represents an oxymoron for a fair percentage of the populace.

Incidentally, who in blue hell has so much time on their hands that they sit around updating "pie" wikis which no one will ever read, except that one verbose self-serving blogger out there who needs editorial fodder?  I wish I were so fortunate as to be able to waste my intelligence on a bunch of anonymous web trolls all night. Wink wink.