Моему замечательному мужу частенько не хватает времени, чтобы подстричься, и его шикарные волосы начинают закрывать ему уши. Что уж говорить о ведении ЖЖшечки :) Несмотря на это, хочу сохранить на просторах моего блога его незаурядные писательские способности.
Мало кто это осилит...подчеркиваю..незаурядные! :))
PSYCHOANALYZE ME OR WHY LOTTERIES MAKE AN IMMIGRANT STARBUCKS-ANGRY
So I am sitting at a Starbucks drinking coffee. Out of the kinds of coffee the place offers, I always choose regular. When I ask for a cup, I say:
"Medium regular, please,"
although I know that the size of the cup I want is called grande. This is common knowledge at least among those who frequent the place. Therefore, when I say medium my request does not immediately register. The guy at the counter gives me a dumb look and asks whether I mean grande. I nod affirmatively and say:
"Yeah, I want medium."
Following the exchange, I get my order.
And this is the way I see it. I have nothing against the coffee guy personally, but if in order to get a cup of Starbucks coffee I need to speak a different language then the guy can go to hell. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Grande sounds great if it comes from a twenty year old girl when my clothes are on the floor. It makes absolutely no sense at Starbucks when it refers to a medium-size cup of coffee.
I take my cup, pour milk into it, sit down, and pretend I'm reading. For that I choose the weekend issue of the New York Times.
A fast looking Lexus SUV parks in front of the Starbucks. A slowly moving elderly couple gets out of the car and walks in. While the husband is ordering coffee, his wife sits down next to me, apparently curious about what the hell I'm doing. I turn to her and squeeze out a friendly smile. She says that she is very pleased to meet a young man like myself who reads the New York Times and takes current affairs seriously. I thank her and do so using as few words as possible. Still, she catches what I'm trying to conceal - my foreign accent. She asks where I'm from and how long I've been in the States, and... oh, well... I answer. Then follows the question that I want to avoid at all costs:
"So, tell me, young man, how do you like America?"
I say:
"It's good, I guess..."
And then, almost as if to retaliate, I add:
"And how do YOU like it here?"
I don't know if she gets the hint that I am becoming confrontational, but she opens her mouth to say something like "what do you mean?" Luckily, her husband comes back with two grande mochas. His wife, oblivious to the fact that our small talk requires closure of some sort, completely blocks me out and says something random to her husband, like how two dollar drinks will ruin them financially. I immediately think of a reply:
"Don't be cutting down on coffee - sell the fuckin' Lexus!"
But I don't say anything because I know I won't get the grammar right. So I choke on the words that never come out.
Hi, I am an angry immigrant. Nice to meet you. Born and raised elsewhere, I came to the US in my early twenties and lived on the east coast for quite some time. I crossed the country east-west and north-south many times. The jobs that I had ranged from maintenance and painting to teaching. I even managed to get some basic education. So I can say that I've had a taste of what its like to live in America, and being treated like a tourist always rubs me the wrong way.
No, really. I think I've learned the American way.
So, every time the chick named Heather, who lives next door, backs into my car, I don't go all out and swear to get it even with her, her car, and her family. Even though I have plenty of bad karma to burn off, I act with dignity. At the sound of the metal bang, I slowly walk out of the house, kick Heather's midget dog Jingles aside (I have no idea how Heather came up with the name; may be she makes the dog swallow pennies; in any case, whenever I kick it, the bitch squeals but never actually jingles), and politely ask for insurance information. It's because I know how the system works.
When I get pulled over on my way from a bar, because my upper body is sticking out of the driver's window to make sure the car runs parallel the dividing line, and when everything about me screams DUI, I slow down to a stop, stay in the car, resist the temptation to address the cop as "OCIFFER," and don't look for spare twenty. It just doesn't work that way here. Instead, I recite English alphabet backwards like I'm God. It's because I don't mess around with the law.
When I have no job and no money I don't shave my head and embrace a social form of discontent. That's what they do back home. In America I look for work. I sit in line, wait for an interview, and suppress the Darwinian instinct to choke the applicant guy sitting next to me, who has a college degree and somehow thinks he has a better hand. Instead, I smile and pretend I'm folding. We may turn out to be co-workers. And I know that, whatever integrity we may later discover, it will only be superficial. However, it sure as hell will keep me employed for some time.
When I work, I learned to hate what I do. No worries: I've learned that it's ok to be bored. According to the 2005 survey sponsored by 24 leading U.S. companies, 42 percent of American employees are coping with work-related burnout, 33 percent believe they have reached a dead end in their jobs, and 21 percent are eager to change their jobs.
Say what? You say: "how about the American Dream?" Let me tell you something about the American Dream. It's not about me doing something that I've always dreamt of doing and becoming filthily rich along the way. It's all about daydreaming at a job that I sooner or later grow to genuinely despise. It's all about working my ass off and saving money for the day when I am old, useless, and when my advanced case of Alzheimer's forces my children (if any) to send me packing one-way to hurricane-ridden Florida. Only there and then I'll get to live my dream. Too bad it won't have anything to do with either sex or fame.
When I get my paycheck, I know that it doesn't get me any closer to that American Dream of yours. There are a number of popular myths associated with the American Dream. One is the idea that extra work gives you extra cash to spare or save. However, any immigrant who works two or three jobs will tell you that those who claim that are full of shit! Immigrants know that there's no such thing as the guarantee of a reward for ass-ripping labor that will be any more than what is necessary for mere sustenance. I, for one, know that no matter how much I work, I'll never make enough. This is so, because the more I work, the more I run myself down. And the more I run myself down, the more money I need to get myself back into the shape that will allow me to continue to perform.
Another myth is that the first half of your life you work for your money, and the second half your money works for you. I think that this idea is nothing short of a delusion. It's the kind of a delusion that gets cured very quickly when at the age of forty you are sitting in your doctor's office, complaining of weakening eyesight and regular chest pains. The delusion is completely gone when the physician tells you that what you have thought to be the first half your life is in fact your life in its entirety, and that you are fucked! You are fucked, and on top of that if you don't have health insurance, you are charged for the appointment, and you know that you are double-fucked!
Bottom line is that if you are inspired by any of these myths, you've probably been inspired by Pinocchio and the idea of a coin-tree!
And even if - miraculously and against all odds - I ever become rich in America, I'm quite sure that after all the years of meaningless work and existence that have drained me of thought and had me lose track of all the ambitions and dreams I had before my arrival into the U.S., I simply won't know what to do with the money. American Dream my ass! To me, the true embodiment of the American Dream is the Power Ball lottery jackpot, when a remarkable fortune - like manna from heaven - befalls some dude whose life has lost or never even had any direction or discernible meaning.
If that's what the American Dream is, then the odds of actually getting to live it amount to... - are you ready for this? - one in 146,107,962, according to the lottery officials' estimates! Moreover, when I think of the encounter between a man and the Power Ball riches, the following picture comes to mind. I imagine a bug crawling in the middle of a desert under the scorching punishing sun. This is its life. Suddenly it bumps into a huge ball of camel shit, jumps on it, rolls it into its bug-hole, stuffs itself with theses, and finally chokes on it.
I've never heard of a Power Ball winner, who, at least in my opinion, either needed, deserved, or knew what to do with the money. For example, I've never heard of a winner scientist who had struggled all his life to conduct ground-breaking disease-curing research due to lack of resources. Instead, a winner usually turns out to be some sick fuck, whose problems are only magnified by the insane amount of lottery cash.
In 2005 the New York Times ran an article about a Kentucky couple - Mack W. Metcalf and Virginia G. Merida - whose life of blue-collar struggle and ramshackle apartment existence, as described in the paper, suddenly changed after they shared a $34 million lottery jackpot in 2000. The money, however, poured in too fast and too soon and, as it appeared, far outpaced the winners' fuckin' thought process! When asked what he planned to do with the money, Metcalf - the seasoned alcoholic who never had a steady job and who at one point lived in an abandoned bus - said that he planned to "totally get away," disappear, and thought of moving to Australia.
Judging by Metcalf's reply alone, one could already tell that his wouldn't be a cinderella story. Moving to Australia?! How dumb was that?! The man lived in Kentucky! And if you know anything about America and believe that "oblivion" is actually a physical place, you would also know that, out of all places around the world, it has to be in Kentucky! Because there's no better way to sever your ties with civilization than by going to live in Kentucky. Believe me - I've been there! Besides, what could Metcalf do with his millions in Australia?! Build a kangaroo farm? I think that Metcalf couldn't even spell "kangaroo!" I also believe, he thought Australia was part of the Union, and he could hop a ride there!
For the sake of jackpot winners as well as for the benefit of the American society in general, lottery organizations should institute a special panel charged with handing over prize money. And if a winner has no better idea how to use it than to buy a yellow Hummer or move to an exotic location, which to him is nothing more than a flashback from the geography class that he flunked in high school, the panel should have enough discretion to say: "errr... no!" Because, if lottery really stands for the American Dream, and if the American Dream is to be associated with happiness, if not for achievement, the respect for this cultural symbol must be carefully cultivated.
Take Miss America beauty pageant, for example. Imagine that one of the contestants is a pretty gal from some god-forsaken suburbia whose only talents are to combine more than five words into a sentence and juggle at least one extra ball on top of the regular two. Imagine also that with those powers she goes on to win over the hearts of millions, becomes Miss America, and gets all kinds of publicity and perks. And no matter how overwhelming the temptation to turn into a high-class slut is, at least for the next year the girl is required to... well... behave! This is so, because she is the role-model for the American virtue; and no matter how superficial, the image helps maintain public faith in the waning notion.
Why not do something similar with lotteries? For example, instead of making winners pay taxes on the money they get, have them spend, let's say, a twentieth portion of it on a televised charity function. And it doesn't matter what it is! For what I care, they can fund a social study investigating why intelligent people vote for republicans or build a shelter for aggressively gay pandas. It'll all be great, as long as the money helps advance some form of knowledge or saves some life form from extinction!
And this will be good for two reasons. First of all, it will at least partially spare general public from the spectacle of lightning-speed and senseless money squandering. The latter - I believe - is entirely inappropriate in the society, a huge chunk of which still lives in outright poverty. In addition, the arrangement may help introduce people like Mack Metcalf to something they've possibly never had - a fuckin' hobby!
In reality lottery winners are left to their own devices, and that's a big mistake! Here's how Metcalf and his wife Merida managed their lottery prize. Metcalf never went to Australia, no! He stayed in Kentucky. I know - it's a shocker! There he bought an estate - a replica of Mount Vernon in Virginia, the home of George Washington. That's it... I can't even joke about it! Of course, Metcalf didn't intend to turn the place into a historical attraction. What did he do? You guessed it! He stocked it with horses and vintage cars.
You'd say - at least it was a good place for the family to live, right? Wrong! About a year after cashing in, Metcalf and Merida filed for divorce and agreed to split the money sixty to forty respectively. Metcalf retained the estate, and Merida went on to live by herself in a modernistic mansion where she surrounded herself with stray cats. I don't know what their stated reason was, but it couldn't be irreconcilable differences, because they had a lot in common; in particular - the passion for booze and drugs.
That's all they did in their separate bug-holes - shoot-up and drink. I'm not even sure that Metcalf got to ride on a horse or drive one of his cars. He would drink to paralysis and throw cash around - left and right. How did he do that without leaving his house? Easily! On one occasion Metcalf's ex-girlfriend talked him into writing out a check for half a million dollars! Of course, this kind of life couldn't last very long. In 2003, Metcalf died of complications relating to alcoholism. Later that same year, Merida's partly decomposed body was found in her bed. It appeared, she had died of a drug overdose...
If the American Dream is really about lottery luck, then thank you very much, but no, thanks! If there's something more to it - it has to be made abundantly clear. For that people must come together in a forum of sorts, throw in suggestions, and work out a consensus. And it would be great to see the nation unite in a debate over something other than, for example, perjury allegations against an overrated baseball slugger. Because Barry Bonds doesn't give a shit about you, dear fans! With the American Dream it can be different, granted that the symbol is nurtured collectively in an effort similar to that of raising a loving child.
Of course, when I say "collectively," I assume that U.S. immigrants will have an option to chip in too; and here's why. When it comes to the American Dream, they're the kind of folks who are most likely to have given it considerable thought. Because, no one in the right mind would leave home for good without having at least some idea what he's leaving it for. Likewise, no one would commit to hours of plane ride without carefully weighing in all cons and pros; because - in case you didn't know - flying in couch across the Atlantic fuckin' sucks!
Moreover, for a while I thought that immigrants were entitled to have their say on the matter. I thought so, because I had read about the Salad Bowl theory, which, as the name suggests, likens the American society to... a salad bowl. You know that salad is healthy and nutritious - it contains all kinds of greens and vegetables. And when you eat a salad you can tell what you're eating, because aside from having a general taste, it also preserves the distinct flavors of its ingredients. And so does the American society, according to the theory. It allows anyone's presence to be felt and any man's voice to be heard. But when I talk to Americans who confirm the description, I know that it's a liar-liar-pants-on-fire situation!
As an immigrant, I've come to realize that America is a melting pot, in which I'm to boil until I turn into a scrapple.
I bet you're wondering what the hell scrapple is. You don't know, and that's exactly my point! In fact, very few people in America know what scrapple is. To those who live in the North-East part of the country, it's a food item on the breakfast menu in almost any round-o'clock food joint. Scrapple looks like a flattened cutlet, and tastes like... It tastes like something that you'd eat early in the morning before going to work, when you don't care what the taste is and you just need to fill up your stomach with anything that requires little chewing.
What about scrapple ingredients? Once I asked about them in one of the Jersey diners - just out of curiosity. The waitress gave me a puzzled look, as if I was asking what the sum of two plus two was. She said that scrapple was processed food - big fuckin' surprise! - and was made by mixing all kinds of stuff together and pressing it all into a thin square form. That was her answer. Well, that was better than nothing, I thought. But I had no paper with me to read, and the place didn't serve liquor. I was bored. And I kept on asking. In particular, I wanted to know what exactly the girl meant by "all kinds of stuff."
The waitress was getting visibly annoyed, but she wanted a tip and, therefore, had to say something. Moreover, apparently she no longer thought that the matter was as easy as elementary math, because she went to the manager with my question. The manager was standing at the end of the counter, and I could see his reaction. He didn't care for a tip and, when confronted with the question, simply shrugged his shoulders and murmured something. I'm no lip-reader, but I swear he said:
"How the fuck should I know?!"
After giving it some thought, I've come to the following conclusion. The guy neither needed nor wanted to know. And why would he? Scrapple fills you up and kills hunger. There's nothing poetic about it, so why study it? I believe, the same logic applies to immigrants. Their role in the US is to provide raw energy for the types of work that few Americans would ever consider doing. Immigrants fill up a low-level social niche that the host culture has prepared for them. There's not much to know about immigrants.
Everything else about them - their backgrounds and the correct pronunciation of their names - is of little interest to most Americans. Immigrants are interesting only to the extent they cause nuisance. That way, they're no more than a bunch of lips and assholes. I will explain: like everyone else, they need food and a place to shit. Ironically, after persistent and continuous inquiry at a number of diners, I've finally learnt that lips and assholes of slaughtered cattle are the actual and only ingredients of the famous New Jersey scrapple. Do I need to say that very few Americans, if any, would care to learn what immigrants think about the American Dream? After all, whatever the Dream is, the great majority of them will never get to live it...
So I'm sitting at a Starbucks...
I'm eating a nut loaf cake and washing it down with coffee. The taste helps me forget about scrapple. Coffee and cakes are what Americans buy at Starbucks. Here they also read newspapers and socialize. I have a newspaper in front of me too. I'm trying to read it. But I can't get past the headline, because reading English is still a challenge. And while reading is a problem, speaking the language is a nightmare! Then, of course, there's my accent... The missus, who said I have one, is sitting right next to me.
Through the window, I see her husband's Lexus. Powered by a new hybrid engine, it's a remarkable piece of machinery. It is to environment, what the Incredible Hulk is to town infrastructure. At low speeds the vehicle is propelled by an environment-friendly electric motor. It is calm and peaceful. Once a certain speed limit is reached, however, the standard V-8 kicks in and fucks up everything that the electric engine has been designed to preserve. I marvel at the Lexus. But I have a feeling I'll never afford to drive a car like that. I don't have a job now, and it doesn't look like I'll find one any time soon.
Believe it or not, but I'm actually quite ok without a Lexus. This is because I've convinced myself that my version of the American Dream doesn't necessarily involve driving a luxury car. All I want is to build a house, plant a tree, write a book, and, possibly, save the world along the way. And I want to be vocal about it. But I know that if I try to convey it in English, I'll sound like a pair of lips and an asshole. Besides, the couple next to me, doesn't seem to listen. They're talking about the price of coffee, weather, and their granddaughter's enrollment at an Ivy-League institution.
I'm pissed...
I have no voice in this place. But I'm sure I'll find it one day. Until then, I'll be taking it out on the guy behind the Starbucks counter! I've made him understand that when I say "medium regular", I mean "grande." He listens to me and I don't care why. It may very well be because my fist is larger than his head. Or it may be because I pay for my coffee. Whatever the reason, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that I get his attention. Say what? You say I'm pathetic? Well, then - screw you! I say, this is definitely a step in the right direction!
By Yankee (DVD)
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88.8){kind=small}
aviva_ru's journal
