How We Survived – Iron Sights (Nano 2016, Chapter 4)
Patton picked at the small pieces of ice that were beginning to form on his moustache as he stood above the ice breaking prow of the canal boat. The canal listed slightly from left to right as Lawrence moved his massive body along the length of the boat. Lawrence pushed his sleeves up slightly to keep his cigarette away from the fur around the cuffs of his coat. He leaned down to Patton offering him a very large cigarette from a gold case, which Patton gladly took. Any time spent near a flame, or even an ember was very welcome on the ice breakers. Long distance cargo boats rarely had many creature comforts.
“Do you know how impossible it’s going to be to find him?” said Lawrence aimlessly, as if speaking to no one in particular.
Patton lit the cigarette and looked up at Lawrence’s face. Lawrence stared out over the Siberian planes and exhaled slowly, his gargantuan chest rising and falling as he smoked. He was totally at home with the snow silently falling on his shoulders, while keeping a sharp eye out for arctic foxes and bears.
“It couldn’t possibly be as hard as you think” said Patton, struggling a little with the cigar sized cigarette.
How We Survived – Land Of Enchantment (Nano 2016, Chapter 3)
Nothing that was poorly defended was ever worth stealing. The stuff they wanted to stop you from taking, now that had value. They’d lock it up, put it behind bars, surround the bars in plate steel, mount guns on it, and do everything possible to keep it out of your grubby mits. Because they wanted to keep it in their greasy grasp.
The domes were locked up, in a way, but nothing was so heavily fortified in this land as the trains that criss-crossed in the open air. The first hurdle to stealing from a train was its speed. At the first sign of bandits, they’d lean on the levers, crank all their engine cars up as high as they could, and they’d start rocketing across the land. To hear a behemoth like that pass by miles away was one thing. To ride a motorcycle right next to it while the giant steel wheels skipped and sparked under the torque was something else. The engines were the size of houses, propelling miles long trains, carrying towns and cities worth of people. It was the only way to keep the cities alive – filling an iron box with lifeblood and pumping it along steel veins.
Everything a man needed, from beggar to banker, was on those trains. Luxuries like fresh coffee, pure sugar, and clean alcohol was all in steady supply. From great cotton producing domes in the south came good bandages, from the north meltwater was pumped into tankers bigger than city halls, from the east came great loads of grain and livestock. And from the west came people. Each found its place on the train, and as the domes became entrenched as the solution rather than a short term cure, the trains got bigger. When simply adding another engine car and another mile became insufficient, they added another story. They added fifty feet in width. The great steel chains were now so large that news of an attack on the middle of the train might not reach the end for an hour. Size was the second hurdle.
How We Survived; Strawberry Canyon ( Nano 2016, Chapter 2)
There are no ends on the earth. Each horizon is just a slice, keeping your mind in place, trying to prevent you from wandering too far. After the exodus started, some people decided that this was the slice for them, and that they weren’t moving. They started digging into the earth, and imprisoning themselves within sprawling domes. José was having none of it.
He’d always been a rambling man, and no dust bowl was going to stop him. Back in the old days before the war, they had seen this happen before. Crops died in the ground, crumbled to dust and left barren earth behind them. He dimly remembered a childhood friend that was sold because his mother couldn’t afford to keep all the children alive. Occasionally throughout his life he had considered looking that kid up, but with the constant fleeing at the time, it didn’t seem likely that he could have any idea where that kid went.
He slowed his motorcycle and pulled off the road for a cigarette. It hadn’t been that long since people had gotten themselves into a big panic and started running, but they had moved fast. Mostly the land looked like it always had, just maybe a little drier. But every 50 miles there was another ghost town, and most of them ripe for the picking, if you knew what you were looking for. He could get used to not paying for gas, or a bed, or cigarettes and food. The road provided.
How we survived; The dark bulb (Nano 2016, Chapter 1)
It takes a lot to unseat people from the natural order of things. People will tolerate war, they’ll tolerate rationing, they’ll tolerate shortages, and hardship. They’ll tolerate atrocity if they have to, at least for a while. But each has their breaking point, and as one after another they begin to snap like too dry brushwood, the world weakens. Each stress adds up, causing the fractures to merge and form fissures.
Some break when the radio stops playing. Others when the air conditioning is a few degrees off. But some won’t break until the earth crumbles in their hands, and takes to the wind just like their hopes. The loss of hope is the last breaking point for so many. They’ll die where they stand when the hope leaves them. Or they’ll rage against the end of the world.
It’s hard to see a revolution when it’s happening all around you. The rains slowed or stopped, and you don’t notice at first. The paper told you it was a problem, but the paper is full of problems. The protests start, and their inconvenience scratches at your windows, but you’d swear it was just the wind. The violence happens elsewhere; it won’t reach me. Safe and tucked within a country, bubbled by your state, softened by your city. Safe. Always safe.
Then the protests turn to anger, and the anger turns to property destruction, or to blood filled coups, and that was the point at which you started paying attention. Weeks and days too late, you decided that now was the end of the world. Ignoring the symptoms, ignoring the signs, literally ignoring the writing on the wall. It was coming for you too, the whole time. These ill winds whispered your name amidst the dry sagebrush, it whistled the song of your life in the pines. The drip drip of drying water fell in the canyon of your abandoned life.
WTF America: The Squeaky Red Cog (Chapter 31)
Working in the US provides some strange fringe benefits.
The squeaky red cog
It’s labor day in America. The day of discount mattresses. There are huge sales happening today, and I have become a man that now works these sales. Each day I’m toiling in the retail mines, loading dust covered merchandise into the carts bound for the surface. Once those carts reach the surface they are taken by myself, and others, and hammered and worked into deals. We’re not making the merchandise, I’m not working a sewing machine, I’m not spinning or harvesting cotton. I’m just a man putting clearance stickers on boxes of shoes.
Yes dear readers, after 5 years of unemployment back home, and around 18 months of self-employment as a wordsmith I have joined the regular working world. That world where you’re expected to be at a place, at a time, to do a thing, for 40 years until you die, and you get paid every few weeks a set amount. So that’s nice.
Because of something akin to an NDA I am unable to talk about the specifics of where I work and the practices therein. Also, because I’m not a dullard that wishes to lose his job, I’m not telling you where I work, or when I work, or who I work with. Any names referenced have been changed to protect the employed.
WTF America: Ronald Reagan (Chapter 30)
Ronald Reagan
Religious Monster Trucks
So when I first considering this chapter, I figured that it would be about Ronald Reagan and memory, and I’d like to head you off at the pass if I may – I’m not taking pot shots at the man for having alzheimers. Largely I’m not taking pot shots at all. I don’t have an issue with Reagan’s memory, but a problem with the way he appears in memory.
Any catholic folk out there have more than likely run into a picture of Jesus. He’s on the candles, he’s on that sacred heart picture and all that. We have this collective image of Jesus, and if you pay attention to… anything outside of the Jesus myth you’re probably of the opinion that he wasn’t a fine haired, blue eyed, all American white guy, but a short middle eastern dude who just wanted to make the world a better place.
You can see the similarities in the Reagan story. And it is a story at this point. Ronald Reagan, for those of you that are young or hard of learning, was the President of the United States of America from January of 1981 to January of 1989, inclusive. He was a member of the republican party, and he did many things that presidents do. He said no to drugs, agencies under his purview funded terrorists and toppled regimes, and he pardoned turkeys every year. Also – how fucking sarcastic is it that the president of the US pardons a turkey on the same day as Americans consumer millions of them. Bet they make the pardoned guy watch. Sick bastards.
WTF America: Coffee (Chapter 29)
Coffee
You see, it's a tiny biscuit, or a massive biscuit here. No in between.
Oh that bitter of brews, that hallowed of liquids, that most venerated of caffeinated beverages. Coffee. Americans love that shit. That inky bitter fluid, they love it hot, the love it iced, they love it in shots, the love it riced (Rice milk – get it?) It doesn’t matter the occasion, or the time of day, there’s coffee. In the morning there’s coffee, in the afternoon there’s coffee, there’s a hot black beverage in the evening, but maybe it’s decaf, or maybe it’s milky, or maybe it’s a quad shot espresso because you’re up all night.
And they are up all night. Because the coffee shops, unlike most, are open at 4am and 5am to cater to the early morning crowd. The coffee shops are open until 1am, or until 4am the next day, and there’s a coffee shop near my house that never closes during the college months because it’s right next to a college campus. Every hour of the night and day there are at least 4 or 5 people there, either getting an extremely early morning, or a very late night. I wonder sometimes if people are there sobering up after a night on the town. They offer coffee to sober up the drunk here, at least they do in the movies. Irish people are offered a door by which they can exit if they’ve had too much to drink.
It’s intrigues me, this coffee obsession, because I do not drink coffee. I make it in the morning for my American wife, I spend time at coffee shops with friends, I grind a bunch of it at the grocery store for my American wife to drink later. But I’ve never consumed it. I like my drugs to be a background hum, a subtle noise, just enough to take the edge off. A cup of tea in the morning doesn’t feel like it gives me a lot of pep, it doesn’t crank my eyes open and force me awake. But it’s absence will cause my eyelids to creak downwards in tiredness and crankiness. Similarly I vape to derive a low level of nicotine; I like to coast, I don’t like to race. But the way these people drink coffee, you’d think they had hot bean water instead of blood.
They’re bitchy, they’re irritable, they’re downright repellent in some cases before they’ve pounded a few salted caramel macchiato lattes. Don’t even talk to them until they’re had their red eye, or their green eye, or whatever cute name they’ve come up with for an unreasonable number of unreasonably espresso shots crammed into a cup. And they know what they like. Everyone that drinks coffee has the perfect method of making it, and they’ve got a perfect way of telling others how to make it too. A skinny latte, a soy cappuccino, a frappucino, a blended iced toddy, a steaming cup of whipped cream and ice cream, and pumpkin spice. All that shit to mask the taste of coffee. From what I’ve heard it’s bitter, so no wonder I see people putting 6 fucking packets of artificial sweetener in it.
No word of a lie – there are packets of artificial sweetener on the tables here. And they make it very well known what they are; they say aspartame, and sucralose, and all the rest on the back. I guess some people know that, so they go with the weird sugars instead, which apparently are becoming popular. Every few months someone has figured out a new way to derive sweeteners, both artificial and real from new sources. High fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, Cactus juice (It’s ‘agave syrup’ but my way is funnier) stevia, sugar in the raw, cane sugar in the raw, maple syrup, maple sap. I’d love to know which fucker decided that it was super healthy to put butter in their coffee. They call that bulletproof coffee, and I can only assume that’s because it forms some sort of impenetrable coating on the top that is akin to kevlar or ceramic plates.
Then the milk, the cream, the mix, the water, the whipped cream, the half and half, the ‘creamer.’ The soy, the coconut milk, the almond milk, the lactose free milk, the 2 percent, the whole, the skim, the…. fucking peanut water or something, or corn water. It’s coming. Wait and see the health nuts explode when someone manages to make a milk like substance out of kale, or artichoke hearts, or some other superfood. Skinny half-fat kale latte smoothies all round lads, with 4 heaping teaspoons of all natural, totally unnatural sweetener derived from some chemical run off from some industrial process.
I’m amazed there aren’t warring factions out there right now loading stones into slings because the other sides dares to use a paper filter instead of a hemp filter. People get very uptight about their coffee. There are coffee snobs, as there are any snobs, but the coffee people are all drinking essentially the same thing – hot bean infusion. They put it in french presses, because that’s the most pure coffee – it doesn’t pass through a filter. Or they put it in a keurig because that’s the most pure coffee – it’s a perfect individual serving. Or they put it in a Kemex, or a percolator, or an infuser, or it’s cold brewed, or vacuum siphoned, or it’s the most concentrated coffee known to man and it retails for thousands of dollars per bottle. Costs more than gasoline and champagne combined, which sounds like the world’s most decadent cocktail in a post-gasoline apocalypse. They should call it Sumatran whiz-bang. With half and half.
According to this here infographic that I stumbled upon, coffee is integral to the American experience. It became patriotic to drink coffee over tea after the Boston Tea Party apparently. 80 percent of Americans drink coffee, people will wait a full week out of every year on line for coffee. These people love the shit out of coffee.
And I’ll tell you why, most nervous of readers – they’re a jittery fucking people, with too much shit to do. I’ve noted that most days in America, aside from those holidays where people don’t work, are full. There’s work to be done, often 8-12 hours worth of it. There’s restaurants to visit, there’s coffee houses to go to, you need to socialize, you need to work out, you need to watch tv, you need to participate in the running of the Americans every Black Friday. There’s such a monumental amount of shit out there to fill your day with that I don’t believe your average American could do it all without the stimulated brought by that most legal of highs – coffee. Examine, if you will, the countenance of people in line for coffee in the mornings, especially when it’s busy. The baristas are hopped up, having necked a heroic amount of coffee during the wee hours of the morning. But the customers haven’t had their proper coffee yet. Some may have had a quick cup before they left the house to steel themselves against the trial that is getting to the coffee shop.
But most of them look pretty miserable. It’s the look of a drinker waiting for a pint at happy hour on Friday after a miserable week. It’s the look of a smoker walking to the all-night garage to get cigarettes after they couldn’t sleep without one more smoke. It’s that universal look of addicts that are super close to the score, but there’s something keeping them away from it. In this case it’s other addicts that had the good sense to get there earlier. I’m not bagging on coffee drinkers for being hooked – I’m hooked on nicotine, I get it all too well. I’ve worn that face while walking to the vape store after a night without my preferred stimulant.
The Americans I’ve met are generally ok people. No larger a population of assholes than one would expect, a few exceptional individuals, but no more so than any other population. “Never take an asshole on vacation,” someone used to say, “for you’ll only find one as soon as you get there.” Might have been my grandfather that said that, not sure. But I feel like the American people are tense, so the legal upper that is coffee suits them down to the ground. Their day is full, and can be made fuller with coffee. More activities can be crammed into those hours between sunrise and sunset, and with coffee the hours outside of those can be claimed.
They’re a tightly wound people. Just watch the outrage that happens when someone asshole tweets about some other asshole, and then asshole A apologizes, at which point no one believes them, because everyone took the liberty of flying off the handle immediately so they wouldn’t have to waste time doing it later. There’s a phrase – “Going postal” – that means people have completely lost the plot and shot up their office, which was usually a post office. This wasn’t coined lightly; it came into existence after a real-life series of shootings. The US went to war with Afghanistan a month after September 11th. I imagine the US scrambles the jets a lot. People shoot at each other, because someone was holding a pack of skittles, or a wallet, or a phone, and asshole A thought that was a clear and present danger to their life.
As a country, people love coffee. I don’t know if that’s what’s making them nervous, but I’m sure it isn’t helping. Your two main recreational liquids in this country are coffee and alcohol. You’d think the beer would cancel out the coffee, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Americans seem to fly off the handle with regularity and aplomb. It would be utterly foolish to suggest that the nation ban coffee. Foolish to suggest they ban anything, come to think of it. I just think it’s kind of poetic and appropriate that this country’s drug of choice is caffeine. The land of 5-hour energy, the land of pint cans of monster, and blitzkreig, and booty sweat. It’s a balls out screaming charge towards the future, and the grabby handed motion of collecting and exploiting as much time as humanly possible. Each coffee drinking American grabs their cup of joe in the morning, and pours liquid power into their veins. They’ve got shit to do son, so get the fuck out of my way, pour some of that thunderwasser into my mocha and lets get this shit done at breakneck pace.
WTF America: Hardly an ending at all (Chapter 28)
Hardly an ending at all
I purchased a moon pie in a gun shop.
So here we find ourselves, as I find myself, at the end of this particular journey. But much like journeys don’t really begin, this one doesn’t really end either. I’ve been musing only on the first year, and the other scattered weeks and months that I’ve experienced America for. There’s so much more to come, both in terms of a life here, and in terms of this book.
The way NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) works is that you have the month of November, just 30 days, to get 50,000 words down. It’s something I do every year because the only way to get better at something is practice, and what better practice for novel writing is there other than writing novels. The creative process is gamified in the best possible way – you have a little box to enter your word count as you write, and the more you update that box the closer you get to pushing a bar over a line. It externalizes the goal, and it turns creativity into filling bars. And filling bars tickles something in the gamer brain.
It’s almost like you’ve accidentally got a novel at the end of the month, as a side effect of filling those bars. They always say, don’t they, for they’re always saying things – “Everyone’s got a novel in them” and the purpose of NaNoWriMo is to make people externalize this novel. I’ve learned that not every novel that’s written is good, because I’ve got some junk lying around on hard drives and in cloud storage. But you wrote every day, and you had a plan, and you had a goal. That’s the reward, and that’s the lesson.
I hope to bring this lesson on board going forward, because writing about this country that I inhabit, this nonsensical land, the area between cold and baleful seas that they call America, has been wonderful. The support I’ve received for it makes me believe that this cobbled together mass of nonsense might have a shot. But we need more book before we can do that. This one’s too short, and there’s so much more America to experience. I couldn’t possible stop here, I’d be doing the country and myself a disservice.
People asked me about the things I didn’t cover. I was asked why I didn’t cover the meat ballet that is sports entertainment professional wrestling, and I must admit that’s a fantastic idea. I spent an hour or two researching the topic and realized there was so much more to it than I remembered from my viewership that lasted for a few years during the attitude era. The gimmicks, the violence, the consumerism, the hackneyed storylines, the simple villains and even simpler heroes. This is a marvellous topic to cover, however I need to get more experience with it before I can talk about it at length.
There’s so much that I haven’t done yet. I live in Arizona and haven’t visited the grand canyon. I haven’t seen the border fence that everyone assures me is full of holes, and those holes are full of Mexicans or Isis agents, possibly both. I haven’t experience enough of California to write more about it, and I would very much love to. The people are so pretty, oh so pretty, and I wonder if they’re as vacant as they’re made out to be. I haven’t been to the East Coast at all, I haven’t seen the amber waves of grain, I’ve never visited America’s hat. I haven’t driven a car here, I’ve never been to a car show, I’ve never seen a monster truck rear and snarl as the audience barks beer and peanuts over one another as yet another old chevy is turned into a pancake of its former self.
There’s the biggest mall in America, which you’d assume is the biggest mall in the world, and I haven’t seen its special brand of lunacy. I haven’t been exposed to the snows of the northern states that would, in a stroke, overwhelm every pitiful Irish snow flurry that I’ve ever seen I haven’t experience beer pong. I was once promised shitty lattes at 3am by a friend in North Carolina, and I should probably take her up on that. I was also promised tea on a porch in the same state by another friend, and I should get in on that offer. I’ve never visited the south, never been in a truck stop, never attempted an “eat this massive steak and you don’t have to pay for the massive steak challenge,” though I’m fairly sure that’s an undertaking that no foreigner could manage without substantial training, and perhaps some surgical enhancement.
There’s so much more, and there’s a list as long as I am tall of the things I haven’t done. I haven’t touched on nearly enough topics either. American attitudes towards sex, I never talked about the movie or television business. There’s plenty of particles and parcels of American culture, pop and otherwise, that I just haven’t clapped eyes on yet, so I couldn’t possibly comment. It was Black Friday yesterday, and I didn’t head out to the local big box stores to see the frenzy. I can only imagine what that energy is like, as humans crush other humans against doors.
I’m also only in my first year of marriage. I’ve heard tale that this is the honeymoon period, and it will last for several years, so that’ll be fun to find out. I’m looking forward to a lifetime spent with this woman I met by telling her to “Make me a sammich, bish” during an online drinking contest on a news discussion website several years ago. Maybe 7 or 8 at this point. She’s been a wonderful guide to America, always willing and patient when I have stupid questions about American happenings. In fact most Americans I’ve met has been interested in explaining their culture, mannerisms, and quirks to me. Often I’ve found it more fun to play dumb that admit I know a little, because seeing someone try to explain why there’s whipped cream on their pie is often more interesting than assuming it’s because it’s delicious. And it is delicious. Oh by the way; if you microwave pumpkin pie, to heat it up a little, it’ll melt on your plate. See, I’m learning new things about this country and it’s weird customs every day.
I’d like to thank all of you that bothered to read this thing. There were calls all year to turn a rinky-dink set of images with curious captions into a book, and I was pleased to write every word of it. Sometimes examining an experience can fracture it, and then it can’t be reassembled into its component pieces. The magic leaves it, and then the memory goes a little fuzzy, and you wonder if it was magical at all. This is not like that at all. As I’ve written this month, people have been incredibly supportive, and I would like to thank you all. The intent of this book was to show the people back home just what kind of life I’ve been living over here, among these Americans, these people that eat cake for breakfast, these people that have religious breakfast cereal, and cathedral like malls. These people that drive cars that are too big, these people that put cheese on everything, and these people that have taken me in and made me feel like one of their own without trying to make me think like them, or be like them. Other than the pronunciation of aluminium, and youse can go fuck yourselves on that one. Five syllables for life.
Another hope is that maybe my American readers could see the migrants; the immigrants, with or without papers, with or without pale skin, with or without a funny language, with a little more compassion. I’ve certainly learned that Americans are a normal bunch of people, and I would hope that I’ve given them a more rounded understanding of Ireland, and of the Irish people. A little cross cultural exchange can go a long way, and I hope that I can be a part of that by asking WTF America.
And again to my readers and cheerleaders – thank you. Without you people this would just be a bunch of shouty words that I posted online, something that faded into the background noise of the internet and was forgotten. And remember that it’s not over. More than likely, this book will not only require subsequent additions, but it will also require substantial editing. Not everything that you’ve read will make it out into the world unmolested. This particular chapter is kind of a placeholder for now, because there’s a wrestling chapter to write, and a sitcoms chapter, and a car show chapter, and a road trip chapter, and so many more chapters to write. I will do my best to update the blog with some sense of regularity, but I don’t think I’ll be able to write every week. I don’t have enough things happen to me in a week to serve up hot steaming batches of WTF America, but I will be updating this book, and the blog, and everything else. There’s more America, and there’s plenty more WTF to get my hands on.
Thank you all for indulging me.
WTF America: A Relentless Abundance of Pie (Chapter 27)
A relentless abundance of pie
The pumpkin spice must flow.
So I’ve touched on thanksgiving before, in the chapter about how Americans eat. And this day, like no other in the American calendar is about consumption. For years it was about the food, the family, the togetherness. But most of all it was about the food. This year, with me being so far from family, and most members of Kimberlee’s family living in California, we held what we’ve heard called an ‘Orphans’ thanksgiving.’ The premise is simple – invite friends instead of family. Because you’ve got friends that are local, who aren’t going anywhere for thanksgiving, so someone elects to host and everybody comes over.
Kimberlee battered many items of food into submission and deliciousness over the course of several days. Homemade cranberry sauce, homemade gravy, cornbread stuffing with oysters, and an expertly cooked 13 pound bird. She cooked it in a paper bag, a practice that baffled me, but it’s hard to argue with the results. I had only been to one thanksgiving before this one, and it was a pretty different experience. Last year Kimberlee’s mother was living in the state, and we were stony broke, so we brought over some scratch made mac and cheese, because that’s what we had. We were still treated to abundance, as Kim’s mother laid on a spread that fed 5 or 6 of us.
Kimberlee’s mother is a religious woman, and I’ve long since hung up with altar boy robes and backed away from the church. Saying grace is also not something I grew up with, so her speech to open the festivities was an interesting spectacle for me. She made mention of the abundance of food, naturally, but we were also treated to a short oration on the treatment of native americans in the US, which I will not attempt to even paraphrase. It’s not like this information was particularly new to me, and it didn’t bring down the festivities, it was just interesting to see this perspective, on this day of great feasting. After one of the most filling meals of my life, I believe we watched a GI Joe movie, which has nothing to do with anything, but I felt it important to note the star spangled cap on this American experience.
This year felt very different. It wasn’t a small gathering of family. It was a party, of the much more decadent kind. I started drinking at 1.30, but fear not dear readers because I am well versed in marathon drinking. I’ve attended an Irish wedding or two, and that’s enough alcohol drinking training for most. The early part of the day was a few friends eating dinner, shooting the shit, and a little bit of cleaning up after ourselves. We went around the table saying what we’re thankful for, and most of what I said has been echoed in these pages before. It’s been a transformative year for me, and for Kimberlee.
This thanksgiving, I was very much looking forward to a feast. The year has had its highs and its lows, we’ve been broke, and now we’re in a spot where we could not only afford a feast, but we could afford to take our friends in. Being skint in America is not a fun experience, and to get this day where we could all throw caution to the waistband and eat and drink our fill several times over was very satisfying.
One of the main things in my thankful speech was how readily I’d been taken in by these strange creatures, these gun toting crazies, these people that drive cars that are too big, and these people that prepare feasts that are too large; these Americans. Not only did several guests provide a relentless abundance of pie, but everyone brought their kindness, and their generosity. People that I’ve known for barely a year came to my little flat with champagne, bourbon, chocolates, appetites and the aforementioned relentless abundance of pie. They brought with them a festive and thankful spirit. They also brought Cards Against Humanity, which if you haven’t played you need to get a copy of it. It’s an experience that is hard to match when you see half a dozen adults crack up into laughter because they have a series of cards that are the perfect answer for “________: kid tested, mother approved.” I’ll spare the gory details, but know this game isn’t for the weak of spirit, or the bruisable of sensibilities.
I think thanksgiving is a great idea. There’s no demand of gifts, it’s a secular holiday, and from what I’ve seen of it so far it inspires people to bring fun and generosity to the table, and to the party. I’m sure I sound a little gushy, but I don’t care – I’m amazed that the Americans I have met have been so welcoming. Within a few months of being here I already felt like I was being treated like an old friend, and now that I’ve hosted my first thanksgiving, I feel like I’ve known these people forever. It fills the heart in a way that makes the ribcage creak out with pride and joy.
But what would a WTF America chapter be without a little complaining. So to the topic that usually comes up around this time of year – consumerism. And specifically that consumerism that occurs around the most capitalist of days, Black Friday. For those not in the know Black Friday is the starting gun for the Christmas shopping, and there are deep discounts on a lot of items. The purpose of Black Friday is, generally, to drive people into a frenzy of buying, to stimulate the economy, or to fill in the ledgers of stores, or whatever the purpose is.
It’s not a kind sounding name, because it’s not a kind day, by all accounts. The trend of the day has begun to seep out into the days around it, with stores opening on thanksgiving itself for ‘Grey Thursday.’ There’s an online equivalent called Cyber monday. Retailers are extending the shopping beyond the day itself in each direction, and there’s a lot of talk of hollow consumerism. The trend has apparently begun spilling over into the UK too. There’s no excuse for it there, there’s no thanksgiving to follow. Some consumers that went out for the spectacle and the bargains this year noted that people were buying shit that they didn’t want or need, because they’re caught up in the frenzy. There’s a helpful website called Black Friday Death Count that keeps track of the injuries and deaths caused by tramplings, or customers shooting each other, or using mace on one another, because they really really wanted a $12 waffle iron.
This is the flip side of the abundance. If retailers can drop their prices this far it makes you wonder where the profit is coming from. Or it makes you wonder if the stuff that people will step over each other’s battered bodies for is worth anything at all. There’s so much shopping to be had in America, and this day, Black Friday, is like D-Day for buying shit. Most of it shit you don’t need. I’ve seen people on social media decry the tradition, but still go out to grab something because the lure of sales is too good. You’re not saving any money by the way – when you buy something, you have less money than you did before. No matter how deep the discount, you will always lose money on a transaction where you give some of your money away.
After a day of feasting, and relaxation, you’d think people would have enough. But this is a very commercialized country. There is no ‘enough.’ I don’t tar all Americans with this brush by the way – there are plenty that aren’t involved in this spectacle-fight they call shopping. But those that do make the most noise, because they will coldcock someone for a fucking tickle-me-elmo, which the child will likely stop giving a shit about before the batteries even run out. I get that shit is cheaper today, sometimes in excess of 50 percent off, but honestly you don’t really need it. It’s not important what it is, or how much you think you need it, you probably don’t. There are black friday sales for cars, for fucks sake. Such a major purchasing decision should not be made based on who can turn up to a lot with cars on it first, or 500th, or whatever the special is. Because there’s money exchanged for this stuff, it’s not called looting, but it looks remarkably similar.
There’s a relentless abundance in this country, and I’m glad to partake of it a lot of the time. A little money in your pocket, and you’ll never want for anything. But days like Black Friday remind me that there’s far too much of a good thing out there. Nobody will tell you no in America if you want to buy something. And you’re certainly not going to listen to me if I tell you no. I get that people want shit. Having shit is nice. You need your shit, your car’s full of shit, you’ve got too much shit in your house. I’ve got a bunch of shit that I use all the time. I could live without it, but for the most part I won’t, because I don’t have to make that choice. I can have anything here.
But what I liked receiving most this thanksgiving wasn’t the food, or the booze, or anything that I could have bought today, or tomorrow, or the rest of December which is the busiest shopping month of the year – it was the friendship. Belonging is better than owning every time, and sat around the table discussing the high quality of the stuffing, or sat around the table playing a card game for horrible people, or sitting outside getting a little fresh air after dinner while talking nonsense about rat-sized cockroaches making their own sandwiches… these are the moments that made my thanksgiving. The turkey will all get eaten, the whiskey bottles will run dry and get thrown out, and the shopping will continue unabated, regardless of what I have to say about it. But the memories and moments remain with me, and remind me that even amidst what could rightly be called a maelstrom of shopping, that friends are what matters.
That said, a relentless abundance of pie is forever.
WTF America: Personal Censorship (Chapter 26)
Personal censorship
Even the herbs and spices are insulting
As far as I’ve seen of it, America is a country of big ideas. Ideas like a constitution, to enshrine the rights that the people have. The interstate system, or the great public works of the 30s and 40s. Never was a job done by halves out here. To quote Ron Swanson “Never half ass two things; whole-ass one thing.” So when it comes to opinions, Americans have opinions wholeheartedly. And they’ll tell you these opinions, whether you like it or not.
They’ll sing it from the rooftops, on radio, or television, in newspapers, on blogs, in magazines, on the sides of blimps, in your dreams. Wherever you can think of, someone will post their opinion, and they’ll go on about it at great length, because by gum there’s a first amendment that lets me say whatever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want, with very few restrictions.
Back home, there’s a very different culture. People have opinions, sure, but there’s nothing better than knowing something that someone else doesn’t in Irish culture. Secrets, and rumors, and half truths are abound and people love them. There’s no happier an Irish person that’s got some dirt on someone. But knowledge about the other locals is power, so often you’ll hear about someone that just got knocked up by someone else, even they they were both seeing other people, and sure your man is only recently separated from the wife, because (and I hate to gossip) but she was running around with his uncle. Knowledge is power, but it only retains power through its rarity. Secrets and knowledge go hand in hand back on the island. The more you know about your friends, enemies, and neighbours the more power you have, provided that they know as little as possible about you.
People fish for information on you at every possible moment. Cashiers in the grocery store will ask you some rather personal things, because sure they see you in there all the time. It’s not because they think you two are friends, it’s because there’s dirt to be had. I was an enigma among these people, because I drifted in and out, and I wasn’t the most social of creatures. I usually went to other towns to socialize – other towns that had my friends in them. So when I would walk into local bars, I would be asked what part of America I was from, and how long I was visiting for. There was usually a look of bemusement on their faces when I told them that I was from the part of America that’s in Ireland, 10 miles away from here, in the same county as them. My accent is neither Irish nor American, but people can never seem to peg where it’s from. It’s a wonderful trick I have.
But in America, people will tell you this kind of information without solicitation. You don’t have to dig and pry, people will out and out tell you. Pictures of their dinner are on Twitter, they’ll post to Facebook about the nemesis they have a work, people will extol and vomit forth all information they have at the drop of a hat. They’ll even tell you about the time they dropped their hat. I’ll take a brief second to say that I’m not against this. It’s nice to talk to people that genuinely care about what you have to say to one another, and don’t immediately turn that back against you as some kind of parochial weapon. Information is really power here if you keep it to yourself.
This is why there are teams of muckrakers churning out streams of attack ads come politics season. Tiny little pieces of information are turned into flechette rounds to pepper your opponents squeaky clean image. And then the opponent does the same, because it’s an arms race of information now. Everyone needs to know that this guy was stapled to a desk during the war, everyone needs to know that this guy supports ‘Obama style tax increases,’ everyone needs to know that this dude not only smoked, but inhaled, and enjoyed, and is addicted to the pot. He smoked 7 whole marijuanas this morning alone. He wants to put revolving doors in the border fence. And so on, and so on.
Americans are more than willing to share information with one another, which makes the surveillance state they have here all the more confusing. There’s the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the DHS and they all want as much information on you as possible. They’ll wiretap you, steal your phone records, keep every piece of information on you on file in perpetuity. And the response I hear from most people, mostly American people, is that if you don’t have anything to hide, this shouldn’t worry you. Because people aren’t stingy with information about themselves, they don’t understand why other people would be. In a world where you’re happy to post your location on Facebook, and your innermost thoughts on your blog, what sense is there in keeping things back from other people?
The level of sharing is very endearing to me. You ask people how they’re doing, and they’ll tell you honestly. And if they’re not doing so well, you want to help, and you’ll hear a story about that time they weren’t doing so well, and maybe you’ll help, or they’ll help, and there’s a whole lot of helping, and sharing, and care bear staring going on. It’s lovely to feel supported and nourished as a person, because people are honest and they don’t come to you with a lot of bullshit.
However. And there’s always a however isn’t there. Sitting upon the log that is this conversation, this bullfrog of doubt and malice that’s about to enter. With this naked honesty comes a lack of self censorship. People will tell you what they think, without reservation. They can’t stop themselves a lot of the time. And some of it, like the stuff that comes out of the mouths of the crazies, is downright frightening. An American is not usually a person that’s interested in suffering in silence. They will suffer loudly, and in public, and you’ll get it in the neck any time you’re around them. If you think these statements are about you, they’re not.
Disclaimer: WTF America is a comedic take on American culture as viewed by an outsider. Remain calm.
It’s like the religious people that stand on street corners, or the guys wearing the “The end is nigh” sandwich boards, or it’s the politicians on TV, or it’s the celebrities weeping on daytime television about how traumatic it was to write their autobiography, because it contains chapters about the time they went to the amazon river and the dreaded candiru swam up their urethra.
You hear shit that you wouldn’t choose to hear in a lifetime, like the urethra line above. I don’t care that Bill Clinton gave an intern a cigar. I don’t care that somebody tweeted a penis picture, I don’t care that celebrities grocery shop like normal people. Every day, and every where, you’ll be inundated by information in America. It’s everywhere. You’ll be informed that this product is better than this product because of a series of features that the two products do not share. The constant stream of censor-less, unkempt, relentless, ever present information begins to push things out of your head. You forget what fresh cut grass smells like, because switching you Geico can save you 15 percent on your car insurance. There’s nothing that stops this torrent of information other than abstaining from listening.
And my god the opinions of regular folk. Have I told you that they’ll tell you things unprovoked? You’ll mention something off hand, like money, or the economy, or something that the president said, and a series of slogans will fall out of their mouths. A verbal diarrhea of bumper stickers will flood its way across the table and it will begin to drip down the far side onto your brand new shoes. Their irises dilate, they grip the table with both hands, and the torrent continues unabated, filling the restaurant floor ankle deep with opinions, factoids, half baked theories, talking points, and blather blather blather. Their arms stiffen, their back arches, and they begin to turn inside out, pushing every single opinion they have out of that hole in their face. By this point you’ve become impressed that these people have anything left in the at all, and they haven’t turned into a california raisin version of themselves, all shriveled, bitter and at last opinion free.
Nobody censors themselves, because they don’t have to. The only thing you have to lose in this country by saying something is friends, or maybe a job. You won’t lose credibility, because anything you say can be defended as opinion, and your right to free speech. Even if the things you say are completely repugnant. Repugnant by any definition of common sense, or human decency. Racism is ok, as long as you’re not in some position of power. It just depends on the people that you’re being racist towards. And even then, there are people that are openly racist to your face, and they’ll sit there like a smug shit with an unreasonably proud grin on their face because they’ve offended someone. Not that I give a shit if you’re offended, it’s not a productive use of my time to avoid offending others. Trigger warning: you’ll probably think I’m an asshole because you’re fond of something I’m making fun of, like Betty Crocker Reese’s Pieces make-at-home box candy bars.
People will say things on Twitter, on Facebook, in person, with bumper stickers, on billboards, on political attack ads, and your mind boggles that someone would expose themselves like that. But here isn’t Ireland – back on the island these statements would turn you into a pariah. But here, who gives a fuck, you can say whatever you like. No matter how fucked up it is, because it’s constitutionally protected under almost all circumstances.
And I love it. Yeah, given the right to free speech people will say the most horrible shit imaginable. But it lets you know where they stand, and then you know where you stand in relation to them. You don’t have to talk to their neighbours to find out what paper they read, they’ll straight up tell you they hate mexicans. But people don’t bullshit you like they do at home. They won’t talk you up in your company and then be shitty about you every other day of the year. And since most people don’t give a fuck what you think, you can say whatever you like too. Most of the time. And thank fuck for that – this book would never get written otherwise.