The story formerly known as "Rage, Boredom and Irritation -- in no particular order" has been changed. The new title is "Boredom and Rage -- respectively".
I am no longer irritated, not do I feel like writing about other's irritations, even though I find them hilarious. Thank you for your understanding. All complaints may be sent via Fed-Ex overnight delivery (which is really a 3 day delivery) to:
Christian Avery
Fanta Guesthouse, Bungalow #14
Koh Pha-ngan, Thailand 84280
Boredom.
The Thai dude to my left is shopping for guys on the internet. I look over at other monitors every so often. Because I'm curious. I shouldn't do it. It's bad and I'm evil. Maybe not evil, just bored, bored and curious--not bi-curious-- you pervs. Just bored, and curious. The guy to my right is checking his stocks in Spanish. I've never seen stock reports in Spanish. Gay boy to my left. Spanish stock inquiries to my right. Dear God, it just occurred to me, the stock researcher guy looks like a Pepsi Cola delivery guy. He's wearing a navy blue baseball cap with some kind of emblem, a red and white emblem, and the bill is formed, curved perfectly by some kind of baseball fashion expert. It's so, so symmetrical. Mesmerizing really. His shirt is Pepsi Cola blue with white pinstripes. Gay Thai Boy is writing something to "HOT Big K". Again, it's all in Thai, so I can't relay the baby oil sexy details. "HOT Big K" is having a conversation with "Daem:Do". It could be some kind of chat room. Again, it's hard to know. In Thai, it looks like a bunch of squigles with a few Hollywood porn star names scrambled in it. Every once in a while I see a picture fly up on the screen of some beefcake. Big muscles and a tan. Pepsi Boy is looking for a job now. He must have a sympathetic heart. He's on a NGO, a non-governmental organization, website. They are the non-profits of the NATO charity nations. Baseball hats lead to other things, criss-cross with other synapses, and then is hijacked while crossing the corpus collosum. An image of a Pepsi cup?
Rage.
Quiet Italian cursing.
Dutch Father noticing.
"I don't care where you come from. But don't do THAT."
More Italian.
"No. Don't do THAT!"
This is the climax. The pointing. The accusations and stare down. It's exploding before my diverted and embarrassed eyes. I take it all in, fully present, aware, but not really looking, if that's possible. I have activated the little button in my brain that I installed when I was eleven years old. The semi-automatic video recorder in my head. My brain's frontal cortex demanded it be put in after witnessing Eric, Eric, Er-, -- Jesus, I can't even remember his last name! -- after Eric's tooth was knocked out by Justin Ferrie's hard ground ball to shortstop. I remember the one hop, the predictable hop. I also remember the second hop, the hop that nobody would have predicted. Eric had no time to react. The ball flew up and hit him in the face. From the third base dugout it was garish and dreamlike. For several years, I had a re-occurring nightmare of standing at a porcelain drinking fountain and taking a long refreshing drink when, suddenly, another kid pushes me from behind. But this was real. A phobia coming to life. Inner-terror by proxy. Eric cupped his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide open. It was the expression of severe shock. Thick crimson blood drooled heavily from the bottom of his palm. Mrs. Bramble, Todd Bramble's mother, who was our score keeper on Wednesday and Saturday nights and a dental assistant all the other days of the week, ran to the edge of the infield grass. The umpire and coaches followed quickly behind. Airway. Good. Breathing. Present. Circulation? Very obvious. Palms gliding over the dirt now, they are looking for a contact lens. No. They are looking for a tooth. A real and very dislodged tooth. A discovery: The tooth is found. It's in Mrs. Brambles hands. Now, to save the tooth. Keep it alive at all costs!
But, what in the hell did they do with the tooth? What did they put it in? Milk? Under his tongue? In a waxed paper Pepsi cup with ice? I remember them leaving quickly. I don't remember the game or who won (we probably did--we came in second place to the Walling Sand and Gravel Cardinals that year). I do recall Eric returning to school the next day with a very swollen mouth and something called a flipper tooth. He played with it, kind of strummed it with his finger at lunchtime in between head tilts and chugs from a thick chocolate milkshake (one mustn't use a straw with a tooth freshly missing). But because so many other details were missing from this event, my conscious self demanded somebody -- no -- some part of my brain stand accountable for the gaps, the inaccuracies. After much debate and squabbling between my sub-conscious and conscious selves, unprecedented cerebral legislation was past, with the Grand Ol' Party-- my conscious self-- coming out the victor. Immediately, a new device was implanted deep within my brain's limbic system resembling the button hidden under the counter at jewelry stores. In times of high stress, amazement, hilarity, or any extreme feeling (e.g., robberies, fly zippers catching penis skin, episodes of tooth loss, etc.), I will nonchalantly depress this hidden button and it will record the event in vivid detail, to be recalled later for the benefit of friends, therapists, and world historians. It should be reliable. It should be trusted. State-of-the-art-- it's gone digital! --record keeping for the mind.
Rewind. Not one arrow. Two arrows.
Blip, blip, blip, flip, blip.
Stop there.
No, go forward a little. Past the part where Krista makes the terrific comparison: Thai buses to Latino buses. Full of machismo, wolves, sexual graphics, more wolves, devotion to strange deities, ruffles in the windows, kung-fu movies, and the colors orange and purple.
There. Stop. Right here. This is perfect.
Krista has stepped outside the bus and is walking into the convenience store to get some popcorn.
A middle aged, kind of a young middle aged, man sits in front of me. From the back, I notice his neck is longer than most necks and his black hair fluffier on top than most hair. He is Bert from Sesame Street. I will remember to tell Krista that when she comes back.
"She's going to be left behind," Bert says in a understandable, yet thick, possibly Eastern European accent.
His eight year-old sized daughter lies on the two seats across the aisle. It's eight o'clock PM. She's spread out on two blue razzle-dazzle confetti seats. Her entire length contained easily by two seats and her body covered by a plaid flannel blanket provided for by the bus line. It's travel bliss for an eight year-old. Bliss for her third grade looking brother as well. On this double decker bus, he has been bequeathed a front row, window seat on the upper level. The seat would be easily sold to nearly anyone for double or triple the standard price. There's an extra three and a half feet of elevated leg room extending all the way up to the upper deck's windshield. This kid is short. He doesn't need the extra space. He is reading some adolescent magazine and showing his dad the unbelievable way the Lord of The Rings movies were filmed. Mom has her own two seats in from of her daughter. Bert, father to these blissful children, is sitting behind his son. They speak what sounds like German, but it's not German. I don't know what it is. Oh yeah, Bert has his own two seats, too.
"Only if I'm lucky," I reply. He is tethered to his wife and these children. Therefore, he will understand my comment, this universal plight of all tethered men.
Soft laughter. He turns around more.
"Where--"
Dear Lord, the inevitable question.
"--are you from?"
Months of experience has taught me not to say "The U.S." or "U.S.A.". It's amazing. Ninety-nine percent of the world doesn't understand it, the abbreviation for United States of America. But, even an illiterate hill tribesman driven out of Burma by some fascist regime, someone who doesn't speak a word of English will understand "America".
"Ah, A-MER-I-KA," they will exclaim.
To Bert I say, "San Francisco. " I do this for the novelty. To mix up the predictable dialogue. To prove to myself that I can think outside of the American response box. The funny thing is that I'm not really from there; I'm from Salem, Oregon, but I don't even think of telling people that anymore. Everyone knows San Francisco. I lived there for four months and so I use that as an excuse to say I'm from there.
"Oh, Sun Fromcisco."
"We are from the Netherlands," he reports.
This explains my inability to define the language he and his family speak. If I can't tell what they're speaking-- it must be Dutch.
Krista returns with two small bags of popcorn. It tastes like department store popcorn. Like the kind I used to eat from Sears, maybe K-mart. I don't know for sure, the digital recorder in my brain hadn't been installed yet. The taste makes me happy. I feel safe and warm, planning for a good night's sleep on the bus after I eat this popcorn.
I quietly tell Krista I think he looks like Bert. I loudly say, so Bert can hear it, that he's from the Netherlands and tell Krista that's why I couldn't place the language they were speaking. Unknown language, it's Dutch by default.
Krista corrects me out loud. "No, whenever we can't tell what's someone is speaking, it's Danish." She adds that both sound Germanic, but not quite German.
She's probably right. I get confused with things like Germanic languages. I don't think there's a drop of German in my blood.
Bert nods politely. "I've never been to Sun Fromcisco."
He: clueless.
Krista and I: clueless.
I want to say that Krista has been to Amsterdam. I want to relate. I have a great urge to relate, to promote international harmony. But the popcorn is good and I have little need to brag for my girlfriend or to have a nice pleasant conversation with a family whose spaces on the bus I deeply covet. With nothing else in common with Bert besides Krista having traveled to Amsterdam, I merely sit.
More people are unloading from big red pick-up truck/taxis. They are filing onto the bus and I am secretly elated that the family is going to have to consolidate their spaces.
Bert calls his little girl to sit with him. Two seats lost to the Dutch family. Ha, ha!
I hear Italian voices. Krista talks Spanish. It's her Navajo secret code whenever we are in a crowded place talking behind someone's back.
"Ellos son I-tal-i-anos," she says sounding very much like she's in a Spanish 101 course in Kansas.
I grimace. She's using a romance language to hide statements from fellow romance language speakers. A few moments pass and she recognizes this.
"Espanol es muy sim-u-lar."
I nod and look away. My hand goes for more popcorn.
Something is happening. A Thai man is standing in the aisle with the Italian man. The Thai man is demonstrating how the seat works.
"Look. Seat lies down," he says while pulling the lever to recline the chair in front of him.
Now, the Italian man is not happy.
I quietly push the button inside my brain.
(to be continued)
(now I continue)
[Two days have passed form when I first wrote this. I've had a half of a big bottle of Chang (Chang means Elephant). Six point four percent alcohol. I'm such a lightweight. Dare I try to finish my story? I'm pratically anesthetized. Send the little dwarf down the long hallway to the back corner of my brain. Have him light a candle and retrieve the microfiche for January 2nd, 2004 -- I'm drunk and the power is out up above.]
...it's going to take awhile for the dwarf. Meanwhile, here's Krista's version of the story:
Anywho -
Thai people are very efficient, they always make sure every seat on the bus, taxi, tuk tuk, etc is filled before take off. It's really impressive and makes me realize (again) how unnecessary an SUV is. There is an empty seat beside the Dutch woman. This Italian couple sits behind her and starts to complain about how small the seats are and that there is no leg room, yadda...yadda. The Italian guy asks the Dutch woman if he can sit with her, he thinks there is more leg room in the empty seat. This is clearly not the case, any moron can see they all have the same amount of leg room.
The husband of the Dutch woman says, why do you want to sit there? The Italian explains the leg room issue... The Dutch man says, my wife is lying down and there is no more leg room than your seat, why don't you just sit with your wife (his voice is starting to rise up in anger). The Italian says Ok, and says something rude in Italian, to which the Dutch man replies, Hey listen, I don't know where you come from but I don't like your behavior, do you hear me, I don't like it! I'm sitting there right behind them stunned at this elementary school behavior I am witnessing AND he's saying this in front of his kids. But here's the best part - the Thai man behind me hears the Dutch guy and says in a cynical voice oh Americans.....Bush.
I guffaw loudly upon hearing this. How hilarious is that?!!! He thinks the loud, macho man is American. And the fact that he mentions Bush is the icing on the cake.
As I sit in my seat it is obviously clear why we all can't get along. We are all so judgmental and territorial (of course, me included!). It sure was a nice laugh!
I am no longer irritated, not do I feel like writing about other's irritations, even though I find them hilarious. Thank you for your understanding. All complaints may be sent via Fed-Ex overnight delivery (which is really a 3 day delivery) to:
Christian Avery
Fanta Guesthouse, Bungalow #14
Koh Pha-ngan, Thailand 84280
Boredom.
The Thai dude to my left is shopping for guys on the internet. I look over at other monitors every so often. Because I'm curious. I shouldn't do it. It's bad and I'm evil. Maybe not evil, just bored, bored and curious--not bi-curious-- you pervs. Just bored, and curious. The guy to my right is checking his stocks in Spanish. I've never seen stock reports in Spanish. Gay boy to my left. Spanish stock inquiries to my right. Dear God, it just occurred to me, the stock researcher guy looks like a Pepsi Cola delivery guy. He's wearing a navy blue baseball cap with some kind of emblem, a red and white emblem, and the bill is formed, curved perfectly by some kind of baseball fashion expert. It's so, so symmetrical. Mesmerizing really. His shirt is Pepsi Cola blue with white pinstripes. Gay Thai Boy is writing something to "HOT Big K". Again, it's all in Thai, so I can't relay the baby oil sexy details. "HOT Big K" is having a conversation with "Daem:Do". It could be some kind of chat room. Again, it's hard to know. In Thai, it looks like a bunch of squigles with a few Hollywood porn star names scrambled in it. Every once in a while I see a picture fly up on the screen of some beefcake. Big muscles and a tan. Pepsi Boy is looking for a job now. He must have a sympathetic heart. He's on a NGO, a non-governmental organization, website. They are the non-profits of the NATO charity nations. Baseball hats lead to other things, criss-cross with other synapses, and then is hijacked while crossing the corpus collosum. An image of a Pepsi cup?
Rage.
Quiet Italian cursing.
Dutch Father noticing.
"I don't care where you come from. But don't do THAT."
More Italian.
"No. Don't do THAT!"
This is the climax. The pointing. The accusations and stare down. It's exploding before my diverted and embarrassed eyes. I take it all in, fully present, aware, but not really looking, if that's possible. I have activated the little button in my brain that I installed when I was eleven years old. The semi-automatic video recorder in my head. My brain's frontal cortex demanded it be put in after witnessing Eric, Eric, Er-, -- Jesus, I can't even remember his last name! -- after Eric's tooth was knocked out by Justin Ferrie's hard ground ball to shortstop. I remember the one hop, the predictable hop. I also remember the second hop, the hop that nobody would have predicted. Eric had no time to react. The ball flew up and hit him in the face. From the third base dugout it was garish and dreamlike. For several years, I had a re-occurring nightmare of standing at a porcelain drinking fountain and taking a long refreshing drink when, suddenly, another kid pushes me from behind. But this was real. A phobia coming to life. Inner-terror by proxy. Eric cupped his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide open. It was the expression of severe shock. Thick crimson blood drooled heavily from the bottom of his palm. Mrs. Bramble, Todd Bramble's mother, who was our score keeper on Wednesday and Saturday nights and a dental assistant all the other days of the week, ran to the edge of the infield grass. The umpire and coaches followed quickly behind. Airway. Good. Breathing. Present. Circulation? Very obvious. Palms gliding over the dirt now, they are looking for a contact lens. No. They are looking for a tooth. A real and very dislodged tooth. A discovery: The tooth is found. It's in Mrs. Brambles hands. Now, to save the tooth. Keep it alive at all costs!
But, what in the hell did they do with the tooth? What did they put it in? Milk? Under his tongue? In a waxed paper Pepsi cup with ice? I remember them leaving quickly. I don't remember the game or who won (we probably did--we came in second place to the Walling Sand and Gravel Cardinals that year). I do recall Eric returning to school the next day with a very swollen mouth and something called a flipper tooth. He played with it, kind of strummed it with his finger at lunchtime in between head tilts and chugs from a thick chocolate milkshake (one mustn't use a straw with a tooth freshly missing). But because so many other details were missing from this event, my conscious self demanded somebody -- no -- some part of my brain stand accountable for the gaps, the inaccuracies. After much debate and squabbling between my sub-conscious and conscious selves, unprecedented cerebral legislation was past, with the Grand Ol' Party-- my conscious self-- coming out the victor. Immediately, a new device was implanted deep within my brain's limbic system resembling the button hidden under the counter at jewelry stores. In times of high stress, amazement, hilarity, or any extreme feeling (e.g., robberies, fly zippers catching penis skin, episodes of tooth loss, etc.), I will nonchalantly depress this hidden button and it will record the event in vivid detail, to be recalled later for the benefit of friends, therapists, and world historians. It should be reliable. It should be trusted. State-of-the-art-- it's gone digital! --record keeping for the mind.
Rewind. Not one arrow. Two arrows.
Blip, blip, blip, flip, blip.
Stop there.
No, go forward a little. Past the part where Krista makes the terrific comparison: Thai buses to Latino buses. Full of machismo, wolves, sexual graphics, more wolves, devotion to strange deities, ruffles in the windows, kung-fu movies, and the colors orange and purple.
There. Stop. Right here. This is perfect.
Krista has stepped outside the bus and is walking into the convenience store to get some popcorn.
A middle aged, kind of a young middle aged, man sits in front of me. From the back, I notice his neck is longer than most necks and his black hair fluffier on top than most hair. He is Bert from Sesame Street. I will remember to tell Krista that when she comes back.
"She's going to be left behind," Bert says in a understandable, yet thick, possibly Eastern European accent.
His eight year-old sized daughter lies on the two seats across the aisle. It's eight o'clock PM. She's spread out on two blue razzle-dazzle confetti seats. Her entire length contained easily by two seats and her body covered by a plaid flannel blanket provided for by the bus line. It's travel bliss for an eight year-old. Bliss for her third grade looking brother as well. On this double decker bus, he has been bequeathed a front row, window seat on the upper level. The seat would be easily sold to nearly anyone for double or triple the standard price. There's an extra three and a half feet of elevated leg room extending all the way up to the upper deck's windshield. This kid is short. He doesn't need the extra space. He is reading some adolescent magazine and showing his dad the unbelievable way the Lord of The Rings movies were filmed. Mom has her own two seats in from of her daughter. Bert, father to these blissful children, is sitting behind his son. They speak what sounds like German, but it's not German. I don't know what it is. Oh yeah, Bert has his own two seats, too.
"Only if I'm lucky," I reply. He is tethered to his wife and these children. Therefore, he will understand my comment, this universal plight of all tethered men.
Soft laughter. He turns around more.
"Where--"
Dear Lord, the inevitable question.
"--are you from?"
Months of experience has taught me not to say "The U.S." or "U.S.A.". It's amazing. Ninety-nine percent of the world doesn't understand it, the abbreviation for United States of America. But, even an illiterate hill tribesman driven out of Burma by some fascist regime, someone who doesn't speak a word of English will understand "America".
"Ah, A-MER-I-KA," they will exclaim.
To Bert I say, "San Francisco. " I do this for the novelty. To mix up the predictable dialogue. To prove to myself that I can think outside of the American response box. The funny thing is that I'm not really from there; I'm from Salem, Oregon, but I don't even think of telling people that anymore. Everyone knows San Francisco. I lived there for four months and so I use that as an excuse to say I'm from there.
"Oh, Sun Fromcisco."
"We are from the Netherlands," he reports.
This explains my inability to define the language he and his family speak. If I can't tell what they're speaking-- it must be Dutch.
Krista returns with two small bags of popcorn. It tastes like department store popcorn. Like the kind I used to eat from Sears, maybe K-mart. I don't know for sure, the digital recorder in my brain hadn't been installed yet. The taste makes me happy. I feel safe and warm, planning for a good night's sleep on the bus after I eat this popcorn.
I quietly tell Krista I think he looks like Bert. I loudly say, so Bert can hear it, that he's from the Netherlands and tell Krista that's why I couldn't place the language they were speaking. Unknown language, it's Dutch by default.
Krista corrects me out loud. "No, whenever we can't tell what's someone is speaking, it's Danish." She adds that both sound Germanic, but not quite German.
She's probably right. I get confused with things like Germanic languages. I don't think there's a drop of German in my blood.
Bert nods politely. "I've never been to Sun Fromcisco."
He: clueless.
Krista and I: clueless.
I want to say that Krista has been to Amsterdam. I want to relate. I have a great urge to relate, to promote international harmony. But the popcorn is good and I have little need to brag for my girlfriend or to have a nice pleasant conversation with a family whose spaces on the bus I deeply covet. With nothing else in common with Bert besides Krista having traveled to Amsterdam, I merely sit.
More people are unloading from big red pick-up truck/taxis. They are filing onto the bus and I am secretly elated that the family is going to have to consolidate their spaces.
Bert calls his little girl to sit with him. Two seats lost to the Dutch family. Ha, ha!
I hear Italian voices. Krista talks Spanish. It's her Navajo secret code whenever we are in a crowded place talking behind someone's back.
"Ellos son I-tal-i-anos," she says sounding very much like she's in a Spanish 101 course in Kansas.
I grimace. She's using a romance language to hide statements from fellow romance language speakers. A few moments pass and she recognizes this.
"Espanol es muy sim-u-lar."
I nod and look away. My hand goes for more popcorn.
Something is happening. A Thai man is standing in the aisle with the Italian man. The Thai man is demonstrating how the seat works.
"Look. Seat lies down," he says while pulling the lever to recline the chair in front of him.
Now, the Italian man is not happy.
I quietly push the button inside my brain.
(to be continued)
(now I continue)
[Two days have passed form when I first wrote this. I've had a half of a big bottle of Chang (Chang means Elephant). Six point four percent alcohol. I'm such a lightweight. Dare I try to finish my story? I'm pratically anesthetized. Send the little dwarf down the long hallway to the back corner of my brain. Have him light a candle and retrieve the microfiche for January 2nd, 2004 -- I'm drunk and the power is out up above.]
...it's going to take awhile for the dwarf. Meanwhile, here's Krista's version of the story:
Anywho -
Thai people are very efficient, they always make sure every seat on the bus, taxi, tuk tuk, etc is filled before take off. It's really impressive and makes me realize (again) how unnecessary an SUV is. There is an empty seat beside the Dutch woman. This Italian couple sits behind her and starts to complain about how small the seats are and that there is no leg room, yadda...yadda. The Italian guy asks the Dutch woman if he can sit with her, he thinks there is more leg room in the empty seat. This is clearly not the case, any moron can see they all have the same amount of leg room.
The husband of the Dutch woman says, why do you want to sit there? The Italian explains the leg room issue... The Dutch man says, my wife is lying down and there is no more leg room than your seat, why don't you just sit with your wife (his voice is starting to rise up in anger). The Italian says Ok, and says something rude in Italian, to which the Dutch man replies, Hey listen, I don't know where you come from but I don't like your behavior, do you hear me, I don't like it! I'm sitting there right behind them stunned at this elementary school behavior I am witnessing AND he's saying this in front of his kids. But here's the best part - the Thai man behind me hears the Dutch guy and says in a cynical voice oh Americans.....Bush.
I guffaw loudly upon hearing this. How hilarious is that?!!! He thinks the loud, macho man is American. And the fact that he mentions Bush is the icing on the cake.
As I sit in my seat it is obviously clear why we all can't get along. We are all so judgmental and territorial (of course, me included!). It sure was a nice laugh!
posted by c. @ 3:51 AM
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