16 March 2008
Counting the little differences
22/03/08 16:37
Integration
starts early. The airplane personel aboard the DL69
from Copenhagen to Atlanta were by no means young,
good-looking, or predominantly female. Rather, they
were middle-aged, and wonderfully differing in shape,
size, and color. One looked like anybody's granny,
another like some rich guy's butler or driver, and
yet another like your average middle-class
big'n'burly BBQ American. Interestingly, the only
true beer-bellied rednecks and bullnecked footballers
aboard were all Swedes.
Everywhere, service is at the fore. The stewardesse aboard the plane commended me on my choice of beverage - a tiny bottle of Jacob's Creek red wine. "Excellent choice, sir," she said, "this one is new on the menu, and actually quite good." I'm not sure if that meant that the other wines on offer were quite poor, but frankly I didn't really care. I just sat enjoying my moment of feeling just a little bit special.
Foodstuffs tend to be sugary or greasy - or both. Aboard the plane they served potato chips and soft drinks as an appetizer before lunch, and when we decided on the healthy choice of grits (a porridge-like, corn-based substance) for breakfast at a local Atlanta diner, they served it floating in a sea of melted butter. Kristian has proposed spinning at hotel gyms to help burn off calories, but I think I'll just go for plain fat. Anyway, it'd be a new experience.
After food comes toilet. I know the subject might be somewhat offensive to you, but I simply have to mention the high water levels they keep in their toilet boils over here. Not only is it a complete waste of water, it is also an open invitation to inspect your own poop. Not always the most pleasant of invitations after a diet consisting mostly of fats and sugars. But don't worry, I won't go there. Instead, I'll leave you with the non-image of the delicious banana split cum sunday fudge cum caramel and whipped cream snack Kristian treated me to in downtown Athens today.
Everywhere, service is at the fore. The stewardesse aboard the plane commended me on my choice of beverage - a tiny bottle of Jacob's Creek red wine. "Excellent choice, sir," she said, "this one is new on the menu, and actually quite good." I'm not sure if that meant that the other wines on offer were quite poor, but frankly I didn't really care. I just sat enjoying my moment of feeling just a little bit special.
Foodstuffs tend to be sugary or greasy - or both. Aboard the plane they served potato chips and soft drinks as an appetizer before lunch, and when we decided on the healthy choice of grits (a porridge-like, corn-based substance) for breakfast at a local Atlanta diner, they served it floating in a sea of melted butter. Kristian has proposed spinning at hotel gyms to help burn off calories, but I think I'll just go for plain fat. Anyway, it'd be a new experience.
After food comes toilet. I know the subject might be somewhat offensive to you, but I simply have to mention the high water levels they keep in their toilet boils over here. Not only is it a complete waste of water, it is also an open invitation to inspect your own poop. Not always the most pleasant of invitations after a diet consisting mostly of fats and sugars. But don't worry, I won't go there. Instead, I'll leave you with the non-image of the delicious banana split cum sunday fudge cum caramel and whipped cream snack Kristian treated me to in downtown Athens today.
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Even army boots were made for walking
20/03/08 23:10
Walking around town today, I found my immediate impression of the people I met based not on the color of their skin, but on their choice of clothes, hairstyle, pose, and words. The difference, of course, is the one between the biological and the social. Not what nature has condemned you to, but rather what society and you yourself have condemned you to in unison. The point is that society is not the only one to blame - though, for sure, it carries a huge part of the blame, too - you also have to add yourself in the equation. I guess that's what America's all about. No matter how righteous your indignation, it is always partly self-righteous. You can tell as many tall tales as you like about the unjustice that has been done to you, but justice is never simple, never uncontroversial.
I won't hesitate to admit that I have never been a huge fan of the overseas operations of the US Army, yet today I found myself shopping for boots in a US Army Surplus Store (my other pair of shoes didn't quite make it past yesterday's umbrella salesman). I didn't feel in the least uncomfortable about it, and when I finally found the one pair I just had to have, all I could think of was Lee Hazzlewood subwoofing his way through "These boots were made for walking". Van Gogh would have been a happier man and a worse painter if only he could have worn them, don't you think?
Irony aside, I truly feel that the US has already taught me the first lesson about integration. It's not about who made the boots, or for what purpose, it's all about how you wear them. And honestly, I can't wait to go a-bouncing down the sidewalk to the Greyhound Bus Station tomorrow. Athens, I come prepared!
Hard rain and soft packs
20/03/08 00:33
Sitting
on a bench by the Atlanta Underground this evening -
smoking a cigarette, going over the events of the day
in my head - I enjoyed the silent company of an
elderly hobo. He just sat there, his rolled up
sleeping mat safely beside him, and stared at a dove
staring back, just as silent as him. No big wonder, I
guess, since they were both made out of bronze. But
still it gave me some comfort, sitting there by the
side of a kinsman of the road.
However, my moment of Zen was soon to be shattered. A strung-out local youth with a nasty-looking sore below his right eye approached me for a cigarette, and decided to strike up a conversation. A soliloquy of pseudo-Shakespearian obscurity, that is. It lasted for ten minutes straight, and all I ever gathered from it were the three central phrases that kept coming back at me in a rhythmic, almost mesmerizing, way - "girlfriend", "up there", "it's so good to meet people", "girlfriend", "up there", "it's so good to meet people", "girlfriend", "up there", "it's so good to meet people", etc.
Eventually I finished my cigarette, got up, and just sort of trailed off, his persensical chorus drowned by the onset of a tropical rainstorm. Half a block later I was soaked through. Ankle-deep in a major puddle at the corner of Martin Luther King and Peachtree, "Strange Fruit" playing in my head, a shrewd businessman of the street waved an umbrella at me from the other side of the crossing. I fumbled for a coin, well aware that I was trying to paddle the Titanic into safety. I pulled out a crumbled piece of paper that turned out to be my cigarettes. So much for hard boxes.
Anyway, smoking policies considered, I mostly keep my little cancerous sticks of instant badness in order to get in touch with strangers - and my umbrella salesman was no exception. He carefully rolled up three cigarettes in a small piece of cloth which he had somehow managed to keep dry (no, seven folded umbrellas don't make an unfolded ditto!). He pressed my hands, and told me that - God willing - the clouds would part to let the sun dry my bones before I got home. Well, whatever home means, it certainly doesn't mean the Super 8 Downtown Motel in Atlanta, Georgia. I know for sure, because this is where my clothes are dripping water into the tub right this moment.
Personally, I have recovered. I can't say as much for my cigarettes, though. Hopefully, they will be all dry and ready to strike me up some chance encounters tomorrow. If not, I guess I'll just have to go buy myself an umbrella. Flood warnings are all over the news, and they just declared a state of emergency for downtown Atlanta. God knows when we'll all be safe home and dry again.
However, my moment of Zen was soon to be shattered. A strung-out local youth with a nasty-looking sore below his right eye approached me for a cigarette, and decided to strike up a conversation. A soliloquy of pseudo-Shakespearian obscurity, that is. It lasted for ten minutes straight, and all I ever gathered from it were the three central phrases that kept coming back at me in a rhythmic, almost mesmerizing, way - "girlfriend", "up there", "it's so good to meet people", "girlfriend", "up there", "it's so good to meet people", "girlfriend", "up there", "it's so good to meet people", etc.
Eventually I finished my cigarette, got up, and just sort of trailed off, his persensical chorus drowned by the onset of a tropical rainstorm. Half a block later I was soaked through. Ankle-deep in a major puddle at the corner of Martin Luther King and Peachtree, "Strange Fruit" playing in my head, a shrewd businessman of the street waved an umbrella at me from the other side of the crossing. I fumbled for a coin, well aware that I was trying to paddle the Titanic into safety. I pulled out a crumbled piece of paper that turned out to be my cigarettes. So much for hard boxes.
Anyway, smoking policies considered, I mostly keep my little cancerous sticks of instant badness in order to get in touch with strangers - and my umbrella salesman was no exception. He carefully rolled up three cigarettes in a small piece of cloth which he had somehow managed to keep dry (no, seven folded umbrellas don't make an unfolded ditto!). He pressed my hands, and told me that - God willing - the clouds would part to let the sun dry my bones before I got home. Well, whatever home means, it certainly doesn't mean the Super 8 Downtown Motel in Atlanta, Georgia. I know for sure, because this is where my clothes are dripping water into the tub right this moment.
Personally, I have recovered. I can't say as much for my cigarettes, though. Hopefully, they will be all dry and ready to strike me up some chance encounters tomorrow. If not, I guess I'll just have to go buy myself an umbrella. Flood warnings are all over the news, and they just declared a state of emergency for downtown Atlanta. God knows when we'll all be safe home and dry again.
