Category: Culture

Urban Legends (2016)

urban legendI love Urban Legends.  The first time the stupid gringo couple bought that rat in Tijuana and tried to import it as a Chihuahua, I laughed myself stupid.   I always look for the dead mouse in the soda pop.  And even though I’ve never seen the Ghost Hitchhiker, I know a woman whose cousin worked with her neighbour.  The neat thing about urban legends is, like Rembrandts, it’s so easy to spot a fake.  Street gangs do not have the patience nor the elaborate forethought to drive around town with their headlights off, looking for victims.  Petty little sneak thieves don’t take the time and trouble to do unmentionable things with your toothbrush.  And regardless of how many people have declared they are Jedi on the census form, the federal government does not recognize it as an official religion.  (I checked.)  That’s why it’s so cool that the latest urban legend has surfaced as a legitimate news story.

If you missed it, too bad, but here’s the Peanut Gallery version.  Apparently, this six-figure American computer programmer, who conveniently works out of his house, decided that rather than working for a living he would pull a General Motors and outsource his job to China.  Basically, he hired a Chinese national to do his work for him — at a fifth the price.  The Chinese technician is living large in some place called Shenyang, and our boy is fat, smart and happy, getting 80% of his salary for doing nothing.  According to all reports, he spends his days watching cat videos on YouTube.  Pretty sweet, huh?

Of course, when you think about it, a bunch of WTF questions come to mind.  Like how did our American programmer find this Chinese guy in the first place?  A want ad in Wired?  Or how come the company didn’t notice when there was a daily log-on from China?  These are little things, but they raise some serious red flags (no pun intended.)  But the telling moment in the whole “news’ story is there’s no who, when or where!  The programmer, the company, the timeframe and the city are not named.  The only hard “fact,” in any of it, is Shenyang, China, and go ahead and try finding a particular programmer in that town.  There’s absolutely no way, from the information given, to check just how true this “news” story really is.

That’s the thing about Urban Legends; they seem plausible.  They could be true.  A maniacal killer could, on occasion, lurk in the back seat of a car.  Dead people could wander rainy midnight roads.  And American workers could outsource their jobs.  These things are all entirely possible; they’re just not probable.

Yet urban legends are more than simply the lies the Internet tells us.  (BTW, Dream Whip™ and ping pong balls do not have the same molecular structure, and Coca-Cola™ was never laced with cocaine.) They are contemporary fables; teaching stories and cautionary tales.  They remind us that, as Hamlet once said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” and tell us to be wary of our world.  For example, there’s an urban legend that Kentucky Fried Chicken changed their name to KFC because the USDA discovered that the company had genetically modified their product to such an extent that it could no longer legally be called chicken.  Apparently, Kentucky Fried Mutant would have been a marketing disaster, so they went with KFC.  This is 100% false (again, I checked.).  However, it does demonstrate that there is widespread concern about GMOs and just exactly what is happening to the food we eat.  Similarly, our enterprising computer programmer shows us that people are worried that North American jobs are, like the elves of Middle Earth, leaving these shores.

Urban legends are genuine folk tales.  Like Aesop’s fables, they give us an allegorical insight into our world and reflect contemporary concerns and attitudes.  As sophisticated as we may believe ourselves to be, we still fear the unknown.  This is why so many urban legends have a supernatural or demonic element to them.

Unfortunately, as our society gets more complex, so do our urban legends.  Real stories get mixed in with the fakes.  We might laugh at our computer programmer outsourcing his own job, but what about my sister’s gardener’s brother, who had his identity stolen when terrorists used Face-recognition software on his Facebook profile picture? Then, when he went to collect his lottery jackpot, he was arrested for terrorism…. You can never be too careful in this world.

 

5 People You’ll Meet In Hell

hell fireI don’t necessarily believe in Hell, but here are 5 people who are going to be there long before people like me ever arrive.

1 — The person at the Fast Food line who acts as if they’ve never been in that situation before.

These are the ones who stand at the counter and stare at the huge neon menu as if is it’s written in Latin.  Hey! The big difference between the #5 Hamburger Combo and the #6 Cheeseburger Meal is cheese — just cheese — and it’s been that way since 1972.  Besides, at some point, you decided to come here, you got in your car, you drove all the way, you stood in line for ten minutes and you still haven’t figured out what you want to eat?  You deserve to burn in Hell for wasting my time.

2 — Anyone who litters

People who throw their trash on the ground should be horse-whipped in this life and suffer the Fires of Hell for the rest of Eternity — twice.

3 — The parents who bring their bratty children to the theatre, the ballet or the gourmet restaurant.

I’ve got nothing against kids, but  if yours have the social graces of an exuberant orangutan, don’t  bring them to places where adults gather.  Little Braydon spitting up carrots and going for  distance might be YouTube cute at home, but my wife and I didn’t sign on for her antics added to the ambiance of our dinner, likewise, nothing ruins the enchanting beauty of a dying swan more completely than some pint-size savage three rows over suddenly howling for juice.  Your children might be the centre of your universe, but if you’ve decided not to teach them manners, you’re not doing them or the rest of the world any favours — and you’re going to Hell because of it.

4 — Accountants, computer geeks, tow-truck drivers and dentists.

These are the people with specialized skills or knowledge who take advantage of the rest of us just because they can — and then act all smug about it.  It’s a tooth for God’s sake — not the Crown Jewels. Nothing legal costs that much!  And, BTW, fat boy in the truck, my car broke down; I didn’t shoot it in the head.  The difference between Mafia extortion and what these folks do is minimal — and they’re going to have to answer for it.

And finally

5 — The people who are always getting offended.

These are the folks who are not so much easily offended as eagerly offended.  They wake up in the morning pissed off with the world and then spend the rest of the day trying to make everybody else just as miserable as they are.  There’s no satisfying these malicious bastards, and for that, they are clearly entitled to all the grief Satan has to offer.

Fictional Friends II

fictional friends.jpgYesterday, a dear friend of mine, Rosalind (“Ros”) Myers was killed.  She was blown to pieces by a bomb, which, I believe, was planted by some renegade members of the CIA.  Ros was a dedicated professional, but she was also witty, charming and could be thoughtful and entertaining.  Although many of her friends had lost track of Ros in recent years, she will be sorely missed by her colleagues and her father, Jocylen, who is currently serving a forever sentence in a British prison.  Ros died as she lives — in television reruns of Spooks on Netflix.

Ever since I learned to read, I’ve always had fictional friends.  Not those “special” ones who tell you to kidnap the neighbour’s cat but real flesh-and-blood people who live their lives in a parallel universe to mine.  One of my earliest recollections is asking my first grade teacher where Dick and Jane were running to.  Miss What’s-her-name didn’t know and told me it wasn’t important.  However, I knew it was.  I knew those two crazy kids had horizons beyond Spot and the big blue ball, and one day they were going to get there.  You see, I had an advantage: I had older sisters who had been reading their stories to me for some time.  I’d already eavesdropped on the conversations of Meg, Jo and Beth and sat in on the adventures of Nancy Drew.  Dick and Jane might have been as dull as Kraft Dinner™, even to a six-year-old, but I was nice to them because they were my introduction to the world’s greatest cocktail party.

There has always been much made of the fabulous world of books and how they can take you to places you’ve never been, etc. etc.  That’s a nice cliché, and it probably works.  But the party that is fiction is so much more than that because it’s populated by people we all want to meet.  It doesn’t take too many chapters into Gone With The Wind before you want to have Rhett and Scarlett over for sushi; and once you’ve seen the movie, it’s a lock.  Imagine a rainy evening playing Trivial Pursuit™ with Holmes and Moriarty or a picnic afternoon with Pan and Tinkerbell.  There isn’t a heterosexual woman alive who hasn’t at least thought about Captain Jack Sparrow — or Loki.

The great thing about fictional friends is they never jerk you around.  Maid Marian never gets on the phone for three hours, carping about how Robin is spending way too much time with the Merry Men.  Or how the only things he ever wants to do is go camping or robbing the rich, or how he’s never there for her, or how being the King’s ward is not all it’s cracked up to be…if people only knew.  And it goes on and on and on.  No, Maid Marian never does that.  She has some decorum — some class.  Sure she has her problems – no doubt — but she handles them without the drama.

Likewise, James Bond never gets drunk and starts bitchin’ about how M and Tanner are idiots who couldn’t spy their way out of a wet paper bag.  Nor does he lament his lot in life and threaten to “march in there Monday morning and tell them both to take this Licence to Kill and put it where the sun don’t shine.”  That’s the last thing on Bond’s mind.  He has a job to do, he loves it and he takes pride what he does.

Over the last half century, I’ve met a lot of people, and aside from maybe twenty or so, I have to admit that the ones I like best fall under the category of “any resemblance to persons either living or dead is purely coincidental.”  My fictional friends never tire.  They never whine.  They never inadvertently hurt my feelings.  They know when to show up, and they know when to shut up and go home.  They share their lives with me and for the most part have no secrets — but I wish I knew them better.  They’ve helped me through every difficulty I’ve ever faced and have never been too busy to be my companions.

I’m going to miss Ros.  She was always a true friend, but I know that — no matter what — if I ever want to see her again, she’ll be there.