Turkey Trot

Back at work, with Ikea blisters and a full stomach. a little too full, and the jeans are a little too tight. Time to get back on the food wagon, especially before people start hauling out the Christmas cookies and Glühwein.
The stomach is full because I went to a Thanksgiving dinner this weekend at an acquaintance's house about three hours from Erfurt.  True to life, the acquaintance, who has a penchant for generating drama by the simple act of breathing, misinformed me and my traveling partner about the day of the dinner. He said Friday, but it turned out it was Saturday. So we ended up staying an extra day, going "Outlet shopping" in a nearby town. My traveling partner (Let's call him T, since I assume I'll mention him from time to time--coworker, likes boys, don't get your hopes up.) promised me that there are larger, more impressive outlets in Germany, one that is a "village," in his words.  We'll see. It's hard to beat the American penchant for name brands and bargain hunting. Outlets are still a relatively new concept here, I think, and the prices often are not much different from the retail stores.  But I do love the names of the brand names here: Bruno Banani, Marco Polo,  desigual, anything, as long as it doesn't sound German. Naturally, there are Levis, Addidas, Puma, and the others, including a Le Creuset, which of course soothed my bruised little soul.
The soul is bruised because I ended up needing to celebrate Thanksgiving so badly that I went to the acquaintance's place, a choice I would not have made if I hadn't needed the identification, the celebration of something that is just a part of who I am.  But the other American, the guy who hosted the dinner, really left me standing in the rain a couple of months ago when I was looking for a job. I had helped him (read: I did it myself) put together a PowerPoint presentation for his dissertation defense, since he could not work with PowerPoint at all. I got his pictures, text, music samples, everything, to not only look fantastic, but to work. Fade-ins, fade-outs, different visual effects. I helped him narrow his outline down to a manageable and comprehensible 30 minutes, went to two rehearsals with others to provide feedback, being the only other person in the room with a PhD, I think. There might have been one other person who has been grilled at that level and lived to tell the tale. I devoted a ton of hours to help him get what he came for, because that is what I do in principle and for a living. I work in education.
And the professors especially noted how fantastic his PowerPoint was. You may now call him Dr.
But when I was looking for a job, and needed to work on my German letter-of-app skills, he was nowhere to be found, and then later told me that he'd had "other priorities." Of course. You need a PhD in order to earn more money and crawl out of the crushing debt you have. I need a job so I can get a resident permit and a work permit, which is not the easiest thing in the world, or at least, that's what I've been told. Sure, of course you have priorities, but I get kicked out of the country in exactly three weeks if I don't get it together and prove I'm at least looking and have prospects. But no, make sure you take care of that make-up exam (No, really, that was his excuse, after not answering the email and then calling three days later.) No, really, after I keep mum about your multiple attempts to cheat on your sweet, loving, yet highly insecure partner, after I cook every day so you can study, after I put up with your egotism...no, just ignore the one thing I really need and will ever need from you.
The Germans I asked to proof my letter and help me with editing sent back feedback immediately. T basically wrote it for me, truth be told.  The American sent feedback about a letter that didn't exist anymore, four days later, after I'd already turned in my application. And the feedback was as weak as a cheap Soju cocktail.
Yes, yes, it balanced out. Yes, yes, I can't expect anything and this is not a world of tit for tat. Yes, I get that. Yes, I understand, but when someone who has experienced the same thing you are experiencing and knows how important the situation is, how much it's a do-or-die moment, when they have been enriched by your help because you simply want to help someone succeed, and they dick you over, it stings. No matter how you package it.
After I'd eaten my fill Saturday, after going shopping and not helping in the kitchen, other than to put my peach cobbler together, after watching the acquaintance and his partner rush madly through the house, after listening to boring people talk about boring crap in their boring clothes and their boring tosses of the head, I went to bed early, not thinking for a minute that I should help with the intense cleanup that would take place in another few hours. I lifted no finger, drank, ate, talked with T and a few other nice people, and wished for Thanksgiving in Morgan Hill, in Oakland, in San Francisco, in Davis, the beauty of conversation led by intelligent people, a sense of community where I know everyone has my back. And I have theirs. And we have all earned it.
My 20 minutes are up.

Tower of Babel

Day two of the attempt at spontaneity. This is hard.

I almost forgot that I had a blogging appointment with myself this morning. Daily writing is hard until you fall (back) into the habit. I miss the days when I could spend hours a day just writing, just screwing around with one word, one expression, twisting and shaping it until it became a new creature. Now, I'm lucky if I squeeze out a sentence from my constipated brain once every two months.

But enough of my meta-bitching.

It is a disturbing 36 degrees outside, disturbing because it is supposed to get colder, disturbing because I don't find it "that bad." I'm sure I'll be squawking a different tune altogether soon enough. The office is warm, the park across the street is losing its frosty sheen, a man plays with his dog, tugging at the soft Frisbee, giving the dog a run for his money. It is another bucolic day in Weimar. And me with no automatic weapon. Pity, that.

The urge to stop and come back to this later, when I can "really" write, is overwhelming. My brain is sluggish, I feel like I have nothing to say. Anyone who knows me knows I must be ill if I have nothing to say, or someone cut out my tongue. Fine.

So I finally moved into my own apartment last Thursday in Erfurt, thank the heavens above.  And, true to form, I had everything arranged with clockwork precision before the day of mobilization. I had sorted out what to do about electricity, had ordered my furniture from Ikea for delivery on the same day, had the appointment for telephone and internet set up for the same day. The only thing I failed to do was take measurements in order to create my typical scaled rendition of the apartment and the furniture to go into it so I could plan where everything went ahead of time.  But I thought I should loosen up. I was proud of myself for letting that one go.

And then, the day before mobilization, I get a phone call from the cable company, or what I thought was the cable company, telling me that they had come by earlier that day and no one was home, so I would have to reschedule my appointment.

--What? I clearly said I needed an appointment for the 15th, not the 14th.

--Well, here it says you wanted the 14th.

--There's no way that's true.

And then I realize, his "14" and "15" sound exactly the same. I probably agreed to the date because of the confusion. Why don't these people speak more clearly? What is up with this Thüringen accent, which sounds a lot like a combination of Austrian and Platt Deutsch spoken by someone with a speech impediment?

So I ask what time they will come tomorrow, since there's obviously a mix-up. And the man on the other end of the phone, who is obviously Satan's bastard third cousin twice removed, tells me that the next available appointment is Wednesday of the next week. After the blinding red before my eyes faded away, I told him that he must be joking.  No, no.  It's next Wednesday, some time between 8 a.m. and noon. Until then, smoke signals and semaphore.

Oh, and by the way, they have to go into the cellar of the store below me before they can do what's necessary in my apartment. Someone obviously needs to be dug up, ritually reburied, and danced over before civilization can bless my abode.

Fine.

Then, I realize there is no point in the cable guy coming before 10:00, since the store, and the cellar underneath it, do not open until 10. So I had to call the cable company and let them know. And thus began the odyssey. Two hours over two days and an ability to recite all the messages played while you're on hold later, I finally reach a human being who knows what she's doing. She informs me that I need to contact the contractor to inform them of my problem. She gives me a phone number, I instead dial another one in my phone, try again, and reach the contractor. He gives me the number of the sub-contractor that he's passed the work onto. And the subcontractor, once I tell him about the installation, tells me that it is impossible to change the appointment, because the cable guy has someone scheduled after me. (And Germania forbid that they might actually switch the appointments around, since we are all obviously in the same time window--Oh God, that would be, like, logical.) So I will have to wait until the next Wednesday.

I did not wait for the red to fade this time, and by the time the conversation was over, a long, protracted sigh of frustration preceded the sentence, " Fine, I will tell him to be at your place at 10."

Now, was that so hard?

The day after I was graced with 110,000 bits per second, I went to work, bought coffee and a pastry at the train station before cramming myself into the rolling sardine tin. The woman said 5 Euro. That's bloody expensive. Then I looked at the register to see the total. It read 4 Euro.

And I realized I'm screwed.

Spontaneity--What's That?

Transcript, Skype conversation with a friend:

Me: I'm trying to get up my blog posts so everyone can see what I've been up to.

Friend: What's taking so long?

Me: I want to revise a couple of pieces.

Friend: I thought blogs were about being spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness, not flowery prose that you slave over and turn into a masterpiece.

Me: That's not really my style...

But she has a point, so here goes.

Since I have to be at work on a regular basis now, at a desk, of all things, instead of in front of a chalkboard, I am going to devote the first few minutes of work to the blog. Who knows, maybe I'll get better at writing on the fly.

There is too much to catch up on in the last four months. Suffice it to say that I have been enjoying a combination of the life of Riley and intense work. It's pretty much been like this: translate madly for one month, piss around for a month or 6 weeks, translate madly again.  Spend way too much money because I'm having such an awesome time.

Trips I've taken: Hamburg, Amsterdam, Paris, Toulon, Nice, Reims, Epernay. Weimar, Erfurt, a couple of other places that I can't remember. Oh yeah, Dresden, Leipzig.

Experiences: I've been to the immigration office more times than I wish to remember, have been deliberately ignored by a sales associate in a department store, been stared at by children and adults in the East, eaten some really fine food and some really bad food, laughed, cried, thrown my hands up and said "fuck it," and then put them down and started all over again. I have had buyer's remorse, homesickness, peace and joy. I am happy to have my own apartment again. I have realized that someone used the bathtub at the house I was living before as a bidet. I have caught people in terrible lies, realized some people I thought were my friends were not, and have been happy to discover even better ones took their place. I have fought with my former "roommate," have made up with her, and have moved into my own place. I have ordered a ceiling light that is a ceramic teapot. I have put together more Ikea furniture than I ever wanted to again. I have driven a Mercedes C-180 on the Autobahn at 200 km/hour, and crapped myself in the process. But the adrenaline rush was great. I have missed everyone, especially my fencing club, my coach, my "Delta Time" with some of the best ladies in the world. I have cooked, baked, learned how to make layer cakes in an oven that looks more like Easy Bake than Viking. I have found the Germans, as usual, incredibly frustrating and ingenious all at the same time. I am fascinated still by their naivete on so many levels, combined with a prickly practicality that makes kittens want to commit suicide.

And my 20 minutes are up.

Independence Day

I am in row 93, as though such a row could exist on a plane. I think this is the A 380, the super-huge tribute to man's affinity for carbon footprints. I can't say it's much different from the sardine tins usually reserved for economy, but there is more legroom and since it's Lufthansa, the food is actually halfway decent for us poor plebeians down here on the main level.

For the entire flight, one of a set of twin babies has been voicing its intense discomfort--something like colic, that's what it sounds like. We receive reprieves of anywhere between 2 minutes to half an hour, enough time to fall asleep, and then sweet baby reminds us that if he can't have peace, then neither can we. After all these years, I am still amazed at the amount of noise such a tiny packet of humanity can make. They (I am assuming the scientific community as distilled through a kind of urban-legend game of telephone) say that a baby's cry is of such a pitch that it can't be ignored, at least not for long. Pity that nature couldn't distinguish between one who needs to pay attention to a baby's cry, and one who doesn't. Let's not get into that whole "it takes a village..." thing. Every once in a while, the baby upsets his former zygote partner, who then chimes in and creates a chorus of crying children. It's been special. They are about five rows in front of me.

At the beginning of the flight, when the baby started crying, I spent a moment in intellectual wankery, thinking about the opening of Die Ehe der Maria Braun, Fassbinder's film about a woman who strikes out on her own after the second world war, becomes quite prosperous, losing her humanity in the process, all, ironically enough, in order to maintain a marriage that actually never existed, despite the piece of paper that says otherwise. Typisch deutsch. During the opening credits, which pop up in a kind of Wiederaufbau brick-laying pattern, we hear a baby cry, which some interpret as a sign of new beginnings, of untapped potential, of starting over from scratch, from the ground up, on a Tabula Rasa, but with the options of making the "right" choice this time. The desire to seek meaning is sometimes really annoying, that I want somehow to link my "new beginning" to the wailing, pooping Petrie dish five rows in front of me. Don't get me wrong. I like kids. I used to be one. But sometimes...

It's not really a new beginning but a continuation of something I started six years ago. Only, now older and more apprehensive thanks to watching the economy bottom out, suffering through four years of underemployment but the same amount of debt as before, I take it all a bit more seriously, see myself as having a bit more at stake this time around. The last time I moved to Germany, it was a lark, something I wanted, needed to do, to recover from a pretty horrific separation and it's attendant nervous breakdown. I always go to Germany or Austria when I need to recover. Normal people choose warmer climes, Tahiti, Mexico, Paris. I choose the land of sausage and embittered, anxious people who tell each other that their gardens are overgrown and they really should tend to that.

Growth has always been a nice by-product of such trips. Now, the trip is about growth, with recovery being a necessary part. I've got about four years of sleep to catch up on.

In the last four years, I have worked as a commercial baker, a pastry chef for a restaurant, an English teacher in "the 'hood" (at the end of the semester, one girl came up and apologized to me for originally wanting to jump me in the parking lot), a German Studies Lecturer, a Composition teacher, a writing in the sciences instructor, honors adviser, language instructor. I have consistently held at least two jobs for the last 7 years, holding three jobs for a year or two of that. I am, as the Germans say, "erschöpft."

After waking up day after day at 4:30, 5:00 in the morning so that I can work as wage slave and academic whipping boy, and realizing that nothing had changed for me financially or job-security wise in five years, I decided it was time to go, to try something new, to change.

They (again) say that Freud defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. If this is the case, I should have been 51-50'd a long, long time ago. The country should have been 51-50'd a long time ago. We are doing it wrong, and we keep doing it wrong but keep hoping for it to somehow work out.

I chose to land in Germany on Independence Day. While all my friends are going to enjoy a nice day off, eat well-grilled Bay Area food, drink lovely wine and beer, consume other products that make them giddy, be they "edibles" or Serrano ham, I am going to topple jet-lagged and punch-drunk off a plane, one of the last people off the plane probably, and make my way to Aachen, schlepping two suitcases and a fencing bag. I chose to land on the fourth because leaving on the fourth would be too hard. I wouldn't make it to any cookouts anyway. Even if I did, I would sit there and wonder, in the idyllic weather and on a comfortable chaise lounge, if I really need to go to Germany, if I really need to move there. I had to be gone before one of the nicest days in the year for me.

The great thing about saying goodbye to people in this fashion, last dinners and outings before my departure, is how wonderful everything is. How much typical Bay Area stuff you get to do: drinking Chardonnay in the Los Gatos Hills at 2,400 feet, looking at the little winery tucked into the valley below; receiving farm-fresh eggs from someone's coop in Los Altos Hills; doing elderflower-liqueur-champagne shots and eating like kings during my going-away fencing tournament; French meals at tiny bistros, perfectly fashioned cappuccinos by our favorite baristas, sampling barley wine and eating tapas, cocktail bar crawls and gourmet fusion French fries. A ridiculously comfortable life. It's deceptive. Because you get this false impression that your life is always like this, but it's not. Mostly friends don't have or make the time for such outings on a regular basis. We have jobs, spouses, children, pets, plants. I only have the jobs, and I don't even have those anymore. These perfect Bay Area days before I leave, something I've experienced before, can be real red herrings.

We land soon, time to go brush my teeth, freshen up, figure out if I'm going to get a "Navi" for my rental car. I probably should. But the idea of some polite female German voice telling me hours in advance that I should prepare to turn right might be a little too much.

Tja...

-manchmal reicht ein Blickwechsel.

That Not-So-Fresh Feeling

I am a child of the 80’s, a bona fide Gen-Xer with an epic chip on my shoulder and a matching Earth-friendly tote bag to carry my judgmental disdain for all things popularized, commercialized, homogenized and franchised. I hate everything, from the latte-swilling Starbucks freak barking at ear-splitting decibels into a phone that has a higher I.Q. than he does, to the emotionally-crippled reality TV junkie who can’t stop obsessing over what Lindsay Lohan and her sketchy BFF of the month snorted behind closed doors before barfing it all up on their newest Prada bags. I am cultural judge, jury and executioner in one. I have to be. It’s my Gen-X duty. Life is soooo hard. But someone has to pitilessly condemn the ill-tempered, ignorant, non-PC, environmentally unconscious and generally retarded people of the world. It can’t all be roses and sunshine.

But lately I’ve had that not-so-fresh feeling, as though my derisive criticism is no longer necessary—or at least heeded. No one seems to care anymore if global conglomerates rape independent businesses wholesale, or that Wal Mart makes its workers piss into a cup for the soul-killing position of capitalist whipping boy. The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent 200-million-gallon oil spill, one of the most mind-boggling cock-ups of the human race, raised collective eyebrows for about five minutes, till we heard there was a sale at Old Navy. Indignation has become passé, gone the way of macramé plant holders and crocheted toilet roll covers. We still sound indignant, sputtering our outrage between sips of Shiraz and nibbles of mache salad in a bistro-café-cocktail-bar-art gallery. But little of it translates into action. Facebook groups like “1,000,000 People Who Want to Plug the BP Oil Spill with Sarah Palin” have supplanted actual demonstrations. If a real-live demonstration does take place, police don’t even have to use water cannons to disperse angry crowds anymore. Happy hour at the local bar does that now. The revolution—if one ever takes place—will not be televised; it will be Tweeted. Instead of doing, we are paying lip service, with all judgment, all debate dovetailing into one yardstick, one expression: “douchebag.” We talk about things in terms of douchebags now, douches, douchebaggery, general douchiness. We’ve revived a term that had its 15 minutes of fame in the 80’s, yet was apparently ahead of its time. Unlike other idioms of yore-- “23 Skiddoo,” “Far out,” “Gag me with a spoon”—that never crawl their way out of the linguistic grave once they have been laid to rest, “douchebag” has experienced not just a resurrection, but a viral second-coming. It embodies the Western Zeitgeist with deft economy, sluicing its way through the current discourse, which, considering its vacuity, is not such a difficult task.

“Douchebag” originally signified the implement used in the process of cleansing the vagina, sometimes after a period, sometimes after sex, sometimes after sex to make sure you have your period, after which you’d have to douche, too. Coined first in 1908, it was an extension of the word “douche,” adopted from the French doucher in 1833, and first used as a verb in English in 1838. The term maintained this connotation until 1967, when it became an American slang term for a “contemptible person,” according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. Although the term centers on cleanliness and health, as opposed to “shitbag” or “dirtbag,” it takes on a negative connotation, much like other terms associated with female genitalia. Not surprising, really.

Though it does not provide the same kind of etymological history as its studious cousin, the Urban Dictionary provides a more contemporary definition: “someone who has surpassed the levels of jerk or asshole, however not yet reached fucker or motherfucker.” The Urban Dictionary defines a jerk as “ an idiot or stupid person,” and asshole as “someone being ignorant, rude, or obnoxious.” Anyone can be a jerk or asshole from time to time. We all have moments of arrogance, idiocy, toddler-like behavior. But we tend to get over it. We tell people, “stop being an asshole,” or “don’t be an ass,” implying that one can escape the state relatively easily. We can recover from being jerks and assholes, and we might, just might, on the odd occasion, even apologize for it.

On the other hand, a fucker, aside from the most obvious biological connotation, can also be defined as “a back stabber,” while a motherfucker is “a formidable or inexorable force,” a “bad guy/terrorist who means to bring Evil to the world or just piss Bruce Willis off.” Interestingly enough, the term also seems to apply to jazz musicians of particularly high skill. But generally “motherfucker” is the worst of epithets one can sling at another, with equivalents in almost every language, though something like “I shit in your father’s beard” is much more offensive. But then again, that is very culture specific, and doesn’t possess the same kind of universality that “motherfucker” does. To be a motherfucker is to lack conscience, a moral compass, to be capable of committing the worst transgressions and break the greatest taboos in order to satisfy one’s whims and desires, to have the ability to sleep with one’s mother, Oedipus without the complex. In truth, the label would apply to a select few: Wall Street bankers and Ponzi Scheme architects, Idi Amin and the like. Sociopaths are motherfuckers. Most others are jerks, assholes or douchebags, with douchebags sucking up a good deal of the oxygen available.

Thus, we begin to see that a douchebag is not just any kind of contemptible person, but a pervasively contemptible one, an idiot with a yeasty residue that can’t be washed off. If we wanted to categorize the three types of people using Douglas Adams’ principles of Bistromathics, we might think in terms of pizza. The jerk or asshole snatches the last piece of pizza from the box when they see you reaching for it. But they at least paid for their share of the pizza. A motherfucker would simply take the entire pizza and kick you in the crotch. But a douchebag will “share” the pizza with you, take the last slice, then riffle through their wallet when the bill comes and exclaim surprise at their lack of cash. “I’ll run a tab at the bar and get the first round,” the douchebag says, but then gets a cab and goes home. You get stiffed on the pizza and the consolation cocktail. And the douchebag never feels a need to apologize or later make up for their actions, because they are assholes with a sense of entitlement who never stop being assholes, as it is their natural, God-given right.

Douchebags, regardless of ethnicity, income or religious affiliation, be it hipster jerkoff or Eurowanker, all share one fundamental characteristic: a sense of entitlement at the cellular level, so inherent that they have no idea that the world neither does nor should revolve around them. Any other situation for them would be akin to believing that Hitler just needed a good hug. Douchebags not only believe that the world owes them something, but they also calculate interest. They are selfish by nature, not due to the misguided belief that all other people are jerks that have to be beaten to the finish line, but because of the misguided belief that the rest of the human race simply does not exist except as instruments for their own pleasure and amusement. They are not the center of the universe; they are the universe. And, like the universe, they take themselves for granted, because there is nothing else. Consequently, the douchebag’s selfishness and entitlement is an organic factor that can only be changed with Herculean effort, or death. And these people surround us like the Russians did the Germans at Stalingrad.

We are so much enveloped by douchebags that we have turned our attention to them in full. Books have begun appearing on shelves in your independent and chain bookstores with titles like Angels, Vampires and Douchebags, The Quotable Douchebag, Hot Chicks With Douchebags and Memoir of a Douchebag. Websites devoted to douchebags populate the virtual waves, providing you with “The Top 10 Biggest Movie Douchebags,” the Douchebag Museum on bigdouchebag.com, “69 Ways to Tell if You’re A Douchebag,” the YouTube video “We Are Douchebags,” and, naturally, a Wikipedia reference. The Urban Dictionary logs 44 different variations on the term, from “douchebaguette” to “douchebag index to “douché,” touché, when addressing a douche. A grindcore, hardcore punk company called Douchebag Records finds its home in Lille, Nord-pas-de Calais in France. Kanye West has proposed a “toast for the douchebags” in his latest single “Runaway,” while a band called Jump Smokers has a single called “Don’t Be A Douchebag,” lambasting men and women alike for consistent idiocy and selfishness. A major motion picture also recently debuted, called, simply enough, Douchebag. A low-budget television satire called Douchebag Beach seems to have gone viral. Jon Stewart uses the term on The Daily Show liberally, sprinkling it appropriately over the politicians and public figures who have gone above and beyond the call of duty in earning the title. And when a term like “douchebag” reaches cable TV, we know it has gone mainstream.

We now have a love-hate relationship with douchebags, lamenting their presence, but lost without them. Douchebags are the new ‘them’ against our ‘us.’ We have divided the world into two categories, the have and the have-nots, the entitled and the exploited, right-wing and left-wing, and anyone stuck in the middle is either a pussy or a wannabe. We condemn people for being douchebags, criticize them for being too liberal or too conservative, yet stroke out when someone refuses to take a side. We are like a teenage girl with her first boyfriend, as clear about what she wants from him as broken glass dipped in mud. We have no clue what we want anymore, but we can identify a douchebag in a crowd of thousands. The tell-tale signs—hair gelled to the max, sunglasses worn indoors at night, retro Miami Vice polo shirt collars turned up in Dracula fashion, biceps the size of Detroit, tits as fake as Jennifer Aniston’s smile, and a sense of entitlement that would blow away Camilla Parker-Bowles—are easy to spot, textbook easy, and easy to judge. We seek out douchebags, enjoy pointing them out, text each other when we spot one, with the abbreviation “D” or “DB.” It’s the Punch-Buggy of the 21^st century.

As much as we hate douchebags, we like them enough to pay them attention and money. Like monkeys in a zoo, we visit them on a regular basis to see what feces they’ll throw out the cage this time. With the re-invention of reality TV, we stopped laughing at innocent practical jokes and started laughing at idiotic, self-absorbed morons with the emotional maturity of amoeba—and that’s insulting the amoeba—as they made their way through “everyday” situations, such as working a normal job, going grocery shopping, and speaking to adults. Much like hockey and NASCAR, we stay tuned not so much for the outcome as for the knock-down, drag-out fights and wrecks that are their natural by-products. We expect these people to act like douches, from Puck on The Real World, to Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, to Tiffany “New York” Pollard, to Anna Nicole Smith, to Jon and Kate Gosselin—who all have their own Wikis, by the way. We want these people to act like douches. It’s not enough anymore to know that someone is poorer than you, worse off than you. We don’t even show those kinds of people on TV anymore. We show the douchebag who spends his disposable income on sunglasses studded with rhinestones and the shirt he wears before he puts on the shirt he wears to go out, the dumbass who drunkenly picks a fight with an end table because it’s in his way. We relish their wastefulness, stupidity, and capacity for violence.

But we don’t just like it; we reward it, awarding people TV contracts, modeling jobs, recording deals, magazine covers and internet renown. We pay people to behave badly for us, pay them a lot. But we don’t want them to simply behave badly. We demand dramatic stupidity, Jackass-like disregard for other people’s safety and feelings as well as their own. We demand they spray on their tans, sleep with their in-laws, snort various powders and wake up in jail. Otherwise, we’re not interested. We’ll prick up our ears at the neo-con’s daughter getting an abortion, but we’d be much happier if we could hear that he was the one responsible for her condition. “The Situation” makes $50,000 per episode on Jersey Shore and $5 million a year in endorsements. Someone is funding his douchy habit, and we can’t say that it’s someone else. As a friend of mine said, "Rome had the Coliseum. We have cable."

We seem to appreciate the douchebag’s ability to shirk responsibility, to avoid ever claiming ownership of their shitty decision-making. We live in the age of the beta test. As a student recently reminded me, G-mail was a beta version for years, never saying officially that it was open for business, that the bugs had been worked out and it was ready for public use. We constantly receive “updates” from software companies because everything is forever “in progress.” If everything is constantly being adjusted, it means that nothing is actually ever broken, or faulty, or inherently flawed. It’s hard to criticize a plan that’s always being changed. Just look at the housing market. Even sexually, the notion of personal accountability has disappeared. “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am,” became “hit it and quit it,” and has now devolved into “toot it and boot it.” “Hit it and quit it,” though coarser and nearer violence than its predecessor, is still milder than “toot it and boot it,” a phrase that removes any gratitude or sense of attachment to the issue. Tooting something and then putting your foot to it to remove it from your sight is a far cry from expressing a minimum of gratitude for the privilege of casual sex. Now, it seems that’s simply taken for granted, which is douchebaggery.

Perhaps we envy the douchebag’s moronic status. Maybe we wish we could be rich and famous and completely devoid of taste, scruples, and a work-ethic. I have to admit, it wouldn’t be bad, not giving a shit what anyone thought of me, buying the trashiest clothes I can find and having the balls to wear them out in public. I’d like to be free of the worry of how many gallons of water I consume in a day, in comparison to people in Somalia, for just five minutes. I’d like my super ego to shut up about gas mileage for once and let my Id drive a fucking Porsche. I want to get things made by children in third-world sweatshops and not bat an eyelid in the face of the truth. I want to not know who Banksy is and have never heard of Yo Yo Ma, so I don’t feel inadequate for not being intimately familiar with their work. I want to be an idiot who thinks the world revolves around me, dizzy from the centrifugal force of my awesomeness.

Self-absorption, it seems, is now sexier than power, as evidenced by the customize-me ethos, the ludicrous amount of “personalization” we engage in and tolerate. From the double-decaf-mocha-latte-with-two-and-a-half-pump-vanilla drinker to the student who sends her professor an email asking if she “really” has to buy the textbook required for the course, we are all about ourselves, what we want, right now, and how we feel. I am going to tell you how I feel, but I don’t care how you feel, because I am too busy listening to my music on my iPhone that has a customized cover, ringtone, keychain and personal mascot.

But I can’t go all the way, I can’t go full douchebag, because a part of me still feels bad, still has a conscience, still feels guilt. I can’t be truly mean to anyone, at least, not on a daily basis. I do have my moments of bitchiness, when I can’t restrain myself, but for the most part, I’m too fucking polite to act the way I’d like to. I’d like to run roughshod over all the people who kill my buzz, infringe on my space, force me to overhear their banal conversations because they’re so damn loud. I smile whenever I think of the expression, “shoot ‘em all, and let God sort ‘em out.”

But I never will. Unfortunately, my inner douche will never truly dominate me. That’s why I need “The Situation,” Paris Hilton, Octomom, Ashton Kutcher, and my next door neighbor, whom I can call a douche whenever I want to, in the privacy of my own home, or out and about with friends. “Douchebag” is like a Sham-Wow: it soaks everything up. The little bit of optimism left over in the 90’s has been replaced by a clueless apathy. Everyone is a douchebag, in some way or another. What used to smell like Teen Spirit has been shat upon from a height and rinsed off with vinegar. The irony of the 90’s has given way to the over-the-top Massengill cheesiness that makes a mountain out of a pimple, a crisis out of a cuticle, that finds a mani/pedi an absolute necessity, instead of sending the money to a charity, any charity, for god’s sake, on the planet. We sold out, and then put even that up for sale.

If you’re calling me unjustifiably judgmental, polemic, stupid, bitchy, classist, elitist, racist, or pseudo-intellectual, I only have one thing to say to you:

Don’t be such a douche.

Thanks to Lucia L.

How Did I Get Here?

Who hasn't asked this question? Talking Heads asked this. Joyce Carol Oates asks this: Where are you going, where have you been? I came across it again while reading Klaus Mann's Mephisto today. An attaché from a Scandinavian country asks himself how he's ended up at the gargantuan and grotesque yet highly civilized and oddly enchanting birthday party of a high-ranking Nazi official. "How did I get here?"

I asked myself this question again, today, while having a cup of coffee with a professor visiting for the quarter from Germany. I'd sat in one of her classes and had been impressed with her calm demeanor and laid-back nature. She was a walking encyclopedia, one of those scarily well-read people who actually knew what they were talking about and wrote books.

I also liked her because we were wearing the same ring, three silver bands loosely entwined, a ring I'd worn in one form or another for 20 years.

She had on these black and grey striped tights, a similar dress. She looked like a German Dr. Seuss, only more reserved.

We were talking about my career, a place I don't like to go, because it's as barren as a 100-year-old woman's womb. The professor suggested I consider going to Japan for a few years, work in one of the German Studies departments there, as they're very interested in hiring right now.

"And I don't think I could have said this 10 years ago, but a black woman in a German Studies department is something unique indeed."

Too true.

"But tell me, have you finished your dissertation?"

"Yes, I finished in 1998."

"'98?"

I took a slow, quiet, deep breath. I knew what was coming. "Yes, in '98."

"Oh. That's a while. 11 years. You might be better idf staying here and doing the same rhing for a while. Where were you?"

Where was I? I've been trying to answer that for years. I've been trying to make up for it almost as long.

I told her the story, the whole thing I'd told another professor in the spring. What bothered me most was the fact that the story never became more comprehensible, that it never seemed to get better, that it never hurt any less to know how badly I seem to have screwed up. A woman without a country and only a shitty sob-story to call her own.

How did I get here? Where am I? Maybe if I start with the latter question, I can better answer the former.

Where am I?

Right at this moment I'm sitting on a train on my way back to the city, where I'll pick up my car and go home. I'll change clothes and go to fencing. Then, I will go back home, make some dinner, and grade essays.

But I guess that's not the really an adequate answer.

I am trying to find my way to the surface of academia again, too stupid to give up, and too lacking in other, more profit-oriented skills that could actually help me pay off my student loans.

I'm 38 years old, single, childless, and working as an adjunct lecturer between 2 vastly different institutions.

I am in a place where I can't seem to move forward but refuse to step back.

I am between the proverbial rock and a hard place, trying not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, if you don't mind incongruous metaphors.

I am teaching at a great university in a great German Studies Department. I am working with people who are teaching me things I should have learned in graduate school, and students I enjoy and adore.

And it is only temporary at best.

I am on the brink of getting it, of actually using my brain for something other than wondering what's for dinner, or if I should wash the dishes or take out the garbage.

I am in transition, I hope to better things.

So does that help explain any better how I got here?

Does that mean that I simply don't know?But I know. Very clear cut choices landed me where I am.

I try to focus on the good choices. Without choosing to go back and live in Germany for a year, I would have never taken the job where I am now. If I hadn't stopped talking to my ex after the break up, I'd be an even bigger basket case than I am now. If I hadn't chosen to stick to a diet for more than a year, I would have never lost the 80 pounds that made me miserable for 7 years.

Is my learning curve just that much worse? Is that why I did so badly in geometry?

People tell me it's unproductive to worry the past like a dog does a bone. They're right. Doesn't make it any easier though.

Some would say that my "here" ain't that bad. And I agree. But it ain't that great either.

The professor, towards the end of our chat, pointed at my ring and said, "We're wearing the same ring." She smiled brightly.

"I've had this ring for 20 years." I did not mention the gold version I wore for almost 12 years, the ring I buried in a box and passed over to friends so I wouldn't set the whole thing on fire and regret it later. That was five years ago. My friends still have the box.

"I chose this ring because of my three children."

I got the ring instead of children.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

It is one thing to be an underpaid adjunct lecturer. It is entirely another to be an unpaid adjunct lecturer. As an underpaid lecturer, you get to at least eat while you bitch about your plight. As an unpaid lecturer, you just bitch. You don't even get a cocktail to soften the blow of the day.

Due to the horrific joke called our economy, the community college I work for had to slash its budget dramatically, which put part-timers like me on the chopping block faster than a lamb at a biblical slaughter get-together. The English department had to cut its budget by 12.9% for the academic year. The only way to achieve this and keep everyone employed was to take some of us (I mean me and a few other schmucks) off of full instructional time and place us on non-instructional assignments. Note that the first three letters of "assignment" describes a particular state of being. Non-instructional assignments, for the layman, are hours clocked doing something other than teaching, for example, sitting in a writing lab, or contemplating suicide.

My non-instructional assignment came in the form of monitoring the new English Lab at a satellite campus deep in the 'hood. The "campus," which consists of one sad building that strikingly resembles the local County Jail, reflects the principles of a community college, as the whole community--enrolled or not enrolled--come into the building. The unenrolled come in because they have learned that there are computers with Internet access inside. The enrolled come because they have to.

Most things I can live with, like the girls who answer their cell phones in the lab and proceed to have a full-volume conversation with their baby's daddy. Even the people who punctuate every sentence, not to mention every independent clause, dependent clause, preposition and transitional adverb with "my nigga" give me little pause. The "students" who don't have any business within a 100-foot radius of the building but come in to print out their travel itineraries don't bother me so much, either. It's being saddled with a program that I will appropriately title Gateway to Hell that raises the hackles on the back of my neck.

Gateway to Hell is a program designed for high school students who don't "fit in" to normal school environments (Translation: teens from 15 to 19 years old who have dropped out of school, are gang members, are apprenticing prostitutes, or are doing this because the terms of their parole require it). One or two good students who actually want to be there to learn something and move on with their lives have somehow been gathered up with their contemporaries and have to endure the same crap as the rest of us. But for the most part the program consists of kids who have never experienced a boundary in their lives and are in desperate need of therapy and a healthy dose of shock treatments. Let's just say that they didn't do so hot in finishing school.

Note: yes, I understand and have a profound appreciation for the fact that these children--because they are children--come from a variety of highly fascinating forms of dysfunctional families. In the first six weeks, I learned more about being a street kid, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism and drug abuse, mental illness, eating disorders and social workers than I thought I would in a year. But since they applied for the program, since they said they wanted a 15th chance, since they said they were "college ready," and since the staff running the program told us the same thing--which they knew at the time was bollocks--my sympathy has quickly run dry.

Maybe if they didn't come in for their required lab hours so high kites would be envious, or if they actually did something other than look for ultimate fighting footage online, or if they stopped spending all their time uploading pictures from their cell phones and trying to score dates on facebook, I might be more tolerant. I might be more easy going if, when I told them they are supposed to be working on their papers, since it is, like, the English lab, they didn't look at me like they wanted to jump me later in the parking lot and then go right back to checking out tire rims. I might feel more warm and fuzzy if I felt like I could leave my belongings in the lab when I go to the bathroom--but I can't, since they've stolen crap from other people who work for the program. I might feel the milk of human kindness flow through me a little if I actually got paid for the work.

But I haven't been paid in over a month, because the Gateway to Hell program screwed up the accounting. I am being paid for my instructional hours, but not the non-instructional ones, the ones for which I really need some kind of reason not to blow my head off with a shotgun. I am not the only person who's experiencing this. I'm just the one who's most pissed off about it. It is one thing to work in little South Central with the Future Thugs of America. It is entirely another to not get paid for it.

I'm certain that if this had happened to the chair of our department, or one of the administrators for the Gateway to Hell program, an emergency check would have been cut toot sweet. But no, I am making calls, doing the rounds, and am getting ready to call my union, for what seems like the thousandth time.

The situation once again reminds me of how awful this particular community college is. This is a college that had to slash budgets, but managed to waste millions of dollars on two construction projects that, now over budget to an alarming extent, have to be put on hold. This is the school that every few years has some kind of scandal about misappropriation of funds, for which one or another bigwig at the school is responsible. This is the school that, despite the fact it has 40,000 students, can't stay above water, even if you threw it a life preserver. This is a community college where someone actually suggested that, in order to bridge the budget gap, we allow private entities to sponsor classes. Sure! Why not? We'll get Coca-Cola to sponsor Health and Nutrition classes, and the Pro-Life people can sponsor the classes in Childhood Development. While we're at it, let's get the KKK to sponsor Religious Studies classes.

Cut the f#*@ing shit.

How is it that the people doing the work for which community colleges are best known and which they espouse--providing access to higher education for the more challenged and disenfranchised members of our community--are the ones not getting paid? The Chancellor goes home to a lovely, warm place where the bills are most likely paid and few threats of bankruptcy and destitution hang over their head. Full-timers get to teach overload while part-timers go wait tables. Landscaping is lovely and the new buildings on campus are immaculate. But I'm wondering how I can turn chunk tuna from a can into an interesting, exciting, and hopefully halfway tasty meal. At least I don't have any cats I have to fight with for the lion's share. I don't get combat pay, although I deserve it, if not, at the very least, a flak jacket and a Howitzer.

The woman in Payroll who is supposedly the nexus point of this clusterfuck has been unavailable, out of her office, hard to reach, not doing her job. I'm sure she's off somewhere enjoying her pay, doing things like putting gas in her car, buying groceries, paying a hit man to finally put an end to her unhappy marriage, which is most likely the fault of a lack of organization and empathy on her part, if her job performance is any kind of reflection. And when she gets back to her desk, She might even clock some overtime, since she has a lot of catching up to do.

She's not the only one who's asleep at the wheel, as is obvious to almost all of us now. I want to track down this woman and her ilk and have them locked in stocks in a public square so I can throw rotten vegetables and fish heads at them, before I move on to bricks and pit bulls. At least they'll be getting paid while they're being abused. I don't even have that right now.

It is one thing to have a job in which you are supposed to take deal with other people's laziness, sloth, bad attitude, wastefulness, corruption and general stupidity. But it is another ball of wax altogether to not get paid for it.