Again... folks... if you don't have Taki's Magazine
"favorite" then...
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
Anyway... introspective tour de force concerning how good
we've got it via Gavin McInnis!
* * *
Last night wasn’t particularly eventful. We went out to
dinner with some guys from work to celebrate Christmas break.
The restaurant wasn’t very fancy and we spent a normal
amount of money.
Then... I put on my Third World glasses and screamed, “Holy
shit!”
When you compare your average American’s night out with
the 50% of the planet who live on less than $2.50 a day, you realize... we are
gods.
America is a country built on mind-boggling inventions,
remarkably diligent entrepreneurs, and unfathomable mountains of hard work. We
take all this greatness and indulge in opulence that makes the Roman Empire
look like a trailer park. What is everyone complaining about? Right now we’re
celebrating a tradition that involves getting drunk with people who love you,
eating until your stomach hurts, and opening tons of presents. What the hell is
in heaven, cheaper beer?
It’s impossible to starve in this country. In fact, our
biggest problem with the poor is they’re getting too fat. Everyone has a
smartphone, even homeless dudes. There are more cars and guns than there are
people and it’s virtually impossible to find a home without a fridge and a TV
in it. When I put on my magic glasses it is impossible to understand why every
so-called oppressed minority doesn’t thank their lucky stars Fortuna’s deadly
wheel plopped them down on American soil.
My boss ordered a couple of seafood platters for the
table and what was once some boring lobster bits on ice became glowing examples
of intense magic. New York is an island, but we’ve deemed the fish around us
too unclean to eat. So we hire fishermen from around the world to find us
cleaner sea fare. Men in Maine work around the clock catching us lobsters they
then freeze-dry and FedEx to the restaurant for overnight delivery. The shrimp
came from China and were shipped here by boat. The unfathomable marvel of just
the planes and boats that were involved in this appetizer boggle the mind.
The short film "I, Pencil" focuses on one tiny
facet of our incredible existence, but it can be applied to everything. You
know what aboriginals in the South Pacific do when they see a plane? They
assume it’s God himself. They’re kind of right. When you peel back the onion
and discover the millions of people behind pencils and planes and boats, you
realize there is an omnipotent force uniting all this talent. Atheists say it’s
just the meritocracy of evolution, but they have a knack for staring into the
eyes of an infinite universe and going, “Meh.”
We didn’t finish the seafood platters because we were
saving room for the main course. Eating in America involves taking small
portions of each course so you get to sample everything. If I’m less than
halfway through my steak and I start feeling full, I eat faster so I can get
more in before my brain shuts the whole thing down. After we’re done, we drink
coffee or digestifs such as cognac, which are really just chemicals that trick
the body into digesting more than it was designed to. A vomitorium by the coat
check would not be out of place.
(*CHUCKLING*)
The appetizers we didn’t finish will be tossed in the
garbage. We throw 33 million tons of food in the garbage every year. This is
food poor people from around the world slaved to create. Even here, a chef will
spend twenty minutes creating a crème brûlée we will take one bite of and then
shove away because we’re stuffed.
* SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, BROTHER!
New York is so lousy with food, there was a rat walking
down the stairs carrying a slice of pizza. In Vietnam, they eat rats for dinner!
One of the guys at the table was a 23-year-old virgin named
Ben who I’m convinced is a closeted gay. If we were in the Middle East, he
would have been hurled off a building long ago. In Africa, he’d probably have
tires put around his body and be set alight. I don’t think there’s a Caribbean
country where homosexuality isn’t illegal. Like most people in this country, we
could care less what his sexual proclivity is. If he’s meant to be gay, go
bananas and grab yourself some wieners. We are so self-deprecating and
negative, instead of appreciating how great it is for gays and maybe getting a
thank-you, we punish anyone who doesn’t effusively embrace them.
(*SMIRK*)
One of the waiters was black. I don’t know his feelings
about America, but he was probably making a few hundred bucks that night and he
likely has at least a little animosity toward this country. If his ancestors
were slaves, they were sold to us by non-whites and we ended the whole process
not long after. Is there a black person in America who thinks they would have
been better off in Africa? A few gave it a whirl and ended up with Liberia, a
shitty nightmare with Ebola. This country wasn’t built on slavery, and any
money it did make was gone after the Civil War when our balance was in the
negative. Even if you believe reparations are a good idea, we already paid them.
* GOOD FRIGGIN' POINT!
The waiter refilled my glass of water, and again this new
take on reality left me gobsmacked. The water he was pouring likely came from
150 miles away at one of the nine upstate reservoirs New York uses for what has
been deemed the champagne of tap water. It gets here via gravity through an
incredible aqueduct system built by a few brave souls who were sick of New
Yorkers getting sick. Nobody dies of dysentery in New York, but it’s the No. 1
cause of death in the Third World.
The glass he was pouring it into was marvel in and of
itself. Our history with glass has been painstaking and for thousands of years
we have been perfecting this incredible solid (no, it’s not a liquid). When
unbreakable glass was invented in 42 BC, the man who created it was murdered by
the emperor. His creation was too valuable to share. That’s what a lot of
people don’t get about entrepreneurs and innovation. Many times these men were
murdered or had their workshops burned down because their inventions were going
to put an entire trade out of business. If you build a better mousetrap, the
world might beat a path to your door or a rival mousetrap maker may beat you to
a pulp. Back in Venetian times, glassmakers were so coveted, they were
sequestered to an island surrounded by armed guards. Eventually, some escaped
and today anyone can make glass. The average restaurant in New York has about a
thousand glasses of various shapes and sizes.
The ingrates claim the West stole all this “cargo” from
the rest of the world. You can’t just steal a pencil or a plane. Too many
people are involved in creating it. And hey, if you like our planes so much,
make your own. Start with a helicopter if that sounds even remotely possible.
Christmas is about many things, but a big part of it is
indulging yourself. I’m all for that. Be crass. Be an ugly American. Laugh with
your mouth full. The men who built this country didn’t do it so we could feel
bad about ourselves. They did it so we could all prosper. I’m done feeling bad
about being the best. We rule, literally. You’re welcome.
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