Mr. Husband is wrapping up week two of his New Job, the one his grandmother refers to as a “real job,” since everyone knows that taxi driving is for “alcoholics and drifters.”

After two years as a cabbie, I’m surprised that Seth didn’t become one or both of those things.

Two years of driving around whores, old lady rummies, and people to a “pick up” at a meth house three blocks away from our house.

Two years of people shitting their pants, leaving drugs behind, and being driven to the Shoreline casinos when they open at ten o’clock in the morning.

Two years of driving junkies to the methadone clinic on the state’s dime, sometimes from two hours away, and usually daily, as well as driving around giant boxes of blood and tissue samples to the labs to make some extra dough.

Driving crazy people with alien implants to the hospital where they take crazy people.

If that’s not a REAL job, then fuck, what is?

So now he sits at a desk, at his “real job,” and orders sheet music for a local instrument and sheet music chain.

“Is it better?” I say.

“I guess, but you know I run into the same kinds of people in the warehouse as when I was driving. They swear like pirates.”

This is funny, because he makes it sound like he went to college with a bunch of pirates or something, and knows.

“Well, what do you mean?” I say. He knows I am not flinchy.

“This UPS driver comes in all the time to drop packages off, and he walks up to the head guy in the warehouse, and he says, ‘What’s up, cum-drippins?”

“WHAT? That’s a very weird insult.”

“Yeah, they’re weird all the time. The UPS driver is black, and the manager said something about him being colored. And the driver called him a koala bear cracker.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, the manager’s from Australia, I guess it was a reference to that.”

“Oh.”

A “real” job. I guess that entails working in a place with a non-stop barrage of bizarre, made-up insults. I am keeping a list.

Cum-drippins, penis flakes, fucking fuck-donkey, jizz hound, Aussie ass-muncher (from the UPS guy, again), sideways fuckbag. I swear I am not making this up.

In Other News

Sometimes it’s fun to run over to the Goog and enter a common mispelling of a word to see what pops up. So the question of the day is, where is Austrailia? Apparently it offers “fun times, scenic views and friendly people.” I want to go there. Do you think it’s cheaper to fly to than Australia?

Speaking of geography, I think surveys like this are super stupid and pointless. Okay, so young Americans can’t find Iraq. Can most older people who aren’t from that region? Really, if you take the names off of any map, don’t country shapes just look like a bunch of arbitrary blooges?

I would also argue that the reason people flunk these little mini-quizzes is because they DON’T GIVE A SHIT. I mean, in a capitalist society like this one, there has to be some kind of REWARD for a correct answer. Something to generate effort. There has to be a carrot at the end of the stick. I answer survey questions falsely when I get snookered and find out someone is just mining my brain for information, and there’s no payoff at the end.

I imagine a bunch of eager-beaver scientists, standing around at a typical college campus. “Hey, kid, got ten minutes?” I can see the look on the student’s face as they’re rushing to class, or to their drug connection, or home to sleep.

“What, no prize? Not even a a candy bar?” The student thinks for a moment. “Where’s Iraq?” DOINK. The finger lands somewhere in the vicinity of the Indian Ocean. “Somewhere over there, who the fuck cares?”

Also, for a generation of people (myself included) who have been raised with the unconscious message that WE (the U.S.) are the center of the universe, why would a person be motivated to look outside our borders? Some would call it nationalism, but I say it extends beyond that. Other people from other places may look to us as the enemy, or a place of opportunity, but we don’t even need to leave unless we want to scope out how quaint some other country is, or grab some delicious food or art. For WE are the CENTER.

I see survey results like this and it makes me want to spit, because the subtext is that our people don’t NEED to know anything, because we are so rich and taken care of, and our society is *whispers* a little caddywampus but, hey, there’s nothing BETTER out there than what we have.

Of course those Swedish kids knew where we are, we’re the U-S-FUCKING-A!