They are trying to get me. Every day they call and message. Every day I wake up afraid.
Unfortunately, this time ‘they’ are real and I can’t just take a prescription pill for 6-8 weeks to make them vanish. I am writing about the course managers at my language school. Their un-coveted job is to dispatch teachers to new or prospective clients all across the city. The first problem is that there are some 300 teachers and 14 course managers. Even if the CMs could manage to correctly remember who they were talking to and which language to speak to each person, things would only be marginally less tense between the two factions.
The core problem is dissent within the ranks of the generally rebellious renegade language-rogue; most of us are a bunch of bums. Making an hour commute to teach 40 year old bank managers how to give directions at 7:30am on a Monday morning doesn’t appeal to most of us underpaid (and hence completely unmotivated) beer-barons. This is true in triplicate when the next obligation of the day isn’t until 4 pm. You might even say we resent it.
So therefore, there is a clear power struggle between the teachers at Caledonian and the course managers; the managers are trying to fill shitty schedules and teachers are trying to avoid them.
Some teachers feel pressured to respond to the course managers when they call or message. Who or what is pressuring them is beyond me. Morals, social obligation, guilt, courtesy, work-ethic, God: all are utterly powerless to get me up and going at 5:15am. Even if they all combined forces and punched through my bedroom wall like some ethereal transformer robot, I would rather die than be a slave to such a beast. So, I have opted to avoid them entirely by means of stealth and distraction.
I do not know how much longer I can hold out; they have me in their sights. They see the plump and juicy virgin flesh of my Monday morning freedom and are circling like buzzards. Every last one of them is trying to slam me with some bogus 8am Monday class in the middle of BFE (that is bum f**cked Egypt for those who speak a more sophisticated dialect of English and may not be familiar with the ‘common tongue’ of the working class expatriate internet journalist). Regardless, they are fighting a losing battle because I don’t ride buses in the AM.
I also do not tolerate English pricks stuttering imperialistic propaganda at me on the streets. You might think “well, it certainly doesn’t matter whether that is something you tolerate or not, Thomas, because I am sure that doesn’t happen in Prague”. Well, that is when I would say “you are mistaken”.
Just last night I was walking home from a bar and these two wankers from Sussex overheard me talking to my friend Erin and asked us where the nearest bathroom was. ‘Innocent enough’ I thought foolishly. ‘Maybe these Brits are not complete condescending tallywhackers.” So we chatted a bit about Prague, travel, the beer… and then - faster than the French lost a country - they switched topics and began insulting the American public.
They were not talking about the leadership problems, corruption, governmental and civil disparity, or other evils common to all men, but about how
“Americans are just big and dumb and, frankly, if you don’t mind my mentioning, quite slow to the punch (old chap)”.
I retorted with clear arguments about the trembling and frail English mindset that has led to the police state of London, the pathetic condition of their withering monarch, the unmistakably evil history of raping Africa and the Indian subcontinent, and the ugliness of English women. Faster than they could say something British in response (which may have led to my first felonious criminal indictment) I introduced my American fist to one of those mangled little rot holes they call a mouth showed them how slow an American punch is.
I was upset, needless to say, and I went home, read about the America Revolution, about the firebombing of London, and watched Braveheart AND the Patriot in order to calm my nerves. After this therapy session, I decided that Mel Gibson is my personal hero.
Let’s take a moment (out of respect for his holiness) and think of all the people Mel has killed in effigy: he has killed Medieval Brits (Bravehart), Colonial Brits (the Patriot), drug dealers (Lethal Weapon), Jet Li (Lethal Weapon IV), various mafioso (Payback), oil-bandits (Mad Max and The Road Warrior), Jesus Christ (The Passion of the Christ) and I am pretty sure he killed Helen Hunt (What Women Want). I could be wrong about the last one because when my roommate was watching the film I was in sleeping in another room down the hall with the door closed… but, if I know anything about Mel, he did the right thing and finished her off quick.
Even more notable than his triumph over the Hunt-Amazon, he killed Jet Li. I have heard said this is completely impossible, even in a movie, because Jet Li doesn’t follow the script when it calls for his dying. The Daoist Chuang-Tzu (800 BMKC [Before Mel Killed Christ] wrote, in his great epic about kung fu, that “Jet Li, like the pink moon-cloud on Mount Tai, travels freely through time and space, going where he wishes, kicking people in the throat…and does not surrender his breath to age or bullets.” So, in that spirit, I have created a quote of my own to commemorate Mr. Gibson’s on and off screen accomplishments: the only thing more dangerous than Chuck Norris is Mel Gibson acting the part of Chuck Norris.
By the way, when the Boogey-Man goes to sleep, he checks under his bed for Chuck Norris.
