Stereotypes

I was looking for something to write about this week, but was coming up short in the funny department, not for any particular reason, but simply because the funniest thing that happened to me happened at work but it was one of those things that might be really embarrassing for the business and I don’t know who reads this. So I went back through my phone looking for inspiration and found this:

Me: What robot were you talking about when you sent me this?
Ken: (looks at text): I don’t know.
Me: How can you not know? Are you fandangling with robots every day?
Ken: I don’t know what that word means, and I think you made it up.
Me: Of course I made it up, KEN. But that doesn’t change the fact that some robot was giving you a hard time.
Ken: That’s what they do.
Me: That’s a stereotype.

And of course, I was then reminded (and please forgive the terrible and obvious segue that will allow me to get to the thing I really wanted to write about while at the same time having at least SOME sort of introduction) of a commercial that keeps coming up on my Youtube recommendations. It’s an ad for Ikea Kitchens and was very popular several years ago, which you may remember. In the commercial, a large Italian family has gotten together for dinner. Everyone is running around to the strains of “Mezza Voce”, trying to prepare the meal. Suddenly, a tiny grandmother dressed all in black appears, and tastes the spaghetti sauce. The music abruptly stops, as she yells “Tutti Fuore!” which means “Everyone Out!”, and the whole family scatters in fear as the music swells up and resumes. I guess they were making sh*tty spaghetti sauce or something, and she’s going to fix it with her magical Italian grandma powers. I don’t know a lot about Italian culture, but their grandmas seem pretty scary, according to Ikea, which seems to be doing a lot of heavy stereotyping in the commercial. And then I wondered how Ikea would portray other cultures in the kitchen, like, say, my own cultural backgrounds of English and Scottish…

A large Scottish family has gotten together for dinner. Everyone is having a wee dram, and sword-dancing to the strains of bagpipe music. Suddenly, a stocky grandmother dressed in the clan tartan appears. She peers into the oven. The bagpipes stop abruptly—well, they kind of just die off, like the last gasps of a large farm animal—as she announces, “The haggis is no done yet!” and slams shuts the oven door. Everyone sighs and there are mutters of “Thank God”, and “Pour me another dram, Jimmy.” Someone hands the grandma a tumbler of Scotch. She tosses it back, and the bagpipes resume, like a large farm animal which has been suddenly been revived.

A large English family has gotten together for dinner. Everyone is enjoying a nice cup of tea whilst singing “God Save the King” acapella. Suddenly, a bespectacled grandmother appears, wearing a cardigan and slippers. She peers into the oven. Everyone keeps singing until the song is finished, because you never leave a monarch hanging. Then they look expectantly at the grandmother, who says, “Dear me, the roast isn’t quite gray enough yet. And I believe those potatoes need to boil for at least another half an hour.” The family nods in agreement and there are calls of “Very well, then,” and “Cheerio”. Someone mutters, “Couldn’t we just order an Indian take-away?The grandmother looks stern and pours herself a small glass of sherry, as the group begins to sing “Jerusalem.”

Ikea: Swedish for common sense. And stereotypes. And robots. By the way, Ken finally remembered that the robot he was struggling with turned out to be the neighbour’s robotic cat litter box–it got stuck and he had to reset it while listening to it yell, “I’m from the future! Save me from these disgusting but adorable creatures that keep sh*tting in my mouth or I’ll bring my army of cyborgs down upon your head!”

Thursday: Life’s little mysteries

I’ve certainly had my share of mysterious events throughout my life, and if you come here regularly, you’ll have heard about the inexplicable presence of long, blonde hairs in my condo, the strange case of the missing earring back, or the sudden appearance of a deer’s jawbone in my backyard. But what happened on Thursday night tops it all. And that’s not just a bloggy clickbait to get you to keep reading—it was truly the most random thing imaginable, and I’ve yet to find an explanation, either plausible or implausible, to account for it. Here’s the scene:

Ken and I were watching the Democratic National Convention. No, that’s not the weird thing. I mean, yes, it’s a little weird how I’ve been watching both conventions obsessively, since I’m Canadian. But I just find American politics fascinating in the same way that some people can’t seem to look away from a car crash. And right now, American politics is as close to a train wreck as you could possibly get. I can’t even write about Donald Trump anymore, because nothing I invent even comes close to the sh*t he actually says. I recently re-read some of my previous posts about Trump—the wall (Week 49), his first meeting with Justin Trudeau (Week 64), his conversations with other five-year-olds (Week 88)—and they all seem extremely, nay frighteningly, realistic. Aside from my imagining of Kanye West as his VP pick, I might as well be channeling him directly. On the other side of the aisle is Hillary Clinton, who I know virtually nothing about. Well, except for the bizarre nicknames that Trump has for her, like “Crooked Hillary”, which isn’t even particularly creative. Although I think if he went with something more sophisticated and alliterative, like “Heinous Hillary”, none of his supporters would know what he meant, since the vast majority of them look utterly baffled when he says anything other than “wall” or “muslim,” or “Constitution”. So after watching the gong show that was the RNC, I really wanted to see what the Democrats would be like in comparison. The DNC was certainly more upbeat—nary a hint of an appearance by the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse—but the reporters all kept talking about how Hillary needed to be seen as more human, which I thought was strange, given that Trump is simply a caricature and compared to him, my fish is more human. (There Mishima—I gave you an honourable mention. Now you can stop whining about how I talk more about the dog and cat than I do about you.)

I believe it was partway through Katy Perry’s performance on Thursday night when I first ran my fingers through my hair. You know, the way people do when they’re relaxing, and maybe a little bored, waiting for something interesting to happen, like a Bernie Sanders supporter disrupting the performance by running across the stage naked, a la the streaking fad of the 70s. But something felt weird—on my head, that is. It felt like there were grains of sand in my hair. I pulled one out, and looked at it closely. It was clear and crystalline. I put it in my mouth, bit down on it and realized it wasn’t sand. It was SALT. I had salt in my hair. A LOT of grains of salt. I turned to Ken:

Me: WTF?! I have salt in my hair!
Ken: How did you get salt in your hair?
Me: You tell ME!
Ken: Were you shaking the salt shaker really vigorously at dinner? Maybe some of the salt flew up in the air, and landed in your hair.
Me: I think you and K would have noticed if I was using a salt shaker like I was playing the maracas. This is insane. How could I get this much salt in my hair?

At this point, I actually Googled “salt in hair” to see if there was some rare, little-known disease that might cause one’s body to spontaneously produce salt crystals. All I got was “using Epsom salts as a hair rinse to prevent dandruff”. Which I had definitely NOT done. My only choice was to bend over and shake all the salt out of my hair. It was so distracting that I only paid half-attention to Hillary Clinton’s speech. From what I could tell as I was upside-down, she seemed to have better and more specific plans for America than Trump, from whose platform I could only discern that “things are gonna be SO good”. And despite the criticism of the guy on PBS who kept trying to mansplain to the two female PBS anchors that Hillary’s speech was flat, I thought she came off as VERY human. I, on the other hand, seemed to have turned into Lot’s wife.

The next day at lunch, I was still freaked out by what had happened, and I decided that maybe K had played a joke on me.

Me: I have to ask you a really weird question. I swear I’m being serious.
K (suspiciously): Um, OK. What?
Me: Last night at dinner, did you shake salt into my hair when I wasn’t looking? Like, as a joke?
K: (laughing hysterically): What?! Did I do what?!
Me: Don’t laugh! I found a sh*tload of salt in my hair last night and I don’t know where it came from.
K: How did you know it was salt?
Me: I tasted it.
K: What?! Why would you TASTE it?!
Me: BECAUSE I NEEDED TO KNOW WHAT IT WAS!
K: What if it was poison?!
Me: Why would anyone sprinkle poisonous salt in my hair? Just be honest. Did you sneak up behind me and do it?
K: No, Mom. I did not put salt in your hair.

I still have no idea where all that salt came from. I’m going to file this under Life’s Little Mysteries, along with the blonde hair in my condo, the missing earring back, the deer jawbone, and how Donald Trump became the Republican candidate for president.