Georgie, can you spare a future?

If George Orwell intended to write a sequel to 1984, he'd probably title it 2008.

Ok, this isn't a post about living in the Twin Cities. It's about living in technological toyland. About riding the light rail, watching this bald headed guy in his 30's who is wearing these futuristic sunglasses, groovin with his ipod, and toying with his gadget. And what a gadget it is. No more than 2 inches wide, 4 inches long. But his fingers are skating across the tiny screen, pulling down menus, opening new popups, he's having all kinds of fun with this little whatsamigger. Now that word may not be spelled correctly. You don't get spell check assistance for made up words that you heard wrong in the first place. Wait, maybe it's whatsmajigger. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a thing that this little device can't do. This guy is hooked. He's Buck Rogers. He's a twelve year old with his first Gameboy. He has been brought up on the future. He doesn't remember when a 1956 Chevy was a late model car. The era before transitor radios, mobile phones of any kind. This guy probably owns a Kindle. Reads Chuck Palahniuk novels digitally.

55,000 of those little reading devices are sold a month according to Amazon. Jeff Bezos just bought a new jet. Or maybe he just bought the fuel for a new jet. That's clearly more impressive. Any fat slob capitalist can buy a jet these days. Try to gas it up. Northwest Airlines just laid off 5,000 workers. They're all going to be competing for Ez's job now. Anyway Bezos or maybe it's Bejos, he changed it from the Spanish when he arrived in this country, keeps his jet fuel in a clear lucite container on the tarmac hooked up to a device that creates waves. Sunlight flickering on the waves of high grade jet fuel. The ultimate status symbol of the 21st Century.

Ez used to write a blog titled Ithaca Sucks. Over 300 posts. Ez did for Ithaca, New York what Hugh Selby, Jr did for Brooklyn. Last exit to Ithaca. Now it's gone. Ez has lost his blogspot. It just disappeared one day. He signed up for it on a different email account than the one he uses now. Had to change his account when someone penetrated the layers of identity Ez had created to protect himself from the wrath of the townspeople, envisioning torchlit throngs pressing against the gates, tar and feather parties, the whole nine yards. Now Ez can't remember the password to the original email account. And there is absolutely no one to talk to about it.

The human element has been eliminated from the future. There will no longer be help desks in the future. There are FAQ's. If you don't find the answer there, then fuck you buddy. Anamolies and anachronisms will be a thing of the past. No special cases. No exceptions to the rule. You hear me. Stick it up your ass if it doesn't work and you can't get help from the FAQ page.

The whole world is like that now. You call that nice? You call that a better world?

Ez went to the Minnesota 150 exhibit over at the History Center in St. Paul. It was a real treat to walk around and see all the things that had been invented in Minnesota. Made him proud to be a new Minnesotean. The snowmobile. The mechanical heart. The beaver hat. Lots of friggin beavers died in the process. Now, more and more guys shave their heads. Maybe the beaver hat will come back. You never know.

Maybe, one day, after everyone is blind and deaf from all the reading and listening devices we've been sold up the whazoo, they'll stick us all in sensory deprivation chambers, there won't be an environment anymore, that would have all been destroyed by technology, everyone will float in the amnitotic fluid of the future, plugged into a virtual reality matrix controlled by Amazon/Google. AGOG.

Halal Camel Down

Ez has ridden the 11 bus now for months and hasn't run into a single warlord yet. Is that possible? This is, after all, little Modadishu, well, at least to the politically incorrect, it is. There are more East Africans in Minnesota than in the entire Horn of Africa. The only runner up is, well, Nebraska.

We're talking about Minnesota now where Garrison Keillhor got rich, spinning monologues about laconic Swedes, bachelor Finns, spinster aunts, ice fishing, biscuits, endless winters, down home in the frozen north, more biscuits. Things sure have changed, haven't they, Sven? Suddenly we aren't talking Lake Wobegon anymore --we're talking Indian Ocean.

Typically, the area of Minneapolis between Cedar/Riverside and Franklin Ave in Minneapolis is teeming with women of all ages in veils. Halal butcher shops line Franklin. Halal is the Islamic equivilant of kosher. Several high rise tenements, what else would you call them, stand out against the urban skyline, marking the epicenters of the disapora. Get on a 2C bus at Franklin and you are likely to encounter a matronly Somali lady, breaching cell phone etiquette with the rapid clucking sounds of lowland Cushitic.

Many Americans may have picked up a distorted view of the Somali people from the 1999 best seller, Black Hawk Down. Mark Bowden's book tells the unhappy store of the abortive US intervention in Somalia back in the Billy Clinton days when two Marine helicopters were brought down by militia fire in the capital, Mogadishu.

Ez gets a little miffed when political hacks go off the map and describe the situation in Somalia at the time as 'anarchic.' Hey, how would you describe Dodge City in 1879? Or any frontier town in the good ole US of A before Marshall Matt Dillon or Wyatt Earp mowed down the shifty bad guys. Not the city of brotherly love, yo, that's for sure. But Ez is biased.

A little anarchy is good for us all, and the messiness witnessed in Somalia during the Clinton years, that really had little to do with real anarchy. Ez tends to think that pundits obsessed with their rigid model of two party lockstep psuedo-democracy always tend to trot out the A word when they find situations on the ground to be a little fluid. What happened in Somali in the 1990's, was a typical reaction to the destablizing impact of a two tiered world economy that favors rich nations at the expense of poor ones, the usual super power machinations in the Middle East combined with the lasting effects of colonialism. Maybe the liberals cooked up that factional stew in the first place to create a relief crisis and make legions of Minnesota social workers rich.

No, besides violating cell phone etiquette from time to time, the Somali people are wonderful. As previously mentioned, Ez has not in all this time encountered any child soldiers, warlords or rabid terrorists with links to OBL since he's been in Minnesota. Actually, there may be more Somali than Scandinavians in Minnesota now, but that boast really requires more research. In later blogs, Ez will deconstruct Scandinavianism. Be there.

Anyway, the Somali people are wonderful. And they add diversity to the social landscape. Hell, they ain't blonde, are they, which is a relief in of itself. Ez once spent an entire day without running into a brunette. And, yep, they do provide jobs for Americans. The Somali Diaspora has made the American Dream possible for so many social workers, liberal establishment Lutheran Church relief workers, quick manuevering educators who set up literacy centers, greedy investment bankers who finance development projects like those tall high rise tenements, taxi companies who exploit cheap Somali labor, down the entire list of bottom feeders. Without this influx of Somali, so many white middle class college graduates in Minnesota would not be able to afford prairie style bungalows in the $450,000 range out in the 'burbs of Edina. Hey there, Sven, political unrest in Somalia sure was a windfall to Minnesota, ja? Like Sutter's gold for California. Relief crisis bonanza.

Ez once thought that Ithaca, New York was the social work capital of the universe. Ain't so. It's Minneapolis, Minnesota. A friggin' NGO theme park. Hell, think of the Light Rail as a ride. More East Africans ride the Light Ride between Cedar/Riverside and the Franklin in a given day than ride the Bakara Express in a month of Sundays. Meanwhile the poor immigrant is allowed to percolate up the economic pipeline, driving a taxi, working low paying jobs in the fast food industry, taking courses on outmoded computer applications at some Minneapolis Degree Mill, believe us, you will never experience a 10th reunion barbecue at this campus.


Ez does have one problem. It's the newcomer's unnerving taste for camel meat. They like their camel. And, of course, all meat has to be halal, which is the same in Islam, as kosher is in Judaism. There are literally dozens of halal butcher shops lining Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Think of it.

Poor camels.

That means, as the newcomers assimilate, work their way into the American mainstream, create market niches for themselves on the Great American Food Chain, McDonalds will have to start selling Halal Camel Burgers. And then there will be a goat chili option at Wendy's. And Taco Bell will feel left out of the camel train. Halal tacos?

kultureshock and beyond

Google the word 'doppleganger.'

you get:

A double, an identical replica of a person. The idea behind this is that everyone has a Doppleganger, an identical copy of themselves somewhere in the world. If the person is good, then the Doppleganger will be evil and vice versa. It is even said that if the two should meet, then they will both perish. Although there is no evidence that Dopplegangers exist, some people have actually reported claims of witnessing what they believe to be their Doppleganger. In all likelihood however, Dopplegangers are an aspect of myth only.

Maybe the idea that Minneapolis and St. Paul are indeed 'twin cities' is also an aspect of myth.

Let's be real, how can these two metroblobs be twins -- they don't look alike, are nowhere near the same size or population, have no features in common except that they were both built on the Mississippi River. Minneapolis sprawls over to the other bank anyway. Maybe there is a part of St. Paul in Minneapolis -- a place where Paulicans drink St. Pauli girl and reminisce about that Midwestern Zion across the big sea waters, you know, the old neighborhood, singing-'by the rivers of Babylon' in a slow Scandinavian wail.

Ez once saw his doppleganger crossing a park in Trenton, New Jersey. A gawky, oblong headed, pimply faced dude with size ten boatyards for feet. No shit. Those days are shrouded in myth too now so Ez is not even sure that this happened. Over the years, however, by a process of slow erosion or siltage, whichever, Ez has earned the right to think of himself as totally unique. He ain't nobody's twin. And this shit about the Twin Cities, well, it's Chamber of Commerce bullshit. We ain't talking Buda and Pest here.

There must have been a moment in Minnesota history when cognitive dissonance ruled the day. To be honest, is there ever a day when cognitive dissonance doesn't rule the day out here? That's probably explains why the Republican National Convention chose St. Paul for their quad-annual truthbashing, ain't it? Ez is from New Jersey where people 'tell it like it is.' None of this faux twin shit would have ever occurred in New Jersey. What self-respecting burg would ever claim Trenton or Camden as a twin? Wouldn't that be sort of like claiming that you look like Jeb Bush?




There are lots of myths kicking around out here in Minnesota. Like this Longfellow shit.

Now, according to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (more on this much later-- nothing is free, nothing), Longfellow

" was born in Portland, Maine and studied at Bowdoin College. After spending time in Europe he became a professor at Bowdoin and, later, at Harvard College. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, though he lived the remainder of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a former headquarters of George Washington."

Now, and Ez poses this as an open question, at what point did Minnesoteans claim Longfellow, a known Easterner, a man who cavorted with other known Easterners all his life, William Dean Howells, Charles Eliot Norton, as sort of a patron saint? There isn't a day that goes by that Ez doesn't take the Hiawatha Line, or see place names like Nokomis, Minnehaha, or shit like that. Minnehaha???? We're getting closer..... noble savages, fantasy redmen, running around in old growth forests, now logged into matchsticks, and the original native population dereacinated, all but exterminate, the few that are left hanging out on the exit ramps of 35W, toting homeless signs----we smell cover up here. The first settlers to Minnehahaville killed off the forest, killed off the Noble Savage and substituted an.......advertising jingle. That it?

Or perhaps the connection has to do with the fact that Longfellow passed away with more pennies in the bank than almost any other American poet. Wikipedia, always a reliable source of information on stuff like this, cites that Henry's personal fortune at time of death was over $300K. Ole' Henry would definitely be living on the tony banks of Lake Calhoun with that kind of dough. And Minneapolitans, Minnesoteans all, for that matter, respect that kind of success. Anybody who can make big bucks cranking out lines like---

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water...

is a winner in the George Babbitt school of achievement.

Hell, they sell a lot of Gitche Gumee up there at the Mall of America.