Resident Evil

so when I lived in Boston I complained that people from Massachusetts were hyper-aggressive, loudmouthed, provincial, small-minded assholes whose view of reality ends at the 495 loop. and in San Francisco I railed against Californians as shallow, duplicitous, passive-aggressive, narcissistic phonies whose view of reality ends at the surface of their own skin. so here I am in Berlin and what do you know? I have a litany of complaints about the Germans. sure there are arguments to be made that they are sour, humorless, chain smoking, obsessive, alcoholics whose county barely qualifies as second world or that they stay fit by frowning intensely every minute of their lives or that their undeserved reputation for order and control is belied by 80% of their streets being covered in dog shit or that they never miss an opportunity to honk, glare or yell at one another or that their habit of pushing through each other can be likened to pushing yourself to the front of the line to nowhere (I mean getting there first means nothing Fritz, because in the end you're still in Germany after all). but I've started to suspect that I may play some small part in the fact that I hate all the people wherever I live. perhaps I carry unfocused and smoldering fury that gets directed at those around me. it could be that I project my worst anxieties onto the faces of the people I see in the streets whether its Sully form Charlestown yammering in his hideous semi-human accent or Blair from Ventura equating his spin class with transcendence or Hans from Pottsdamm living the idiom that to 'frown is to live'. could it in fact all be my own faults I see in others, my own shortcomings assigned unfairly to the blank canvesses of the strangers I see daily?


.....nope. its really them. they all do suck. wierd, huh? good thing I'm so awesome to help balance things out.