Who needs to get hit in the face with a burning monkey's fist soaked in diesel? Lots of people.

But especially the guy in this story.  So as a preamble:  This is going to be an entry where I take advantage of the internet paradox of anonymous ubiquity, if I could coin a term. . .  the fact that everyone could read this entry, but probably not the guy it's directed at.  So last night I went to trivia at the keg.  If you don't know what this is, it's self explanatory really.  You go to the Brass Taps at the U of G, the dude gives you an answer sheet and then he cracks a few offensive jokes and swears while he reads off trivia questions.  Winning teams win vouchers to exchange for beer and other delights.   This is neither here nor there.  Across from me there's a dude who I can't hear for most of the night because of loud music or talking, and really i don't feel any great loss.  He's someone's friend or roomate, who cares. . .  But now he has become the subject of a rant on stupid people.  People that are such statistical outliers that you don't even know they're being serious.  If they were smarter they could harness their character and become the greatest of satirical comedians.  But they don't.  See the sweetly infuriating irony of ignorant people is that they are ignorant to their own ignorance.  And it is the vice of people like me who care too much.  People like me can't pick their battles.  We want to make the idiot know so badly.  We take it upon ourselves to try to wake up this sleeping person from their la la land.  We're the mom to their nightmare, the shepherd to their sheep, the jesus to their heresy.. . .  "Wake up stupid boy, Jesus is here and he wants to tell you something. . . you're ig'nant." 

Let's call him Igbert. . . I might call him Iggy for short.  Igbert first slid into my conscious awareness with a sort of sideways slithering motion, like a child crawling under a chainlink fence by searchlight, radar sweeping the sky above him, futile in its search for obtuse interlopers.

Iggy opened the conversation with Laura by asking if we were in a relationship.  Good start Igbert, keep your cards close to your chest, don't let 'em see what you got.  Somehow in the conversation Igbert determined that I have a swedish passport.  Apparently I confirmed this 

unknowlingly without actually being in a conversation with him yet.  Now Igbert is on his chest, shuffling under the fence, undetected.  Soon he's in and he stands up, dusts himself off and walks out of the aether with a proverbial hand extended in greeting.  "Did you know" he leans in, eyebrows raised engaging both Laura and I in the conversation "That in Europe,"  here comes a useful nugget of information for my travels, "There are no fast food restaurants."  I hear a record slip in my head, the DJ is puzzled and the people on the dancefloor of my mind 

questioningly look at each other and then over at the music booth.  No one knows what happened.  Now my mind is racing.  Laura already knows he's an idiot but I haven't figured it out yet.  The grin on his face is so convincing that I think he's just a guy with a razor sharp sense of humour.  So I play along.  "Really!?" I exclaim, in an interested but non comittal tone that alows me to play both the  'I think you're a fucking idiot' and 'I think will play your game' sides of the fence.  "What about the McDonald's they opened in Moscow right after the fall of communism, does that count?".  He registers what i'm saying, but not as any sort of counter to what he's 

saying, just as a contribution as valid as his own to the conversation.  I recall that was the last country in Europe to get a McDonald's, and the only thing keeping them out was Communism. . . What about the Mickey D's I ate in in Geneva, where it only cost $12 for the cheapest burger on a real focaccia bun?  Fuck everybody has McDonald's, I've eaten McDonald's in Delhi.  The only McD's I do eat is in foreign countries, just to see what they got going on there, since it's always different (the one in India was actually a curry, needless to say awful compared to any real Indian curry).  The point is Mickey D's is just the beginning here Igbert.  There's KFC, there's pizza joints, there's fries, though in Germany they're called Pomfrit, in France it's frites or pommes frites, and in the UK they're chips.  Ever heard of fish and chips, ass face?  Yeah that was POPULARIZED IN EUROPE.  All these thoughts occurred to me on the walk home after where I realised I'd been had.  He never knew how stupid he was.  The calmer he was in my mind (where he was infinitely calm) the angrier I got. 

 He was so happy to share this chicken McNugget of information with me, because he thought he was imparting wisdom.  Needless to say he'd never been to Europe.  He had endless facts after the first one was so well received. . .He told us all about how "In the States" cause every state is the same, "When you order Iced Tea, you know what they bring you?  Do you know?  They bring Tea,  that they brewed that morning, and they put ice in it.  Isn't that crazy?".  Iggy.  That's insane.  Come off it.  Ice in Tea for Iced tea?  Shit man, that's crazy enough to be the original point of iced tea!  Christ on a raft if it were true that they did that everywhere in the US, there should be someone in the states right now telling his friends that in Canada you can get iced tea out of a machine, in a CAN!  And when it comes out there's no ice, and barely any actual tea.  That is a story worth telling.  He went on to dispense facts about how in the US (where it's obvious now that this worldly gentleman has travelled extensively) they bring your fast food out in a woven basket.  Isn't that cultured?  Real classy. 

 We still use plastic here, the age of woven baskets hasn't dawned in Canada yet.  The best part was at the end when he started shitting on Espanola, Ontario, saying it was so stinky because of the pulp and paper mill, and that it was the worst town ever, don't go there, it's in the middle of nowhere.  He was laughing condescendingly like he was from Hollywood California.  Now he's holding court and a bunch of us are listening.  Someone from the peanut gallery asks "Where are you from?" And without batting an eye he proudly answers "Sudbury."  Now I'm absolutely roaring laughing.  When I calm down I ask him how he can shit on Espanola when he comes from Sudbury.  "You guys don't have any trees.  The rocks are so black that movie crews come up there to make films about the moon.  You have no right to shit on a town that has a pulp and paper mill for stinking (they all do) when you come from a place that looks more like the moon than anywhere in Canada" except for maybe Nunavut, and their latitude gives them a wonderful excuse.  He moved on to reminisce proudly about the famous big chimney and all the people that had died on it.  After the story of the Italian bricklayers that fell off it in a big gust, and the guy that climbed the whole thing, both sides, to prank the passing airplanes by taking the warning lights off it before falling 20 ft. from the ground and dying, after those stories the death toll hovered around a whopping three.  Three people.  Well shit,  I know convenience stores that have killed more than three people.  I guess I can never accuse him of not being entertaining, but I still feel like I got scammed, since I wasn't nearly mean enough.

First thing I'm going to do when I land wherever I land in Europe at the end of this trip is wrap up a nice fat Eastern European cheeseburger, stuff it in tupperware and walk around europe with it.  After a month I'm going to put it in the efficient, fat-free European post.  and send it to Ig'nant Igbert with a note that says "Turns out they do have fast food in Europe, it just isn't very good."  I guess that's why he was at trivia, to help us bring home the gold with his wealth of information.  Even if it was all wrong, you gotta admire the guy for being so sure about it.

**The red picture is of the Badlands in Ontario.  I assure you Igbert didn't know we had badlands in Ontario, but we do.**