Monday, September 22, 2008

a man yelling

its 230 am. i just spent the night rehearsing for a show at a shitty bar i dont want to play at. however, from that, things i am passionate for came up. original songs, things to do with the songs in the future; things to work towards.

next topic

i smoke cigarettes. i smoke them often and i am poor and recently my roommates and i have been buying 2 dollar tops tobacco and rolling our own cigarettes. in an attempt to save money, i in fact, simply smoke more.

next topic

i wanted to smoke a cigarette and there was no full tobacco packets. i then decide that i will bite the bullet and go out onto the block and buy tobacco, and a 2 liter of coke (by request of my roommate when i asked "you need anything from the outside world?")

when i get down to the 24 hour bodega, i see a guy in a silver sportscar with doors that open like a lamborghini or a delorean. i say "thats a cool door" to the large, well dressed black guy that walks towards the window.

he then proceeds to yell at the man of persian/middle eastern descent; of which specific ethincity i have no idea. and hes fuckin yelling.

he had apparently asked for a "HEI-NE-KEN" not a fucking "GUI-NESS". he then, continues to yell as he says "I haaave money! I have fuckin money!" as he whips out a large - i would honestly guess about five hundred dollars- wad of cash from his tan, matching velour pimp suit thing, worn with tan timbs with the tag still on, a large bling watch, a few rings, a hat with the 50/50 hologram still on, brim unbent. he probably has more bling around his neck.

the bling dude then explains how he has "dark windows in the car, opened the beer without looking (because he was driving) and took a sip only to find his heineken was, in fact, a guinness. i personally would have not cared in the slightest if that beer mix up happened to me.

ANYWAYS he continues to yell at the poor skinny bodega dude behind the spinning window, who from all i could see was just putting his hands in front of him as if to say "i dont understand exactly, please slow down and stop yelling at me so we can figure this out because im fucking scared of you and your yelling."

i put my hands in my pockets and just watch bling blong yell at scared persumably arabic dude. i felt like i was in trouble too. the yeller then gets the guy to refund his beer, and calms down and turns to me and then very calmly reiterates his rant, that people on the next block could have heard. i just sort of say "heh eh. i guess its a uh um simple misunderstanding." (mr large rich yelling black guy)

the yelling bling dude then gets in his car, flips his kick ass door back down, and puts back on the techno dance music i am reminded of three minutes ago when he drove down the block to beat me to the bodega. as he drives a way i see that his license plate says "rockstr78" if i remember correctly.

i get what i came for and go back towards my house. i then think about how that yelling guy totally over reacted and i would have never done anything like that. i would have calmly gone to the guy and said "yo i asked for a heineken and i took a sip without looking and its not what i asked for."

then i thought about where i live and how im sure that a lot of people try and scam out the bodega owners. also that the bodega owners scam the customers, changing prices daily, five cents to a quarter at a time. also selling lucys and all the other phone card-condom-gum things that come in bulk with no actual price known to the customers.

i THEN thought about what i have been LEARNING about the middle east and the cultures that make it up and a little bit about how the language is organized. also how the language actually sounds to me, and it sounds like a lot of words with very few syllables. a lot of "sound" words that-to me and my uneducated, completely foreign ear-sound like a lot of tkths and tkkhhss and thlamaslada and shit like that.

THEN i considered how "guinness" and "heineken" might sound to a person who speaks a presumably middle eastern area language, when being given directions through a thick plastic spinning window at 225 on a tuesday morning.

i said guinness and heineken it a staccato tongue with a lot of tka and ths and stuff. essentially i did a poor job at saying a word in an arabic/islamic/persian language. i tried to place myself in that situation, as i speak two langauges poorly (not including my english),and how not having the full grasp of another language, the organization of the words, the enunciations, inflections, and phonemes is quite difficult when taking orders.

im back at my steps unlocking my door and i wonder if this dude had gotten to where he is by yelling. not by yelling because hes an asshole, but a sort of conversational strategy to get what he wants when he needs it.

because shit gets done when people yell. and if you come out yelling, your more likely to get what you want quicker, especially if there has been a misunderstanding and you didnt get what you ordered. going back to what i would have done in that situation, i would have been calm and polite, which if someone is A) trying to scam me or B) didnt hear correctly, but is afraid of being scammed himself, might not actually work. it would turn into an argument of who isn't being honest. and though a plastic window at 230 in the morning, will probably not end well.

i think thats it, im starting to lose my tense and write run on sentences