reesesWeb

I never actually forget anything. It's just that sometimes, things trickle out of my head at a time other than the right time. I'm that guy who'll wake up at three AM, the night after a big debate, with the witty rejoinder.

"No, you can't use kittens tied to balloons as little messengers to keep your secret plans out of the hands of your enemies, because they can't talk, and they're awful at writing!"

I mean, the really obvious stuff, right? I go looking for it...nothing. I turn my inner eye...inward, and nothing, just a black, gaping void. My inner eye gets a little scared, like it's taking a midnight stroll down the wrong alley in the wrong part of the Tenderloin or that park in Belltown by Mama's (oh, wait, let me localise this for DC -- like SE DC) with a string of fifty-dollar bills taped together the long way, hanging out of its back pocket, a little moneytail or something, although really, I think the scariest thing in the Tenderloin or SE DC or Belltown or whatever, would be this little eye in parachute pants cruising down the street like the head of the Comet Ulysseses Grants, and ain't no way someone's getting in a tussle with that eye for a few hunny, dig?

What the heck was my point? I think I illustrated it perfectly, anyway. I'm a bit absentminded, but really, more tardyminded, but that has a whole other implication that hits a little too close to home, so let's leave that be.

Ah, yes. So, I had forgotten to mention that I was on the plane Monday morning, flying back from Schiphol, and they showed The Recruit. Now, it's an enjoyable enough movie, because any movie with Bridget Moynahan can't be that bad, especially if you're not listening to the movie, but typing away and looking up and feeling a little disgruntled that they edited out the bits where she's running around nude, even if it's all shot from the back. I think Patrick Moynahan was her body double, though, and that's just too much.

So, in this movie, which I had seen before in the states, there were two bits that made me wince a little bit, being one of the roughly 30% of the people on the plane from the states, the other 70% being godless foreigners. Two bits where Al Pacino's character talked about money, and I realised a couple things.

I just came from a country (Hungary) where very few people are going to be whinging about making only $70k or $75k or whatever per year. That's about eighteen million forints a year, which is enough to buy a crappy flat in the city. Where if someone offers you $200k, you're not going to be asking what the job is, because you wouldn't want them to have any opportunity to change their minds and give it to some other sod. I'm sure the dutch people on the plane didn't mind either way, because each job would leave them with forty euros after taxes, which they'd spend on beer and cigarettes.

Anyway, I think the last movie I saw dubbed into another language was possibly The Matrix, when I saw it in Nice sometime last century. It generally avoided discussions of money, so I really couldn't say how translators handle currency. Do they translate the amounts into quantities that would make sense in the local context, or is this why so many foreigners think we're so affluent? That $70k is the poverty level in the US, and we all get out of college with salaries of at least $200k?

I have very little understanding of how much, say, the average frenchman makes throughout his life. I've spent a lot of time talking to french people, lived in Paris, etc., but it's not something that comes up. "So, Jean-Philippe, how much did you make right out of University? How long before you made FF100k? How much did your flat cost?" Right, I want to reinforce their idea that americans think about money all the time. (Just a sec, I have to put in this stop order.) I imagine that, especially in countries with more progressive taxation, (I hate that term, because of the association of the word 'progress' with something so foul and malodorous) the curve is much more flat. Flatter. And that is why Flattery will get you nowhere.

Where are my pants?

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