A Guide to City Life # 11111 - The Country

Welcome to the Guide to City Life #11111 - "The Country". In this module, you will sigh with bucolic longing for the dying ways of your forefathers as their sons and daughters are pulled to the city and forced to labour long days and nights on the loom - the last refrain of a half-forgotten folksong caught in their throat as the whirr of industrial progress drowns out their world-weary dialect.

The country is a place that has no skyscrapers. It barely has any buildings at all, and most of those are filled with livestock, harvested produce, or equipment - rusty, bone-like things with dulled teeth and a nameless smear.

The country is eerie. In it, men have less teeth, and women are interchangeable with tree-stumps. Country-folk, or as they are known to themselves, "us of the patch", have totally different traditions and methods than city dwellers. Unlike you or I or anyone clean, country folk live off the land. They pay homage to the dirt that controls their lives. Sometimes they make out with it.

Country dwellers emerged from rocks about 50,000 years ago. They have gone through a lot. They have been: cave men, neolithic farmers, slaves of the Pharaoh, free yeoman, serfs, peasants, kulaks, industrial farmers, smarmy grandsons of industrial farmers, and smarmy great-grandsons of industrial farmers who decide to buy an organic farm on the side.

Why do city dwellers need to know about the country at all? Unfortunately, the country is where food is made. This is a huge disadvantage for all of us, because it means the food we get is usually pretty dirty and needs to be washed. Or at least rubbed. If you've ever been to a Farmer's Market, you will notice boxes of dirty tubers and leaves. These are actually what vegetables look like when they come from the country. It takes a lot of spa treatment to get them fit for the grocery store or processed ramen soup mix.

In the country it is illegal to smart-mouth a scarecrow.

If your car breaks down in the country, I'm sure someone will be along shortly. Wasn't there a gas station a few miles back? Oh great. It's raining. Just fucking great. This is totally worth seeing your crazy family for.

Music in the country is known as "country", "bluegrass", "folk" or "hoot'en'tootenany". Music plays a large part in country life, because they have a lot to get out of their system. Country music can consist of ancient ballads or tunes that have been passed down from generation to generation, or, alternatively, cheap knock-offs of top 40 hits. The common thread is that all country music must be played on a raggedy string-bereft fiddle, spoons, jugs, washboards, tractor parts, or bags of teeth.

All country music must be run passed Satan before it is allowed to be played in the country.

Here is a list of famous country songs:

• Rock
• Stick
• Beethoven's 6th Symphony "The Pastoral"
• Tube
• The hucky munkin grammophone blues
• Cigarette butt
• Diesel

I bet you didn't realize some of your favourite bangers were actually long-treasured yokel bonfire tunes.

The country...Whispers. The country...Secrets. The country...The old, homey, bonified...The...

Thank you for tolerating the Guide to City Life # 11111 - "The Country". We won't have to deal with it for long, but until we can get the Great Concrete Age fully rolled-out, we'll have to at least try. Please hold your breath until the release of our next module, #4 - "World Cheeses, Local Cheeses, Warlords".

Wolf-Dog, Son of the Wolf and the Dog

The sled toppled over in the snow, but the wolf-dog Mario Hernandez leapt free of the chaos to face the foe before him. A lynx! In a flash he was at the beast’s throat, examining for dry skin. The other mutts cowered like dogs. Not for nothing was the great Sibero-Alaskan wolf-breed prized by Indians, Sourdoughs, and Pita Breads alike. Fierce, loyal, cunning, a little schmutzig, but you know, generally pretty agreeable - as all things, men and beast, are, in the shadow of the Arctic Circle.

“Get ‘im Mario!” cried Mandible Pierre. “Get ‘im in de face, colisse!”

Mario gazed intently at the savage beast. The beast gazed intently at Mario. Then started a round of Devil Sticks. Such is life in the North.

“Oh franchement!” cried Mandible Pierre as he kicked an empty can of erstwhile beans at his smarmy companion of the Gravy Curd.

Long weeks had the team been trailing – from Edmonton they set out, 16 men mushing a team of 21 sled-dogs. By the time they reached the Great Slave Lake those figures had mysteriously reversed - 21 dogs driving a doubtful team of 16 sled-men. In the Yukon country the figures had righted themselves once more and a decent 2 men were warily driving 8 dogs, of which Mario Hernandez was the undisputed Director of Communications.

Proud, cunning, fierce, and staggeringly large – none of these things were Mario Hernandez. A different breed of wolf-dog, Mario had inherited more atavisms and less chromosomes than the average arctic saltlick. Clearly he had that special, semi-retarded breed of Arctic Goonwolf in his pedigree. His head was massive and droopy. His eyes, red and hilariously wandering. His snout was as large as his legs were squat, and his moustache – so rare a “thing” in the dog world – was prominently bushy and usually pretty well maintained with some weird dog-brand of pomade.

“Mario Hernandez!” his first owner had named him, the Indian band-leader called Collectible Figurine. “For the beast looks like a Mario – what a moustache! Clearly the winner of our tribal Movember competition. No contest.”

After a bitter half hour of struggle – a lynx got hands at dem sticks – Mario Hernandez trotted up to his Poutine-stained owner, half a sandwich in his mouth and a bag of Alaskan-themed temporary tattoos tied to his bushy tail.

Such were the tallies on the great Excel Sheet of the Aurora Borealis. A promise made was a debt-unpaid – a debt of death, cold, harsh, or, if unavailable, at least a debt of severe frostbite in the posterior.

The team continued until nightfall, where they set up camp by the lone firelight, the dogs round in a ring howling their “oy veys!” to the nameless snows. Tucked in their furs, Mandible Pierre and his companion Brownie LeBrun discussed the life of the gold seeker and part-time stand-up comedian.

“C’est fucking nuts la. Cold as de tits.”

Mandible Pierre took a long draw from his pipe and frowned.

“’Bernac oui”.

As they were nodding off, they stared dreamily at the hungry eyes glowering at them from the fringes of the forest, beyond the reach of the firelight. Either they were being hounded by wolves, or these trees and bushes had, like, eyes.

Wolf-dog Mario Hernandez did not sleep that night. With droopy vigilance he stared down the pack of hungry wolves, tempting them with all his wolfish blood to just fucking try it. One time a daring silver she-wolf went to make a pass at him – in an instant Mario threw up the doggy gang sign of choice, and was troubled no more that night by silver wolves. One of the other dogs, however, was lured out of the camp to check out this really cool new lamb taco place for wolves – something something camino? I dunno, it got really good reviews so…But actually it was just a ploy, and the wolves totally ate that dog.

At dawn the men swore as they drank their morning coffee from the portable Keurig machine. Then they gathered their spirits, which were mostly marshmallow. They set-off on the sled, stopping at every really big hill for a good slide. Brownie LeBrun would occasionally bust out the GT-Racer for really radical slopes, while Mario Hernandez held up the signed poster of Brett Hull for encouragement.

Eventually the night fell once more, and the dreaded eyes returned. A wary Mario Hernandez started digging trenches. The two Frenchies however decided that there was nothing to fear but fear itself. They were so tired like, it was just a really long day. They were having none of it from some stupid hungry wolves, they are basically all the same anyway, they call at like 8 p.m. on a WEDNESDAY and don’t even know how to pronounce your name properly and just ugh. Not having it.

Another dog got ate that night lol.

When the dawn broke this time, the eyes did not dissipate. Not only that, they definitely had wolves attached to them. Bold wolves. Wolves with striped shirts and well formatted, single-page resumes. Wolves that weren’t afraid to neg a chick if they needed to. Mario Hernandez bristled. The Frenchmen shivered. The other dogs just flipped out. All the while, the wolves stared, licking their chops, tucking serviettes around their necks and banging rudely carved knives and forks against each other.

Mario Hernandez – wolf dog – had had enough. Every fibre in his body was attuned to the wild Salsa rhythms of the forest. His very blood was howling syncopated spasms of carnage and tacos. He was done. Breaking out of the protective ring of the fire, he trotted right up to the biggest, boldest, most aggro wolf in the pack. Mario Hernandez – wolf dog, son of wolf and dog. The big wolf started down at him, laughing weirdly.

And then Mario Hernandez did what he was born to do, what his father was born to do before him, and all the patriarchs of the Northern Wild – Mario Hernandez did that one act that defines a Northerner soul and heart from all other creatures. Growling maw to maw with the wolf, he opened his jaw and said in doggy argot:

“Fuckin’ cold eh? C’est frette icitte!”

Bitching about the weather unites all creatures under the frozen stare of the Midnight Sun. 

A Guide to City Life # ٣٩ - "City Wisdom"

Welcome to the Guide to City Life # CHARNOTRECOGNIZED! "City Wisdom". In this module, you will learn some of the basic chunks of speakwisdom that will serve as your urban astrolabe. They will help you navigate the steel and concrete sea, avoiding pitfalls, pitbulls, pity parties, and pizzicato murder.

What is wisdom? Wisdom can be defined as a gumball machine for proverbs. What is a gumball machine? A gumball machine was an archaic form of sugar infection that involved the exchange of coins for treated rubber.

A proverb is a punchline for the cosmic joke of inevitable failure. Wisdom is an artform that originated in the desert. In the desert, death was dealt out quickly and harshly to nomadic peoples. When some kind, hoary-bearded patriarch was bitten by an ape spider, his dark bearded relatives would, instead of seeking help or praying to the Lord Johobo, reply with a quick punchline or proverb. Thus the prevalence of proverbs in books of desert divinity:

There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Oh snap.

Although wisdom has helped to irritate men for all of history, many of its proverbs have grown irrelevant, if not outright baffling. The city man can hardly expect to relate to the old Arabic proverb الثروة تأتي كالسلحفاة وتذهب كالغزال  because he probably cannot understand old Arabic. If he could, he would  be faced with a new problem of interpretation: what is a turtle? Why a gazelle? Did I run out of staples again?

The city has, happily, grown its own pod of proverbs for the modern proletarian. Here are a few of the better ones, with a commentary to explain their significance.

Kill mosquitoes.
Commentary: Mosquitoes are awful and deserve death.

I've never even seen a goddamn Moose.
Commentary: Less frequently seen than one might suppose, the Moose is a creature of note.

Don't order the beef shawarma are you nuts? That meat has been there for like, 3 days.
Commentary: Vegetarians are usually vindicated through patience and observation.

I like Solange better anyway.
Commentary: In the city, the fine arts are judged by both aesthetic merit, and aesthetic anti-merit (or hype).

Wait, the purple bus tickets expired already? 
Commentary: In the city, "public transportation" is a by-word for death by strangulation.

A fool and his money are easily awesome.
Commentary: No one is impressive by city standards until they make money for spending money.

A stitch in time is a sci-fi novel.
Commentary: Literacy, a common form of improv theatre.

Eat around the Bananas dad, they are just empty calories.
Commentary: This is derived from an old Berlin poem that ends with the lines "girth equals mirth".

Prep your materials and marinate the night before.
Commentary: That which is juicy, is kingly.

Thank you for putting up with A Guide to City Life # CHARNOTRECOGNIZED! "City Wisdom". If this module has been helpful to you, we know a Nigerian prince that could make you quite wealthy. To proceed to the next module, simply think happy thoughts, and then crow.

Sergei Eisenstein's Vine

Recently discovered under a pile of soot under a pile of rubble under a pile of V for Vendetta masks, fragments of a screenplay for Sergei Eisenstein’s lost masterpiece Vine. A multi-second cinematic project, Vine was intended to capture the rhizomatic and variegated forms of human depravity under the economic regime of capital. Eisenstein’s montage technique would have been deployed here to its fullest effect, showing a Bakhtanian eruption of 20^th century man’s most proletarian bodily functions. Although never completed due a complicated ménage of censorship, bureaucratic red-tape, Stalinist politics and significant bowel trouble, the film’s tattered screenplay stands as a testament to its projected grandeur and theoretical import. Here we present the first publication of this fascinating piece of cinematic “fuck your goddamn film thesis”, not seen by human eyes for over 70 years.

Vine, Or, Ten Vids That Shook The World

  

PART 1: THE ODESSA SMACK CAM (Одесса шлепок камеры)

In Odessa, the townspeople stand around the harbour steps bumpin they jams.

Title: In those memorable days, the town of Odessa lived in peace with the rebellious jerks of the Battleship Versace.

An Imperial guard is standing on the steps, minding his own business. Meanwhile off to the side, a sailor fills his hand with rotten caviar and creeps up behind him, arm poised for a devastating smack to the back of the sailor’s head.

Title: SMACK CAM!

The sailor smacks the guard, who falls backward down the steps, knocking over townsfolk left and right. He sets into a downward plunge a perilous baby pram, which does three forward flips before landing upright and flinging the baby into a basketball net.

Cue Music: IF PIRUS AND CRIPS ALL GOT ALONG

PART 2: TERIO, CHILD OF THE REVOLUTION (Истры Дитя революции)

The child emerges from the pram and is noticeably overweight. He stares into the camera and starts to gyrate, before beginning a full-on Twerk.

Title: Within the hearing of the Tsarist Boosie N*ggas, brotherly cheers sound across the water.

Close up shots of the people of Odessa with tears in their eyes, cheering for the glory of the worker’s revolution.

PART 3: DON’T DROP THAT GUNH-GUNH-GUNH (Не бросайте этот пистолет пистолет пистолет)

A shot of the great architectural wonders of Happy Moscow. The camera flits back and forth between the rapid pace of workers in a foundry to the glory of the Red Square, to the cameraman’s unwavering eye.

A gunshot.

The cameraman drops his camera, and starts running.

Title: Can’t even take no vine in Moscow w/o bein’ shot at!!!

PART 4: TWERKERS OF THE WORLD (Туъркинг мира)

Title: Twerkers of the world can’t be comparing…Shock Twerker

A big bottomed proletarian woman is rhythmically pulling levers in a factory. Unlike her comrades, however, she does so in syncopated motions, bent over, and squatting to the beat of an Ernst Busch Worker’s song bumpin over a speaker.

Her colleagues look at her skeptically.

PART 5: BOURGEOISIE BE LIKE… (Буржуазия как)

Title: Bourgeois be like…

A shot of a rich Tsarist merchant with a monocle and stovepipe hat, asking with raised pinky the ambassador’s wife “do you have any Grey Poupon?”

Title: Proletarian be like…

A shot of a worker yelling at a factory cafeteria woman “WHERE DE FRENCHS AT YA BISH?”

PART 6: WHEN THE BEAT DROP (Когда бить падает)

A shot of the Red Army marching.

Cue Music: STRANGE FRUIT HANGIN’

Army waits for the drop. When the drop hits, army get TURNT UP

Cue Music: WE COULDA BEEN SOMEBODY

PART 7: FATHERS STAY IN YOUR SONS LIVES! (Отцы, оставаться в жизни вашего сына!)

A shot of the great statue of Tsar Nicholas II surrounded by an enraged mob.

Title: He says he never smokes Turkish opium or eats p*ssy.

The mob begins to pull down the statue.

Title: “I have enough caviar to eat at home!”

The mob successfully pull down the statue. An orgiastic cheer. The citizens of Petrograd storm the Winter Palace and start raiding the wine cellars. Trotsky in Lenin pull up in a truck and start making it rain roubles.

Title: Meanwhile, extreme ratchet behaviour from the Ratchet Mechanic’s Worker’s Council

Mechanics waving ratchets in triumph. Peasants high fiving factory workers. Shouts of “WORLD STAR REVOLUTION!” echo across the land of Russia.

PARTS 8-10 were, unfortunately, eaten by a Stalin for breakfast on November 16 1936.

A Guide to City Life #237 - Sirens, Alarms, Beeps, and Other Warning Signs

Welcome to the Guide to City Life #237 - "Sirens, Alarms, Beeps, and Other Warning Signs". In this module, you will learn about fear.

In the city, men and women are often about their everyday activities: buying milk, slapping bugs, sarcasm, sighing at birds of ill omen, or brewing soup. They do not usually have time to stop to think of the grim beyond. Sirens, alarms, and beeps are institutionalized auditory reminders to us all that, as Dr. Phil once said, "although we none of us like where we are going, we aren't ever going to get there anyway. Fuck."

A siren is a brightly coloured screaming hat for cars. Hearing a siren usually indicates that someone in your immediate vicinity is in danger of living longer than he or she needs to, and that the Universe, cruel and indifferent to individual plaints of injustice, has provided him or her with a means of escape.

If you hear a siren, be sure to think about everything you love with a cheap, super-imposed 3D Pog style skull overtop of it, with a graffiti text spelling out "Satan Rules". Then go back to your game of whist, or your nap, or you precious YouTube one-upmanship. No harm will come to you yet.

There are also alarms. An alarm is a building's way of telling you it doesn't feel so great and that it is probably going to barf. It could just be a toaster burning some toast. It could be a gas attack. In any case, follow the alarm sound to the nearest puzzled office worker and be sure to shrug your shoulders. You must then put on your coat in a leisurely manner, and ask your co-workers if it's worth it to bring your laptop or is this just, like, a drill. Be sure to grumble when the floor fire-person tells you not to bring your scalding hot coffee into the stairwell. Once you are outside and safely away, huddled in a group of sheep-like untermenschen, make light-hearted jokes about the meeting being late, and look into the building for signs of those who did not make it out in time to avoid the grim reaper.

Many people think alarms all sound the same, but to the well-trained ear, an alarm can be as explicit as a news report. To interpret an alarm, count the length of time between each sound wave. The Government has a secret standard code: 13 nanoseconds means you will all be fine. 15 nanoseconds means the alarm may be serious. 23 nanoseconds means your floor was chosen for the "fool's sacrifice" at the spring equinox, and that you should all accept your fate gracefully.

Beeps are also important. When your phone beeps, you have forgotten something important. You have forgotten to rise from slumber; or an important meeting that will affect the rest of your life is passing you by like a grey cloud before the Moon. Beeps are clever but tricky. Learn to respect them.

The ear is not the only means by which the Big Other wants to discipline your fear gland. Although less popular than auditory warnings, "signs" are also extant, and can provide useful information about how we are all going to die. For instance, a hand with flesh and acid peeling off it (WHMIS number 32) clearly indicates that in this area men do not need to wash their hands after going to the johnson. Or take the classic raised index finger pointing to the constellation Vega (WHMIS number Q), which means the Soviets have taken to the stars once again.

Many of our warning signs were originally designed by sad Reformation artists in the 17th century.

This has been A Guide to City Life module #237 - "Sirens, Alarms, Beeps, and Other Warning Signs". If you would like to review this module before the quiz, tick the "I am humble" box at the bottom of your screen. If you are confident that you got everything in this module, no pity will be had.

Click somewhere likely for the next module, number #238 - "Adults With Comically Childish Handwriting".

A Guide to City Life #134a - Ordering a Coffee

Welcome to "A Guide to City Life" module #134a - Ordering a Coffee.

In this module, you will learn the basics of ordering a coffee. You will learn what a coffee is. You will learn what ordering is, and how everything you do is ordered by unseen powers. You will learn to drink by mandate, for it is a delight.

In the city, humans love coffee. This is because it is a warm, energizing drink.

Humans in the city are very sad. Although happiness is not a tangible thing, they sometimes pretend it is, and this pretend happiness, though merely a hot, brown liquid that scalds if drunk too quickly, is called coffee.

Happiness.

There are two places one can get coffee. One place is everywhere else, and the other is Starbucks.

Starbucks is a special coffee store that does good for the world and is sponsored by the Elders of Zion. They use a special language which will be indicated in this lesson by the open bracket "(" followed by a closed bracket ")" when the term is complete.

Coffees come in small (tall), medium (granday) and large (ventricle).

A coffee dispenser is called a "barrista", or, in the unlikely situation that it is a male, a "barrister".

When placing your order, be sure to specify whether you would like your coffee hot (or, in Starbucks terms, chachuffski) or cold (Starbucks chachuffscoi).

Some people prefer tea over coffee. Some people do, because preferences vary. For instance, some people prefer fascism to democracy, or witchcraft to the one true religion. This is not to say that tea is any worse than coffee.

Coffee comes in a variety of flavours, blends, and mixes. Do not try any of them.

Coffee is an ancient bean.

There are many slang terms for coffee, so deeply is it a part of people's everyday, disgusting, lives. Slang for coffee could include: joe, cup of joe, brown, cahfee, black gold, texas tea, double double, espresso, chino, cappo, marco, groucho, diabolico, and purple drank.

When ordering a coffee, custom usually dictates one must pay in money(s). This is not always the case however. In certain cultures, the scalp of a coffee cup, known as a rim, can be gruesomely torn off and exchanged for a fresh cup. It is illegal to transport coffee rims or materials made out of them in many countries around the world.

Coffee can be enjoyed with a variety of "snacks" or "treats". Donuts or cake, for instance (see lesson 12-Z114-2-A). Many city dwellers have taken to the biscotti, a kind of soft concrete. Many city dwellers are also unfortunate, status hungry apes with poor lineages.

Let us now review our grammar. Choose a pen and mark your score:

1. The active of the verb "to order"
2. A deponent, proletarian, misery
3. Circle the noun in the sky
4. Pour it in a mug

In conclusion, coffee is an integral part of it. Do partake.

Amelia Bedelia: A Woman's Place is in the Revolution

I remember going apeshit over the misadventures of Amelia Bedelia. When I was 6, there were very few things funnier than this crazy bitch who, when asked to bake a date cake, literally chopped up a calendar and put it in the oven. Or when asked to “dust the furniture”, covers every movable in the house with a thick layer of schmutz. Amelia taught me that there weren’t only two ways to do things i.e. the right way and the wrong way. Amelia taught me my first lesson in dialectics: that if one did the wrong way wrongly enough, it was better, so much better, than the quotidian “right way” ever could be.

What is the psychological make-up of a dialectical genius? Amelia is perhaps more cunning than we give her credit for. On the surface she appears like the most vile caricature of a Victorian colonial (she is actually in Cameroon-a fact I never noticed as a child) and worse, a working class hausfrau  – stupid, uneducated, hasty, and glass-eyed. But what if this was all a pose? Or even better, a strategic position designed to subvert and undermine the petty bourgeois who exploit her gender and class?

In 1922 the Czech Anarcho-Bolshevik Jaroslav Hasek wrote The Good Soldier Svejk – a comic novel about the misadaventures of a bumbling Bohemian soldier serving in the Austro-Hungarian army during WWI. To surface observers Svejk is merely a comic oaf, but discerning readers have always noted the anarchistic and dissident undertones of his character. Much like Bedelia, Svejk carries out the orders of his superiors with a degree of literalness crossing over insanity into straight subversion or even mutiny – no matter how simple the order, he always manages to overdo it by following the exact wording, instead of the spirit, of the injunction.

Thus Svejk, when commanded to deliver a message transmitted by his foul-mouthed commander, includes the insults and swear words directed at him as a literal part of the message. Or when asked to retrieve a black market bottle of cognac for his commanding lieutenant “without being detected” manages to drink the whole bottle himself to avoid detection by a nosy officer on patrol.  But, as always, when Svejk is about to be reprimanded, the disciplinary authority catches a glimpse of his “simple, honest face” and loses all composure. Much like Amelia Bedelia’s pies, Svejk’s honest, salt-of-the-earth “good soldier” pose is what saves him from rebuke. There is something inhuman, or perhaps post-human, in Svejk and in Amelia – is he just a cunning man of the people, or just a well-intentioned idiot? Does he represent the Brechtian adage, that “he who fights for communism has but one of all the virtues: that he fights for communism”?

Communists have long admired the Svejkian tactic of resistance. Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht drew directly on the selfish proletarian anti-hero in the figures of Herr Keuner, Azdak, Lao Tze etc. Instead of confronting injustice directly and bluntly, which only serves to prolong the cycle of exploitation by sublating the supposed resisters into the very structure of exploitation, the Svejkian hero resists precisely by complying. This dialectical form of resistance ultimately proves to be the most subversive, undermining the command and the system from the inside.

Is this what Bedelia is up to as well? How can we dare to argue this about one of the English speaking world’s favourite children’s characters? One must always be prepared to read beyond the assertions of the author or the norms genre. The French literary critic and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard teaches us in his many books of “detective criticism” that one cannot ever trust the intention of the author with regards to his characters – literary characters have a life of their own, and may know things their authors do not about themselves. Bayard is thus unequivocally able to assert that Sherlock Holmes was wrong about the Baskerville case, and that Arthur Conan Doyle himself was duped by his own literary creation.

In this light, the happy-go-lucky stupidity of Amelia Bedelia becomes a conscious social position. The feasibility of Amelia’s “stupidity” becomes less and less likely the more we examine the brilliance of her fuck-ups. Such mistakes are all but impossible to make in the common realm of discourse. The everyday man does not just learn disconnected words and actions – he is taught to obey an overarching superstructure of norms and associated behaviours and phrases that follow one another as a matter of course. He has no business analyzing the discourse of meaning in smaller fragments – such is the work of high culture, the war against cliché that distinguishes the fine arts. When Amelia steps out of the world of everyday meaning and into the strange realm of puns and literal mistakes that she continues to operate in, she is working in the world of the poet or literary genius, not the everyday schlub.

Of course the question of Amelia as a female Svejk adds even further potential for subversion. Instead of the liberated feminist who serves as such an easy target for the Tea Party conservatives of the world, the Bedelia-phenomenon undermines their position from within with a Palin-like elegance. Amelia Bedelia does what a woman in her position “ought to do” – she complies to the letter with every assumption deems to make about the hausfrau – a stupid bumbling idiot who cannot be trusted, but whom we secretly expect to be efficient and cunning. Amelia obliges us further by overidentifying with the male injunctions of identity, like Sartre and De Beauvoir’s waiter of bad conscience:

Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer… All his behavior seems to us a game… He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a cafe. There is nothing there to surprise us. The game is a kind of marking out and investigation. The child plays with his body in order to explore it, to take inventory of it; the waiter in the cafe plays with his condition in order to realize it.

Does Sartre himself realize the emancipatory potential in just such an over-playing? We see it in action in the behaviours of the Rogers’, Amelia’s employers, who come to adapt to her literalness and start to tell her to “undust the furniture” etc. A rebellious maid in Cameroon might cause a lot of trouble, become antagonistic with the colonial wealth of the island, get thrown in jail and do nothing for her cause. In a case where open resistance would be too easily quashed, the potential for a Herr Keuner-like adaptive resistance, a resistance that complies until the master is dead, and only then proclaims a loud “NO!”, is called for, and is in this case the more dangerous form of resistance to the powers that be.