![[simpleton]](img/thesimp.gif)
March 1, 2010
Countries Without Jews
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![[It's always hot and dry in countries without Them]](img2/verse/lebanoncastle.jpg)
Always that same smell:
Sweat and leaded gasoline.
Brutal sun and pleading horns
all the way from the aeroport
where everybody apologizes:
Our hospitality's world famous,
but you know the Israelis;
They want to steal everything.
Just like the ones in your country.
She goes: Oh yeah, they're the worst.
I go: They sure can be a handful!
And then her cousin picks us up.
We drive past watermelon shacks,
and dry pastries that taste like gunpowder.
I go: You shouldn't say that stuff
about the you-know-whos.
And she goes: You're the one that's always
talking about how pushy cheap
and paranoid They are.
I never called Them cheap, I say.
The cousin's clueless, so she translates.
For a couple minutes we all tell
the jokes we know, and it turns out
I know the most jokes.
I go: But it's not that you need to like Them.
It's more of a proxy situation:
It's a bad sign not to have any,
like healthy frogs. And she goes:
People got a right to live
any way they please.
Just because your big America
likes Them don't mean nothing here.
I go: You know why Britain got
in first place, before the U.S.?
I go: Because they gave Them room.
Some London synagogue was rich
enough to pay George Frederick Handel
to write an oratorio --
But then she's making with one hand
the yakity-yak motion.
Her cousin puts in a cassette.
Worst music you ever heard.
The sunbaked traffic thins out and
we get a whiff of ocean.
Cause one thing's sure: the countries
without Them are always hot.
She goes: So you think China's weak
because they don't have none there?
I go: China does too got Them,
and Japan, Korea too.
It's shitholes like Burma, Pakistan --
I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!
she says. I go: Like Freedom House
and all them self-promoters study
how much liberal press or private
industry there is, when they should just
count how many Jews there are,
and if the number's too low,
you've answered all the other questions.
But now she's slapping herself in the face,
and going Uh! Uh! Uh! Even
the cousin's a little freaked by that,
but he don't say nothing. So I try
to do a Hollywood gesture like
Honey, don't let's fight.
She flinches, hugs the door, and goes:
You know what you remind me of?
A Jew. You're nothing but a Jew.
And now I'm backpedaling real fast,
because I'd still like to get a hummer.
(Though even that's not working out;
she says it tastes like gunpowder.)
She gives me a ringing punch in the ear.
I go: I'm going back to L.A.
where people still respect tradition.
And I'm walking right after dawn,
someplace really skanky like
Harvard and DeLongpre maybe.
I see a knobby-knuckled tranny
I recognize as Phil, this guy
I worked with selling playing cards
longer back than I care to go.
And I go: Phil, I never knew
you liked this stuff. And he goes:
Nah, my dominatrix makes me,
to prove my love for her. He tosses
his platinum wig, and goes: So?
No thanks, I say, but what the hell;
a few more weeks alone...who knows?
We laugh. Phil looks away and goes:
I guess you think it's pretty weird?
I go: I've seen plenty weirder.
Hitler was into scat, you know.
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