Making Logos

My sister lives in Cairo, Egypt. I spoke to her on the phone recently. She said, amongst other things, that when books and movies are imported into Egypt, someone edits out the pigs. The government actually pays someone to do this. She is a teacher, so they may be especially thorough with nursery rhymes and children's stories.

What does this mean?

Old MacDonald had a farm e i, e i, ooo
and on that farm he had a --- e i, e i, ooo
with a --- --- here and a --- --- there,
here a --- there a --- everywhere a --- ---

In movies such as Charlotte's Web and Babe, she said, the entire movie plays out with the pig pixelated or blurred out. Now, I don't know about you, but it seems like a talking pink blob would somehow be more obscene.

I must admit, my first instinct was "If they blur out the pig, isn't that like saying Allah made a mistake?" I don't necessarily believe that's true, though. People make mistakes all the time. You can add that to my growing collection of Famous Last Words.

My sister went on to tell me they cut out kissing scenes between non-married couples in movies too.

"You think Babe was bad? I tried to watch Love Actually -- didn't understand anything."

Sure, it might disturb the plot a little, but in this respect I understand where they're coming from.

For more Unnecessary Censorship:

Unnecessary Censorship Sesame Street Edition

Glen the Butcher

When I was twenty, I made a terrible mistake and wound up working as a butcher’s assistant in Marlton, New Jersey.  It was my firt time abover the Mason-Dixon Line.  My friend Fran arranged something with the manager.  I'd get paid under the table.  The manager introduced me to Glen the Butcher.  From the moment he opened his mouth, I already knew I hated him.

 “So, what ’cha know ‘a, Noah?”  

Glen the Butcher laughed.   He was squat and round like a deer tick.  The manager and I nodded like oh yea, that’s the stuff.   

Glen the Butcher kept on.  Glen the Butcher wheezed.  Glen the Butcher hacked.  Squishy coughs.  He doubled over now, gave it all he got.  He had purple veins on his head. 

The coughing fit ended as quickly as it begun.  He stood up with a lit cigarette dancing below his mustache. 

“Come on then.”  Glen the Butcher was on the move.  A seductive finger of smoke lingered, pointing that ‘a way. 

                I met him at the swinging door.  The walls around us were plywood, had a row of heavy white aprons with orange-pink stains hanging.  “Now, all joking’s aside,” he said in a thick Jersey accent, “you never worked in a meat shop before, right?”  I said I hadn’t.  He stepped closer, still smoking.  “Let me tell you’s something.  People’s get fingers cut off ‘n hands chewed the fuck up in tha meat grinder all the time.  All kinds of stupid shit happens ‘n here.” 

I bowed my head, considering what kind stupid shit would happen to me. 

                “That said,” he continued.  “I don’t want’s no silly shit going on like those fuckhead friends a’ yours over in tha deli.”  I nodded, but he wasn’t quit finished. 

“Now, I don’t know’s why they keep giving me people that don’t know nothing, but that’s what they do.  So, from now on, your name isn’t No-ah.  I’m gonna call you No-Nothin because that’s exactly what you know until I tell you what to know.  You don’t do nothin.  You don‘t know nothin -- Until I tells you.  Got that?” 

With this sparkling introduction out of the way, I slipped into one of the stiff cotton jackets.  A blue insignia on the left breast read:  Frank

                The meat room air was cool, left a metallic taste in the back of my throat.  Glen the Butcher showed me the meat grinder and meat locker.  The meat locker was almost empty.  Meat hooks hung from chains.  They looked like Spanish question marks; sounded like wind chimes.  I imagined Glen hanging from one, his legs kicking like a swimming pig.    

                For my first task, I stood at the business end of a bone saw catching meat in a plastic tub.  The job was menial, and required complete attention.  I kept my meat coat clean.  Glen worked quickly, and to my surprise, quietly.  But then someone rang the assistance bell.  It drowned out the blood-splattered radio in the corner.  It wasn’t so much a ring as a grinding clatter.  The meat room became a Pavlovian experiment.  

The bell did not make Glen the Butcher salivate, however.  It made him curse, curse, curse.  He stabbed his carving knife into the chopping block.  He turned to the window overlooking the grocery store.  An attractive housewife had rung.  Glen stormed over in these black rubber boots and dropkicked the door. 

“Today, a Marlton butcher was arrested after bludgeoned a woman to death with a T-bone steak.  Details at eleven.”

That’s what I thought I would hear.  But stepping onto the sales floor transformed Glen the Butcher.  He greeted the woman, listened and reciprocated.  He even engaged in light banter.  He brought a twin-pack of steaks back into the meat room.  The smile quickly melted.  He was seething again, mumbling.  Bits of his psychotic rant tangled with the music on the radio:

“Gold bricking…”

     DON’T STOP

“…maggot princess…”

           BELEIVING

“…spoiled little bitch”

               HOLD ON TO THAT FEELING

Glen the Butcher packaged two individual steaks, and brought them to the swinging door.  Glen the Charmer walked onto the sales floor, placed a single steak in the woman‘s cart, and waved good-by. 

After Glen the Butcher’s bi-polar escapade, I slipped on a kidney and dropped a tray of ground beef.  I was scooping it into the pan when Glen the Butcher caught me.  I thought he would unload a case of knives, but he just told me to run it back through the grinder.

I spent New Year’s Eve morning labeling 50 pounds of steak.  But I entered the wrong code into the labeling machine.  Top round sirloin was ringing in the New Year.  It cost as much as pig rectum. 

That afternoon, the real butcher’s assistant -- the person whom I’d replaced -- showed up.  He was Glen the Butcher’s son.   He hadn’t come to work in four days.  He looked like hell.

Glen the Butcher looked at him as if he’d just pushed the bell.  “Where ’da hell have you been?”  

“I had some things to take care of,” said Butcher Jr. in a backwoods Jersey accent.  “Who the hell is he?”   

I’m the guy they pay under the table to pick up your slack.  Surly Glen the Butcher would stick up for me. 

                “Who, this guy?  He’s nobody.  And neither is you.  Now re-price this meat.” 

                Although Glen the Butcher had placed me in the same category as his drug addict son, I decided nobody was a step up from No-Nothin.  I slacked off a bit after Butcher Jr. showed up.  By the end of my shift, Frank’s meat coat was still spotless.  However, before I left, in what felt like a gruesome rite of passage, Glen smeared his bloodied hand across my chest. 

“There ‘ya go.  Get some blood on ya.  Now you’s a real butcher!”  

I walked into the deli to see Fran, trying to pretend like I wasn’t swathed with blood.  He couldn’t stop laughing.  The straight-laced woman waiting for cold cuts looked apprehensive.  Maybe she’d never seen a real butcher before.  

Notes on Going to See Mao Zedong

If you haven't checked out my latest story on Matador Network, Notes on Going to See Mao Zedong, you can read it HERE. 

"With a half-mile of folks standing side to side and butt to loin, a woman in a plaid shirtdress filed me back with her cane. It seemed unintentional, and at the time I thought nothing of it. But the folks behind us smelled blood in the water."


Big ups to the sultan of stoke, David Miller, for his fine editing work. 

Noah

A Preview from: My Moving Diary

2 January, 2008.  Raleigh, NC:  “I don’t think you can fly into China on a one-way ticket,” the woman at the Delta check-in counter says.  Her vest has these sad plastic wings pinned on. 

            “Are you saying that I can’t get into the country, or that I need to buy a return ticket?” 

            She thinks for a second.  “I don’t know,” she says.  “How long do you plan on staying in China?”

I'm actually moving to China, but two different people told me not to say that.   This is what I say instead:

“I’m just going to roam around the country for a while.”   

“Um, OK, you can figure this out when you get to JFK.  Have a good flight.” 

JFK Airport:  I check into Air China, get my boarding pass, and keep my mouth shut.   

Air China:  I’m the only White person boarding the plane.  Oops – there’s one more.  The plane is a double-decker.  I’m downstairs.  Everyone around me is speaking Mandarin or shouting Mandarin.  I have a window seat.  I sit down and watch people in the aisle shove each other from behind. 

There's an impulsive air onboard.  As we taxi down the runway, a man stands up to rummage through the overhead compartment.  The stewardess storms over and berates him.  I mean she lets him have it.  She points to his seat, and yells at him like a dog.  The man looks away like a dog, too.   

     “No!  Bad!”  I imagine her saying.  “You know what you’ve done.  Now sit!”   

I half expect her to bust out a choke collar.

The man behind me has his knees in the seat, talking to the man behind him.  They’re using ‘outside voices,’ even though they’re close enough to play patty cake.  The captain comes over the speakers and speaks Chinese.  I look out the window to make sure we’re still in America.   

I eat a Xanax.  We are prepared for takeoff. 

Somewhere over the Arctic Circle:  I wake up feeling naked.  The overhead lights are off.  My wedding ring is gone.  I use my iPod as a light and search the floor.  A knot tightens in the pit of my stomach. 

I search my immediate area before hitting the flight attendant CALL button.  I still have a pretty good buzz on; otherwise, I don’t know if I would have done that.

The girl comes over.  “I lost my wedding ring,” I say.   

She shakes her head.  She doesn’t speak English.   

At this point, I don’t know why this surprises me.  I point to my finger, tapping the spot where my ring used to be.  No luck.  I point to the ring of the man beside me.  He’s asleep.  Everyone’s asleep.  She’s trying real hard to understand what I’m saying. 

In a last ditch effort, I point to my ring finger again and say “Poof!” 

Poof is a magical word to this flight attendant.   It gives her clarity.  And not only that, it gives her the power to disturb sleeping passengers without remorse.   

The woman in the aisle seat gets it first.  The flight attendant prods her on the shoulder.  She comes to with a jolt.  I’m standing.  The flight attendant’s standing.  We’re both looking at her.  Before she can figure out what’s happening, the flight attendant launches an interrogation on missing jewelry.  The woman looks around like a chameleon, muttering the Chinese equivalent of “No, no, no.” 

I feel awkward about unleashing this flight attendant, but it’s out of my hands. 

She’s jostling the passengers in the row behind me now.  Their reading lights are turned on for them.  Their faces recoil.  They’re ordered to search the floor.  The man in the window seat is still asleep.  When he comes to, he is very confused.  The passengers beside him have their heads between their knees.  This, coincidentally, looks like the crash landing position.  The man looks to the flight attendant, but she offers no relief.  She is using her outside voice in a dark plane somewhere over the Arctic Circle. 

By this point I am freaking out.  What will I do, I think, wait until the plane lands? 

The nervous man doubles over now.  There is a commotion.  He comes up, pinching my ring between his fingers.

Getting Even

So here I am, again, standing across from the mailman.  Actually, it’s a mailwoman.  The woman’s in her fifties, fair skinned with a curly, round head of hair.  She’s not looking at me, but I’m looking at her and thinking This is a broad who’s played life by the rules.  I’d never say that of course.   

Maybe it’s just the uniform rubbing off on me.  It’s one of those sky blue, Government Issue two-pocket oxfords.  What a mouthful, and for what?  The thing’s practically wearing her, and yet, I can’t stop staring.  There are four plastic pens in the left pocket; three blacks, one blue.  The blacks are crammed into a corner, but the blue one, the misfit, is hovering over Nipple Territory. 

The mailwoman lets out a sigh.  It’s for me.  Her colleagues look over, but they know the score.  Beads of sweat are rolling down my back.  After seven minutes, she’s still counting the three-pound-bag of change I tendered as payment.  There was some regular change on top, a few 10 and 20 cent pieces, but now it’s down to the nitty-gritty:  The 1 cent pieces.  Back home we call them pennies.  The European ones are even smaller.  You can’t spend them as fast as they come in unless you’ve got a motive.

I found a motive two hours earlier.  I rode my bike over to pick up the package my mother sent from the States.  She sent it two weeks before my birthday, and now, a month later, I get a memo in the mailbox.  It’s in German.  I don’t know what it says, but something about the layout seems to communicate:  It’s your lucky day.  I left my apartment and cut through the park, taking the cemetery trail to the 704 line.  The Deutsch Post is further up on the right. 

There were only two people in line.  When I reached the counter, I handed over the memo and the woman went back and found my package.  I asked her if she spoke English in German.  She said “yes,” in a way that reminded me of rainbows.  “Great!” I said.   

She asked for my ID.  I told her sorry, I didn’t bring it, and recited my mother’s address instead.  She looks carefully at the package, which she hadn’t handed over yet.  She raised an eyebrow.  It was good enough for her. 

She scanned the package and gave me another test.  I wouldn’t be able to charm my way out of this one.  To take home my package, my birthday present, I would have to pay 33 Euros and 56 cents.  The package, it seemed, contained items the German government wished to profit from.  It was a business tactic based upon the popular model of consumerism:  I desired the package more than the money. 

This tactic was also, coincidentally, based upon the model of ransom.  Ransom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money to secure their release.  Most cases of ransom involve kidnapped people, but not always. 

I am reminded of an incident where thieves broke into the tomb of Argentine president Juan Perón.  They weren’t looking for gold or jewels.  They wanted the president’s hands.  This was no arbitrary detail, however.  Perón's hands were viewed as a symbol of national power.  The thieves sawed them off.  Newspapers worldwide ran stories on the Hands of Perón, as the incident became known.  As the story unfolded, it was also made public that the thieves removed another type of symbol:  The president’s genitals.  They requested $8 million to return the hands.  It wasn’t made clear whether or not the genitals were included in this deal.  It didn’t matter.  The government refused to pay the ransom, and the items were never recovered. 

My situation was a matter of ransom disguised as customs charges.  Be that as it may, I wasn’t going to react as the Argentine Republic had.  I was willing to pay the Post’s ransom. 

But I was not able.  I had 20 Euros on me.  When I told the mailwoman this, she understood.  I had never incurred customs charges on a package before.  I made it quite clear that this charge was unexpected.  She whisked my present back into the bowels of the Deutsch Post.  I walked out to my bike empty handed, ruing my ill preparedness.  While peddling home, however, those feelings of self-pity turned to anger.  I would, amongst other things, plot revenge on the post office.  

The only question now was "how?"

We're Chugging Right Along

I've published another story on the Matador Network called Hitting the Skids on Emerald Isle. 

"A lot clearing business, a man named Brian, and life in a trailer — 

C Noah Pelletier describes growing up in a family of Beach People."

Nick Rowlands, editor of Matador Life, did a great job working behind the scenes with this story.

If you haven't checked it out yet, you can read it here.

And please leave a comment!!

Where do I fit in, exactly?

Germans have the damndest ideas of a good time.  Haul in a wiener wagon and a beer truck to any open area and folks will get dressed up in autumn-colored shirts and corduroys and drive their Audi’s or Mercedes station wagons as fast as they can to get there, honking horns and shouting to pedestrians along the way.  I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this, but much like accordions and lederhosen, the novelty wears off rather quickly.

What doesn’t wear off so quickly is the German’s sense of moral resilience.  You might, for example, find yourself standing with others at the crosswalk of a long, deserted street, waiting for the signal to turn green.  Crossing the street may look safe, but the people around you will literally hiss if you cross prematurely.  And folks are hesitant to speak to each other even at the park – that is, unless you toss a Frisbee too close, and then even an old woman will make a fist and curse your ever-loving soul.  Many people leave the house, I’ve decided, just to ensure that things are in order.  When they’ve finished inspecting the outside world, they come home and find still more things to correct.

**

            I moved to Düsseldorf in the summer of 2009.  Shortly after arriving, I met a Kiwi who was kind enough to give me a bike.  The thing was beat up, “Cursed” he called it, and showed me where he broke his wrist.  He wished me better luck with it.

There was a long bicycle rack in the parking garage under my apartment building.  Many of the bikes were sick with flat tires or rusted chains.  I found an open space and wedged my front tire between the brackets.  All was fine until a month later, at which point I found a note stuck to my handlebars.  Actually, note wasn’t a strong enough description.  This was an official document typed in perfect MLA format, folded into thirds, and sealed in an envelope.  No detail was overlooked. 

I couldn’t read German, but the implication was clear:  There were many spaces, but this one was his.  The whole thing was, I felt, a tad ridiculous.  I put the letter back into the envelope and, when I returned from the store, stuck it back onto my handlebars.  There didn’t appear to be assigned spaces on the rack, so I went home, hoping the situation would blow over.  The next afternoon, I found my bike propped up against a cement pillar near the end of the rack, the letter still attached. 

**

This glimpse into my neighbor’s psyche was interesting, but to think that everyone handled matters in such a passive aggressive manner – that was disturbing.  I tried to imagine things from my neighbor’s point of view.  To do that, I gave him legs which were as hairless and thin as sign posts.  His face was bony, but healthy, and it glowed before the pale blue screen of his computer.  I imagined a tall, slick brow that furrowed easily, and a tongue which poked out from the corner of his mouth when he typed.  The voice in his head, which sounded like my own, told his soft, pink fingers to type this:  “Re:  Bike Parking.”  Did he use spell check?  Certainly.  He would save this letter (for future reference) in a folder labeled “COMPLAINTS.”  

**

I brought the envelope upstairs to my own computer and attempted to translate it.  Still, I couldn’t stop wondering what kind of man would go to such lengths.  The more I dwelled upon it, my mind searched for more reasons to dislike him.  What was his private life like?  Was he married?  If so, what was it like to make love to this man?  From his letter, I didn’t get the impression that he was particularly tender.  No, with him it was all about control, so I imagined his wife lying under him like a wounded sparrow, twitching in cold, rhythmic sync with the clock on the nightstand.  That probably wasn’t fair of me, but aside from the letter, I didn’t have a whole lot to go on. 

It’s a funny thing, passive aggression.  I used to think myself above it, but when you have enough free time on your hands, the stuff spreads like the dickens!  For a minute there, it was almost like having a secret admirer, but instead of possible romance, there’s misdirected resentment.  When I went down two days later and saw his shiny new bicycle sitting in my old spot, I almost let the air out of his back tire.  That’s my idea of fun, but it would have been childish, and far too obvious.  Instead, I parked my bike a few spaces down the line.  That was nine months ago.  There haven’t been any new complaints yet, but the suspense is killing me. 

**