Truesday: Austin Aside Letter

That’s not to say you’re immune from my stern gaze of cynicism. Being human, I’m prone to doubt serendipity and I’m still left to wonder, considering you’ve never proven yourself to me in any way. I’ve proven myself repeatedly. Like the time in Seattle when that dude said “Austin’s a place for people who want to think they’re in love with a place even though that’s impossible”, I told him to choke on a chalupa and without any notable hessitation: I circus-monkey-slapped his aged mother, who was sitting right there next to him, with us on the plane.

In my mind.

Her hearing aid popped out like a wine cork and no one could find it because its clear plastic construction made it invisible to our eyes. The remainder of the flight was awkward.

In my mind.

So I have to ask you, Austin: I slapped a perfectly nice mother of some stranger who slighted your reputation. In my mind. What have you done for me lately?

Perhaps I should hypothesize on your dedication by way of random scenario throwing.

I had a dream the other night that I was “let go” from my job for telling racist (apparently inappropriate?) jokes on a bus which was en-route to some horrific Team Building Exercise (which somehow involved barbed wire, medieval sorcery/body-armor, and a pool of fire). But the jokes weren’t racist. They simply used racist terminology. It wasn’t even clever, really. It was like knock-knock jokes except when answering the “who’s there?” part, I would lash out with a loud racial epithet like a lame Tourette’s sufferer.

Words by themselves aren’t racist, and they aren’t necessarily funny either. But instead of that logic, I tried to claim that instead of sounding like a hay-chewing racist, I was just quoting Dave Chappell and Eddie Izzard, and that my boss simply didn’t “get” youth humor. As if Chappell and Izzard even qualify as “youth humor” anymore.

At least, that was my argument as my boss fired me right there on the bus in front of my battle/workmates. Not my best work, by any stretch (the jokes or my defense).

Would you have canned me for that?

Or how about if I happened to be the leader of a sovereign nation which used to own Austin (but currently does not), and when I got the dubiously-defendable-as-ombudsman opportunity to militarily descend upon Austin and reclaim it as my own (let’s say I really needed the river-access to ship petroleum or something, to make some sweet mullah because my national cupboards were sadly bare of the canned pork-barrels, of which I and my closest compadres are so accustomed to sharing).

Would you hold that against me? If I had to smote a slew of your inhabitants in order to seal my peace?

Or how about if I made a movie which had a minor sub-plot which used as a device, the round-about lampooning of either the disabled, or the disenfranchised members of your population? Would you get all up in my face and label me a taste-slayer? Would you place my sense of morality up on the chopping block? Would you slap me with threats, boycotts, and lots of overly-theatric finger-wagging?

Really, Austin. Would you forgive like I give? Is this a two-way like the Cesar Chavez of today, or am I stuck on the Chavez of 2007?