Before I left my last job, I received an inter-office email from a co-worker who - how shall I put this? - displeased me. I worked for him last year when I was blogging a lot. He didn’t appreciate it, and gave me a poor performance review. And rightly so. Remember?
Anyway, before I left - long after the bad review, when I wasn’t working for him - he sent this email company-wide. In the subject line was: How Do You Identify a Siamese Persian Cat? (Edit: See below in the comments. I’m an idiot.) At the top of the body is: “Scroll down to find out.” The curious email reader does this, rolling his or her eyes, and at the bottom is a picture of a cat with a kitchen-towel turban on its head and plastic Warner Brothers cartoon-style dynamite sticks strapped to its chest. (Siamese. Persian. Terrorists. Get it?) I had to laugh. The reasons are twofold:
- That a person can be so clueless as to forward this email. Company-wide. In 2008. Knowing there’s an Iranian woman on staff. COMPANY-WIDE??!!!! INCLUDING A WOMAN FROM IRAN!!!! YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT!!!! I AM ASTOUNDED AT YOUR STUPIDITY!!! YOU ARE SURPRISINGLY VILE!!!!
- Pictures of cats being humiliated are funny.
I really, really wanted to see the guy get a talking to, but I didn’t. I’m sure he got one; I just didn’t see it. Ah well.
m_rturnage | 26-Jun-08 at 5:20 pm | Permalink
Sounds like being him is the worst punishment imaginable. Glad he no longer enjoys the pleasure of your company.
alex | 27-Jun-08 at 6:30 am | Permalink
That’s very nice of you to say.
MagnusFromBerlin | 27-Jun-08 at 12:40 pm | Permalink
No, I have to say I do not get that joke. The only terrorism Thailand has ever engaged in, as far as I remember, was the harbouring and supplying of landmines for the Khmer Rouge (together with the USA and certain European states) after their genocidal asses got kicked out of Cambodia by the Vietnamese.
Maybe the joke is a leftist one about how America dresses up it’s allies as terrorist in the “War on Terror”, but that still wouldn’t explain the problem with the distance of South-East Asia to the Middle East, the fact that most Thais are Buddhist and not Muslims, and that turbans are only worn by the very small Sikh minority.
So in my little Sherlock Holmes humor exercise that once you have eliminate the impossible, the remaining must be the joke, I can only come the the conclusion the the joke is about North-Americans complete lack of geographic knowledge, but then it is not be a very good joke, is it. not a “Schenkelschläger” as us Germans would say…. still cats got tortured in making this joke. So, well done.
MagnusFromBerlin | 27-Jun-08 at 12:45 pm | Permalink
EDIT, i forgot my finish line (it was not supposed to be about cats). It was: “And you are worried about your foot in your mouth, other people have apparently their feet so deep in their mouths it pushed their brains out the back”
alex | 27-Jun-08 at 2:20 pm | Permalink
Magnus, you’re the first to make me realize that the intended joke, while offensive, is also dumb. You’re completely right. Until you laid it out, I was thinking Siam was somewhere in the Middle East. I think I was thinking “Syrian” instead of “Siamese.”
So, yes. States-ers are idiots. (People from the U.S. are not Americans. Nor are we North Americans. We are States-ers.)
alex | 28-Jun-08 at 7:55 am | Permalink
I just realized. It was a PERSIAN cat. Jeez. I’m stupid.
MagnusFromBerlin | 28-Jun-08 at 11:32 am | Permalink
don’t know if this is any help to you, but to me that joke would be funnier with a siamese cat. That at least would make it kind of absurd instead just being the States-ers modern day equivalent of something “Der Stürmer” would find funny enough to publish…