Clueless in America. Chapter 39

Posted on November 16, 2009 by f32dream

39. GPS, Grossly Pathetic System

Our Global Positioning System was for us a grossly pathetic system. Of course the GPS was not the problem, it was the clowns using it. We needed to find our way from Hartland to ‘Up North’ and specifically to an unimportant dot on the map called Summit Lake. We also wanted to swing back through Cedarburg and to re-visit Kohls.

By the way, I am sitting here giggling in anticipation about what I am about to write.

I named the GPS system Ronnan. Ronnan was the perfect navigator, like absolutely perfect. As soon as I had turned a corner, Ronnan would very pleasantly let me know that in three miles I would need to turn right and then as I got close, in a very well-mannered voice Ronnan would remind me of that intersection. If ever I forgot the instruction, which incidentally I do most times, a quick glance a Ronnan’s bright and American cheerful screen was all that was required. Ronnan at her core was beautiful, however it was her relationship with us that caused problems.

We jumped in Betsie and programmed Ronnan for our friend’s house in Cedarburg. It was here where I think that we made our second mistake, we chose the option for taking the shortest route. So we fling Betsie out of our friends’ driveway and were happily bouncing down the road when we approached our first T-intersection. I whacked on the right indicator just as Ronnan informed us that we needed to turn left, up, let’s say Cow Pat Street. Sharon and I looked at each other and thought ‘Well it is the opposite way to which we came, but let’s give it a go’. Betsie on the other hand could almost be heard sighing and thinking ‘Oh no, what fresh hell is this?’ So we dutifully obeyed. We were doing fine, we recognised some stuff from the day before, but increasingly we had that feeling of doom approaching us. We found our way into the most common part of rural Wisconsin, otherwise known as the middle of nowhere and suddenly we noticed that Ronnan’s battery was almost flat.

This is where we discovered our first mistake. We pulled over, rummaged around in the box that the GPS came in and found the cigarette charger thingy, plugged it into the lighter and then went to plug it into the GPS and oh shoot, it did not fit. We did not know where we were, our map was of the whole country, so did not have any of these Wisconsin-nowhereville-back-roads on it and now Ronnan was giving up the ghost and we couldn’t do a thing about it.

So we drove until Ronnan died. The good news was I knew exactly where we were when Ronnan karcked it. We were on the side of the road between Cadarburg and Madison and though this was a mere pin-point on my map, in reality it was a distance of about 115 km. We kind of thought that if we just kept on driving in the direction of what we remembered as east, that we would recognise something. What we forgot was that we were in back-woods middle America; every little town was a stinking clone of the one before. Each new town had the same cute houses, the same post office, same gas station, same fast food joints and same Lutheran church. To top this off, we never seemed to catch the name of these towns. I was sure we were travelling due east, but for all I knew we could have been travelling around in rather tight circles.

We decided to stop and crank over Ronnan. She burst into life and instantly told us to turn left. We turned left and she died again. Whilst Sharon was rather tersely explaining to me all the reasons why she does not like technology, I was rather tersely asking her to quickly turn Ronnan back on. Ronnan burst back into life again, gave us one instruction and promptly died. Sharon and I, in our increasingly cranky state, played this game for about twenty minutes, then I noticed a particular letterbox. This was clones’ville middle America, it looked like every other stinkin’ letterbox, but somehow I thought that I had seen this particular identical letterbox at least once before.

We pulled over, Betsie was once again red with embarrassment, we were red-faced with frustration and this letterbox just sat there proud and tall on its post, gloating at the crazy, stupid, fuming and helplessly lost Kiwis who had just been washed up on its road. After some time of trying to free my head of Sharon’s stories about new technology, I figured out what we were doing wrong. Ronnan was faithfully giving us the one instruction before karcking it. But we were actually quite close to Cedarburg, driving through seemingly identical square mile blocks of light farmland. So by the time we had turned Ronnan back on, we had already driven past our next one or two turns. So every time we turned her on, the first thing that she had to do was correct our perpetual screwing up, which meant due to missing our second instructions, we had been driving in painful figure-eights.

I am sure glad that Ronnan the GPS was programmed by Americans; if she had been programmed by Kiwis, every time we turned her on her opening words would have been ‘You twats(124), you have f’ed up again, accelerate into the nearest power pole, then dig a hole and bury yourselves’. But this being American-programmed, every time we cranked her over, she burst into her bright-sunny-dispositioned-service-industry English. For that I was incredibly grateful, Ronnan has become my role-model for suffering fools gladly.

So we learned a trick. And for the next thirty or so minutes we learned to turn Ronnan on and receive that one vital instruction. Turn that oh so important corner, then whack on the brakes and pull over beside an identical, seemingly-empty farm house. Then turn Ronnan on again and wait the painfully long five minutes for her to wake up her tired and drained circuit boards. Then we would kick the ever so reluctant Betsie into action and repeat the process another couple of kilometres down the road. Of course if there had been people around, we could have asked instructions, but no one was out on this dismal overcast day. Perhaps they had seen us coming. Eventually we drove into a village that kept on getting bigger and thus we had hit Cedarburg and Ronnan was gratefully left to enjoy her death.

Tune in next week to read about burnt roaster coffee.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

Thank you so much for reading out for lunch. If you would like to contribute toward the running of out for lunch or donate money towards my writing projects, please click on the donate button. Thanks Kel.

The Changing of a Name

Posted on November 15, 2009 by f32dream

The Changing of a Name.

The name ‘America – The Land of the Ziploc Bag’ is formally being changed to the temporary name of ‘America – Lost in a Registered trademark’

The reason being the word ‘Ziploc’ is a registered trademark.

If you are interested in the process, please read on.

Email 1 Written to the Customer Relationship Centre for SC Johnson, USA.

Comments:Dear Sir/Madam

Please can you take a look at my blog. I am using the word Ziploc Bag in the tittle. I was about to produce a tee-shirt with the words ‘Ziploc Bag’ on it and then I was reminded that the word Ziploc is trade marked.

Please check out my blog at http://www.lunch.lt/ziploc-bag and advise me. I am hoping to publish a book with the same tittle.

Waiting you reply.

Yours faithfully
Kel Fowler

Email 2 From the Customer Relationship Centre for SC Johnson, USA.

Thanks for contacting us, Kel.

I have forwarded your email to the appropriate department for handling. Someone should be responding to you shortly.

If you have future comments or product information needs, we invite you to visit or e-mail us again at www.scjbrands.com.

Regards,

Courtney

Email 3 Written to the Customer Relationship Centre for SC Johnson, USA, 15 days later.

Dear Courtney

Thanks for you reply, as yet I have not been contacted by the
appropriate department and am interested in your reply.

Please when can I expect a reply?

Cheers Kel

Email 4 From the Customer Relationship Centre for SC Johnson, USA.

Kel,

We appreciate your patience while we look into your request further. Someone will be getting back to you as soon as possible.

Regards,

Denise

Email 5 Written to the Customer Relationship Centre for SC Johnson, USA.

Thanks Denise

Email 6 From the SCJ Supervisor, Oy Transmeri Ab, Finland.

Dear Kel,

many thanks for contacting SCJ concerning the usage of Ziplock name in your t-shirt and book. It is great that our brand has made so good impression but we are not able to give the permission to use it in the purposes not managed by SCJ company itself.

We hope you all the best

Kind regards

Soile

Email 7 To the SCJ Supervisor, Oy Transmeri Ab, Finland.

Thanks for letting me know, I kind of expected that. I presume the same also applies for my blog?

It will take me quite some time to remove your brand from everything, but I will start doing that.

Cheers Kel

Email 8 From the SCJ Supervisor, Oy Transmeri Ab, Finland.

Dear Kel,

Unfortunately yes it also applies for your blog.

kind regards

Soile

——————

If you are interested in donating towards the unlikelihood of of court costs or just towards the general running of America – Lost in a Registered Trademark. Please do me a favour and click the button.

America the Land of the Anonymous Plastic Bag

Posted on November 11, 2009 by f32dream

The owners of the Ziploc Bag brand have informed me that I do not have permission to use their brand in my story. So ‘America the Land of the Ziploc Bag‘ will be called ‘America the Land of the Anonymous Plastic Bag’, until we can come up with a better name.

Please if you have any ideas let me know.

Cheers

Clueless in America. Chapter 38

Posted on November 9, 2009 by f32dream

38. Empty Nest Syndrome

Well, directly after church we piled into Betsey and high-tailed it to the other side of Milwaukee. Perhaps in this instance a better verb might have been that we ‘MapQuested’ our way to Hartland, Wisconsin. This is relevant because this was one of our last relaxed non-GPS navigated trips, more on that later.

We arrived at our friend’s house to discover that they were well and truly suffering from empty nest syndrome. Their youngest daughter had done the grown up thing and gone out and got married. Like so many do these days, rather than her moving out of the family home, she and her husband moved in, sprouted a sprog(119) and settled down. Time passed by, money was saved, no doubt a little space was required, and the young family decided to move away from their in-built babysitters with the well stocked fridge and into their own home. It was shortly after this event that we arrived.

This was one of the times that my pastor’s training was required for we found our friends rather downcast and notably empty-nested, sitting bedraggled on their lounge floor. For indeed, not only was the home empty because their daughter, her husband and snot-gobbler(120) had just left, but the home was also empty because the exiting daughter and her young family had taken the stinkin’ furniture with them. So the dutiful man of the cloth that I am, I that it was my responsibility to point this suffering, empty-nested couple towards the light and to provide some much-needed refreshment for their tired bodies and no doubt aching butts.

In this case, the light turned out to be a honking huge and brand spanking new flat and wide screen television, that just happened to be airing a live Green Bay Packers game and the refreshment, well, that was beer from his fridge. With beer and a Packers game, who needs furniture in their house?

But seriously, ‘house’ is exactly the wrong word to describe this lounge-furniture-less abode. Immediately upon walking through the front door we felt instantly at home. It was almost a weird feeling, because there is no real reason for such a feeling. We have journeyed with this family for about seven Lithuanian Julys and always liked their…. I do not know the word for it. Perhaps it is their ability to be themselves whilst allowing others to also be themselves. Or maybe it is their ‘what you see is what you get’ attitude. I cannot put my finger on it, but we did feel instantly at home in their home. Part of it naturally enough was recognising God’s peace in their home, but this was only part of it. Their home environment kind of personified an oasis of good home-cooked-Olivia-Walton(121)-American values. We rested there.

That evening they had invited into their home everyone who was local and had previously met us at the Summer Language School here in Klaipėda(122). It was a nice time of catching up with friends and acquaintances, but no-one enjoyed it more that their grandson. The wean(123) was in carpet-crawling ecstasy. Not only was he on the floor playing with his train-set, but all of the adults were down at his level as well. ‘Twas something to do with all of the furniture having been moved from this lounge to his lounge.

We had a good sleep and were gone early in the morning for breakfast with another friend.

When Americans do breakfast, they do it right, well, almost right. American breakfasts can best be described as Scottish breakfast ‘lite’ as in only half the content and a quarter as unhealthy. But great nonetheless. Our friend, of whom this was the first time we had met her husband, is an inspirational force in my life. So we ate and drank coffee, whilst turning over endless possibilities of wonderful programmes for the orphanage kids. The problem so often being, is how are we supposed to down-scale these great North American-birthed ideas and apply them to a still-desperately-trying-to-emerge-from-communism Lithuanian public sector and state-run orphanage culture? It is tantamount to trying to fit the Sahara in a test tube, the programme tends to get buried under the daunting administration of the task.

Now just to set up the future story, our friends blessed us with a gift and tried to bless us with another. The first gift was the keys to their crib(124) in ‘Up North(125)’, Wisconsin. The second gift and mixed bag of blessings was a GPS system to find the crib up north.

So with a belly full of bacon and a cup full of caffeine, we regrettably plugged the GPS into Betsie and set off up north.

Tune in next week to read about the GPS from hell.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

Clueless in America. Chapter 37

Posted on November 2, 2009 by f32dream

This chapter was gratefully sponsored by contributors to coffee fuel. If you would like to sponsor a chapter of ‘Clueless in America’, please click on the button.

37. The ‘Holy Trinity’. ‘Cafe’, ‘The Book Shop’ and ‘the Holy Toilet’

Well, you know how much I hate those times where we have to share about what God has been doing through us in Lithuania. I always feel the temptation to sell our cause and totally refuse to. But on the other hand, I am always really thankful for the opportunity. I would actually rather preach, but oddly enough America the-land-of-empowerment has a reputation of not sharing its pulpits and we only found this to be true. The church which we were visiting did get it right as far as our wee spiel went though. The evening was perhaps somewhat set up for us, but it did not focus entirely on us. For me the crowd winner of the evening was a table overflowing with cakes. Under normal circumstances I would have gorged myself here but I had been in the USA too long and had become more additive than human. American food tastes so good and leaves you feeling so bad. The second hit of the evening was the open-mike-entertainers, they had a good time clowning around. And then there was us; being us we vocalised through poetry, stories and photos, and as per usual at the end I felt like we had not reached anyone. We spent the rest of the evening chatting away, answering all sorts of questions about Lithuania. As good and as valuable the evening was, it still felt horrible for me. This just seems to be part of the territory with which I must struggle.

Sunday morn was church time. This was the first church of our denomination that we had visited during this trip so I was keen to watch and learn. This church was also coming out of the American churchianity syndrome of fund-raising their way into a new building and I was very keen to see this building. I guess what I was expecting was a square, imitation windowless carpet factory girt with V.I.P pastors’ parking and American and Israeli flags. It seems two things are synonymous in American christianity: the first being the rather odd and comfortable marriage between the church and state and the second being the ‘Holy Trinity’, or the ‘Cafe’, ‘The Book Shop’ and the ‘Holy Toilet’. I was very keen to see if this church was another American church that worshipped at the altar of the ‘Holy Trinity’.

Well I was not totally disappointed and was a little surprised. The church was another Jerusalem-type church sitting like a light on a hill, but no Israeli flags. The first thing that hit me as we drove up through the trees was that God had yet to provide them with enough money to seal their entrance road. We were driving over pot holes up a dirt track. In my personal, and I stress very humble, opinion, there is nothing worse than the perfectly-polished church that has it all together. I like churches with character, creaky pews, leaking roofs and daggy pastors. I enjoy churches that serve you great cups of tea that you would never drink at home because they are so bad. A gravel driveway to a new church was a good start for me. I cannot remember what the outside of the building looked like. I am presently sitting in a cafe so cannot ‘google’ up a picture of it so please be content that it could have been brown wood or it could have been grey concrete. But the important thing to note is that it was not a square building. In fact it even looked something close to how I imagine a church building should look. No steeple, but they did have a steeplish kind of thingy on top. The car park was not that big, however we still parked some distance from the door. The congregation size was still blissfully small enough for the person who greeted us at the door to actually know and care that they were greeting new people.

And yes they did have the ‘Holy Trinity’ thang goin’ down. There was a small book store on the left and a cafe flanked with toilets on the right. The communal cafe area was very light, with lots of wood. It seemed that the décor was teetering between cute and stylish. It was so far definitely the nicest north American church that I had visited. But it was the meeting hall that really set the building apart from the rest. For starters the room was not square and the chairs were in a half hexagon format. In fact I was unsure if this really was a church or not, how could one possibly recognise a brand new twenty-first-century American church when it did not have square carpet tiles? I mean if we had to line up, how would we know where to stand? The floor was strange, nice but strange. It almost seemed to be polished concrete tiles. In most circumstances this totally would not work, but in this case the room was full of light and had large light-emitting windows behind the pulpit. Of course they were not silly enough to have these windows low enough for you to glance out and day dream your way through the sermon. One of the windows rose up quite high to form the afore-mentioned steeplish thingy. It was kind of like a giant stained glass window without the stained glass, thus allowing heaps of light in. It always strikes me as a bit of an oxymoron, these churches that sit you in the dark and preach on Jesus the Light of the World. This new church building was set out very nicely and the fact that it was light and airy, somehow participated in the facilitation of community.

The service was good, good worship and very good teaching. At one stage we were dragged up the front and blessed with yet another church praying for us. But there were two buts. This was not a church for me: as I said before, I struggle at well polished churches, I need some blood, guts and good old-fashioned community building grit. It was clear that this close congregation had journeyed together and that perhaps now with the new building, was on the other side of a mountain. It felt like the wrinkles had been polished out and I love wrinkles.

Now I am not saying that the next befuddled monologue explains the above church, but it is one of the things about which I left thinking.

One of the fundamental problems with our denomination is that in the west, it is a predominately white middle-class church. White, middle-class churches for me are like vomit on an ice-cream cone. The packaging is good, but they smell and taste terrible. It is strange that in the west we are a middle-class church, when one of our focuses is serving the poor. Serving the poor, or perhaps better said as serving the asocial, is something that I am doing every week. However this kind of serving is in danger of becoming a luxury accessory for modern day church. Why do we serve the poor? Is it because it is something that needs to be on a church programme in order to make the church complete? Is it something that is driven out of pity? I promise you, the poor do not need our pity, they need our love. I can learn more about life and God during an afternoon in our local orphanage that I can during a Sunday morning in church. Are we serving the poor because we somehow think that doing good things will get us into heaven or at least closer to God? Are we obeying the Bible, trying to obey God, or are we serving the poor as our worship of God? Each to their own I guess. The question I am working through is, why can I not see the poor in our local churches? Am I blind to them, are they not there or are we converting them into middle-class clones of ourselves? I so desperately hope not. One of the many beautiful things that the so-called poor have to offer is their vast richness of life experiences and non-kin family relationships. Us, we-have-all-we-need middle-class are in such danger of looking down on God, but the poor they look up at him with awe and wonder. Often with simple sentences they are capable of totally confounding my minimal Bible college-educated knowledge. The poor are such a gift and we should never introduce them to God only to refine them into middle-class clones. Encourage them into rough, non-conforming diamonds and let their voices be heard. Either we are not bringing them into our church communities or on arrival they are be presented with white, middle-class straight jackets.

Of course, to be all post sucky modern on you, we do not need to bring the poor into our churches. However if we are enjoying community, equality and relationship to minister to the poor, and they are playing with our kids and eating at our dinner tables, then worshipping together should be a natural progression of the relationship. The poor are our friends, not our subjects or an accessory item. We should celebrate life with them and celebrate who they are without conforming them to our mould. A little easier said than done and with that I will now formally get off my high horse.

So what comes next?

Well you will have to wait until next week for that.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

Thank you so much to those of you who donated to the writing of this posting of Clueless in America. This chapter was written in the Tinderbox cafe in Merchant City, Glasgow, Scotland.

Clueless in America. Chapter 36

Posted on October 27, 2009 by f32dream

This chapter was gratefully sponsored by contributors to coffee fuel. If you would like to sponsor a chapter of ‘Clueless in America‘, please click on the button.

36. Shopping; Cute and Then Kohls

After a peaceful and subtle Wisconsin sleep, we went shopping. This was at my instigation, first I wanted to see a little of this town that looked so cute in the dark and second I wanted to buy that 100-strength fleece that I did not buy in Texas. But most importantly of all, we just needed a day out of the car and on our feet. If you are American, don’t even try to understand that. I have tried to explain our persistent need to exercise and eat food that is not pumped full with additives to many of you and have never succeeded.

Unfortunately it was a wee tad damp outside. Though walking in the rain did not worry Sharon and I in the slightest, it would have almost have been bad hospitality for our hosts to not have taken us to the very cutesy multi-storied undercover craft market. This place was located in an old building that could have perhaps once been a mill. It was very poky, once again very cutesy, and quite busy. I do not like crowds, poky, or cutesy, but I love art and craft. So I found myself spending time outside standing in the rain waiting for my phobias to subside before dashing back into the building, up and down the myriads of deep brown varnished stairs, pushing my way past roadblocks of plump female Americans and into the shop beside the one I panic-strickenly dashed out of some ten minutes earlier. I found a wonderful computer backpack. Oh gosh I so wanted to buy it. It was totally made out of recycled goods, it was the combination of the right colours, pockets and had the perfect water-bottle holder. It would have cost me everything I had. I stood outside in the rain for quite some time debating with the angels and demons of my mind over whether or not I should buy this bag and proudly add it to my collection of ethical goods. I decided no, because it was at least four times the price of a normal bag and I could not afford it. Also what was the point in buying an ethical bag, when I did not need it and would have to get rid of the perfectly good and cheap computer bag I am presently using. But the straw that single handedly broke the camel’s back was the fact that, though it was advertised as an ethical bag from 100% recycled goods, it was not ethical, it was made in China. It is hard not to buy stuff made in China and I know that the ethical/moral high ground is very slippery, but China’s human rights and environmental record is absolutely dismal. And on top of that I live in a ex-communist country and right beside two emerging dictatorships; I am not about to willingly give similar countries my dosh(115), especially when there are many other options. The bag stayed and we left.

Next stop was Kohls in Grafton. If I was commissioned to do an advertising campaign for America it would read, ‘America, we have Kohls, visit us at www.kohls.com’. In New Zealand my body size is average to small. Every shop has clothes that fit me perfectly but in European Lithuania, I am short and stubby. Nothing that I buy ever fits me, it is all either too long or too tight. But in America and Kohls, if I can get it small enough, it fits. There was nothing ascetically pleasing about the store, it was not cutesy at all and suffered from an over and abundant supply of the colour brown. But what it had was clothes, cheap clothes, very cheap clothes and almost everything that I had not been able to buy in the last six years of living in continental Europe. I was still fruitlessly searching for my very elusive pair of bib-type overalls. But I wanted second-hand ones and gave up searching here very quickly. Our host told us that she would buy whatever we needed, which was a very kind offer, but unfortunately it just served to overwhelm me. I own so many hand-me-down clothes, that are not quite me and so much that I have bought over the past six years, I would never buy, let alone wear if I could just nip down to the local Kohls. I had dollars in my pocket and my host was offering to buy. But I just could not do it, there was no point in replacing clothes that had not worn out yet, even if I did not like them. But I was delirious with the excitement of the possibilities and was running around like the proverbial two-year-old in a candy store.

And just as we were getting ready to leave, I spotted the long sleeve tees(116), oops had to go try them on. Naturally enough this held everyone up, but the tees were perfect, so perfect that I am wearing one now. Then just on the way to checkout, I remembered my long-term need to replace my nine year old pair of sport shoes. I quickly hiked my way around to the shoe section to see what I could buy. In my rush I asked a shop assistant for help, only to discover that Wisconsin really was part of America. The shop assistant’s face instantly broadened into a predictable service industry cheeky grin. His eyes danced for a while as he painstakingly ponder my question, then he informed me that this was not his department and that if I waited a tick, he would call the correct person to come and help me. I was just about to pipe in and say that no, I did not want help because I was holding people up. But quicker than a Texan can say ‘have a good day sir’, he had drawn his’ phone from his hip and was contentedly ranting to a random shoe person about getting down here to help. Bummer, I was going to be forced to wait, and wait I did. It seemed like an eternity until the sprightly, pimply, teenage head of the shoe department arrived. She bowled right on up to me with the ‘How can I help you sir?’ line. I swallowed the irritating sir part for the interests of time. I explained that I needed a pair of sport shoes, I needed to be able to run, kick a ball, play basketball and generally go for a walk in them. I had asked this question many times in snooty-technical-over-exercised-outdoor New Zealand. We Kiwis simply could not meet this request without selling me four pairs of shoes. I always found this strange, ’cause when I was a kid I could do all of these things in my ‘Bata Bullets(117)’ and ‘Chalks(118)’. My last pair of snotty NZ-purchased running shoes were almost sole-less after their first street basketball game. But this gangly teenager grew up in America, the world’s capital of everyday-worn-sport-shoes that never see sport. She knew exactly what I needed; a couple of soles, with a hunk of leather on top and a lace on each. She delightedly danced over to a shelf, pulled off four pairs of shoes and said any of these would do. Naturally I was sceptical, but to date America’s band of immigrant and teenage shop assistants had not let me down. She read my scepticism and said ‘Take a seat sir, try them on and see what you think’. Then she asked me that embarrassing question ‘What size do you take?’ Of course I didn’t know, but she suffered this fool gladly and gave me a few options to try. Somewhere about here Sharon turned up to quite rightly hurry me up. I ended up buying the only pair of non-Chinese shoes that fitted me. So I wonder how far down the ethical purchaser slide I fell, walking out the door with a pair of Vietnamese Nikes? However, pimple face did very well, she had outdone all of NZ: I have regularly played football in those shoes, plus played a little orphanage basketball, I have ran a fun run, barged a canal and have walked miles with them happily attached to my feet. Well done Kohls. I ran to the checkout where everybody was politely and patiently waiting for me.

We had a quick lunch in a cool Mexican restaurant where I successfully managed to receive and eat a dish that was nowhere near what I ordered. It tasted good, but it still was not corn tortillas. We returned home to prepare for our evening.

Tune in for the next issue and read about those Americans and their sport shoes that never see sport.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

Thank you so much to those of you who donated to the writing of this posting of Clueless in America’. This chapter was written in the very comfortable Chu Chus Cafe, West Kildbride Scotland.

Clueless in America. Chapter 35

Posted on October 19, 2009 by f32dream

This chapter was gratefully sponsored by contributors to coffee fuel. If you would like to sponsor a chapter of the ‘Clueless in America‘, please click on the button.

35. Please Notice Us, We Are From Wisconsin

Californians know that they are loud and obsessed with fast cars. Texans know that they are not really part of the USA and that the USA could not exist without their bigger and better existence. Canadians know for sure that it is not part of the USA, evidence of that is through having provinces like British Columbia and towns like London and Cambridge. And Wisconsin…. well, um Wisconsin, poor old Wisconsin. Wisconsin just does not seem to be happy in her own skin. Wisconsin is quite similar in a way to New Zealand, she spends her days like a sulky teenager, too bored to care about the rest of the world and then spends her evenings jumping up and down screaming for someone to notice her. If I was to make a tee-shirt for Wisconsin, it would read ‘Wisconsin – Validate Me’. South Carolinians have drawling accents, Texans have good manners, Amazonians have air-conditioning, but Wisconsinites, they have low self-esteem. I loved understated and unassuming Wisconsin, it was like God had carved out this state for me to feel comfortable in. I could feel securely insecure here without being noticed.

Another thing that was managing not to be noticed here was KFC. We couldn’t find one and ended up stopping at some insecure, sulky, grotty service-station excuse for a restaurant. The tired-looking wrung out waiter only just managed to squeak out a hello from his excessively drab and boring face. He served us with all of the panache of a seagull drowning in an oil-slick and the food itself resembled that seagull a few days after its passing. The absence of the obligatory American flag left me wondering if indeed we had found our way back into Canada.

Regrettably and I mean regrettably, we drove straight through Milwaukee without leaving the interstate. We Map-Quested our way north and then west and ended up way ahead of schedule in the town of Cedarburg. It was November and during this time of the year in the north of the USA it starts getting dark shortly after daylight begins. Consequently it was dark when we arrived. And, oh my goodness, did Cedarburg just look like the most cutest and quaintest wee town. We drove up and down the main street just gawking out the window. Because of our earliness we ended up being forced to wait in the evil empire of Starbucks. This Starbucks was actually very warm and welcoming, but once again the waitress had not been trained in the School of American Service Industry. This pleasant enough lassie was wonderfully self-absorbed, lost in a conversation with a friend and was delightfully oblivious of my presence and desires for coffee. Surely I was in Canada, I mean the rain felt like the Canadian stuff. With such blasé service, I could have been back in Aotearoa. When we left I let out a cheerful American good bye. Little miss I-don’t-seem-to-notice-you behind the counter, simply let out a cheerful ‘bye’. There was no ‘have a nice day sir’ or ‘see you you next time’. I was beginning to feel as if I was in some kind of rehab clinic and was being detoxed from the USA. I was noticing Wisconsin.

Our friend met us at the Starchucks and we followed him through the cool air back to his home. I had always considered him a little weird for an American, but now I realise he is not weird, he is just from Wisconsin. I mean people from Wisconsin are just like Americans with the sound and colour turned down and they are just like Canadians but friendly and with the slightest touch more self-esteem. And it is amazing, your average Wisconsin person is about as diplomatic as a UN official after her morning coffee. Yet you go south of the border and your average person from Chicago is about as diplomatic as a pallet load of bricks flying through the front windscreen of your speeding Mercedes. America is extremist and I have yet to find the middle ground.

Our friend’s house was utterly gorgeous. One thing that Americans right across the country can do exceptionally well is cute. And cute in context; if I plonked the décor of this house into mainstream suburban Kiwi-land, people would be entering the home and vomiting with disgust. We hate cutesy. Americans love it and seemingly know little else. They know that the Polish sugar bowl would look perfect on the windowsill beside the five different-coloured egg cups, with the rainbow-house-thingy sitting at the end. Whereas in New Zealand, windowsills are for transistor radios, pot-plants and the glass that holds your false teeth. Americans do tartan well, in fact they get away with putting it everywhere. There is probably more tartan in your average American state than there is in all of Scotland. In Scotland it is the wearing of tartan that makes a man look like a man. In America it is that little strip of tartan hanging above the kitchen window that makes a cute kitchen, really cute.

America, it is tartan not plaid. Over the centuries many a Scot has lost their life in battle defending the right to wear their tartan, defending the land it is from and defending the family that it represents. How do you think it feels to have this honoured by hanging it in your cute kitchens and turning it into things like oven mitts and pencil cases?

I was so pleased when our hosts decided to take their dog for a walk. I was feeling all gluggy from spending a day eating nasty road-side food with a side salad of Southwest peanuts. Cedarburg looked like a leafless movie set for me. Lots of yellow, green or blue two-storied wooden houses, flanked by wide streets and large fence-less lawns draped in dead leaves. Everything about Cedarburg was lazy, subtle and, well just quietly and quaintly American.

Tune in for the next issue and read about those Americans and their sport shoes that never see sport.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

Thank you so much to those of you who donated to the writing of this posting of ‘Clueless in America. This chapter was written in the very comfortable Chu Chus Cafe, West Kildbride Scotland.

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Clueless in America. Chapter 34

Posted on October 12, 2009 by f32dream

This chapter was gratefully sponsored by contributors to coffee fuel. If you would like to sponsor my writing, please click on the button.

34. Emotionally Drained

Well the morning came, breakfast was breakfast and then the women enjoyed doing women things. Whereas us men went out and did men things. It was so great to be back in the Commonwealth, we didn’t have to talk about it, discuss it or even necessarily think about it, we just went out and did it. Though men being men, we did have to make one very important decision first. And that is, which one of us would drive? In the Commonwealth(110) it is an insult to a man’s masculinity to be the passenger, it simply cannot and must not be done. It is much better for two men to drive separately, than for one of them to be forced to be the passenger. But we were grown up and mature men and theoretically such things did not concern us. Saving face was needed, with little effort we came up with the possibility that the women might need a car. Sharon was not insured to drive Betsie, so my mate’s car was left behind and he became my passenger. It was the only option and the man thing to do. With that behind us, we could get on with our day.

Interestingly enough, Betsie had spent the evening breaking the law. Unbeknown to me she was not allowed to spend the night sleeping on the street. By law, the street had to be traffic free, so the snow ploughs could keep the streets clear of evening snow. My mate reckons the only reason why we did not get a ticket was because of the ‘US Marine’ sticker on Betsie’s back door.

So what did we do this morning? We went to my friend’s former workplace. After all, is not a man defined by his work? I needed to experiment with some printing and his family owned a printing company. We wasted away most of our day, tinkering with machines and computers. At the end of it we had clear-cut man results packed away for me in a cardboard box. It was very satisfying, very intimate and so, so good to not have to talk about everything and to just knuckle down and enjoy getting something done together. It was a great day. My friend’s wife had committed the ultimate sin to our masculinity and called us and asked when we were coming home. Shortly after the call and just as the dew was starting to set, we arrived hungry and willingly back at the house.

Now our friends wanted to take us out for a special meal and asked us what we wanted to eat. Oh such a joyous decision, my brain instantly switched into European mode and started ticking off the possibilities. Maybe Indian, Mexican, Malaysian or Thai. Just as I was about to celebrate the complexities of the decision and to start working out how to choose what food we wanted, Sharon in her New Zealand state of mind cut right through the mince(111), and stated fish ‘n’ chips(112). I quickly reply ‘This is North America, they do not have fish ‘n’ chips here’. How wrong I was and how quickly I forgot, North America or Canada is not the USA. Yes, they had fish ‘n’ chips and to my delight, Sharon’s quick uncomplicated thinking meant we were going to eat them. The words ‘Kiwi’ and ‘fish ‘n’ chips’ are kind of like the words ‘European Union’ and ‘mindless bureaucracy’, the former cannot exist without the latter.

But first in the fading, chilly Canadian evening light we had a tour of London. This tour consisted almost entirely of a walk along the banks of the Thames. Oh Canada you are just so cute, who else would name one of their cities London and then name its river the Thames? Or perhaps the correct question is, who else would want to?

Anyhow it soon got dark and colder. The kids started being kids and got hungry and cranky. We were all tired and the light was no longer reflecting off the beautiful golden maple leaves, so we packed up and went to Archie’s Seafood Restaurant.

Now I may be a little biased here, but the best fish ‘n’ chips in the world are on the corner of Selwyn Street and North Road in Dunedin, New Zealand. The second to the approximately 600,000th best fish ‘n’ chips shops are all on the islands of Aotearoa. Scottish and by default English fish ‘n’ chips are a worthy imitation when the real thing is not available. And Aussie fish ‘n’ chips are too hoity-toity and expensive. So here we were at Archies Seafood restaurant, London, Ontario, and where did this delightful chuppie(113) fit into my well researched scale? Well they were the real thing, but they were also not Kiwi, so I will put them in at the very honourable position of 600,001st. They were stinkin good fish ‘n’ chips and the best I had had since leaving New Zealand. Well done Canada.

And what better way to sleep than with a belly full of fish ‘n’ chips? Knowing that we had quite a long drive ahead of us, we left quite early in the morning. The cool, crisp, dark early morning Canadian air mixed with the aroma of fresh coffee really did feel like we were going somewhere.

For some reason Canada made me introspective and melancholic. Knowing that I was going to jump at least five years into the future upon crossing the border, I took the opportunity of the quiet highway to reflect a little.

Incidentally, whilst writing this, I am sitting in a cafe on the west coast of Scotland in front of an open fire, so getting back into that introspective mood is happening quite nicely. I could almost live in Canada. I think that I would find the subtle racism and the overt PC’ism quite difficult. But there is something about the unkept streets, the attitudes of especially the men, and the darkness, that just draws me in. Canadians are funny and cute, they are not up-themselves. And driving west leaving Canada was making me homesick. I was not even sure of what home I was sick for, but I was homesick. My bones were tired, tired of almost twenty years of living abroad. Then suddenly out of nowhere my falling spirits were interrupted by an adrenaline burst in the form of a border guard wanting to look in the back of the car. And suddenly the beautiful subtle greys of Canada were gone and I was back in the action-packed, brighter, faster and more intense USA. My favourite movie is the death-row musical ‘Dancer in the Dark’. I do not need the bright, happy-clappy, have-a-nice-day-sir emotions of the USA and would much rather opt out for a little Canadian angst. I wonder what makes America so hyped up, so intense and eager to feel good? What makes America so extremist? And the reverse, I wonder why Americans cannot understand why much of the rest of the world does not need to feel as if life needs to be eternally lived on cloud nine? Sometimes I wonder what would happen if sugar and caffeine where to be banned in America. But Scotland is also pumped up on caffeine and sugar and its people can be just as melodramatic as the rest of us. Why oh why, America, are you seemingly so steroid bound?

Anyhow back in the USA, Michigan went past, causing about as much excitement as a game of baseball(114). We stopped just before the start of the ‘Goat Track’, filled up with petrol, bought an ice-cream and took a few minutes in mental preparation for the hell of Chicago roads. We were shaking with the pre-empted terror of knowing what that ‘track’ would be like. Our reward was that we were going to stop at the first KFC that came across our path. We saw two KFC signs, both were beyond closed-off ramps. We played Russian-roulette with numerous trucks, but the short of it was, second time through, the memory was worse than the journey. And without any warning, we were in Wisconsin.

Tune in for the next issue and read more, though you may not actually notice, but we will be in Wisconsin.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

Thank you so much to those of you who donated to the writing of this posting of the ‘Clueless in America‘. This chapter was written in the very comfortable Chu Chus Cafe, West Kildbride Scotland. And once again if you would like to sponsor my writing, please click on the buttons below.

Clueless in America. Chapter 33

Posted on October 5, 2009 by f32dream

33. Canada, it is not the USA

Well we drove into London as dusk was falling. I had spent hours back home in Lithuania researching driving instructions to our various friends’ houses, and though it was peak hour, London’s busyness was quite placid. We drove though the cool, crisp evening air without taking one wrong turn. Though Betsie was still a little rattled after the border comment, I could sense that she was quite proud of us. The person we were going to visit was my room mate at college some twelve or so years ago. I can still remember the first time that he walked through the door of our tiny British Columbian campus/house. I thought ‘Oh no! Here is trouble’ and indeed I was right. What I didn’t realise at the time was that he would be my brother-in-arms, the one that I spent time with drinking beers and barbecuing steak. Or that eventually the two of us would move into a cardboard house on a lonely Mexican mesa and spend all of our money on building a roof so that our new-found Mexican friends could live a little better. Over the six months we spent living in and out of each other’s pockets we accrued quite a lot of history, fought a few battles together and never got caught during our misadventures. And this placid London evening was our barbecue and beer reunion. The anticipation of meeting again was killing. Of course, now he was married with a couple of sprogs, one of them being only a week or two old.

Betsie lumbered to a stop in front of his house. My mate was out the front chopping up a tree that had collapsed under the weight of a recent snow dumping. After a long drive it always takes us a while to gather things up and actually get out of the car and then we went to the back of the car to gather our bags etc. and start dragging them up the driveway. On my way past the tree, I stopped and greeted my buddy whom I had been waiting so long to see, with a polite hand-shake and a hello before entering the house to meet his wife and settle in. After twelve years of waiting, our reunion was no more that a hello and a hand-shake. It appears that Canadian men are just as inept as Kiwi blokes at sharing their emotions.

I mean if we had been American, like the ‘south of the border’ brand, we would at the very least have hugged and said something like ‘It’s really good to see you again’. And shoot if we were from some parts of Europe, we would have sped frantically through Michigan, swerving in and out of the cars, whilst excitedly honking the horn and randomly whacking the brakes and accelerator. We would not have eaten during the whole trip, but would have stopped numerous times for coffee. When we got to the border, we would have had to spend thirty minutes searching for our passports and then another thirty minutes searching for the car keys that we lost in the process. We would have totally missed the comment about the ‘pricks south of the border’. And once in Canada we would have rung our friend twenty separate times to get fresh instructions on where to find his house. And on arrival we would have abandoned the car half on the road and half on his front lawn, would have jumped out of it and run open-armed across his lawn, oblivious to the fallen tree and running chainsaw. We would have hugged, maybe kissed and maybe even cried, whilst yelling things like ‘It has been so long, it is so good to see you!’. Then once more oblivious to the tree that needed to be cleared before dark, we would bring out the beer, wine, bread, cheese and sausage and sit, eat and drink whilst sharing how we felt about almost everything. Somewhere about one or two in the morning we would have our last coffee, send the kids to bed and stumble to the car to discover that leaving the door open all evening had run the battery flat. But we wouldn’t care, we would just grab our bags, retire to bed and sleep through until lunchtime, before starting on the coffee and intimate feeling sharing again.

But alas we are dignified Anglo-Saxon subjects of the Queen, we suck up our pain and only share our emotions at the pub in that two minute window between being happily drunk and stupidly drunk. Thus a hand-shake and hello sufficed.

But me thinks, this is not entirely true. We settled in and my mate cut his wood and cleared the tree in the fading light. When he had finished, he came inside and gave me a beer and asked how the drive was. This was Commonwealth man lingo for, ‘It is good to see you again’ and was a rather intimate moment. We were all hungry, his wife presented us with steak, we grabbed another beer and followed her pointing towards the barbecue. This translated out to ‘I remember all of the times we ate steak and drank beer together in BC(109), they were really special times we had together and I have missed them ever since’. Then we stood out there beside the barbecue in the freezing temperatures together. Because that is how Commonwealth men bond and express their love and companionship to each other. We could not work out how to light the gas barbecue, then suddenly it quite literally and dangerously exploded into combustion, we giggled and though carefully avoiding eye contact, smiled at each other. This translated into ‘We really miss our simpler, freer days before we were married, but are quite content and happy to now be married, though sometimes it can be a little work, but is well worth it’. Then we stood there, froze, drank our cold beer, ignored the steak and bagged our third college room-mate. This translated out to, ‘Yeah we had some fun back then, they are really good memories, it is such a shame that we no longer live in the same city and that we are not here for each other, you would be a really good supporting friend for me and sometimes I could really do with someone who understands me the way you do’.

Then the beer ran out, which meant the steak must have been cooked and our intimate deep and meaningful time was over. We wandered emotionally drained inside to our waiting wives who seemed to have been communicating on a rather different level and had been using such strange intros to their sentences as ‘I feel’ and ‘It hurts me when’. We presented the steak which incidentally was bloody rare to them, and sat down and ate. This was followed by putting the kids to bed, then we whiled the rest of the evening away with idle chit-chat before going to bed at a respectable hour. Oh the Commonwealth, it presents us with such a comfortable, predictable and somewhat boring lifestyle. But it is what we know, who we are. And for us the emotionally-inept contingent of Commonwealth men, we would really like to change things, but outside of having another beer and shouting at our favourite hockey, cricket or rugby team, have no idea how to express it.

Tune in for the next issue and read more about our Canadian adventures.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

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Clueless in America. Chapter 32

Posted on September 21, 2009 by f32dream

32. It’s all in a road sign.

Okay, back to the 10% of our freaking out on the ‘World’s Fastest Goat Track’. One of the things that we couldn’t help but notice were the road signs. American road signs were either written for the stupid or by the stupid which is odd because I did not meet any stupid Americans during our visit.

I could write a whole book on silly road signs, so I will endeavour to keep this short. American road signs do not like punctuation. Take for example this sign, ‘SLOW MEN WORKING’, so fire them if they are too slow and hire faster people. Or the really common one on the ‘Goat Track’, ‘KILL CONSTRUCTION WORKER $10 000 FINE’. Okay next time I run one over, I will make sure he lives. How about ‘BE PREPARED TO STOP’? Hello, if I am not prepared to stop, how the hang could I pass my licence? Isn’t every person behind the wheel of a car supposed to be prepared to stop? Or ‘SHOULDER WORK 500FT’: What? Is there a gymnasium ahead, and why is the verge so crappy? Let’s try ‘RESUME SAFE SPEED’. Why, dang this sucks, I was really enjoying driving like a dangerous maniac. Okay, just two more; ‘NO LITTER $50 FINE’. Quick kids, throw some trash out the window before we acquire a $50 fine. And lastly, ‘CAUTION CHILDREN’. Ah man, I do not have time to stop and tell them all to behave, they don’t listen anyhow.

How much money would it cost to stick a stinkin’ comma on a road sign? ‘SLOW MEN WORKING’ with the addition of a comma would move work-men from being thick to being safe. For example ‘SLOW, MEN WORKING’, or better still ‘SLOW DOWN, MEN WORKING ON THE ROAD’. I don’t know, is it too hard to read the four extra words and comma at fifty miles per hour, or is it too expensive to write the extra words?

Here is my plan. How about we hire an over-perky, service industry-trained and highly-skilled, smiling and slightly elusive KFC worker to write the signs? Then they would read something like, ‘HOW Y’ALL DOIN’? LOOK I DON’T WANT TO BE OFFENSIVE OR ANYTHING, BUT PLEASE SLOW DOWN, THERE ARE GOOD MEN WORKING ON THE ROAD AHEAD. WOULD YOU LIKE FRIES WITH THAT? HAVE A GOOD DAY, SEE Y’ALL NEXT TIME’. Then even dumb foreigners could understand. But don’t panic America, Europe’s not better. Our roads are full of signs that consist of pictures and numbers that merely allude to the possibility of an instruction.

And then before we knew it, we were approaching the Canadian border. Oh Canada, oh Canada, the closer we got to your border the more warm and fuzzy our emotions got. The Queen of New Zealand also happens to be the Queen of Canada, somehow that mere little fact makes Canada alright.

So here we were on the Blue Water Bridge with the beautiful Lake Huron to our left and St Clair river on our right. Traffic was at a standstill before we hit the almost two mile long bridge. This gave us plenty of time to watch Betsie’s temperature rise dangerously high and to find our passports etc. Amongst the documents we had to find Betsie’s insurance card. Betsie’s owner had very kindly purchased special insurance for our Canadian sortie. One of us somewhere along the line had placed it in the ashtray. Not a problem in itself, except that the ashtray seemed to be full of identical cards and we spent the next thirty minutes searching through them sorting them into dates, thus narrowing down the options until we were left with the two relevant cards. At the start of the ordeal, I jumped into the fastest lane, taking note of the car with which were parallel. We were in a hurry to have a cuppa(107) with Lizzie(108), but by the time we found our way to Canada, the parallel car, as expected, was long gone.

At the entry booth we were nervous as we were not totally convinced that we had all of the right insurance details. Not only that but I presented the dude in the immigration booth a British driver’s licence, Kiwi passport and American car ownership papers which belonged to someone else. I was expecting an ordeal and an ordeal is what I got. This gruff-looking and speaking Canadian dude in the booth looked at my passport and said, ‘So you are from New Zealand eh?’ I said ‘Yeah’. He replied, ‘New Zealand and Canada have a lot of similarities don’t they?’ Eh! Other than Canada being blessed with our Queen, my mind was drawing a blank. But I knew that that man holding my passport not only had a lot of power to make life hard for me, but like seemingly most other border patrol officers, had an over inflated sense of just what that power was. So I frantically tried to find some similarities. I fumbled out something like, ‘Yeah we both have mountains and our people are quite laid back’. And his reply was, and I quote you word for word, ‘Yeah unlike all of those pricks south of the border eh!’ And then without ever asking to see our insurance, he handed back our passports.

I was both flabbergasted and in hysterics! In fact I was laughing so much that I needed to stop at the border toilet. The gall of this guy, I was bewildered, bemused and totally beside and beyond myself with his comment. It was so out of context and so rude that it totally tickled my humour and slightly offended me. Welcome to Canada, the land of my Commonwealth cousins. It seemed to me that the polite ones were the ones that got away and all proudly live south of the border.

But this comment was such a Canadian thing to say and at that, such a Canadian male thing to say. If I had to put a sign at the border, it would read; ‘Welcome to Canada, the nation that defines itself by who it is not’. Or if I needed to be more specific for the sake of US citizens, the sign would read, ‘Welcome to Canada, we are not the USA’. But of course Canada could never endorse such a sign, because, and sorry if I offend you by saying this, because Canada is the ‘politically correct’ capital of the world.

In my totally humble opinion, Canada has some of the best cop and robber television shows in the world. And yes, I did mean to say Canada, not Hollywood. But the problem with Canadian television is that the people are always so predictable. I mean it only takes thirty seconds to work out who the really bad guy is. He is the one that does not say ‘Get ooout of my hooouse nooow’. Or in other words, the bad guy is always the US citizen. And if you want to work out who is the good, intelligent, sharp person in control, well start the narrowing down process by searching for the females. Canada, after all is blessed with being a matriarchal society. Then when you have singled out the females, search for the minorities, the chances are that the head honcho will be the best looking black woman on the set. I don’t have a problem with this, it just gets boring after while. And then the men, well Canadian television has that uncanny knack of making most of its men look slightly fumbly and cute. Even on the rare occasion when the bad guy is a Canadian man, he still manages to have a totally lovable and cute innocence about him.

Anyhow we had arrived in Point Edward. Oh, I am homesick already for Mother Commonwealth. Thirty seconds across the border and the Canadians have to throw such an English place name at you. It probably took a Canadian committee of public servants a few years to come up with such a simple, pleasant and politically correct place name which screams into your face, ‘This is not the USA’. I mean if Americans named it, it would have been something like Point Chuck or Point Randy.

Anyhow time to get off that subject and to make it perfectly clear that I do like Canada, though please don’t stone me for this, but it is kind of like the USA except laid back, without the intensity or brightness. It doesn’t hurt your eyes so much. Maybe it is the USA ten years ago and with good beer. But for the sake of my Canadian friends, IT IS NOT THE USA!!! Have you got it, IT IS NOT THE USA.

And it only took us about two miles to have this point totally rammed home at us. We went past a road sign on the autostrada. I read it out loud as we approached it. I wish I could remember what it said or had asked Sharon to write it down. But it was just too long for that. It had multiple, multiple-syllable words crammed into multiple sentences all on a little road sign. After I had finished reading it, Sharon and I looked at each other and said, ‘What did that mean?’ Then befuddled and confused, we looked at each other and said, ‘Welcome to Canada, this aint the USA’. Except Sharon would have said ‘This isn’t the USA’.

And at that, we were on the 402 heading towards London. Oh, isn’t it so cute having all of these English place names?

Tune in for the next issue and read about fish ‘n’ chips and other stuff that I have jet to

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.