Third World Enough?

[Phnom Penh, 2/27/23]

One can’t say sorry often enough. With the most bitter remorse, then, I apologize for suggesting English is thoroughly corrupted. Why, it’s getting richer by the second, yet more compact, miraculously! Crazy has become cray, for example, and K is way cooler than OK.

Long a ballast of shitty English, shit has become even more ubiquitous. Biden is some solid shit, man! He’s the real shit. He dropped some cray shit last night. I ain’t shitting you, bro. Shit if I ain’t voting for that motherfucker again. The other asshole is just too KKK, K?

Perhaps this mirrors our shrinking life, mind and, soon enough, even stature, for how Yao Ming or Viking can you grow gobbling stink bugs and millipedes?

Going nowhere but way down, the best we can hope for is to pay less than an arm for an egg and, if the world doesn’t blow up tomorrow, some desperately awaited staycation, a word birthed by that laughably mild, in retrospect, economic hiccup of 2008.

Though vast sections of the First World are actually Third, Fourth or Fifth, as in much of Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans, etc., you still likely have a car that runs on eight-laned freeways to Arlington Cemetery sized parking lots, so you’re still in the First World, dude!

Still, let me give you some Third World sketches, for some survival ideas, eh?

Yesterday in Phnom Penh, I saw a woman walking around selling hammocks and woven mats. Though she had a bunch of each, they were so light and portable, she had no problem wandering around with them on her shoulder and, well, head. So cheap and comfortable, hammocks are ideal beds for anyone without a roof for a night, month or years. Think soldiers on the move, fleeing refugees and the homeless. As for woven mats, they sure beat cardboard boxes, since they’re much more compact, folded.

This morning, I saw an old woman walking around with a scale. In my obscured novel, Love Like Hate, I write about this charming trade:

A few steps from Phuong there was an old man who sat behind an old scale. You came to him to learn your weight. The chubbiest people in the neighborhood felt a compulsive need to step on his scale several times a day. They kept him high on the hog because he charged by the pound. Though he had no knowledge of medicine,
everyone called him “doctor.” The day was long and sometimes he fell asleep. As soon as he started snoring, thieves and beggars would step on his scale for free. In his dreams, he often saw these lowlifes gleefully weighing themselves, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

Charging by the pound was my invention. I doubt if the Cambodian lady charged even a quarter, for you can get rice with chicken gibbets or feet here for just a buck, and they’ll throw in some veggies. When a chubby matron stepped on the scale, a man standing nearby cracked up after saying something, so all three of them laughed.

Remember Fats Domino, Fats Waller or Chubby Checker? Should we change their offensive monikers to Ruler Shaped Waller, Plus Size Domino and Healthy Checker? Of course, since we’re not Jewjab hesitant Holocaust deniers.

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill ‘em all. Let Gaia sort ‘em out, just to kill ‘em again.

OK, OK, I’ll get back to survival ideas. There’s a Vietnamese saying, “Buy from one end of the market, sell at the other end.”

You don’t even have to do that. In Busan, South Korea, I saw ladies who sold right outside the market stuff they had just bought inside! Some broad would pay sort of wholesale for garlics, break them up, then offer cloves at retail price. Sure, she had to invest three or four drops of sweat for her daily kimchi and bibimbap.

Why not buy boxes of instant noodles then sell individual packets? Of course, we’re talking nickel-and-dime here, but you’ll be surprised where your mind will veer when your belly is void. Outside in the dark a decade ago in San Antonio, some guy said to me he’d do 10 pushups if I gave him ten bucks.

Ten?! Even I can do that at 59, with my beer belly scraping the ground.

Buy donuts to sell at bus stops, outside subway stations and inside bars. Push a shopping cart around with food items, like they do in barrios already. Specialize in one dish. With a carafe of coffee, carton of milk, sugar in a jar and paper cups, you’re an instant cafe or wandering barista.

[Istanbul, 12/18/25]

At a breakfast stand here, I’d see two of the owner’s daughters working. One is about 15, the other just 8 or 9. Though appearing only rarely, the younger is also expert at grilling and cutting meat, waitressing and bussing. Cheerful, she delivers plates of rice with grilled fish or pork to customers just yards away. This morning, she saw a friend so ran off laughing, before her mom called her back a minute later. Spotting a baby next door, she went over to say hello.

By the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers, there are kids selling food. With work toughened hands, a girl of ten regularly sits on the sidewalk behind a bamboo basket containing bamboo tubes of sticky rice.

If they had richer parents, these kids would spend time learning English or math, or playing video games. They might not know how to boil, much less fry, an egg. If living in a highrise or gated community, they wouldn’t be comfortable in dumpy alleys. When eating out, they sit in air conditioned rooms away from messy life.

Sprinkling their conversations with English, if not speaking it entirely, they become less Cambodian, but that’s perfect, for their future, as mapped by their parents, is in Australia, Canada or even the United States of America!

Studying until they’re nearly insane, maybe they’ll get accepted into Trump’s alma mater, the Wharton School of Business in gorgeous Philadelphia!

Away for 4 1/2 years, I still keep an eye on my old home, so what’s going down?

Much more of the same, predictably. Five days ago, three hooded youths got out of a parked car to shoot in all directions for 19 seconds. Seven people were hit, including a 2-year-old in a stroller, but that’s not unusual. In 2022, 217 kids were shot in Philly.

Herself shot twice, the baby’s mom is said to have “no idea her daughter was wounded until changing her diaper,” according to the police.

Also last week, a masked man with a submachine gun robbed a bodega. Two masked accomplices served as lookouts. Many Philly stores had signs banning face coverings, but Covid ditched this rule, so masked robberies are easier than ever, and surveillance cameras nearly useless.

Mayhem and madness have become so banal in the Empire of Chaos. In Oakland, bicyclists are intentionally knocked down by swinging car doors, for it’s a hoot to send strangers to hospitals. It’s a national policy, after all.

There’s even a name for this new pastime, “dooring.” Interesting, too, the importation of an old Australian slang, “hooning.” Originally, to hoon was to be an asshole, but in the US, it now means to be an asshole with a car.

With my mean whip, I hoon around town, looking for some bitch to door.

So bored, they seethe, in the last flowering of a culture that could have been.

“If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles,” Whitman said, but there’s nothing but the sickest soil, Walt, and no one is looking for you.

In a bombed city, your grave sinks.

[Camden, 5/18/15]

[Camden, 9/12/16]

[Phnom Penh, 2/27/23]