Dr. Slumdog or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Blog Again

It has been a very trying week for me. On Monday, my wallet, cell phone and iPod were stolen out of my car. I went thru an abbreviated version of the steps of grief or coping or whatever you might call them. When I realized the iPod was gone, I was irritated. It's the second one that's been stolen from me, BOTH gifts from my mother. When I figured out that the wallet with ATM card, driver's license, forty dollars in cash and my cell phone with all my numbers in it were gone, I was enraged. And then when it dawned on me that all my pictures, videos and most importantly text messages from my sweetheart were now in the hands of someone else from whom I would not get them back, I became so depressed, I skipped work for two days. Then I began the process of getting my life back together, cell phone by debit card, one piece at a time.

Until I walked into Chase bank this morning. I went to go check on my claim because someone had taken four hundred dollars out of my account on Monday morning and the person over the phone assured me that I would have it back in a few days. However, after sitting and talking to a helpful young man at the branch, he called the claims department and put me on the phone with them. They explained to me they would not be crediting my account and listed a few frivolous reasons as to why they wouldn't. After some back and forth in which they explained they would not be able to help me any further and that they would not re-open my claim, I hug up the phone, calmly closed my account and walked across the street to Bank of America.

What does this have to do with movies? I'm getting there.

Let's switch topics again for a brief moment and get it out in the open. Terrorism is bad. We can all agree on that, I'm certainly not disputing it, but I want to say it, so everyone knows I'm on board when I say that I really don't concern myself with it. I don't know if it's living on the West Coast or having spent time in the Middle East, but let's table that for now and say I have a far more personal and valid reason for having an unfair prejudice against Middle Easterners. For as long as there is a heavily accented customer service rep NOT servicing me as a customer, I will hold these prejudices. For every slumdog that yells at me because he can't fix my computer, tells me I am eligible for a great new rate on my wireless plan or tells me that checking the ATM camera installed at their branch is "not what they do," I'll lump them in with the terrorists. And some of my very best friends, close friends are Filipino and that's close enough.

So, as I was driving home, cursing said slumdog, it occurred to me that if that awful movie's lasting legacy is a racial epithet against the very people the film exploited, then maybe there is some justice in the world. Or as they would call it 'karma.' Is this an outwardly racist post? I don't think so. Does it necessarily have to do with movies? Kinda. But, if it does tell you how movies play a part in forming my world views and shaping my personality, then I think that's a pretty good blog. And maybe I should start doing more of them like this.

Unfortunately, I was the one covered in the proverbial shit.