A Reprimand

Today I was pretty busy down at the shop doing real work installing things as opposed to office work. One of my battalion’s first lieutenants came in to the office sign some paperwork, an action which today I was not involved with, thankfully. On the way down to the shop, the lieutenant had stopped by one of our local Hajji shops and bought a Hajji vision DVD that had eight movies for the price of one. Hajji vision is the semi-racist slang for pirated DVD’s which are usually sold for a dollar. Most are one movie for a dollar, but you can also buy multiple movies on one DVD where you sacrifice quality for quantity while still getting the great low price. They are almost always high enough quality that you can make out the plot. (I have only seen about four or five movies on Hajji vision and have never bought any even though it is a win-win situation for the buyer and the seller. Maybe the producer loses out, but two out of three winning must be okay, right?)

So everyone is looking at the newest purchase which is a collection of eight Oscar nominees: Chariots of Fire, Rocky, the Deer Hunter, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next, and some others. I had seen exactly one of the movies, Chariots of Fire. Everyone thought this was completely unacceptable. I was accused of Communism, un-Americanism, and being culturally deficient, a berating that took close to a quarter of an hour. I’ll accept guilt on one of those counts. So the lieutenant gives me the disk (forces it on me, really) and tells me that I have to watch the rest of the movies. I bargained my way out of having to give written reports. In an attempt to be more culturally proficient, I will blame my cultural deficiency on my parents, my economic circumstances growing up, and on being a white male. If I hadn’t forgotten the DVD down at the office I would get started on cultural proficiency training tonight.