american update, part one

I considered it my patriotic duty to kill some trees in order to create the tree-death (printable) version of this post. Also, I said "duty"! Hee-hee!

Or you can click here to read the shorter Cliffs Notes version of the post. Or you can wait and read the shorter Cliffs Notes version tomorrow, when I post it.

Right. I’ve been in the US for a little over six months now. One of the first things I did upon arriving in this country is purchase a cell phone (to those of you living in the UK, this is what you would call a mobile; to everyone else, this tone is what you would call condescending). I also went to Circuit City to buy three house phones. I bought three phones because the Patriot Act has outlawed the purchase of single items. Buying only two of something is a Class B misdemeanor. With a court order signed by two sitting judges, a US citizen can still buy single items, but only in gallon drums. Unless they are buying a single cell phone, which must be no larger than a Pez dispenser.

I have become truly American. I own two cars now. I have gained 140 lbs., largely by listening to everything that the ads on the Food Network tell me.

It’s okay, though, because I have registered for eight weight-loss programs and purchased twelve fitness products, each of which I learned about on a half-hour infomercial fronted by Jessica Simpson. I can’t afford any of these things, so I’ve put them on credit cards. Several lovely TV spokespeople have suggested cool ways to consolidate my debt.

I now vote Republican, because I realize it is sinful not to. I send an embossed Christmas card to the Bushes (Jr and Sr) every year. I realize that we had to invade Iraq because Osama bin Laden attacked us using the frequent flyer miles of Democrats living in Afghanistan. And because I’m in America, I now think Afghanistan is a city in Iraq.

I listen to country-western music. I think Hannah Montana is a funny show. I watch local news and I’m not bothered by headlines like “Robbed by Thieves.”

No, I have to stop there. This was an actual headline on my local news the other night, and it does bother me. I’m forced to wonder what it said before the editors got hold of it:

“’Robbed by Robbers’? What the hell kind of headline is that? Take it back and do it again. Preferably without inhaling varnish beforehand.”

So the copywriters spend an hour at Starbucks and come back with--

“’Robbed by Thieves.’ By thieves. Yes, dammit, yes. You see that? I like it--cuts right to the heart of the story. No fluff or crap. Run it.”

My main problem with the headline, frankly, is that it isn’t news. “Robbed by Thieves.” Well, yes, that is what thieves do. They rob. Thieves who never rob are just law-abiding citizens in ski hats. So how can it be news to say thieves robbed?

No--news would be something like, “Embalmed by Thieves,” or “Smelted by Thieves.” These are activities rarely associated with those who burgle. On the other hand, “Robbed by Buddhist Pilates Instructors” or “Robbed by Ferrets” would make excellent news stories as well.

But I digress.

So let’s see: I bought a house, which was a major undertaking, requiring me to provide our mortgage lenders with a scavenger hunt list full of things, except possibly a major and an undertaker.

I make no claims to be any kind of financial guru, but I now feel qualified to offer the following advice to anyone looking to relocate to the US from overseas. If you are interested in purchasing a home, you might consider...

• not moving to New York, whose housing laws were clearly devised by a real estate attorney trapped inside Cheech and Chong’s VW minibus. I kid you not, in NY State, when you purchase a house, you will be charged $75 in order to pay a gratuity to the person who prepares the title for your home. That’s right - the state is enforcing tip money for its civil servants. They even label it that way on the closing paperwork: “Title preparer’s gratuity.” God bless. Call me pedantic, but if you are FORCED to pay it, then it isn’t TECHNICALLY a gratuity, is it? I’m going to introduce a motion to the New York legislature proposing that that line be reworded, “Title preparer’s mandatority.

• If you must move to New York, under no circumstances should you move to Westchester County, which is the county with the highest property tax in the state. Seriously - the local taxes here cost more than the state taxes do. Which I think means that economists can now complete their geometric proof that New York is bigger on the inside than on the outside.

• Then again, sure, the property taxes here are spine-chillingly high, but at least the actual houses are as expensive as all get out. Whee!

• Naturally, if you’re going to invest thousands and thousands of dollars in a gaping vortex of debt, you’re going to want to time it carefully. I would recommend, for example, NOT attempting to secure a mortgage, say, around the time that the bottom falls out of the sub-prime lending market. As it happens, bottoms falling out of any kind of lending markets--sub-prime or prime or super-prime or even markets which are divisible by several different positive and negative integers beyond themselves and one--basically bottoms of any kind falling in any way out of any sort of lending markets will tend to make lenders, like banks and mortgage brokers and bent-nosed Sicilian gents with names like “Marty Shoes,” a mite anxious. So beware of falling bottoms. Because it’s bad enough that lawyers, banks and New York State will devour your savings like they’re a 3-pound lobster. It will be worse if you have to beg them to tie the bib on in the first place.

• Of course, if you do end up begging, it’s best to have all your paperwork in order. Thus, when making your overseas relocation to the US, it will be best if you haven’t actually spent any time overseas prior to your arrival in America. It turns out that for the last 50 years or so, the US has ceased to believe in the existence of “the rest of the world.” Instead, it believes that the horizon line created by the ocean and the sky is a fixed, tangible barrier into which ships will sail if allowed to go too far, like Jim Carrey did in The Truman Show. If somehow a ship should accidentally break through this barrier, it would find itself in a dark, nebulous world filled with sea serpents and bogeymen. This alleged “Europe” of which so many speak is purely an imaginary Never-Neverland with no more bearing on reality than the Loch Ness Monster or the separation of church and state. The Middle East is a sort of fictional “Albert Square” setting used as the background for the long-running nightly serial drama called “The News.” Some people have been watching this program for so long that they have actually begun to believe that the characters in it are as real as they are.

• The point is that if you have been out of the US for any length of time, when you return, you will find that no record of you as a consumer or wage-earner exists here. You will have no credit record and will thus be incapable of qualifying for a loan of any sort unless you a) construct a credit history for yourself by pasting together every bill, bank balance sheet, credit card report, tax return and pay stub you have received or sent for the last two years (make sure you have all of these handy so you don’t have to make a lot of overseas calls!), or b) convince the financial institutions of the US and the rest of the world to communicate with one another in a spirit of respect and cooperation as peers and equals.

• Oh, and if you DO manage to sort out all the necessary paperwork, neatly line up your internal organs in alphabetical order on a marble slab, pay all the necessary expenses and live through the closing date without stabbing one of the eight people there to sign papers in the neck with a pen, be sure you have more than four days to move in before school starts for your kids and your new job begins in earnest.

In spite of all this, we managed to buy a house. Which we love, by the way, irrespective of my mildly sarcastic tone (okay, maybe less of a tone and more of a sarcastic orchestration). My favorite part of the whole experience was when we finished signing all the paperwork. After the fiscal colonic we had undergone, we stood up with our papers and our lawyer said, “You can keep the pen, you know, as a memento. Because it’s such a big day.” She was, in reality, a very lovely woman who was incredibly helpful. But there was a part of me that wanted to say, “Um, actually, I think the house will probably remind us of buying the house a bit better. Plus, I’m less likely to lose the house by putting it in my shirt pocket and then having it fall out when I lean over to tie my shoes. Plus, it’s kind of a cheap pen.”

more to come...