Nothing beats kicking back at the pool, unless you’re the pool boy. {Source}

This story in the San Francisco Chronicle got a lot of attention recently. It’s about a young guy named James Razsa, who used to clean the pool at the Bush family compound in Maine. “If every American had to pool-boy for these people for a day, you’d have a revolution on your hands,” he says.

Another interesting (and perhaps related) factoid appears in the middle of the article, where journalist Chris Colin (previously here) writes:

I’ve known Razsa for a while now. I first got to know him in 2006, when I was living in Slovenia. One of his brothers, an old friend of mine, had been living in Ljubljana¹), and James had come for his wedding and to earn some money working at a bar.

I couldn’t help but wonder if Razsa’s short time in Ljubljana helped radicalize him. I would guess that the anti-American sentiment in a Slovenian bar is at roughly the same level as a madras in Waziristan. Obviously Slovenes as a whole are pretty solidly anti-Bush/Iraq War, but bars in particular allow for the crucial convergence of students, alcohol, and socializing — and that means more Fak Bush rants per capita than any other place in the country. (God knows I’ve sat through plenty of them.)

And don’t tell me subliminal advertising doesn’t work. If you spend weeks in a bar listening to people regularly complaining about the Bush administration, it goes in. Heck, even I’ll be walking down the street and have sudden, inexplicable outbursts:

Mrs. Michael M.: Hey, do you want to stop for some ice cream?
Michael M: Sounds good. What’s that flavor I like again?
MMM: I forget. It’s the one with cherries and chocolate, right?
MM: DICK CHENEY IS A WAR PROFITEER AND SHOULD BE TAKEN TO THE HAGUE AND FORCED TO EAT HIS OWN FACE!!!
MMM: What? What the hell?
MM: Sorry. I’m sorry. Geez, I don’t know where that came from.. What were we just talking about?
MMM: You were trying to remember which flavor of ice cream you like.
MM: Hmm, right. I think it was “Don” something. Was it? I think it was. I think it was like “Don Corleone” or some play off of that. I think… I THINK BUSH IS ALMOST CERTAINLY A REPTILIAN HUMANOID, OR “REPTOID,” AND WANTS THE WARM HEAT OF IRAQ IN ORDER TO REGULATE HIS COLD-BLOODED BODY TEMPERATURE!!!!
MMM: You’ve been in bars again lately haven’t you?

The story about the unhappy pool boy is here.

1. Over at the relevant Fark thread, one commenter wrote: “I’m fairly certain that place doesn’t exist.” [back]