What kind of First-Worlder are you? Grab a pencil and paper (or your calculator app) and answer this short quiz to find out!
OFFICIAL FIRST-WORLDER QUIZ
1. I (do / do not) eat the bruised parts of a banana.
2. I (have / have not) purchased undergarments to alter the size or shape of my butt.
3. I (do / do not) have an IRA or 401k or 403b.
4. I (do / do not) complain about how often I need to water our lawn or garden.
5. I (do / do not) judge a restaurant by its wine-by-the-glass or craft beer offerings.
6. I (would / would not) compare the chance event of an hour-long electrical power failure on consecutive summer nights as akin to living in Baghdad.
7. (True / False) There are certain colors of M&Ms and/or LifeSavers that I throw away.
8. I (have / have not) wondered about repercussions of unfriending a person on Facebook.
9. I (have / have not) checked Amazon reviews of the best espresso machine.
10. I (do / do not) think my world depends on who is elected President.
11. I (do / do not) answer internet quizzes.
ANSWERS and SCORES
1. Score 6 first-world points if you don’t eat the bruised parts of a banana. Score 3 points if you do. Either way, you have a banana!
2. Score 3 first-world points if you ever wondered how your butt looks in various clothes. Score 3 more points if you decided to do something about it.
3. Score 6 points if you have an IRA, 401k or 403b. Score 3 more first-world points if you hastily decided to cash out during the 2008 financial crisis.
4. Score 4 first-world points if you complain about watering your garden and your garden does not feed you. Score 4 more points if you planted your garden to provide a haven for bees, butterflies and other pollinators.
5. Score 1 first-world point for every minute you spend reviewing a restaurant’s wine-by-the-glass or craft beer list before you order. Score another 4 first-world points if you usually request a taste of the ones you are vaguely interested in.
6. Score 1 first-world point for every one-point rise in your blood pressure when you discover you have no internet access.
7. Score 2 points for every color or flavor of M&Ms and/or LifeSavers you throw away.
8. Score 5 first-world points for every Twitter feed you follow. Score 1 first-world point for every Facebook friend you have in excess of one hundred. Score 5 points for every blog you stopped reading because it was too political, or too wordy, or the person who wrote it was too… I don’t know, it just took too much time and there were not enough emojis.
9. Score 2 first-world points for every Amazon product review you read in the past month.
10. Score 10 first-world points if you think it doesn’t matter whether Donald Trump knows what he is talking about as long as you agree with him. This is America, after all, and we are free to think what we want or not think at all. Bonus: Score 2 points for every time you talked back to the television in the past week.
11. Score 6 first-world points for having read this first-world blog to the very end.
RESULTS
• If you scored 0-5 points: You obviously cheated. Add 20 points to your first-world score.
• If you scored 6-15 points: You must be one of my Canadian readers! As a citizen of America’s 51st state, you should visit more often to fully absorb our first-world culture.
• If you scored 16-35 points: You either have too few Facebook friends or you take meds to regulate your blood pressure. To increase your first-world score, you need to submit a Facebook friend request every day until you reach 1000. And consider buying a backup power supply for your laptop so you will never experience the trauma of being offline.
• If you scored 36-85 points: Congratulations for having been born in the First World! Drink a Bud Lite, watch a Dallas Cowboys game, and bask in the happy circumstance of having been born in the greatest nation on earth, though you had nothing to do with it.
• If you scored 86-3675 points: Come on. You didn’t really add up all those points. But it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know how to add. Someone else can do all the adding, maybe someone in Bangladesh. If there isn’t an app for it, who needs it?
Another Little Town crime edition. Really, sometimes they make it so easy. These stories recently appeared in Citizen-Times, our remotely-published “local” Gannett newspaper.
Man assaults officer with metal wash board
Now, this is not a laughing matter, but where else would this happen but in the heart of Appalachia USA? The text of the article did not go into detail on the washboard incident (which took place at the County Jail) but it did say that the perpetrator, one Jason Smith, was charged with “assaulting a government official with a deadly weapon.” It gets better:
Earlier in the evening, as Smith was being arrested by two Asheville Police Officers, he refused to get on the ground and place his hands behind his back, warrants state. He attempted to hit officers with a large piece of cardboard and threw it to the ground in the middle of the street. Officers charged Smith with resisting a public officer and littering, which are both considered misdemeanors, according to court documents.
That littering charge is going to be especially hard to beat here in Asheville. I hope Smith has a good lawyer. And I hope that whoever left a washboard out in plain sight at the County Jail, where anyone could pick it up and use it to attack someone, will learn to be more responsible with deadly weapons.
Asheville man charged with several area break-ins
Joshua Frantz, a South Asheville man, was jailed by the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office after being accused of breaking into a number of homes on the very street he lives on. According to the article, Frantz “took more than $5,000 and $4,000 in valuables from his neighbors.” (Note to Citizen-Times: $5000 and $4000 usually adds up to $9000.) But there is much, much more to this story. I am reposting a sizable portion of it here, so that it will not be lost to the winds of internet time:
A deputy interviewed a woman at one residence who said someone was in her house, and when she came out of the bathroom the person ran out through the backdoor, warrants state. The woman told a deputy that her boyfriend had gotten a better look at the person. The deputy then spoke to Frantz, who lived with the woman.
Frantz described the man as having the “same build as him but had hair and inch or two long. He also said that he was wearing orange shorts and carrying a backpack that had red or orange on it,” warrants state.
Deputies searched the couple’s home and surrounding outside areas. They saw a pair of black gloves sitting on the countertop in the living room, a crowbar lying on the patio table in the backyard and a backpack that appeared to have red or orange on it.
In the bathroom Frantz had been in, a deputy saw what appeared to be a towel filled with hair as if someone had just gotten a haircut, warrants state. Hair was on the sink and all around the bathroom. A pair of orange shorts also had been thrown on the floor in the basement, according to warrants.
When deputies went back outside the house, they noticed Frantz was wearing a cap and his scalp was white appearing to have just been shaved, warrants state. He also had some “random longer hairs on his neck and around his head that I believed would be consistent with a quick cut,” according to warrants.
After piecing details together and obtaining evidence, authorities named Frantz as the person who had broken into neighboring residences stealing various items.
I don’t know if reporter Abigail Margulis intended her story to be quite so entertaining, but I would find it hard to write this account with a straight face. It would have been fun to be in the newsroom (in whatever city that may be) when her editor reviewed it.
As for Mr. Frantz’s neighbors, the lesson to be learned is this: if you can’t trust the guy who lives next door, you better hope that he is either very stupid or a bad liar, or both.