Drive them out!

I'm not a racist. I love all humanity. The true joy of assisting my fellow man in any and all activities brews through me with all the passion normally associated with high-end coffee makers. This is why last night was truly disturbing to me.

I turned off the lights at 12:15 last night. I fell asleep at 1:30. All right, this may have had something to do with my listening to a podcast of This American Life, but that's neither here nor there. Point is, I was rudely awakened at fourteen minute to three by a noise so loud that it could not be tolerated. At first I thought it was my roommate's alarm clock, but it was too loud, and eventually I realized that it was the fire alarm. I kept out of bed (a minute later), put on socks and shoes, made sure my roommates were right behind me, and joined the growing hordes (I use the plural because four separate programs were affected) congregating at the swimming pool. Eight minutes later a copper showed up, and soon after him four fire trucks and several vehicles belonging to the volunteers who make up the Morristown Fire Department. Fifteen or twenty minutes after that we were allowed back in, and half an hour later I managed to fall asleep.

The reason for my racist reaction? Who did you think it was that pulled that fire alarm? A full-blooded American? No-sirree! It was a couple of Brazilians who are departing and who thought they'd give us a nice parting gift.

Ridiculous, eh? You'd think that people who are old enough to join the armed forces of this glorious land would have a brain capacity that exceeded that of your average twelve month old. Actually, now that I think about it, my darling niece Chaya (whose birthday is on 2 Tammuz-send presents now!) would never do such an idiotic thing. So obviously these hispanic idiots are severely mentally retarded.

Why am I harping on foreigners here? Two years ago, when I was in the Rabbinical College of America Tomchei Tmimim for shiur daled, the first fire alarm of the year (we had nearly fifteen in about four months) was caused by, guess who? Frenchies. Turns out he put his siddur on top of a fire alarm setter-off pull thingies. At 1:30 in the morning. Of course, how he managed to pull it up when the siddur was officially on top remains a mystery to this day...

Later that year we had another fire alarm. Why? Because some brilliant Frenchie sprayed deodorant into the smoke alarm in his room. What a genius.

So anyway, the firefighters are present, and guess what? A brilliant foreigner has to start running around taking pictures as if he was a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer! And he should have known better too-he speaks English (or whatever it is that Australians speak). Nevermind that he looks like a complete fool and is getting in the way of the fire people-he has to take pictures.

If I sound crotchety it's because I am. That's what happens when I don't get enough sleep. What's my solution? Cancel all I-20s and tell them foreigners to go back to where they came from. We don't want 'em here, them and their sleep-deprivation tactics. Heck, they're worse than the federal employees at Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay! At least there the inmates got a little publicity. But here, at RCA in Morristown, NJ, our sadistic torturers work in silence, with nary a publication to cry foul at their treatment of us. Sick.