Whistle

Last Saturday I sat at home and wrote a lousy blog post where I spent nearly an hour thinking up, and then alphabetizing the names of strippers*.  As I engaged in that activity, I was listening to what I like to call "shit pop."  Katy Perry, Flo Rida and other pop songs that have little to no redeeming value**.  They exist only to get stuck in your head so you can have the same hook loop in your mind for a 90km bike ride.  Anyway, I was listening to the song "Whistle" by Flo Rida while our maid, Ms. T, hovered around the room cleaning the floor**.

*How could I have possibly forgotten the other Eastern European standby stripper name, Natasha?  I'm slipping in my old age...
*I realize that this music is something of a weakness for me.  I know I should hate it, but, just like my new Hello Kitty iPhone cover, I love it because I shouldn't.
**Maybe the most yuppie sentence I've ever written here.  The fact that we have a maid is somewhat embarrassing simply because we would never even consider this sort of thing in America.  If you can't keep your own house clean, get a smaller house.  I get it.  The problem is that in order to live in the neighborhood we wanted to live in, we either had to have a too large house, or live in a closet.  We went for the slightly too large house and hired someone to help us keep it clean.

Here is the song in question:

I think it's safe to say that Ms. T has saved our sanity and our relationship.  For the first six months or so in our slightly too large house, Reyna and I would spend 2/3 of our Saturdays cleaning and doing laundry.  It sucked.  Now we have time to do other things, like write lame blog posts on the weekends.  Although it is a little embarrassing to have a mid 50s woman doing household chores while we sit on the couch and watch television, Ms. T doesn't seem to care.  I'm pretty sure she loves working for us simply because we are American and she loves all things American.  It might also be because we pay her more than we probably should, but I'll chalk that up to our "western guilt."  But I digress.

As the song (this was a post about a song, remember?) faded out, Ms. T stopped cleaning, turned to me and we had the following exchange:

MT: I like that song.  It's my favorite song.  Next week can I bring a USB* and get the song from you?
Me: Sure.  Do you have an email address? I can just email it to you if you want.
MT: No.  No email.
Me:  Do you have a computer?
MT: No

*She couldn't remember the word for USB, but I figured it out from her charades.  Her English is not great, but it's a hell of a lot better than our Vietnamese.  Also, what I wrote aren't her exact words.  I am simply quoting the intent, because to write it like she speaks would make her appear stupid or slow, which she absolutely is not.

The questions came in waves that went something like this.  I asked none of them, but have been plagued by them since our exchange.

1. How does one listen to a song saved onto a jump drive without a computer? I can just picture little 54-year-old Ms. T sitting in an internet cafe rocking out to Flo Rida while all the gamers stop their first-person shooters to stare at her.
2. Does Ms. T have a full understanding of what the song is actually about? 
3. Is Flo Rida capable of writing an international hit song that isn't about getting blown?  

I guess the answer to that last question is yes..... sort of.