#45 One-Upping

First off before I begin I’d like to wish everyone that comes to this blesearch or resealog (my research log/blog, witty right?) a happy New Year. I’m sure that 2010 will be an exciting year and we will be looking forward to what happens within this new year and decade. I hope the best for everyone and that everyone stays happy, healthy, and wealthy (or becomes so if they are not).  Secondly I am sorry it has taken me a while to post; time just has a way of making you waste it. Anyway for whatever it’s worth here we go.

For those of you who may have thought from just reading the title, no the title does not have anything to do with the extra life that you get when playing Super Mario Bros. Instead it has to do with how whenever you say something that you’ve done, an Iranian will magically appear in order to try to out do it with something they did. This is known as the phenomena of “one-upping.” Ususally it’s in the same line of your accomplishment, but sometimes that is impossible so they’ll blurt out something they’ve done. Example? Say you are a woman and tell people you’ve had a baby, an Iranian male, knowing he cannot say he also had a baby, will say that he cured cancer or won a Pulitzer Prize (the Iranian’s explanation of why you haven’t heard of such feats, the “haters”).

At this point some of you may be saying to yourself, “Well everyone does that. It’s not just limited to Iranians.” While I may agree with you that everyone tries to one-up someone else, Iranians do it in their own special annoying Iranian way. What I mean is that while a normal person will only one-up people that they are actively in a conversation with and it will happen maybe once or twice, an Iranian will pop out of nowhere and constantly bombard anyone around them with one-upping. The one-upping occurs even when they have no idea what people are talking about. One on my colleagues told me once that he was in the bathroom talking on the phone about an honor he had received and an Iranian overheard and yelled out, “So what? My whole family got those awards and the President of the United States gave it to us in a private ceremony. No cameras, even ours, were allowed. That is why there is not going to be any evidence of it.”

It should be quite obvious as to the reasons why Iranians do this, but if you don’t know its because they have a strange overwhelming urge to show off. What better way to show off than just saying you do something better than other people. Anyway the next time you go saying some well deserved accomplishment to people check your surroundings because you never know when an Iranian will come and one-up you.

#44 Dancing

I don’t think anything else is needed to be said.

#43 Deals

Ever tell an Iranian that you work for a certain company that deals with goods such as clothes, electronics, etc.? Well if you did then a majority of the time the question that comes after that is, “Can you get me a deal on (insert product  name here)?”

For some reason Iranians are always interested in deals. Deals of any sort on anything. Pretty much anything they can get a deal on they want it regardless of what it is or if they have any use for it. TV? Want it. T-Shirt? Want it. Dirt? Want it. Catnip? Want it. That is why outlet stores and stores like Nordstrom Rack, Ross, TJ Maxx, and other stores that sell brand names at discount prices are full of Iranians (although if you were to ask an Iranian where they got it, they wont admit it). When it comes to finding deals, Iranians are like bloodhounds.

Iranians are actually so much into deals it is said that there is a petition going around in the Iranian community to make “Black Friday” into a cultural holiday. For those of you who don’t what Black Friday is, it is basically a day where Americans lose their brains and any sense of morality, common courtesy, and any attributes that separate humans from animals. Wikipedia defines Black Friday as: “Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, which is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. The term dates back to at least 1966, although its usage was primarily on the East coast. The term has become more common in other parts of the country since 2000. Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November. According to Reuters, in 2007 135 million people participated in the Black Friday shopping rush.”

In any event, ever since Iranians found out about this day they fell in love with it because it captures their very essence since it combines two of their passions, deals and the color black and what better way to show their love than make a cultural holiday out of it? Well, none. Iranians are in such anticipation for this day that they plan for it the whole year. They develop various teams to hit up different stores, set up dummy accounts and funnel money into it, map out the interior of stores they want to hit, and strategically place themselves in stores in order to ensure they get the products that they want. It has been said that there are training camps deep within the Colorado Rocky Mountains where Iranians train for this day since the thin air and high elevation helps with endurance. It is quite a militaristic event.

So the next time you go to a place that had a really good deal on something you wanted and its not there anymore, know that the IDF (Iranian Deal Federation) was there and took them all.