Graduation for some MM followers! This is my tribute for your accomplishments!

Why does Pompeo do this? Because he’s trying to smear China’s reputation and prevent China’s rise. China threatens American hegemony.

Here’s the fundamental problem…

ANYTHING positive that is reported about China is regarded as Chinese propaganda and not to be trusted.

So you can show as many videos of Uyghur culture as you like, and they’re all considered fake.

You can show demographic data of the Uyghur population increasing for the past decade, and since they’re official Chinese stats, they must be fake.

The ONLY way to prove that Western media and Mike Pompeo are lying about the Uyghurs is to go visit Xinjiang and see with your own eyes.

Millions of foreign tourists already have. And do you know what they all see?

Happy Uyghurs. Uyghur culture flourishing. Mosques practically around every corner. Uyghur children playing in the streets. If China is committing genocide, either racial or cultural, she’s doing a very bad job of it!

Unless you think Xinjiang is one vast Potemkin village, you must conclude that Western media is lying.

But here’s the thing: most people in the West will never have the opportunity to visit Xinjiang or China. They either can’t afford to, or they don’t have the time nor inclination.

Mike Pompeo and his ilk are counting on this. They’re counting on most Westerners being unable to verify the truth. This is how they get away with propaganda lies.

P.O.D. – Satellite (Official Music Video) [HD]

The incompetency, or rather, the inconsistency of competence, of the local governments of various levels.

First and foremost, the current Chinese government runs more or less on the principle of meritocracy, that is, the better you do on your job, the more likely you are to get promoted.

The result of which is that the central government consists of the brightest, most capable, and most experienced individuals of the entire Chinese political system, while the local governments – especially the lower level provincial and municipal governments – are more of a mixed bag.

It is not rare to see the local governments failing miserably at their jobs, people get angry, the central government had to step in and, as we would call it in China, “wipe their butts for them.”

And that’s also why the infamous system of petitioning (信访/上访) is…well, infamous.

Through the system of petitioning, officially known as public complaints and proposals, petitioners are, in theory, able to directly get into contact with the central government to report issues they have with the local government.

The problem is, in order to reach the central government, you must first petition with the local government.

And, naturally, when the issue of the petition in question is directed at you, the local incompetent official, you are not very likely to just allow the petitioners to go to the central government. And the end result would be rather grim for some of the more vocal petitioners.

Over the years, the central government is becoming more aware of the issue and, with more effort put into anti-corruption and power abuse since Xi, the central government is trying to achieve a balance between improving the petitioning system itself to allow petitioners to reach the central government, and improving the efficiency of the local governments so that the guys in the central can better focus on their actual jobs.

The 2016 Feng Xiaogang Film I Am Not Madame Bovary is a satire-comedy that criticized the petitioning system and the incompetence of lower level officials, and was well received:

Definitely worth a watch if you’re interested in the topic.

What could be better for you than sitting down to a nice cold glass of fruit juice? I mean, after all, the word “fruit” is right there in the name. How could you go wrong?

Truth is, you might as well be drinking a can of soda with your breakfast. Ounce per ounce, fruit juice contains as much sugar and as many calories as a can of Coke. Maybe more.

Sure there might be some vitamin C and antioxidants in your juice, but that hardly makes up for all that sugar.

Let’s look at a comparison between apple juice and Coca Cola.

• Coke: 140 calories and 40 grams of sugar (10 teaspoons)
• Apple Juice: 165 calories and 39 grams of sugar (9.8 teaspoons)

Even if you are careful to pick up the juice labeled “100% Pure” and “not from concentrate”, that doesn’t mean much. In a commercial process, once the juice is squeezed from the fruit it is usually stored in massive oxygen-depleting storage tanks for up to a year.

This has the unfortunate effect of removing most of the flavor from the product. To make it palatable again, manufacturers have to add “flavor packs” to their product.

What is a healthier alternative? Just eat the actual fresh fruit itself. It will taste better and be better for you.

The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary

Beijing may use Anti-Secession Law to seek Taiwan reunification, Chinese foreign minister says

I know my cat chose me.

I was talking to my friend outside her apartment. There were cats all around, ferals and strays.

As we talked, I suddenly felt fur on my leg. I looked down and saw a beautiful black cat brushing past my leg, loving me, choosing me.

I sat down on the curb and petted her (by now I knew it was a girl).

She pushed her little head into my hand and licked me.

This was love at first sight for her.

A lady came out of her apartment and told me she feeds the cats and this little girl, and that she’d been a stray for many months.

Next day I took her to the vet where she got a wellness check, all of her shots and a pill to kill worms in her tummy.

She had no fleas or sores.

I took her home.

She hid under the couch until she got hungry and came out to eat. She found the litter box by herself.

Two nights later she began sleeping with me and has ever since. She’s the love of my life.

Here’s Charlotte

My aunt and uncle were exceedingly generous people, and one of the things they liked to do was to take friends to new restaurants they had discovered. I used to tell them that once a restaurant had their seal of approval, it was like giving them a Michelin Star!

They once took a couple out, and were having a great time until the husband complained about the steak—after he’d eaten about half of it. The waiter comped his meal. My aunt put it down to the fact that not every dish that comes out of a kitchen can be 100% perfect all the time, and did not think any more about it.

Until a few months later when they took that couple to a different restaurant and the same thing happened—the husband ate about half his meal, complained to a waiter, got his meal comped. My aunt said something along the lines of how bad his luck was and how embarrassed she was that two of their restaurant choices had not pleased him.

He replied, “Oh, the meals were perfectly fine. Great, even. But I fill up on salad and bread and drinks, eat some of the entree, call a waiter over and then get the whole meal comped.” He bragged that no matter how nice the place, there was always something to “complain” about. Too cold, too salty, too spicy, not done enough, too well done, had an ingredient not mentioned on the menu, etc.

My aunt likened it to stealing and he just scoffed, “Look at it this way, I’ve saved you about $25 both times we’ve gone out.”

My aunt and uncle stopped taking this couple out to dinner after that.

CANDLEBOX – Far Behind (Official Video)

After our first visit to Japan here are our “only in Japan” moments.

1. After checking into our hotel, next morning I get a letter taped to the door. It read

2. My wife and I casually stroll past a tea tasting event. We showed the slightest of interest at one stall. There was a group of 4 already seated and only 1 empty chair. So we thought never mind, lets keep walking. The host tells us to wait 1 second. He runs, and I mean SPRINTS, about 20 paces to a truck. Grabs an extra chair and runs back to us. I thought this guy will do anything for a sale! So we sit down and try the teas, tastes good, lets buy some. He’s not selling! Turns out it was all part of some free educational event.

3. Maid cafes. Its a cafe, the waitresses dress like french maids. They act super cute like anime characters. Oftentimes sickeningly over the top, like calling me “master” and drawing cute animals on my food. But what surprised me were the people who didn’t work there.

It was not a busy period when we went. Besides us there was another table of tourists. There was a big guy with a deep voice dressed in FULL DRAG. He kept getting up every 10 mins and came back in a different outfit. There was a grumpy old man and a normal looking Japanese guy.

So before the dancing starts, they try to sell you some glow sticks and firecrackers for audience participation. They dim the lights. Disco ball lights up. Normal guy opens his bag and takes out his OWN glow sticks and bunny ears. Grumpy man’s face lights up like a child. Guy in drag gets up and starts stretching. The music starts, a candypop / eurobeat thing. The maids dancing is not bad but all the weirdos join in! They know all the moves, are more enthusiastic than the maids and they look ridiculous. One of them was trying to get us to join in. Only in Japan.

4. No taking calls on trains. If someone forgot to turn on silent and gets a call they will quickly reject the call. One time a guy sprinted to the place between carriages to take an important call.

5. We took a cable car up a mountain. On the way down a friend in our party left her sunglasses up there. A worker must have seen it and radioed the guys at the bottom. When we got out of the cable car, a worker informed us to wait while someone brings it down on the next cable car. Bravo.

6. We go to check into another hotel and behind the check in counter was this.

7. Construction zones. One place had a decibel meter to make sure the construction did not make too much noise (perhaps only during certain hours). If the construction blocked a sidewalk and you need to walk around, someone will be there to apologise for the inconvenience.

8. Airport security. You know how you can’t bring a bottle of water through most airport checks. Some Japanese airports have a machine that scans your bottle for flammable liquids. If it passes you can bring it. Just goes to show their attitude to not inconvenience you that they will invent a machine to do that. In Australia the attitude is more like “F*** that, we don’t care what’s in your bottle we’re confiscating it.” In China, they used to say “Are you sure its not a flammable liquid? Prove it, take a drink.”

9. Go to an arcade. Everyone has the reflexes of a ninja.

Japan is an amazing place where being polite and attention to detail are taken to the extreme. Thoroughly enjoyed our visit.

Head East: Never Been Any Reason (Live)

Simply because it’s humiliating.

Check this out…

Because you just don’t make any sense as a country. You treat your citizens abysmally despite the fact you’re the wealthiest nation on earth. You prioritise the wealthy elites in the armaments industry ahead of the safety and right to life of your own children and adults. as well as people in other countries. You prioritise the bottom lines of the health insurance companies, big pharma and law firms ahead of the rights of your citizens to decent healthcare regardless of financial status. You prioritise owners of privatised educational establishments ahead of the need to properly educate your citizens and equip them with critical thinking, instead trying to ensure that they never gain the ability to think critically as that would endanger the brainwashing of the population. You prioritise the profits of private prison owners ahead of the rights of citizens to proper and fair justice.

You don’t allow your citizens real choice in how and by whom they should be governed – instead giving them just two options – invariably both supporting the status quo. Even within that choice of 2 leaders you will quite often make the one the people voted against POTUS. If anybody makes any suggestions around policies that would benefit the regular citizen ahead of the wealthy elite. you have brainwashed vast swathes of citizens to angrily denounce such notions as Marxist, communist, socialist with great disdain, demonstrating clearly that they have not the foggiest idea what any of those words even mean.

You are run by big business, by lobbying and by corruption. No country is exempt from this but you just bring to a totally different level. Almost 50% of voters deemed one of the most famously corrupt, cheating, lying, self-serving, delusional, mysogynistic, racist and morally bankrupt people on the planet to be an appropriate leader. First time round it was somewhat understandable that you might take a punt on someone hopefully representing a change from the status quo. After he had spent 4 years demonstrating that he represented everything that was worst about the status quo, but bringing it to new levels and represented nothing that was reasonably good about the status quo … after he had clearly demonstrated that his idea of “draining the swamp” was to become the biggest swamp rat of all – even more people and almost as big a proportion of voters decided that his behaviour, his essence was appropriate to lead the wealthiest nation on earth.

How can anyone expect us to take the US seriously? I mean we have to in the context of their wealth and their military might … but in terms of leadership, intelligence, morality, how can we possibly have any respect?

I’m referring entirely to the system here as opposed to the citizens. Even the citizens who somehow believe Trump, who somehow feel an archaic law for another time and other reasons to have the right to bear arms “trumps” the right for citizens, including innocent little children, to be safe and to live are only so warped in their thinking because of the brainwashing carried out on an ongoing basis by the status quo. Most Americans I’ve met have been equally as nice as people of other nationalities. Ok, we do struggle sometimes. particularly with those who have never travelled beyond the US, by their sheer ignorance about the rest of the world allied with their unshakeable belief that everything in the US is better than the rest of the world and that every other nation should be envious of them.

Apart from the incredibly corrupt and unrepresentative political system and the sickening brainwashing, I think that the main issue is the educational system. I mean you allow crazy people to teach creationism as fact to children in your schools. What hope is there really?

You have incredible entrepreneurial ability in your country. You have many positive things yet you typically allow your people a choice of being governed by two old, rich, white, “status quo” men, totally out of touch with the real world as experienced by citizens. You’re the richest nation on the planet yet you’re happy to have schoolchildren slaughtered because of your laws, happy to have people die because they can’t afford private healthcare or go bankrupt because insurers try to avoid paying out the cover for which they have paid. You’re happy to have widespread homelessness while your government ploughs billions into an army already multiple times more powerful than anyone else – guess who profits from that?

I feel almost as much sympathy for citizens of the US as I do for those of war-torn, drought-stricken African countries. Almost as much … but those poor folks would happily change their circumstances if they could – you folks just keep voting and accepting more of the same.

.

I’m from Bangladesh and here are a few things that I find hard to explain to peeps back home.

– Fruits and vegetables are way more expensive than meat and poultry.

– That, generally speaking, the poor is more obese than the rich.

– That Americans in general are incredibly confused about the use of the apostrophe. Like seriously bad.

– A lot of couples adopt children, sometimes in spite of having their own, and treat them exactly like their own. (To me, this alone is a marker of a great people)

– By and large, people do not carry cash.

– That you address your boss (and some of your professors) by some abbreviated variation of their first name. And that applies to pretty much everyone, regardless of how much older they are than you.

– Parents can get arrested for physically punishing their children.

– Severe poverty, homelessness, etc., no matter how limited, actually exist. Even in America.

– A name as common and as easy to pronounce as mine is almost invariably incomprehensible to most Americans.

– America is literally HUGE. My home country is roughly the size of Florida, one of the fifty states.

– In spite of the society being openly hedonistic and liberal, the social norms and standards still have very strong conservative religious influences.

– People don’t really care about the FIFA World Cup even though USA qualifies.

– The importance of credit rating/ credit score.

– Return policy

– The history behind Thanksgiving

– Black Friday and the frenzy associated with it.

– Amazingly friendly, hospitable and helpful people. Yet, a very conveniently private lifestyle.

– That, American foreign policy is a very inaccurate reflector of public consensus.

– Grinding. The dance form.

– That you cannot purchase alcohol unless you are 21 but can purchase a gun if you are 18.

Kix – Don’t Close Your Eyes (Official Music Video)

It’s about the drugs!

Peter Gardner : A New Zealand-born Australian.

If you are in China, for god sake, never do anything illegal related to drugs.

You can’t imagine how serious is the anti-drug moment in China. Narcotics Control in China is a very serious and comprehensive process.

June, 2020.

There is virtually 100% chance of being caught for drug related offences.

You might know the penalty already: capital punishment is a legal penalty in China.

Aug, 2020.

Frankly, drug abuse has been responsible for numerous social issues in China.

If you understand Chinese history, you will realize how drugs created trouble for China. Opium Wars (鸦片战争) are just an example.

Hence, the government is extremely serious about eradicating the drug offences.

We expect everyone to cooperate with law enforcement.

China is a beautiful country. You are welcome to visit China. Eat, drink, and have fun. Just keep in mind that you have to respect the law.

AC/DC – Jailbreak (Live at Donington, 8/17/91)

I was that patient.

I was completing an internship as part of post-graduate studies. I had two weeks left of my placement, and I was eager to get it finished, as I also had a small part-time business and a family.

Over the course of several years, I had developed what I described as a “cranky digestion,” requiring me to manage my diet carefully to avoid episodes of pain, nausea and diarrhea. This became a regular part of my life, and I had almost normalized it.

But while supervising a client with autism at his volunteer placement in a hospital laundry one day during my internship, I became aware of sudden, acute nausea, not quite like any nausea I had ever experienced before. I was also experiencing upper right abdominal pain, but the worst thing was this overwhelming, disorienting nausea. I found myself moaning and rocking, unable to stay still. Telling my client I would find someone to stay with him while I sought help for myself, I collapsed. Unable to stand, I began to crawl toward the employee health clinic, which was fortunately located on the same level of the hospital.

The employee health nurse who greeted me sent me immediately to the nearby acute-care hospital’s emergency department. I was, by now, in terrible pain, and the strange nausea was even worse.

I was quickly given IV morphine and dimenhydrinate, which got the pain and nausea to manageable levels.

Diagnostics indicated a badly diseased gallbladder and a large gallstone stuck in the common bile duct. I was admitted to hospital, where the plan was to break up the big gallstone and then, once my condition improved, remove the gallbladder.

My liver values were described to me as “terrible,” and I continued to feel awful for several days. But once the big gallstone was out of the common bile duct, I felt a fair bit better. I still wasn’t eating, but my pain and anti-nausea medications were able to be reduced, and I felt pretty much like myself.

I wanted to leave the hospital, finish my internship, and then get on the outpatient list to return to have my gallbladder removed. The residents and nurses kept telling me that was “not a good idea” and “it would be best to deal with the gallbladder right now.”

Well, sure. In a perfect world, that was true. But I wanted to finish my internship, graduate with my classmates, get back to work and take care of my family. If, as I had been told, my gallbladder had been diseased for years, surely it could wait a few more weeks or even months to be removed.

One day, the attending surgeon strode into my hospital room.

“I hear you want to go home,” he said, quite brusquely. “That’s a terrible idea. Why won’t you stay and deal with this now?”

“Well, I need to finish my program,” I said. “And then I can wait on the outpatient list for having my gallbladder removed, right?”

“Your gallbladder is in disgusting condition,” he said. “It should have come out years ago, and I’m planning to have a word with your family doctor about why you weren’t referred for your chronic pain and nausea. But the point today is that given the number and size of gallstones you have, you have a 100 percent chance of having another attack like the one that brought you in here, and a 25 percent chance that any attack will be fatal quite quickly. Your liver was failing when you came in through emergency. If you had waited until the next day to come in, I feel sure your family would have been planning your funeral.”

Right.

I agreed to stay as an inpatient and have my gallbladder out. The surgeon seemed a little surprised by my quick acquiescence.

But here’s the thing: none of the other medical personnel had explained the issue to me. I wasn’t trying to be difficult or heroic. I just didn’t know how sick I had been. I really didn’t understand the risk.

When the two residents and my regular nurses heard what the surgeon had said to me, they were scandalized. They assured me that he was an excellent surgeon, but had a terrible bedside manner.

As far as I was concerned, his bedside manner was just fine. I didn’t need platitudes, I needed facts. He told me what I needed to know to make the best decision for my health. I ended up spending nine days in the hospital. By a special arrangement, I was able to graduate with my class and finish my internship after the fact.

The surgeon came in to see me again just before surgery and again, briefly, the day I was discharged. I found he was consistently informative and blunt. No, he wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but I didn’t need a prom date, I needed a surgeon who would be honest with me. I am still grateful for his “terrible bedside manner.”

Queensrÿche – Jet City Woman (Official Music Video)

I have been to China many times. I understand what is happening in China. It is hard not to be impressed after landing at one of the world’s largest airports and taking the Maglev to Longyang Station at 430 km/hr. This is the fastest commercial ground transportation system on the planet.

Shanghai has huge and growing subway system. In the downtown area of Puxi, there are multiple levels of highways .

I went to Semicon China last year and saw a vending machine that only accepted WePay, no cash or credit cards. This simply follows the trend to allow everyone to accept payments phone to phone. Unlike with Square, there is no additional hardware required to use WePay, since your smartphone already has the ability to scan QR codes.

The high speed rail system connects the country in a way that makes the ICE, TGV or Shinkansen look small by comparison.

When I first went to China in the 1990s, little of this existed. There were no multi-level highways in Shanghai. There was no Maglev, nor Pudong airport. The subway was partially built but the high speed rail network was still a dream.

There may be people who believe that China is a poor country living in the last century without the benefits of modern technology. All I can say is that they should visit China and see the reality with their own eyes.

Cheech and Chong greatest hits!

That question can be easily answered when you take on the perspective of an American billionaire. How does an American become a billionaire and maintain her/his enormous wealth? By investing in enterprises that hold monopolies in their respective markets and supporting government policies that incentivize and subsidize such practices and by lobbying legislators, the President, governors, and judges to enact, enforce and safeguard those policies. All of these activities are perfectly legal in the United States. They are even enshrined as the pinnacles of plutocratic capitalism.

China, on the other hand, is a socialist country and its economic policies can only be best described as state capitalism. Because the Chinese Communist Party was founded on the principles of Marxism, it does not support monopolizing and profiteering from patents. As the British historian Adrian Johns succinctly put it: “[Patents] projected an artificial idol of the single inventor, radically denigrated the role of the intellectual commons, and blocked a path to this commons for other citizens — citizens who were all, on this account, potential inventors too. […] Patentees were the equivalent of squatters on public land — or better, of uncouth market traders who planted their barrows in the middle of the highway and barred the way of the people.”

China also criminalizes the practice of “influencing” public officials as bribery or grafting. President Xi Jinping was notorious for enforcing party disciplines with his signature anti-corruption campaign that resulted in the dismissal of several prominent incumbent as well as retired party members, including those within the Politburo Standing Commitee. His nationalistic policies have time and again antagonized many American corporations hoping to expand their market shares in China. President Xi’s growing popularity with his foreign policies advocating free trade and globalization is what irks American billionaires the most.

Imagine you are one of those American billionaires. Why do you love America so much? Because you have an obscene amount of money, you can buy off any political candidates you want through the use of PAC contributions. Because both the Democrats and the Republicans pander to your interests, you can readily “influence” them to provide you with tax cuts and subsidies for any investments that you may own. Because you can profit the most from monopolies and protectionism, you definitely do not want free trade. Because you want your bank investments to stay bullish, you are naturally opposed to banking regulations. Because the Chinese are promoting the Belt and Road Initiative with their own state-sponsored financing, your foreign bond investments are not going to be as lucrative as before. Moreover, the worst fear of all is your poorer fellow citizens are clamoring for socioeconomic reforms that lean toward a socialist system. That is the biggest threat to most American billionaires. The rest is just propaganda concocted to convince others to shun socialism.

The story of Miller’s Pub in Chicago

Miller’s Pub in downtown Chicago is legendary, and I first visited in the 1990s.

What I didn’t expect to find there were my favorite buffalo wings in America. I had eaten every famous buffalo wing in Buffalo, New York, from whence they first came. Although they were all spectacular, Miller’s (located more than 500 miles from Buffalo) was somehow superior!

After discovering these chicken wings in 1999, I made an annual pilgrimage to Chicago just to eat them. And that was a 448-mile (721 km) drive from my house one way (nearly 900 miles round trip)! I brought a different friend each time I went up there, year after year after year. I think it was about 2008 when it all came to a crashing halt.

A friend of mine had never had these wings, so off we went. I drove him 7.5 hours from Nashville to Chicago just to eat the wings at Miller’s Pub. That was the sole reason for the trip. They had been so magical, so complex, so perfect. Most importantly, they had been beautifully consistent over the years.

Sitting at the table in rapt anticipation, the wings arrived from the kitchen. They looked different, far too red, and way too saucy. Miller’s had changed the recipe! Why? What we were served was akin to chicken wings tossed in ketchup. It was horrible!

And that was the end of my visits to Miller’s Pub in Chicago.

Remember The Name (Official Video) – Fort Minor

Classic Beef Stew

It’s hard to say what’s better, the aroma or the taste of this homemade beef stew. Our recipe is loaded with potatoes, meat and spices and is a savory dish your family will ask for again and again. It takes just four simple steps to make and only one bite for our beef stew to transport you to a cozy pub in the British Isles. If you’re lucky enough to have leftovers, our beef stew with potatoes makes for a wonderful lunch. Should you only have one serving left, there’s no shame in hiding it in the back of the fridge. This way, only you know where to find it. We would do the same!

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil or shortening
• 1 lb boneless beef chuck, tip or round roast, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 3 cups water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 2 medium carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 large unpeeled potato, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 medium green bell pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 medium stalk celery, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 small onion, chopped (1/4 cup)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 dried bay leaf
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 2 tablespoons Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour

Triumph – Lay It On The Line (Official Video)

Why do many Chinese people become much more patriotic and defensive about China after living in the West?

I am ethnic Chinese, but I was born and grew up in Taiwan, and have never lived in China.

I want to give you a blatant example of what can make a Chinese person more patriotic after being in closer contact with the western society.

New York Times, the beacon of freedom and salvation to the world, and staunch champion of all under-privileged and exploited Americans, the poor, the Blacks, the Latino, the Muslim, the native Americans, against institutional and cultural repression, is more than happy to join the oppressor when it comes to the Chinese.

Take a look at this reader’s comment (July 24, 2020):

China Orders U.S. to Shut Chengdu Consulate, Retaliating for Houston

After several paragraphs of red-neck style China bashing, the last paragraph says:

“Can someone cite for me one world-changing innovation China has contributed in the last century? Or, for that matter, in the last five hundred years?”

in a thinly veiled racist attack, directed clearly not at a political entity, but at a culture, an ethnic group, a people.

I am not interested in disputing this nonsensical comment, but more alarmed by the following:

• This comment was singled out from 228 other comments by the New York Times editor as “Times Pick”, clearly agreeing with and even cheering on the commenter for his blatant racist-minded ranting. I can almost see the smirk on the editor’s face for having someone else speak his/her mind without having to own it.
• If you replace “China” in that paragraph with “Africa”, “Muslim world”, or “Mexico”, you can be sure the ultra liberal New York Times editor will not only disallow its posting (not to mention “Times Pick”!!), but will be all up in arms castigating this commenter for being the racist he is.

But hey, Chinese are fair game in America, lampooned and mocked and verbally abused by news media, entertainers, politicians, etc., who would otherwise be the most politically correct, the staunchest of champions for all underprivileged groups (except the Chinese of course), who would not in their wildest dreams imagine belittling Black culture or Hispanic culture!

So do you blame these Chinese expatriates for becoming more patriotic? They enjoy a position, ethnically and culturally, at the bottom of the ladder, fair game for everyone a few rungs up with impunity.

By the way, this is not only in America. It is pretty much in all the “enlightened” and “liberal” western societies. And as I mentioned, the behavior is not limited to right wing xenophobes, but to liberal beacons like New York Times or Der Spiegel.

Actually, the more liberal the media or person, the worse it gets. At least an American mountain man in the Appalachia may hate Blacks and Asians equally, without such discrimination.

Shame on you, New York Times!

The Black Crowes – Remedy

It certainly was common in my family in the 1950s, with one exception. No butter.

We had sticks of margarine which had a uniquely grainy texture when you tasted it.

That wasn’t bad as long as you had plenty of grape jelly to spread on your white Wonder bread. We knew this bread was extremely healthy and good for you—after all, it “builds strong bodies 12 ways.”

And at my grandmother’s house there was definitely bread and “butter” on the table for anyone to eat at any time. However one of my uncles did not use either butter or margarine.

He spread white lard directly on his white bread. No time to toast it. But he was also extremely healthy, or so it seemed. In his spare time he worked as a truck mechanic, but his regular job was Farmer. Picking up bales of hay and tossing them into the back of a pickup truck, lifting farm machinery, and working 12 or 14 hours a day must have burned a lot of calories.

This man was the most superbly conditioned human being I’ve ever seen.

He washed his white bread and lard down with plenty of black coffee. And let us just say that he drank liquor too—or that was the rumor. At age 10 or 11 the adults did not discuss such matters with me.

In later years when real animal lard got rare—he would spread Crisco on his bread.

He was very healthy as I said—although he also was a heavy cigarette smoker, as was nearly every man of the WWII generation.

He was outstandingly healthy right up to the day when he failed to get up from his chair on the front porch of his house one hot Sunday afternoon, and was found dead by his wife returning from church.

He had died of a massive coronary. He was, I think, about 60. Most of my uncles lived well into their 60s.

That white bread had several other important uses.

Meals at my grandmother’s house always involved meat, potatoes, and some kind of gravy. This gravy was so wonderful that we sopped-up and ate every particle of it on our plates. Using that same white bread.

A little later, when my cousins and I were on into our late teens and 20s, we would eat white bread in the early evening before partying.

This was well known to facilitate your ability to drink more. You laid down a base of bread in your stomach which then soaked up alcohol like a sponge—which is essentially what Wonder bread was.

Edible sponge.

Personally, I never noticed that this drinking strategy had much of a salubrious effect, but many of us swore by it.

And if you’re in a hurry to get to work, the ability to grab bread and slather something viscous on it on your way out the door—well it was a lifesaver.

In addition to grape jelly—homemade using mason jars and pectin and cans of frozen Welch juice concentrate—some of my uncles put molasses on their bread.

Sorghum molasses right out of a bottle. It had the consistency of honey but was less sweet and had a slightly sour/bitter “kick” that you had to get acclimated to.

Do people still use white bread and butter this way today?

No one I know does. We eat egg white-only omelets with grilled asparagus and follow it up with a few slices of fresh fruit. Blood orange is a favorite of mine. I use butter in cooking but I no longer spread it—or anything else—on bread. In truth I very rarely eat bread.

Of all these things—the only one I really miss is my grandmother’s gravy. It must have had some secret ingredient because I’ve never been able to replicate it.

Or maybe it was the prospect of impending nuclear war that made all that food taste so good.

We were quite sure that the war was coming—soon!

No one was more surprised than me when it hadn’t happened by 1970 or at the very latest, 1980.

It’s unfortunate that vanilla — a very exotic flavor indeed — has come to be synonymous with plain, neutral. The low-risk default option least likely to offend anyone.

But because its flavor is so agreeable, pleasing to so many, it’s the go-to choice when one’s aim is to pick a flavor that won’t meet with any serious resistance.

Other flavors (you name it, any kind of ice cream flavor you can think of, strawberry, chocolate, caramel, nut flavors, fruit flavors, etc.) will have strong defenders and advocates, an equal number on each side who like it, or strongly dislike it. You can’t please everybody.

Except, sometimes you can. Vanilla stands alone in being one flavor that rarely stirs up any disagreement. If you’re sent to the store to get ice cream for a party of 20 people, vanilla is the safe bet, the default choice to arouse the least displeasure. Not many people will say that they love vanilla. But very few people hate it. What’s not to like?

What makes vanilla special?

Vanilla is an orchid. The aroma and flavor is so complex, so mysterious, and so desirable, it’s become the most famous flavor in the world. The ubiquity of vanilla makes it easy to take for granted, or view as common.

I would personally like to see vanilla get more respect, more recognition for how unique and genuinely exotic it is. Every bit as exotic as the cocoa plant, perhaps more so.

Here’s a segment describing a little about this unique plant.

It comes from the only orchid that bears edible fruit among thousands of orchid species, thriving only in tropical climates within 20 latitudinal degrees of the equator.

It’s earned a reputation for being the most labor-intensive agricultural crop in the world.

What’s more, it is estimated that between 250 and 500 distinct organic compounds make up vanilla’s beloved flavor and fragrance profile.

Whoever uses the term vanilla as a euphemism for ordinary is seriously misinformed.

That phraseology drives “Spice Boss” Tom Erd bonkers.

“Vanilla is a complex set of flavors. To say something is vanilla that’s plain just sticks in my craw,” he said ….

… If anyone knows vanilla, it’s Tom Erd. He compares the complexity and nuances of high-quality pure vanilla to those in wine or coffee.

His favorite? Madagascar. “I love the Madagascar flavor and aroma by far,” he said.

Describing the different vanillas merely using words can be difficult, according to Erd. The Mexican and Madagascar are similar, with the Mexican being a little spicier. Most people couldn’t pick up the difference in finished foods, he said.

The Tahitian is “way different,” he added, “more fruity. It reminds me of black cherries.”[1]

The word vanilla has even come to be a shorthand label for ho-hum dull people, personalities, tastes, or habits — including sexual tastes —- that are square, plain, and boring. This is really unfortunate, emblematic of how we modern people often take our unprecedented abundance of exotic things for granted.

Next time you hear the word used that way, remind them that the vanilla plant is an exotic orchid! It’s only because we live in a very fortunate time of advanced plant cultivation, spice trade, and increasing prosperity, that we are privileged to have such an exotic flavor available to us any time we want. This familiarity breeds, if not contempt, a casually dismissive disregard for how common and routine this once-rare flavor is.

The kind of exotic spices and flavors that we routinely enjoy today (including the cocoa plant) were once reserved for royalty and the elite aristocracy, who funded the efforts of explorers, merchants, and speculators, pioneering trade routes into distant corners of the world.

If you get a chance to have really good vanilla, scooped right from the bean, and used in recipes, you’ll know what I mean.

Footnotes

[1] Exotic vanilla: Beloved flavoring is anything but plain, but it is pricey

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Message…

You only got one shot.  One shot.

Opportunity only comes once in a lifetime…

Lose Yourself by Eminem | Eminem

This isn’t anything lewd, but my family still has a house in China.

A mansion.

And it’s just sitting there, in a little-known rural village, doing nothing.

A house in outer Fuzhou (this is not the house I’m talking about; I’m showing this image from the internet to give you a rough idea of what our house looks like)

My father’s side of the family was originally from the rural outskirts of Fuzhou. They started coming to America as early as WWII, starting with my grand uncle who fought in the US military, and was able to bring other members of the family over — including my grandparents, who in turn brought dad over, who in turn brought mom (who came from urban Fuzhou) over, who then gave birth to me. As more and more members of my extended family immigrated, the village where they grew up shrank; it still exists, but it’s a shadow of what it once was, and half of its houses are abandoned and awaiting demolition.

But despite being in the US for decades, my dad’s side of the family, especially my grandparents, never 100% abandoned the village from which they came. They would visit the village every time they returned to China; moreover, they would invest in it from time to time, all in the name of “revisiting our roots” and giving back to the community. Their money went to a renovated ancestral hall, a basketball court (both public)…and a mansion, with three floors, a balcony, a fancy garage and security gate, just for us.

No one lives in the mansion, though. Not even our family; when we return to Fuzhou, we live in the city center with my mom’s side of the family. Our mansion, that we paid money to build and maintain, only gets a visit from us when we pay a visit to the ancestral village. We unlock the door, explore the house from bottom to top, make sure all the furniture is in place, re-lock the door, then leave. Here in America, my grandparents and parents are rentiers who make money from tenants. But we don’t bother making money from the mansion in China that belongs to us, that we don’t make any use of.

I used to think that the mansion was just a vanity project, something my grandparents wanted to build either because they thought it would look good, or because they wanted a vacation home…except they never actually lived there when they were on vacation. Or because they wanted a retirement home…except they’ve been retired for years and they haven’t moved.

Turns out the mansion was built for some other reason, and it’s not one that I like to think about.

My grandparents have always been low-key worried about an eventual military conflict between the US and China.

They’re American citizens, just like everyone in my family who lives in the US; the oldest in our family have been legally Americans for nearly half a century now; we have established ourselves here, some of us were born here, so we’re not supposed to be going anywhere (despite building a house in China, my grandparents seem to get that, as they’ve bought their graves in Pennsylvania…go figure).

But my grandparents, from day one, premised this assumption on our country of residence being at peace with our country of origin. Miraculously we managed to have that for quite a while, to the extent that we were ready to take it for granted, but the thought of the “unthinkable” happening never truly left the minds of our family. Somewhere inside, even during the “best” of days, my elders sensed that there was never a zero chance of total war, and as long as that was the case, a contingency plan was in order. They were convinced that if things do get to that point, it wouldn’t matter how long any of us have been in this country or have been its citizens — we wouldn’t be able to carry on our lives as usual, to put it diplomatically.

Which is where the mansion comes in. For whatever it’s worth, according to those who wanted it, the mansion is designed to function as a potential place of refuge for our family in case the United States goes berserk during wartime and targets ethnically Chinese people. China would therefore be the only place on Earth where we could blend with the crowd and not get beat. We’ll move into the mansion, and because it’s our property we will be able to live there for as long as we have to.

One reason I find the mansion to be silly is that I highly doubt we would be able to get out of America in the first place if the government or somebody else goes after us, and no one in our family is certain about the situation escalating to such a level, hence “contingency plan.” Besides, if the government is at war with China, how would we be able to travel to China anyway? Well, smartass, we would go to China via a third country! Or however many third countries it takes. The important thing is that we have a home outside of the US in case we can no longer call the US home.

I don’t think we’ll ever permanently reside in that mansion — I don’t want to think we’ll ever have to. Sometimes, I hear my family joke about moving into the mansion if war breaks out, so they don’t seem to take the idea that seriously either; they prefer believing, as I do, that China is no place for Chinese Americans. We shouldn’t have to live there unless we’re on vacation, or we’re too incompetent to live here.

But whenever I think about how my family put all that money into building a possible refuge from World War F****g Three, I’m not going to lie: I am spooked. Spooked that we could plan for something like this. More spooked when you consider the possibility of a conflict and realize they weren’t entirely paranoid. But also reminded of just how precious peace is.

What are the most overpriced cuts of meat that people often buy from their local butcher?

My local butcher has the foulest mouth and the strongest opinions of anyone I have ever met in a customer-facing role. I think it’s hilarious.

I once bought some skirt steak from him, because I wanted to try making carne asada. First he tried to tell me I wanted sirloin, because it’s better and it’s the same price.

And I told him no, I’m doing a recipe and it needs skirt steak. And he asked what I was making, and I said carne asada, and he grudgingly admitted that should be made with skirt, so he goes and gets some skirt.

And as he’s cutting it up and weighing it he was moaning.

“It is fucking overpriced, this stuff. Overpriced, you know what the problem is, don’t you? It’s those bloody chefs. They get hold of it and put it on *waves knife* fucking Masterchef or something, and then everyone wants it and the price goes up. That about do ya?

Right, good. And then the wholesalers put the price up. And then I have to rip my bleeding customers off, don’t I? Fucking eleven quid a kilo! Nice bit of sirloin would cost you that. Here you go.”

I pointed out, laughingly, that in that case he ought to be grateful idiots like me watch Masterchef, or he’d never sell any.

“Yeah, yeah, true, well! Not as bad as this bloody woman who come in the other day, wanting ox tail. You know about ox tail? Why would anyone want ox tail? It’s been shat on it’s whole life. Ten quid a kilo, because of the bloody chefs, full of bones, and it’s been shat on it’s whole life.

Then again, she said she wanted fillet for a stew, so she didn’t know what she was talking about anyway.”

And as hilariously foul-mouthed as he is, there’s no arguing with his logic. Ox tail is ridiculously overpriced.

Message…

It’s time. You all are so close now.

Graduation. Some people are (for certain) going home.

Motley Crue – Home Sweet Home (Live – Crue Fest)