Part One, Part Two, Part Three
Date: 28 Feb 2017
Subj: Of scale, objet d’arts, and “Chinese Food”
Friends and loved ones,
I recently returned from a 10 day trip to Beijing. Please let me start by apologizing about the promised-but-as-yet-undelivered pictures. I forgot when I posted that link that it was to my work dropbox account, so for those of you who let me know you couldn’t access it, my apologies. I also have other considerations, as some of my friends still work in the military in counterterrorism and/or intelligence, and so putting (some of) you all together into an open dropbox folder might not be the best idea. Instead, I’ll have to point you to the abyss known as social media, where I occasionally post pictures of my adventures. If you don’t have a smart phone (and thus can’t download the instagram app), you can simply go to instagram.com and search for “Ozymandias.”* That’s me.
I will also attach the occasional picture or two here for you all to pull down if you like. This time I’ve included one from the Great Wall that I got after we climbed up to the far end of the Mutianyu section. We got fortunate with a light snow – the first all year, I’m told – and it produced the picture here. I’m no photographer, but I think the Gods were smiling down upon me when I looked back upon where we had walked. I’ll let you decide for yourselves.
Going back down was like descending a snowy ladder… OSHA was not consulted in the construction of the Great Wall of China.
After a day at the Great Wall, we managed to get over to the Forbidden City, built by the first Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Dai. Construction began in 1406 and was completed in just 14 years. If you could see it, you would appreciate just how incredible and impossible that sounds, but that seems to be a theme for my limited time in China: they can build stuff that makes the Pyramids of Giza look like a Lego project…and they do it in a hurry. Forced labor – aka slavery – on a mass scale really GETS SHIT DONE as it turns out! Anyway, I would invite anyone to take a click on the wikipedia article on it; there are some good pictures, as well. When you factor in all of the work done on the Great Wall during the same time, as well as the Temple of Heaven (a separate historic religious site), Tianamen Square, and on and on… your mind starts to get a little numb with all of it. How could they possibly have built so much, on such a scale…?
When you walk into the Forbidden City, it is immediately apparent that the entire intent was to humble anyone coming to see China’s Emperor. You can’t help yourself. I don’t care if you were riding at the head of an invading Army: if you rode in through those main gates into the first courtyard… you couldn’t help but be awed by the scale of it. That courtyard would actually hold an entire army… comfortably. I’m not being hyperbolic – I’ve seen Division-sized changes of command in the military.
The camera can’t possibly capture the scale of just the first inner courtyard…of many like it.
If that wasn’t enough, you go through many, many of these traditional temples and structures before you ever get to the North side of the Forbidden City, where the Emperor and Empress resided. And that says nothing of how it stretches East to West. It covers roughly 180 acres and has – coolest of all – a 52 meter wide moat! Yep, it’s got a flipping moat!
It also houses some of the greatest treasures of the ancient Chinese empire, now behind glass in long stretches of interior corridors, making it the most visited museum in the world at over 14.5 million visitors annually… yes, more than the Louvre, which makes this a good time to introduce scale regarding China. The entirety of France’s population in 2016 is estimated at roughly 64.5 million people. Fine, round up to 65 million Frogs. The population of Chongqing (what we in the west used to know as “Chung King”) is generally accepted to be around 60 million people. Yeah, all of France’s population is covered by ONE city – unquestionably a big one. Depending upon whose list it is, it’s the most populous city on the planet, BUT, however you slice it, that’s just one city in the interior of China. (I’ve been – I promise I’ll show you pictures in a later email).
Anyway, I ask you to consider that same sense of “scale” when considering my words regarding those artworks. For me, they were unquestionably the most stunning part. I took more pictures of the treasures behind the glass than I did of the structures. Gaudy? Meh, for some reason I find the Chinese aesthethic way more appealing than the opulence of Louis XIV and Versailles, or even some of the extravagance of the Newport mansions near where I grew up in RI. It’s the artistry in the details, though, from every brick on every. single. ballustrade, to the thousands (multiple human lifetimes worth of effort!) of handcrafted tiles that make up the giant ceiling of just one building, to the solid gold statues of the Buddha, or the exquisite carved white-jade fish that also could be opened and used to hide objects inside. I’ve attached a picture of a gold amillary, a device used to track the movement of celestial objects in the sky. The picture doesn’t do it justice. Nothing does. It’s completely gold. Not golden in color, or gold-plated… it’s real —-ing gold. Worked by human hands into what you see below…hundreds of years ago.
I didn’t get to hold it, but my guess is it’s worth a few bucks… or rather, yuan.
How much jade was discarded in making this?
I’m sure the Buddha would be totally stoked…
Corridor after corridor…
Oh yeah. The Forbidden City also had its own opera house inside. China’s equivalent to the Globe Theater.
After being overawed (again) at the Temple of Heaven, (pics no good), we spent time working and sampling some of the local fare… which brings me to what is the first, but likely not the last, of “Ozy’s Alimentary Analyses of China’s Food.” Many of you on this email list know me well enough to know that my palate isn’t quite as… sophisticated as some others. Yes, I’ve traveled the world and eaten in a great deal of places, from reaching into a communal pot of meat with Afghan tribesmen, to some of the finest steakhouses and sushi restaurants the U.S. and other countries have to offer… however, my mom and kids know that my tastes remain pretty simple – probably downright provincial, so please take this critique with the appropriate caveats.
They’ve got decent beer here, at least by my admittedly non-existent standards, so that’s something. But the food isn’t quite… well, it’s not ‘tall like the (small ‘c’) chinese food back home. It seems that here they just kill everything and then cook it right on the spot. For example, I had duck wings as an appetizer earlier this evening, and they were… let’s put it this way, it didn’t take a lot of imagination to see that they were formerly bird’s wings. As in… just a few minutes ago. (Did we walk by some birds in the alley before we came in?) They had, uh, *some* meat, plenty of bones, wings… and maybe some skin and feathers. I’m not sure, to be honest. I tried to politely show I had done something to them, but largely I resorted to the same tactics I did when I was a kid and Dad wanted me to eat my peas… I pushed them around the plate, nibbled a little, made a big show and lots of noise when I did nibble… then I tried to hide some under the mashed potatoes (but not too many, that’s how you get caught, yo!!), and otherwise made it look like I had eaten… some. At least enough not to be rude. Then I hightailed it out of there to a coffee shop near my apartment that I knew served a ham and cheese panini. (Never in human history has a crappy ham and cheese sandwich satiated the palate quite like that one).
Earlier this day I was having lunch with three Chinese friends. They wanted to take me someplace “special” – a very well-regarded restaurant founded by a famous Hong Kong actor. They ordered for me, telling me they would get “only the best” dishes. A kind of beef stew came, except with broth rather than the thicker stew we know. I thought, “Bingo! Yahtzee! This is something I can get down with!! Meat and something that looks similar to a potato…” Then I realized that the meat was rather… well-larded. Ahem.
I never really took the time to appreciate how hard it would be to remove the fat and gristle from a piece of stew meat with chopsticks. My companions finished their bowls and stared at me. I rubbed my stomach appreciatively… “Mmm-mmmmmm! Yum. Boy that’s good…” I said, mostly sincerely.
“Really?” they said, looking at the large gobs of fat with some meat hanging from them still stacked up in my bowl.
“Oh yes, Totally! Mmmm… watch!” I tried to drink more of the broth to make it look like the level was lower, hoping that would camouflage what I hadn’t eaten.
“Well, my stomach can’t handle too much after working out…” I said, patting my tummy like Winnie the Jinping. Which was a mostly true statement, but I was also thinking about the Haagen Dasz I had managed to find and was hoarding back in my apartment’s college dorm-sized refrigerator.
Despite all of the above, I think this China thing is going to work out for my diet. I really do need to drop a few pounds, so this circumstantially-enforced intermittent fasting is going to be perfect. With any luck, I won’t insult my friends too much while I’m at it. ?
Yes, yes. Honored guest. Thank you, xiexie. Very nice, but… (see alt-text)
That’ll do it for this episode. I hope you all are well. I am enjoying myself and think of all of you at various times (but not all at once, because that would be weird.)
Warm wishes,
Ozy
*Sorry, Glibs. If there’s an Instagram account by the name of the poem, it isn’t mine. While I know I’ve doxxed myself before, I used my true name on my Insta account in the original email.
It may just be me, but there doesn’t appear to be any alt text.
you’re a writer use you imagination.
I’m going to imagine he’s pretending that porcelain leaf vegetable is real plant matter.
I’m thinking he was hiding uneaten gristly bits under it.
There is, but it’s super double secret. I stuck it into a more visible spot.
Oh, so the focus was supposed to be the chicken behind the very prominent broth bowl?
About the unopened beer cans — are you supposed to order you entire meal’s worth of beverages at the begining, or BYOB< or what?
What technique was used for removing the unused portion? depending upon that, you could use the cast-offs for making smaller pieces. And we would need to know how much jade it started with, and whether there were unusable sections in the base lump of rock.
I used the same trick when my mom went through her unfortunate lima bean phase.
Good stuff, Ozy! The Great Wall is pretty much the one thing I truly regret not going to China to see.
That’s been my experience about more than few things in Japan as well.
Every stairway in a store that isn’t some main department store focus piece? Going to 2F of the Apple store in Ginza was like climbing a lighthouse stairwell.
it didn’t take a lot of imagination to see that they were formerly bird’s wings – does it usually? Here ducks are generally cooked whole.
I think I would have liked some of the food…
I’m really enjoying these, thank you.
I have a friend who went to China to ref roller derby a few years ago. She made of big FB post of all the snacks you would find in a convenience store. It pretty funny. I remember BBQ flavor chicken feet, and squid-flavored something or other.
Also why don’t you marry John Cena if you love China so much?
I was wondering what was up. Yet another Taiwan dustup just broke. You’d think the entertainment folk would know to avoid this.
Naturally, they all immediately profusely apologize to the communists.
See, this is why being a vegetarian is actually advantageous there. They understand the concept, have no issues with it, and it greatly reduces the chances of having to put something truly disgusting in your mouth (no jokes about ex-wives, please) out of politeness.
I’d rather take my chances tbh
whatever lie allows you to live with yourself bro.
Back in the mid-80’s, my Dad inadvertently got some Chinese chefs sent off to the countryside for reeducation.
His team didn’t realize that rice is considered ‘peasant food’, and that eating it signals that you found the main course completely inedible.
Whoopsie!
Why would you serve it if it was not meant to be eaten?
Come to think of it, given the anecdotes, the rest of the meal is likely to be inedible anyway.
It’s a regional thing- up north, it’s noodles and breads, in the south, it’s rice. And of course, they each look down on the other, much like northern Italians sneering at the southerners because they don’t eat polenta.
Honestly, I have eaten magnificently when in China. There’s some bad food (like anywhere else), but the good food is sublime.
Relevant
Yeah, that happened with a relative of mine, except that he was told by his Chinese counterparts not to embarrass himself like that — rice was for poor people.
Totally predicted where I was going to go with that.
The only food I didn’t like in China was the sea cucumbers. I mean their bacon, “cowboy steaks”, and watermelon where substandard, but edible.
One of the best meals I had was at an Uigher hand-pulled noodle shop. All me and my translator could eat for about $4 American.
Also it is customary to give the guest of honor the eyeball from the fish. I didn’t care much for that.
Uigher – misspelling is a microagression
If they’re worried a about microaggressions, they aren’t one.
I’m wondering if they made up that guest of honor thing just to see if they could get you to eat it.
Same-same in VN, my predecessor was guest of honor at his going away party, he got the chicken’s head, luckily there was only two and the ranking VN got the other one. Whew! There was 3 giant grub worms, I got one and fortunately there was beer, I ate mine but it took the beer to send it on it’s way.
Moral of the story – never be the guest of honor in an asian country?
Fish eyeballs aren’t too bad.
Lightly sauteed hog brains in Serbia are another story.
I ate sea cucumbers once.
It was… odd.
Thx Oz. Some responses:
Jade: If any of y’all are ever in Guangzhou, find the jade market and spend a few hours. It’s like 1-2 city-block-sized buildings, about 4 stories tall, packed with jade dealers. Aisle after aisle of little booths, craftsmen, food stalls, raw materials, etc. Some are just dealers, some are artists. Everything from the fantastically elaborate sculptures as big as your couch to cheap jewelry.
My main food story: Eating in the plant cafeteria is always family-style, where they bring out dishes and we all eat around the table. Almost every dish is some variety of “chopped up animal and greenery”. One day there was a bowl of something that looked like stringy white pulled pork, kinda shiny stir-fried. I had a few. They were tough and tasteless and I finally decided they were some kind of calamari. But none of the Chinese co-workers there could tell me what it was. One finally had to go to the kitchen to ask, and came back trying to get the right words out of his little phone translator. Best he could do was “it’s a chicken leg except for the meat and the bones and the skin” – so all the knuckle/tendon part from drumsticks. So by that point I’d curiously chewed down 5 or 6 of them and still feel a little nauseated about it to this day.
Other food comment:
– I can’t believe how many educated colleagues can’t even put a Chinese name to any of the vegetables. They’re all city folks, but if you ask them what it’s called in Chinese, they often don’t have a word for it. It’s “just a vegetable”.
– Yeah the gristle and fat and bone shards in soup is beyond me.
– Neighborhood farmer’s market in Dongguan (fruits, vegetables, and “wet” – animals at every stage of life and death) is a fun place to take noobs who want to see something authentic, until they really do.
– Italian chef at our (nice, Western) hotel regretfully refused to make zabaglione for us because he had 0 trust in the safety of local raw eggs.
There’s no way in hell I could ever take my wife to a wet market. I think she would have a breakdown.
all the knuckle/tendon part from drumsticks – the gristle at the joint? I don’t know what tendons there are in a chicken drumstick that are visible
Each muscle connects to the joints via 2 tendons. I’m mostly talking about the longish ones hooking the muscles to the small (bottom) end of the leg.
But first you have to forget about a drumstick that came from a fat, soft, young chicken. Picture a leg from a skinny, old chicken with the barest amount of tough meat on it, and very well-developed tendons. Now strip (dunno what they did with it) the little bit of meat off of each and stir-fry them, along with the knuckle gristle when it’s still attached.
sounds like stuff I ate as a kid in the countryside where the chickens were free range and tough. I mean the whole leg including gristle and tendons, but nothing was left except bone.
The best gristle in the chicken is the triangular one attached to the chest bone though
Good review, OZY. I enjoy your China travels, my Asian travels are rather limited.
A trip through a larger Asian Food Store in the US would surprise a lot of folks. I still see things that cause eye rolling. OTOH studying the regular customers is interesting for some of us.
Thanks for the article.
I thought you got to do an extended Asian tour. Just not the good kind…
X2 but not so much sight seeing. First time I lost weight eating out of the mess hall, I looked like a professional POW. Quality-quantity were lacking.
Second trip I worked close to the mess hall, never (or rarely) left base camp, only saw the country side from a helicopter and then only at night.
The Asian Supermarket* around here is the sort of place where you can find a huge variety of stuff you’ll never see elsewhere, but where you have to put up with an appearance that the sanitation isn’t quite up to par, and the aisles are so narrow it’s difficult to pass people going the other way – and this is a place where most customers have baskets, not carts. I figure they only get away with it by making the inspectors fear charges of racism should they ask to look inside.
*actual name of store
The local Ranch 99 is similar. Not unsanitary, but it doesn’t look well kept and they don’t give a second thought to making it look modern. The layout and style reminds me of the Cub Foods we used to shop at during the early 90s.
The variety of cuts of meat, live seafood, odd vegetables, and weird treats is unparalleled. It’s also relatively cheap… on par with Aldi.
There are some chain Asian stores in Portland that do seem to be fairly clean and open, well one that matches both, but ones around here are like that. The one I regularly go to has wide variety and better quality produce than the crap at supermarkets but they also leave it on the shelf until it sells regardless of wilt or expiration date or worse.
There is a Texas supermarket chain called Fiesta that specializes in ingredients for the local dominant minority groups. So in Houston in addition to Mexican ingredients, you can buy five kinds of lentils and spices by the pound, in Austin there’s all sorts of Vietnamese produce, etc.
It’s honestly pretty fantastic.
My tour group hit pretty much only tourist restaurants in China – and they were all excellent. As good as any sit-down Chinese I’ve had in the US (which isn’t that many TBH).
My friends and I hit one place where the locals ate and I don’t recall it being good or bad so that’s good I guess.
IIRC Chongqing is one of those city/county amalgamation thingies and by all rights that figure cannot be compared with a city such as London or Paris or NYC.
I am hoping there will be an article on business drinking…
I was surprised, but Korea has both China and Japan well beat for alcohol consumption per capita.
I wouldn’t have guessed it. However, since the stats are self reported we are dealing with China here.
Sorry for the OT. Do you want to see my shocked face on this 180 degree spin?
C.D.C. Will Not Investigate Mild Infections in Vaccinated Americans
And I agree on the aesthetic aspect when it comes to Chinese vs. European Romantic. The Baroque (etc.) art and architecture in Europe just looks contrived and effeminate to me. Some exception for the restrained Georgian style that you see in the UK sometimes. Anyway, what you see in China, even when super detailed and approaching gaudy, is just more natural and beautiful to me.
You mean like this?
For me, they are too different for me to be able to say, “I like X more than Y.” I like them both. I wouldn’t mix the styles and I wouldn’t live in either one, but they each have aesthetic merits that the other does not.
I mean, Baroque is MEANT to look contrived.
If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.
You’re worse than Hitler
Supposedly there’s a Chinese joke about an alien that lands. The Bejing guy wants to study it, the guy from Shanghai wants to open a trade mission, and the guy from Chongqing wants to eat it.
Yeah, we don’t always remember it, but there’s not a monolithic “Chinese” culture. I’ve heard more than one Northerner say of the Cantonese that basically “those jokers will eat anything that moves.”
Fucking Northerners and their rocking eating R’s.
I’m not sure I believe this. The old king probably has had a lot of bitchin’ experiences. Even moreso if he’s always been foolish, yet managed to survive to old age.
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
A server with apache and a specific enumerated list of perl modules should not take weeks upon weeks to deliver. It’s not exactly an exotic or difficult request.
If you are OK with a VM, you can have it in about 90 minutes.
Then spend a week and a half dealing with firewall requests…
These are VMs.
And the firewall requests have been completed and verified.
And 90 minutes is far longer than I needed to spin up a VM and throw apache/perl on it when I had the rights to do so.
Knowing government they have to order the server that they are going use to host the VM.
I’m kidding, but given the global hardware shortages how are you on capacity in general?
It’s not capacity. The VM exists. That’s how I was able to test the firewall rules.
The damn ‘engineering’ team just won’t do the work of putting the software from the paperwork on the box.
The only reason we end up with capacity issues is because we underbuy. The bean counters bitch about the price and want to squeeze things into spaces where they don’t fit, then bitch about poor performance and declare us failures for not making too little processing power handle more load than they even originally asked for.
/looks at two giant e-mail threads where the project manager is asking for dates but can’t answer the questions about the spec and scope.
No idea what that’s like.
I’ve been there too. This case is me grousing about someone not doing something that requires no special skills or decisions be made.
Soups, Dim Sum, and any manor of noodle are usually a good go to. If you are in the south you could also have some great seafood and fish. You still have to ignore any concerns about Hg levels in the fish, chemicals in the food, or any similar issues.
Hong Kong had some of the best food I ever ate. I spent a 12 hour layover eating dim sum and drinking beer.
Shanghai was good food also but trying to find it was very hard if you were without a guide.
This is how you start an open-minded conversation on guns.
The state of Texas took one step closer Monday to fully embodying its cartoonish TV persona as a gun-slinging, vigilante rodeo of a place, when the Republican-heavy state legislature passed a bill that would allow just about anyone to carry a handgun without a license, training, or a background check.
“that would ALLOW just about anyone”
If you’re “allowing” you don’t understand rights.
Slate and guns? Nope I already know what kind of conversation that will be, and if I want to be preached at I’d haul my ass off to church.
Did they happen to mention all the other states that are Constitutional Carry? How many are we up to now, 10 or 12?
And ruin the narrative?
Nineteen.
List here.
Also worth mentioning is the number of states like VA where the requirements (online hunter’s ed course) are trivial to get a CCW permit.
Online class for Iowa. Sheriffs shall issue.
Never mind, Iowa just killed that this year. Anyone can carry now.
Not anymore.
In person training is required in Virginia as of this year.
*sigh*
I guess I’ll have to get a TX carry permit (constitutional carry notwithstanding) once the VA permit expires.
the Republican-heavy state legislature passed a bill that would
allow just about anyone to carry a handgun without a license, training, or a background checkremove unconstitutional infringements on the right to keep and bear arms, since apparently the courts are incapable of doing their job.Better?
Thanks Ozy. I laughed at a couple of points, but mostly at the Chinese affinity for animal fat.
We went to an upscale restaurant in Shanghai and let the hosts order for us. One of the plates came out looking like a spicy meatloaf with a rice breading on it. However, upon cutting into it with a serving spoon, I realized it the “loaf” was pure ground up backfat that had somehow been coerced into maintaining its shape instead of just oozing out onto the table.
The Finns in the group were the hardest hit however as their digestive systems were not accustomed to anything that was on the table. I think they spent the next two days confined to their hotel rooms trying to rid themselves of it.
I been to Guangzhou twice on business. Both times the local folks took us to nice restaurants. The food was mostly good, but I did get sick both trips. I was a well-seasoned traveler by then, and it didn’t matter.
So uhhh is there anything like good Chinese food in the US? Never had a Chinese dinner I enjoyed, ever. Japanese, sure. Italian, of course.
I’m convinced all American Chinese restaurants get their ingredients from the same distributor. I cannot taste the difference between any of the multiple Chinese restaurants in our area.
I completely concur. The menus are cloned, and they always have about 5 sauces to drown things in, ranging from too sweet to SugarFree Death.
That’s not actually a joke, according to Searching for General Tso
That’s an enjoyable doc.
Absolutely. Here in Phoenix, you can eat regionally at any of the numerous Asian malls lining Dobson in Mesa. SP and I are regulars at Happy Bao, which specializes in… bao.
When I lived in the Bay Area, we avoided Chinatown, but regularly hit the Clement Street area. Best Chinese I’ve had outside of Hong Kong.
I don’t know that I’ve encountered vegetarian bao.
There was one really well regarded one here in Cleveland, but the owner sold it ~10 years back, and the quality went downhill quickly.
The best I’ve had in the US was at dim sum restaurants.
“Just remember, it takes like 3 weeks to starve to death. And you can live on just beer for longer than that. And we’re supposed to be home by then, so you should be fine.”
I always understood the rule of thumb to be four minutes without air, four days without water, four weeks without food.
four months without WiFi
Four years without sex?
When did the topic of my first marriage come up?
I laughed, then I remembered…
I suspect a few of us read that and had a fleeting remembrance
Having had to be hospitalized for extreme dehydration, I would rather die in a gazillion different ways than of thirst.
Dehydration plus sun poisoning, never been so miserable. Makes you feel like you’re not thirsty but you need to drink.
Makes you feel like you’re not thirsty but you need to drink.
A get-together with the in-laws?
Maybe. Even if you’re right, I’m still right too, since 4 is “like 3”. Ho ho.
Once on a project, the cost for something was coming in at about $12,000, and just to get under the skin of somebody who was being overly sensitive and needed to relax, I told him it was “nearly 6 figures”. Since 5 is nearly 6…
I’m pretty sure a lot of the variables depend upon the individual and their state of health.
My body’s clinging to its fat reserves just in case this circumstance rolls around.
OT:
What’s happening in the Minneapolis autonomous zone, you ask?
Nothing much. Beyond the shootout, at least.
When the moon is in the Seventh House
Those damn white supremacists are at it again.
It’s been a quiet week in the Lake Wobegon Autonomous Zone…
When I was stationed at Hollman AFB in Alamgordo its population was about 30,000, locals, active and retired and the silly Germans…yet we had no less than 8 chinese restaurants. It always struck me as odd and the fact none where ever busy.
I always suspected them to be a front for the CCP hoping airmen would divulge secrets (F117, F22, backup NASA shuttle landing strip, a test wing and 4th Space Command)
But how was the food?
Always got my Christmas duck at one
“Yes, it’s a beautiful duck. But you see, it’s smiling at me.”
Ah, alt-text is visible now.
Eh, a strong aftertaste of Monosodium Pentothal
My kids had a friend in high school who was an exchange student from China; they took him to our pretty decent Chinese restaurant in Miles City, MT (at a population of 8,500, it is the largest metropolitan area for 150 miles in any direction) . They asked him if it was like the food back home , and he answered “Hahaha, no.”
“What’s Different?”
“This is WAY better,”
Vast amounts of brown sugar, MSG and soy sauce makes everything better.
I universally hear American Chinese food described as “too sweet” by Chinese Chinese.
They eat toad skins, fish heads and monkey assholes. Of course it is way better.
What the hell is wrong with those people?
The conversion of George Floyd in to a martyr, now has me doubting all martyrs.
Was Joan of Arc actually a real cunte that deserved it?
Well, she was French…
Well, she was French…
Led thousands to their deaths in a pointless conflict between the British King and French King after making it into a vicious war of religion?
Seems likely.
There was a “cathedral” back then, only it was actually a cathedral.
The Super Flower Blood Moon lunar eclipse is coming May 26
Sugarfree looms large.
Here we go again. Every time the moon comes out it has to have a special name.
Every full moon has long had a name.
Different types of full moons have also had names as well. Super, Blue, all go back a ways, I believe. Although this is the first time I’ve seen a lunar eclipse referred to as a Blood Moon.
Blood moon, blue moon, harvest moon , super moon I’ve heard of. Flower moon? That’s a first for me.
Have you never heard the wolf cry to the New Corn Moon?
“Native American” Moon Names.
So everyone from the Inuits to the Inca agreed on these moon names?
We’ll never know, because Columbus destroyed their moon-names.
So, translating from the various forms of gibberish, the full moon in May is going to be big and comes with a total lunar eclipse.
I read it as super flow-er blood moon. Like an entire sorority synced cycles or something like that.
Always appreciate the articles Ozy.
On food preparation. FYI; if you cook with a pan in the oven, the handle is still hot, as opposed to when you use it on the stove.
Went back to reading (finishing up) your anthrax articles. The rhetoric in chapter 12 is very similar to something I keep hearing about some current vaccine, just can’t quite put my finger on it.
if you cook with a pan in the oven, the handle is still hot, as opposed to when you use it on the stove.
Can confirm.
I also relearned last weekend while changing oil that motorcycle exhaust pipes get hot.
*looks at burn mark on wrist*
I like the pictures.
I was in the Peabody Essex Museum a few years ago. They had a display of some bits of art from China that traders brought back in the, I think, 19th century. There was one piece of carved ivory that stood out to me. Incredible detail. I imagine it took a very long time to carve that piece.
They had a display of some bits of art from China that traders brought back in the, I think, 19th century.
The Brits looted the hell out of the Summer Palace during the Opium Wars, too. I imagine that was some top-notch stuff.
Same as it ever was.
From the anthrax chapter 14
““a small number of military members have refused to follow their commander’s direct order to take the [anthrax] vaccine” and that the cause of their fear in taking the shot is “misinformation obtained from web sites set up by special interest groups
“How can they refuse when we trained them not to think for themselves?!”
“The Harvard physicist who claimed the first interstellar visitor in 2017 was an alien craft, although the object has been determined to be a rock, says Earth needs to form treaties with extraterrestrial civilizations in order to keep the peace in space.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9617415/Harvard-physicist-says-Earth-needs-treaties-alien-civilizations-avoid-cosmic-catastrophe.html
I wish more pointy-headed academics were his kind of eccentric, instead of being rabid anti-white racists determined to tear down American society.
Having a physics professor that is a bit kooky is par for the course and you are right it is far better than the zealots that dominate the humanities and social sciences.
The aliens will give us a few beads and we’ll sign over the deed to the planet.
I miss Mr. Lizard. Top-notch schtick, never broke character.
Agreed.
There was a heck of an entertaining book and/or movie in there – interstellar aliens poised to conquer Earth, but repeatedly foiled by their own bureaucratic screwups.
Character?
Are you saying it wasn’t an actual lizard-person?
I think he did break character once in order to spread word on a fundraiser.
We don’t make treaties with cockroaches. Why would a species capable of traveling between stars or galaxies or dimensions, and in such a way that we can’t tell what they’re piloting, want or need to make a treaty with us?
“their own bureaucratic screwups”
“Come on! They’re not even Level 4. We can just bomb them and stripmine their planet! Its right there in Volume IX of the Annotated Prime Directive!”
“Well, this says they are Level 2.”
“That’s not even the right galactic arm! Its a typo!”
“You tell the Third Assistant to the Undersecretary xe’s an idiot, if you want. You know xe’s mating with the High Priestex of Primate Lives Matter, right? So I’m not even sure this is a mistake-mistake.”
“John Cena apologizes in Mandarin for calling Taiwan a country”
https://nypost.com/2021/05/25/john-cena-apologizes-in-mandarin-for-calling-taiwan-a-country/
Fuck. Them.
Also, Exhibit No. 1,335,897 in “the case for never apologizing”.
“OK, fine. Taiwan and the mainland should both be under the control of an ethical, law-abiding government.”
A real tuff gai he is.
John Cena seems like a normie, as far as ideological matters go. Normies’ firsts instinct is to apologize when faced with an offended party.
It is weak sauce, but I will extend some grace to the guy.
“Normies’ firsts instinct is to apologize when faced with an offended party.”
That’s what the non-normies rely on.
Definitely. The only hope is that as more people are exposed to these sorts of mobs they will become less tolerant of their bullshit.
No doubt in my mind this came down from his paymasters, who got it from their paymasters in the CCP.
Very likely. I just think he was knuckling under to something he didn’t understand.
Who?
Ugh. What a chickenshit. I think I am going to make another vodka and lie down.
The bees are getting smarter.
WTF is wrong with the police in Houston? The only reason I don’t dismiss this as complete bullshit is because of the history of completely fabricated search warrants, etc.
https://reason.com/2021/05/25/texas-deputies-say-they-were-molested-and-traumatized-by-colleagues-during-federally-funded-prostitution-stings/
For those not interested in TOS:
Chief: Let’s do some prostitution stings!
Vice cops: WooHoo!
Chief: You know what would make sure them hookers don’t realize we’re cops? We’ll pose as a fake bachelor party!
Vice cops: WooHoo!
Chief: And of course, they’ll never believe it’s not a bachelor party unless we’re getting hammered!
Vice cops: WooHoo!
Chief: You there, you fiiiiiine chica detective! You’ll be our hooker decoy!
FCD: Yes sir!
Chief: Take off your clothes!
FCD: wut?
Chef: Ain’t no way those hookers will believe you’re one of them at a bachelor party if them titties is being hidden!
FCD: wut?
Chef: C’mon, gimme a lap dance and rub them titties in mah face!
In their defense, it sounded like a good idea at the time.
Sounds like there were at least a few (low-level?) sexual assaults committed.
Prediction: Retirement, full pension, Nothing Else Will Happen.
Might be hard to duck this one:
“As the first suspects arrived and the sting began, Chief Gore immediately took off Sanchez’s bra without warning and for no real reason. He then threw her bra across the room. This conduct would become his routine at the beginning of every single operation. While her breasts and naked body were exposed due to Chief Gore’s actions, he would continuously laugh, even after the undercover operation ended.
Chief Gore would maneuver his body on top or under Sanchez, where she could feel his arousal. Chief Gore also would immediately begin kissing and licking Sanchez’s neck and chest. Chief Gore was intoxicated during these assaults due to the shots of hard liquor he insisted all undercovers consume before and during operations and the cases of beer the male deputies consumed throughout the operations.”
And:
“McKinney was ordered to enter the parlor in an undercover capacity and wait to be sexually assaulted to give the raid signal,” despite the fact that there “was already sufficient evidence to make an arrest prior to exposing McKinney to this trauma,” her suit states. As part of the operation, she was “penetrated in both her vagina and anus by the same individual who had only days before assaulted the HCCO-1 staff member.” She says she was then forced to drive herself to a sexual assault exam and report the charges to the district attorney herself.
That’s pretty blatant even for forty years ago.
But you know what’s most important? They all made it home safely afterwards.
I was going to make a joke but that last paragraph is really something else. WTF?
Many years ago I attended a strip club. One of the dancers was quite homely but looked vaguely familiar. A few months later I realized that she was a classmate from high school when we attended a class reunion. She was talking with someone and flashed her State Police badge. Turned out she was doing undercover work. She was neither fine nor a chica but she did shed her clothes.