mf.rox

Next week, I’m going to teach a Chinese class to a foreigner!¬† It’s pretty exciting!¬† It’ll be my first time.¬† The way it all came about was that I had talked to somebody I know about my plans to do this, she needed a teacher, and that was it!¬† We made the arrangement!¬† Although my Chinese isn’t perfect, and certainly won’t be able to teach anybody to speak like a native, I’m confident that I can help another foreigner learn to communicate well with local people and get a good basic grasp of the language.¬†

Almost every time I have office hours this one weird kid comes in. He asks me all these questions, and actually once wrote down the answers. I asked him what he was doing, and he said it was just for himself. He always has all these detailed questions about how to learn English and about the American education system. He sort of gave me the creeps.

Today he showed up, and all of a sudden admitted that he’s not even my student! He was just coming to my class! I was really pissed off. I mean, I am having office hours, but they are supposed to be for my students. I’m not sitting here to give free English lessons to strangers. I wanted to ask him if he was nuts imposing on me in this way, but I didn’t. I did civilly tell him that I’d like only students who were registered in my class to come see me.

In other weird student news, someone who is not in my class took the exam last week. I don’t know why someone would just drop in and randomly take the exam. Anyway, this person got a 76, which was better than some people who were actually in the class.

“I’d like a sunny-side-up dick.”

http://peer-see.com/blog/chumble-spuzz/2006/07/09/

 (I originally found this link through Sinosplice.)

Bush daughter’s purse stolen.

One of the Bush daughters put her purse down on the floor at some tourist hot spot in Argentina. Of course, it got stolen. On another odd note, none of the Secret Service men noticed.  

 

A reference to the war in Iraq was taken out of a Simpsons episode before it was aired on FOX. Here is a link to a video of the original and the broadcast version. Found (as usual) through EastSouthWestNorth Blog.
Altered Simpsons clip, from BoreMe

I’ve been having very interesting, technicolor dreams lately. They’re so interesting they surpass anything in my real life, and even anything I watch in actual movies. That makes it hard to motivate myself to get up, since I know I won’t be seeing anything as interesting while I’m awake.

Here’s the content of one of the latest ones:

I often have dreams that have to do with a movie that suddenly becomes incredibly violent at the last minute. Often the number thirteen is involved. (For instance, in the past I’ve had a reoccurring dream about a movie by Peter Greenaway that is cut into fourteen sections, with the thirteenth and fourteenth being horrifically bloody and brutal.) This dream had to do with a movie called BEAR, which came from a book (it has a yellow cover, with a picture of a bear and the type in black) that I saw in last night’s dream too. It’s a science fiction story, and suddenly the last thirteen frames of the movie become incredibly violent, with a female character (played by Renee Zellwiger) being transformed into a bear, and using her long, razor-sharp claws (kind of like you see on Gloomy Bears) to slice a man to ribbons.

Of course, thirteen frames of a movie would take less than a second to see, but when the dream began, I was thinking about them and how I would be scared to see them. They had actually been printed out large — maybe people in the theater could only see them subliminally, were terrified, and wanted to see what they were really like — but I tried to avoid looking at them too.

As the dream went on, I was put into the actual movie, as sort of an observer/minor character. It was set in a society that was sort of futuristic and medieval at the same time. It was set in sort of a police state where animals were only kept as pets and not trained to do anything, and the government used sets of strings (like dividers made of string) to block some sort of magic or power. What they really didn’t want people to find out was that some people, under the right circumstances, could transform themselves into animals. They also didn’t want people to know that animals were trainable, and could be taught to do things. If they thought you were involved in training animals, or had some sort of knowledge of the possibility of people to transform, government agents would kill you. There were also people who had some sort of ability to steal people’s souls through their mouths — they weren’t part of the government, though — they had some power or authority, but I’m not sure who it came from. Eventually it became clear that the bear transformation at the end of the movie involved a woman who was totally ignorant of this possibility of transformation, and she just turned to a bear unexpectedly, perhaps under the threat of rape by the man, and once transforming, tore the man to shreds.

I wonder what I’ll dream about tonight.

“It is useless … like a heavy brick.”

So, I’m cheap. But, I’m having trouble with my computer again. It’s a Gateway with 256 MB (?) of RAM. It’s been plagued with problems, which is why its original owner, Original Curtis, got rid of it. It used to refuse to go on, and instead the fan would run madly. After being fixed a couple times, it stopped doing that. According to the technician, the culprit was a loose wire.

Now the problem is that the screen will freeze up, and I can’t do anything but turn off the computer manually. For a while, it would do that within a few seconds of going on, but now after doing MSCONFIG or something like that in safe mode, I can USUALLY get it to stay on for like 15 minutes, until it freezes up when the fan goes on. Then I can’t use it again for several hours, because each time I turn it on it freezes up almost immediately. To try to fix the problem, I’ve also taken off a lot of unessential programs and removed a few pictures. I have a TON of pictures in the documents folder — could that be a problem. They’re pretty large.

I’m not sure what to do. Shall I try to fix it, again (this will be my fourth time dealing with a technical problem in like a year)? Shall I mostly use the office computer that I’m on now, and keep my home computer for the 15 minutes a day or so that I need to deal with personal stuff I don’t want to put on the office computer? (That would be very cost-effective.) Or, should I buy a new computer? The problem with this is that I’m cheap. I did see a computer for 3,999 RMB at Carrefour. It’s a famous Chinese brand, a laptop, and small. One problem with O. Curtis’s is that it weighs like ten pounds. I DO like desktops, but it would be nice to have a computer I could take around. This computer also has only 256 MB of RAM. Is that a big liability? Should I make another choice? I, being cheap, would like something for under 4,000 RMB. A desktop would be okay too, although it wouldn’t have the advantage of portability. I did see an HP desktop for about that price.

Any advice, people out there?

That was what I thought of Bowling for Columbine as when I thought of it briefly tonight.

I wonder if I (heart) my concubine bumperstickers would sell? I’d buy one as a joke.

According to this quiz, I have a 93% chance of disappearing.  The next two came out as suicide (67%) and disease (60%).

How Will You Die?

Happy syringes.

Originally uploaded by MFinChina.

From an info pamphlet for a Hepatitis B drug.

Here’s an article on some Lei Fung commemorative condoms. Apparently, the same company is going to release Mao ones.

Lei Feng Condoms
I this kind of surprising because the Hunan restaurant near my school just took down all their pictures of Chairman Mao. When I asked why, they said it was because there was a new rule that Mao’s image couldn’t be used to advertise things.

A quiz: Donald Rumsfeld in his own words.
From The Guardian. This link, like the Lei Feng one,¬†was also originally found on Roland Soong’s EastSouthWestNorth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,,1943315,00.html

I was excited by the Democrats’ win yesterday! I watched everything at Big Bamboo, a local bar in Shanghai, with other members of the local Democrats’ group.

In other news, Alice the dog lost her virginity tonight! The perpetrator was a dog named Lucky who she had played with the other day. It didn’t sound like she enjoyed the experience very much, because she yowled through everything.

Also, I think I’m back on track with Nanowrimo. Almost 1,000 words today.

Alice the dog was really sick yesterday.¬† She had a fever, was listless, and wouldn’t eat or drink.¬† I was really worried, especially because her temperature seemed so high.¬† I felt guilty because I let go of her leash the other day to let her play with another dog, and she ended up eating some garbage.¬† She ALWAYS does that, no matter how many times she is yelled at or punished for it.¬† Maybe it is because she was a stray when she was a puppy.¬† I was really worried she’d eaten poison or something like that.¬† Of course, because Mr. Zhao (Dog Man) also lets her off her leash to run around for a while at night, she could have eaten something bad then — there is no way of knowing.

Anyway, after being upset all night, I’m very happy that she seems to be feeling better.¬† Her fever is down, and she’s been eating and drinking.¬† She doesn’t have as much energy as usual, but I’m thinking she’ll be back to normal in a couple days.¬† Yay!

Or did the song go “tell that GIRL to shut up”?

Anyway, I had a talk with that Chinese-American guy yesterday. He’s the guy I talked about back on September 5, who always badmouths Chinese people, and said weird stuff about Jews. Basically, his opinions hurt and offend me, and whenever I talk to him, even for a few minutes, I come away irritated. I’d been trying to avoid him, but he wasn’t getting the message that I didn’t want to talk to him. I decided I’d have to do it directly, or he wouldn’t get the picture.

We were supposed to meet for dinner last night, and when we saw each other, I took him aside (he’d invited another person too) and told him how I felt. I told him I’d gotten the impression he didn’t like Chinese people very much, and while I have no illusion that China or Chinese people are perfect, the things he said hurt my feelings and made me unhappy. I also mentioned the whole agreeing with Mel Gibson thing, and said that if he really belived Jews were some sort of evil force in the world, that was not something I could accept. I told him if he really believed these things, I didn’t think I could spend time with him. He was kind of aghast, and started arguing with me. He said he didn’t remember saying those things, but then he started saying that he didn’t believe Chinese people and “the Jewish people” were “above criticism.” At that point I told him that I was going to go home.

I am proud of myself, I guess, because I was never rude or impolite when talking to him. I really can’t be friends with him if he believes these things. Maybe hearing me say these things will be good for him, and make him think about what comes out of his mouth and how it makes other people perceive him. Original Curtis mentioned to me that one time he was at this party, and this guy came up to him and whispered in his ear, “Why do you talk about yourself so much?” It was a shock to hear, and made him think about what he was saying, while not embarrassing him in front of the other guests. So maybe hearing me say this to him will do him some good. Probably not, right? But there’s always a chance.

On a side note, I don’t like it when people talk about “the Jewish people,” or “the blacks” or “the Chinese.” It makes it sound like all the people of the group know each other and coordinate decisions together, which is completely ridiculous. For example, when you talk about Jewish people, you’re talking about millions of people all over the world who’ve never even met, have different political views, and even different religious views. If some politician like Benjamin Netanyahu wants to make a decision, it’s not like he calls up Bob Dylan, who calls up Paul Wolfowitz, who calls up my friend Phil, who calls up Jerry Seinfeld, and then they all get together and vote.

Part of the dream I had last night was that two things came in the window into my house and scared me.¬† I figured out pretty fast that one of them was just a chipmonk, but the other one was much more bizarre: it was a severed deer head.¬† I figured out in the dream that it had been blown off with a shotgun, and because of the ears, it was still able to flap around.¬† I guess the ears were propelled by the wind, and were blown around in some sort of way that made them effective “wings.”¬† I can’t explain it in a way that makes sense.¬† Even though the deer was dead and had no mind of its own, its head kept swooping at me scarily and I kept having to hit it with an umbrella to keep it away from me.

I feel this is really interesting, but on the other hand I feel like it’s mean to talk about this, like it’s something I should keep quiet about. The other day I asked my embroidery teacher what her surname was. She told me, and wanted to write it down, but told me she didn’t know how to read and write! In fact, the only thing she could write was her name, because her brother had taught her, but she had real trouble with even that. She told me that her parents wouldn’t send her to school and told her to study embroidery instead, because if she didn’t know how to do embroidery nobody would want her. Her older brother and younger brother got to go to school. Of course, refusing to send girls to school isn’t allowed, but she lived in a little village in the countryside, and people didn’t come around checking very often. Imagine if you couldn’t read and write at all! I feel a little bad mentioning this here since I posted her picture and all, but it’s so interesting. She’s my age or a little younger. She’s married now, and told me her husband and daughter live in Shanghai, and that her daughter goes to primary school here.