mf.rox

Little tiny scorpions.

Originally uploaded by MFinChina.

How about these?

Wasp larvae?

Originally uploaded by MFinChina.

Mmmmmmm…

So many disgusting foods, all in one place!

Originally uploaded by MFinChina.

I went over to the Longhua Temple Fair yesterday, hoping to see and photograph some performances. There weren’t any while I was there, but what there WERE were tons of cool/disgusting snacks. At this stand alone you could get fried seahorses, tarantulas, wasp larvae, silkworm grubs, scorpions and centipedes. I stayed on the safe side and had fried shrimp, crab, a waffle with vanilla ice cream, and a couple of sticky rice/red bean cakes.

The fair will be running until May 7th.

The head of the summer ESL program at Roger Williams U. was supposed to call me either yesterday or today for an interview at 10:00 a.m. his time.  I calculated that would be either 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. my time, depending on daylight savings.  I’m afraid I was wrong, and it was actually 9:00, and I missed the call.

DAMN IT!  Now I feel like an asshole!  If I did that I’ve missed out on the job for sure! 

I just stole this from a writer on Livejournal called Nakedfotolady.  (I’d put a link to her blog but it wouldn’t be easy because I accessed it through a proxy.)  Basically, you go to the IMDB and look up ten movies you really like, then choose three of the keywords.  You provide the keywords, and people try to guess the movies.  Here goes:

1.  Epic, idiot, power struggle

2.  Mutant, manga, self-sacrifice

3.  Icelandic, bizarre, epidemic

4.  Disturbing, tragic ending, Los Angeles storm drains

5.  Photo montage, post-apocalyptic, amnesia

6.  Color, defecation, cannibalism

7.  (Nothing!)

8.  (Nothing!)

9.  Male bonding, assassination, blindness

And to make up for the impossible-to-guess numbers seven and eight (the answers would be FANTASTIPO and FIGHTING TO SURVIVE), here’s an easier one:

10.  Pollution, disco, giant monster

Anybody want to guess?  I’ll provide hints if asked.

As a bonus, here’s one more:

11.  Urination, eyepatch, baby.

While looking at this post on the Mobius Home Video Forum, I thought up a new class idea: Film noir English!  You could learn to talk like a character from DOUBLE INDEMNITY, LAURA, or something like that.  I can just hear myself, “Students, repeat after me: ‘Dames are always pulling a switch on you.’”  Wouldn’t that be fun?

Today’s Daily Mainichi was just death, death, death.  Assassinations, suicide, dead babies, even dead animals.  That plus the carnage in Virginia makes me wonder why all this stuff is going on at once.  Dr. Ji says that people usually go haywire in January and February, although to tell the truth, I always used to get freaked out around this time of year.

In the midst of all the disturbing news, though, I found this weird story about three handicapable yakuza:

Trio of handicapped toughs strut their stuff in Shinjuku

A couple excerpts:

“Kamikaze’s got a real talent for swindling and extortion …”

and

“The three then pose for the camera, making hand signs that Jitsuwa Mad Max explains convey the meanings, respectively, of “I’m gonna pop you one,” “Now you’re on my shitlist, you bastard!” and “Hey, are you dissing me?”"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g-yrjh58ms

I had this dream the other night in which a friend and I (Laura Kersting, in fact) were living outside in these chickenwire cages.  They were only about two feet high and as long as our bodies.  It struck me as we got rained on that when winter came along, we would be really uncomfortable.  It dawned on me that it would be great to make an igloo to keep warm.  I kept thinking, and then I realized there was tons of discarded styrofoam in the area, and that would be really good material because it would insulate from the cold.  As the dream went on, I kept refining the design, like I realized I b/c the foam is not solid, I could drive something like a chopstick down between two parts to connect them, so the structure would be more solid.  Eventually, I even started thinking about making something high I could stand up in.

Actually, styrofoam igloos for the homeless seem like a good idea, for winter, anyway.  They’d be light, waterproof, and the blocks would be reusable. 

For those of you outside of China, for like the last month, everybody has been talking about the Chongqing “nail house.”  There were pictures of it and updates almost every day.  Well, recently the owner and developers came to an agreement, and the house is no more.  For a good picture and brief article:

Annova article

For a more detailed story, plus an explanation of the term, here’s a page from the famous blog Danwei:

The coolest nail house

For some reason, the no weird hair, no mean judges, no crying rules for China’s new reality TV talent shows was judged important enough to merit being featured on Yahoo.com’s home page.  The only good thing about it is that the blurb shows a little picture of the first Super Voice Girl winner, the charismatic and extremely masculine Li Yu Chun.  If you click on the story, though, you don’t get her picture.  She’s actually a very good singer, seems to be coping well with fame, and seems to be, well — she was interviewed on another Hunan TV show hosted by an extremely feminine male presenter and his “special friend.”  Li Yu Chun was interviewed with her “special friend,” and there was actually a shot of her running through flowery fields with the girl, holding hands.  She can kick your ass, plus belt out a good rendition of Jackie Cheung’s “Corazon de Melao,” with decent Portuguese pronunciation and everything.

Today while walking past the school’s Thursday English corner (which I never take part in), I saw something that looked suspicious.  I walked over, and sure enough, there were these two white guys proselytizing to some Chinese girls.  I asked what they were doing, and reminded them that they were breaking the law.  Actually, proselytizing isn’t forbidden, just proselytizing by foreigners.  The guys claimed that they weren’t preaching, that the girls just ASKED them about their religion.  Conveniently, though, the guys just HAPPENED to have a copy of the New Testament in Chinese.  I gave them a bit of a hard time, before handing back their Bible, which I actually snatched from them — it looked like the guy was going to hide away what he was holding when I came over to them, so I nabbed it to take a look at it. 

I never liked these people who come to China under false pretenses to preach to people.  I also don’t like people who use fear to convert others (although I don’t know if this is what they were doing).  I also don’t like it when these people urge Chinese to break the law for religion’s sake — that’s really easy when the worst that could happen to you is you get deported, while the Chinese person could end up in a lot more trouble.

In a way I felt guilty for giving the guys a hard time, though.  Maybe I should just let them do their thing?  Also, maybe my scolding them could make what they are doing seem MORE interesting to people who they are talking to, who might just forget about it otherwise.  Maybe they’re just giving people what would end up being a good innoculation against religion?  I don’t know.

I just woke up.  I was having another one of those dreams I mentioned before.  This time I went with Editor B and a couple other people to this conference I didn’t know anything about.  Once I got there, not only couldn’t I find B at all, I couldn’t find any conference schedule, so I ended up wandering around confused and frustrated.  I eventually found out it had something to do with writing, but then I got all anxious and irritated because I realized as much as I like the idea of writing, I don’t want people to know my thoughts.  I’m scared of exposing myself.  I’ve thought about this a lot in real life too.

In other real life news, I’ll have a phone interview for a summer job at Roger Williams University next week.

From the Sydney Morning Herald, through Shanghaiist:

Excrement pile saves Chinese woman after balcony fall

April 4, 2007
A Chinese woman survived a fall from a sixth-floor balcony after she landed on a large pile of excrement dug up by workers clearing a septic tank, state media said.

The unnamed woman was stretching to hang washing when she lost her balance and fell from the balcony at her home in the southern city of Nanjing yesterday, the semi-official China News Service quoted a local newspaper as saying.

The woman suffered only minor injuries after the 20cm heap cushioned her fall, the agency said.

Workers had been dredging the tank after complaints by local residents, it said.

DPA

He’s back!

Originally uploaded by MFinChina.

Today walking home I heard the sound of a harmonica, and to my delight, I found my favorite crazy beggar is back! He goes practically naked when it’s cold, and wears an overcoat in the summer. He randomly blows on a harmonica and sometimes declaims to everyone.

Today I chatted with him and he showed me his handicapped person’s ID card. It turns out he’s only forty! I’d always thought he was over fifty! His name is Su Hong Kai, and he’s a Han person. (I’d always wondered if he was from Xinjiang.) He started asking me stuff about American money, about how much it costs to call the US on the phone, and said something like he wants to talk to a basketball player there.

I usually never give beggars money because there are a lot of scam artists, but this guy is really so nutty I don’t think he could ever get work. Plus, he doesn’t hassle people. He just does his own thing. Today he was wearing a strange woman’s ID card around his neck, and he had a long chain with a lock on the end wrapped around his waist. Teya and Pam, who were there looking at him when I arrived, said it was dragging along the street as he walked along.

Last night I had this dream in which I saw a new kind of mousetrap — or really, because of the size, it would be a trap for rats and small animals.  It consisted of a nest made out of ramen noodles.  The animal would be attracted by the noodles, and when they got to the middle where there was a relaxing-looking nesty area, that part would have some sort of battery-powered shocking device.  They’d lay down for a rest, and then ZAP!  No more rat. 

If not, I want to learn more about this painter!

http://www.villagevoice.com/art/0714,saltz,76224,13.html

Actually, I thought the guy had a crank in his butt.  Maybe the writer is just “turning our cranks”? 

Except a few sesame seeds.