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Or thereabouts, anyway!

Hello to the person there who looked at this blog!  Your dot just showed up on Clustrmaps!  Warmly welcome you, as Chinese people would say!

I just posted a comment on the IMDB of a weird North Korean film I’d once seen called ORDER 027. Since the comment itself isn’t up yet, here it is for you to see now:

Strange, disjointed North Korean film

I saw a Chinese-language dub of this a few years ago, and the deepest impression it gave me was of several films that were started by different directors, not finished, but then edited together. It starts out as a really interesting-looking military film, and then it suddenly becomes sort of a spy film, then sort of a kung-fu film, and so on. In each of these parts, the look is totally different, and I’m not even sure if all the characters appeared
consistently throughout the film.

Mostly, it’s interesting as an oddity, if you’ve never seen a North Korean movie before. I don’t know if this is a spoiler or not, but for me, the most memorable part was when the North Korean spies snuck over the border to the South. According to this film, the only vehicles in South Korea are jeeps that have “US army” spray-painted on the front, and South Koreans are all incredibly hairy and wear foot-long crucifixes around their necks.

I was having brunch at American Steak and Eggs today, and there was this super bitchy lady who came in with her husband and baby. The complained about everything, only smiled like one time in an hour and a half, and looked at her husband like she hated him through the whole meal. She was also super-bitchy to the waitress and threw a fit because the girl didn’t know what she was talking about when she asked for “soya milk.” I felt pissed off, and wrote something into Shanghaiist’s anonymous tip box:

To the American woman who threw a fit at American Steak and Eggs when the waitress didn’t know what soy milk was: If this woman spoke fluent English, she’d have a better job, one where she earned more than 150 dollars a month and didn’t have to serve people like you. As another diner, listening you complain about everything and sit there scowling at your husband like he was a turd on a hot road didn’t enhance my meal.

Now I feel a little guilty about it, and wonder if I could be getting the waitress into trouble in some way. As for the American woman, she ought to feel bad. Plus, if she can’t live without soy milk, she should look up how to say it. It’s not hard.  But I still feel kind of guilty for writing that.

I don’t know what happened.  It screwed up my last posts, and all the other posts on this page as well.  I’ve been trying to correct it, but nothing worked.

One of my new year’s resolutions for last year was to read more, and I’ve achieved my goal, with 29 books so far. Here’s a rundown, and in true anal retentive fashion, I’ve included a code to tell you where or how I got them:

Normal type: I bought it myself
Underlined: Given as a gift
bold lower case: Borrowed from someone else.
Italics: Bookcrossers book
BOLD UPPER CASE: MAN WITH A CART BOOK

1. The Heart of Hyacinth – Onoto Watanna
2. Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China – Guy Deslile
3. kafka on the shore – haruki murakami (*)
4. Transit – Lana Citron
5. mysterious skin – scott heim
6. P.S. I LOVE YOU – CECILIA AHERN
7. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon
8. EAT, DRINK AND BE MARRIED – EVE MAKIS (-)
9. more, now, again – elizabeth wurtzel
10. The Day They Came to Arrest the Book – Nat Hentoff
11. A Void – Georges Perec
12. The Pilot’s Wife – Anita Shreve
13. aunt dimity and the next of kin – nancy atherton
14. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim – David Sedaris
15. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – Rebecca Wells
16. Little Altars Everywhere – Rebecca Wells
17. The Dog Walker – Leslie Schnur
18. The Dogs of Babel – Carolyn Parkhurst
19. Daddy-Long-Legs – Jean Webster
20. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggars
21. anil’s ghost – michael ondaatje
22. dance, dance, dance – haruki murakami (*)
23. The Men Who Stare at Goats – Jon Ronson
24. HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS – J.K. ROWLING
25. The Full Cupboard of Life – Alexander McCall Smith (*)
26. Belle de Jour – Anonymous
27. The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint – Brady Udall (*)
28. Happy Holidays – Janet Dailey (-)
29. The No.1 Ladies’ Detective agency – Alexander McCall Smith

Added bonus – I put an (*) next to the books I especially liked, and an (-) next to the books I thought were not very good.

Shortly after I published the Overheard in New York quote, I noticed the huge difference in tone between the two posts.  It didn’t seem strange to me at the time.  That’s what I get for watching too many Hong Kong movies.

In other news, I subitted my first grad school application today — the one for Michigan State.  I’m hoping that I didn’t mess up anything, but I’ve vowed to not go back and look at it again for a while.  I’ve got to stop thinking about it now that it’s out of my hands.  I did my best, and proofread and everything.  I hope either my application was mistake-free, or other people made worse mistakes than I did.

Strangely, I crave a hamburger.

Old black dude to Salvation Army Santa: Hahaha! You ring that bell like a faggot!

–33rd & 7th

(From Overheard in New York)

It just happened a few minutes ago, according to the Associated Press.

Pakistan’s Bhutto killed by bombing

I got a couple of Christmas packages from my mom recently, and today I opened them. They contained:

1) The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith

2) Tears of the Giraffe, by Alexander McCall Smith

3) The Big Over Easy, by Jasper Fforde

4) Congotronics, Konono No. 1 (a CD)

5) Two bars of Caswell-Massey almond cold cream soap

6) One bar of Caswell-Massey oatmeal soap

7) Tons of cat toys.

Thanks!

of Hakka-language Christmas songs, complete with cheap synthesizer music!  You owe it to yourself to listen!

Dim dim do

(Click where it says “Asian Jingle Bells.”)

Those crazy kids!

Originally uploaded by MFinChina

My eight o’clock and ten o’clock classes gave me flowers for the holidays! Thanks, everybody!

I was walking around the classroom, teaching today, when all of a sudden a flourescent light tube came loose and went crashing to the floor, shattering everywhere.  It missed the nearest student by like five inches, and I think some students got pieces of glass on their shoes.  Luckily, nobody was hurt.

Check out this picture looking down into the seating area of Danbo Fun, a fast food place at the mall near my house.  On one hand, I’d like to eat there for the experience, but on the other hand I’m afraid the color scheme would make me nauseous, or give me some sort of psychedelic seizure.

Danbo Fun seating area

If the seats look like eggs to you, that’s probably on purpose, because I think it is an egg fried rice specialty restaurant.

Since complaining about my dreams they have actually improved a lot. Here are two recent ones:

1) Caught in a drug bust.

In this dream, I went to a party with my friend Curtis. I didn’t know who would be there, but once I got there, I saw they were all people who were notorious for drug-taking. They started pulling out packets of white substances, which I found shocking. One had cocaine, one had heroin. There was another guy who had little white sticks, like sucker sticks, that were coated with some sort of drug.

We were all sitting around, and this messed-up looking guy came to the door. (We were in a cheap motel room that had a screen door.) I figured he was there to take drugs too, but he turned out to be an undercover policeman. All these other policemen came, and luckily, they started interviewing me first. I say luckily, because I wasn’t high on drugs or anything, and could answer their questions in a coherent way, so they wouldn’t have as much of a reason to take us all in. They kept trying to trick me, but they couldn’t do it.  I felt pretty satisfied with myself.

2)  The “Illusionist”

This was set in Victorian times.  A bunch of people had come to see a performance by a man who claimed he could make things disappear because he was banishing them to another dimension.  The audience believed he was just an illusionist, and came to watch for amusement.   The man demonstrated by setting something up, clapping, which would make the lights go out for a fraction of a second, and then you would see that the thing was gone.  He did this a couple times, and then didn’t set up any object.  He just clapped, and when the lights came back on (in my dream, it was likes some sort of strobe effect), all the chairs in the theater were empty, but you heard all the people scream as they realized the man actually DID have the power banish them to another dimension.  He clapped again, and then all the chairs were empty and the auditorium was silent.

Today I went to the pharmacy and explained my problem, and the ladies there recommended a kind of “intestinal lubrication tea.”  I tried it tonight, and like an hour later, I felt a strange sensation.  I wondered what it was for a while, and then I realized it was my nearly-forgotten urge to poop!  Success!

I just noticed Teya’s comment recommending prune juice.  Actually, I’d forgotten all about that.  I really love that stuff, but I rarely buy it because I am too cheap.  Maybe they have it at Carrefour?  I’ll go check it out.

“Happiness is your heart’s flower opening.”

Every piece of candy in a box my student gave me has a little saying on the inside of the wrapper.

Matt M. texted me about a Korean parliament fight, with injuries, the other day, so I decided to see if I could find a video on Youtube. To my surprise, there is a veriable cornucopia of political brawls out there. I’m going to try to embed the Korean one with the best video, although unfortunately the sound quality is poor. Oh — I couldn’t embed it, so here is a link to the video. There are lots of other amazing ones out there, such as one at the Sudanese parliament where people hit each other with chairs. There’s also the Czech vice president slapping another politician in the head. Of course, there are tons of videos of Taiwanese parliament fights, some with backround music.

On a side note, it was nice to see female politicians mixing it up with their male counterparts.  It puts the lie to that stuff I’ve read a lot of Western guys in Asia say on the Web about how they want to marry an Asian woman because they “never argue.”  What fantasy world are they living in?  My female students had a good laugh over that one.

Is this a slam-bang card?

Originally uploaded by MFinChina

Let’s share that holiday feeling! Or, if you’re in Japan, “Let’s holiday!”

I made this with fd’s Flickr Toy’s plus a still from a deleted scene from the Korean cartoon AACHI & SSIPAK. After seeing the card Atomic Books got from John Waters, I decided to see if I could make something even more inappropriate.

Hope you like it! Feel free to pass it along to friends!

On a warning sign, China:

Take the child … 

From www. engrish.com.