mf.rox

I went to Dog Man’s yesterday only to find out he had given Hui Hui away.  His reasoning was that when Hui Hui got old enough to be interested in female dogs, it would cause a lot of trouble.  Right now two of the dogs in our neighborhood are in heat, and it’s been causing quite a bit of chaos.  So anyway, he gave him away to someone who wanted a dog to guard the gate of their house.  Unfortunately, I never took any pictures of Hui Hui — I did take like two, but they were no good, so I deleted them.  Bye bye, Hui Hui!  I’ll always remember your lopsided little face with the sticky-up, wiry little hairs!

The slogan at the top of the page comes from a Russian spam I got today.

A page from a Vietnamese bootleg Batman comic, posted by Ethan Persoff on www.ep.tc.

I must admit whenever I hear about someone I was friends in with the past but had a falling out with, I want to hear that they have failed at everything they’ve done.  When I see they have been successful in any way I feel angry and bitter.  That’s bad.

I’ve had about enough of people telling me how unhappy I’m going to be when I move back to the US, how I’m going to freak out and have culture shock, etc. I don’t need to hear that! Why would anybody think that would be a good thing for me to hear? Do they think I haven’t worried about that already?

I’m also tired of people asking me a million questions about why I haven’t gotten everything totally arranged yet. Moving from one country to another is hard, that’s why, and I can’t wave a magic wand and get everything all done.

I had planned to send off three boxes of stuff today. That would have been the official start to my moving back to the United States. But today I woke up to this really incredible rain that has lasted all day so far. I can’t go get the boxes because they’d get wet, and I can’t go retrieve my drycleaning because that would get wet too. I guess this will have to wait until (I hope) tomorrow.

Congratulations to Kelly K. (formerly Kelly S.) on the birth of her new baby!

Unexpected piety at the supermarket.

Originally uploaded by MFinChina

I found this last week at my local Trust-Mart.

I haven’t written personal stuff in here for a long time. I guess it’s because the stuff I want to say is a little strange and I feel weird about saying it.

I’d like to explain a little about why I decided to leave China, and to leave it now.

To some degree, it’s because I’m feeling sort of flat. Nothing is exciting me here. My job isn’t challenging me right now either. I feel I need to so something new, learn something new, have something to work toward.

I was also sort of worried about the Olympics. I thought Chinese people had built it up unrealistically in their minds, expecting it to be this perfect thing that would gain accolades from all over the world. I expected that a lot of foreign media organizations would be nitpicky, focusing on all the little problems they saw, and that Chinese people would be surprised and angry about that. I guessed, because of my experience with Chinese people so far, that people would get really bitter about this, and it might affect the lives of foreigners here. We might be the target of resentment, or not be as welcome as we once were. Therefore, I thought that now might be a good time to leave. What with all the events in Tibet, the biased media coverage, the disruptions of the torch relay and the nationalistic feelings these things have stirred up here, it seems like I was right about that.

Thirdly, I have a feeling that it’s just time to go. This is what I feel weird about talking about. In a way, it’s a kind of “God told me to” feeling. I have this deep gut feeling that I am meant to leave China this summer. It reminds me of in DONNIE DARKO, when the teacher who is played by Noah Wylie, says something to him about “walking in God’s channel.” I feel like if am going to walk in God’s channel, and stay on the path I am supposed to be on, I need to leave China this summer.

I was goofing around on this dandy site called Oracleofbacon, and typed in Editor B’s name. It came up that he had three degrees of separation from Bacon. According to the site,

Editor B was in ‘Java Madness’ formerly titled ‘Coffee Madness’ (1995) with Kenneth Patrick Brady
Kenneth Patrick Brady was in Dead by Sunset (1995) (TV) with Ken Olin
Ken Olin was in Queens Logic (1991) with Kevin Bacon

If that’s true, because I was in several ROX episodes, I should have four degrees, and anyone else who knows me should have five!

I await confirmation from B to see if the first linkage is correct.

Apparently, during the 2000 primaries, a Bush operative (probably Karl Rove)  started a rumor that John McCain’s adopted daughter from Bangladesh was his “secret black lovechild”!

From:

“Highlight the torture and your brown daughter”

and

http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/000311.html 

Really.

These folks in Dharmsala are way more radical than the D. Lama.  I think it may be a mistake to present the Lama as the true representative of Tibetans now, considering what happened in March.

If finally watched CODE 46 tonight, which is a DVD I only picked up because the cover said a lot of it was shot in Shanghai.  It is supposed to take place after some sort of big disaster has turned most of the world to desert and also necessitated widespread use of in-vitro fertilization.  The distracting thing was that all the footage in Shanghai was shot a couple years ago, with no attempt to hide advertising.  Therefore, I saw ads for products I use every day.  While I was watching, I was like, “Oh, look!  An ad for M-Zone!”  Plus, tons of props came from Ikea.  For instance, the lamp in Tim Robbins’ son’s room was the same as the one that is sitting one foot away from me right now.  These thing kept jarring me, not letting me suspend my disbelief.

Actually, that happens a lot with Ikea products.  I was roped into watching CAPTIVITY, and partway through, one of the people I was with realized that the lamp in Eliza Cuthbert’s cell was the same one in her bedroom at home.  Heck, even John Woo’s THE KILLER uses stuff from Ikea!