Chapter 43

In the past year, I’ve been reading quite a bit on World War I, and went through the colossal series of podcasts Blueprint For Armageddon by Dan Carlin, which is highly recommended like everything he’s done on Hardcore History. It was said that through the numerous stalemates and wars of attrition, artillery wasn’t always used with the only goal of destroying targets, but also to corner troops, as a psychological tool, and as a way to cause severe disturbance by preventing sleep. On the morning of Chinese New Year, I could totally relate to that, as the shelling started before dawn and only paused mid-morning.

Of course it would be borderline disrespectful to equate my plight with the situation of a French infantryman in the trenches at Verdun, being under the blankets with a woman and a dog by my side with zero danger to my life and a day doing whatever I want ahead. Still it fucking sucked, it’s not as if those are the pretty kind of fireworks with splashes of color in the sky, they just do BOOM.

Ah well. Part and parcel of living in China, just like terrorist attacks are for the city of London, according to its mayor. Smile and enjoy life.

I read the book on the Norman conquest while taking a spicy shit. William was embroiled in a three-way conflict with Henry, king of France, and another neighboring duke named Geoffrey d’Anjou, but both of those cunts died from some kind of medieval disease that could be cured with over-the-counter drugs nowadays, and the succession for their titles lead to internal squabbles. That meant William was free to fuck around with other neighboring duchies and eventually pack some ships full of scurvy-infested mercenaries to go crush England.

Next up in the Top 500 was a Beach Boys album. It sucked. So far I’ve listened to 35 albums and it’s the first one I truly disliked, about a third leaving me indifferent, a third being objectively interesting but not my cup o’ tea, and a third being albums I’d potentially listen to for fun. After that it was some material by King Sunny Adé, a musician from Nigeria. It seems like it’s a compilation, and I’m wondering if it should count as an album, but nonetheless it was pretty cool music. And then the funk of The Isley Brothers made me shake my white ass and bob my head and play air guitar in my living room.

The girlfriend asked me to pause the music, as she was having a videochat with a bunch of her friends. So I retreated to the home gym, where I did my calisthenics and kettlebell swings while listening to Dilated Peoples on my portable speaker. Dilated Peoples is a hip-hop group from LA with cool beats and a positive attitude, their track Worst Comes To Worst is a pretty nice little banger.

I took a cold shower and then cooked myself a lunch of sausages and buttered bread. When I reached into the fridge for the jar of relish, there was a white beer looking at me, batting its eyelashes, and I thought why not, I just worked out.

We were out of tortillas, so I went outside in the grey hazy weather and rode to a shopping mall with a large grocery store in its basement. The dog came along and trotted spritely along on his leash. Before leaving, I uploaded a bunch of new stuff in my mp3 player, and listened to an album by Revulsion on the way. At times I’m conflicted: on one hand, nothing gives me the type of hair-raising “Yes!!!” feeling that a good death metal riff can, but also, I’ve listened to so much of the stuff through the years that most of it just feels so damn formulaic and generic at this point, even if it’s executed perfectly like what that Finnish band does. So maybe it’s a good idea to have a bit of a metal detox.

There was a sign at the entrance of the mall that said “No pets” and another one that urged people to put on their glassfoggers but nobody said anything as I walked in, maskless and with a dog cradled in my arms. They didn’t have tortillas, so I just bought a few random snacks and beverages. Then I rode back home, and went to retrieve the package I ordered online from an alcohol retailer and had been sitting on the oversized mail shelf at the gate. The boxes were too big for me to carry them on my bicycle, so I opened them, removed the bottles from their styrofoam casings, and put them in my pannier.

I dropped it all at home, including the dog, and then carried on with my mission, as I wanted to eat tacos for dinner. So I rode to another big shopping mall and bought the elusive packs of tortillas. I started listening to the Joe Rogan podcast with Francis Ngannou, UFC heavyweight contender and destroyer of worlds. His story is absolutely insane, how he grew up poor even by the standards of his native Cameroon, took the illegal migrant route through Nigeria, Niger, Algeria and Morocco, which implied paying some smugglers to pack him in a truck with twenty others and drive through the Sahara, dodging cops, paying bribes and buying fake passports along the way. Now at this point of the story he had been waiting 12 months in Morocco to break into Ceuta. No matter how you feel about illegal immigration, for sure whe you hear a first-hand story like this you see that it’s far from easy and risk-free, and in his case, the gamble paid off, leading to a budding MMA career and soon after he was knocking mofos’ blocks cold on the big UFC stage. And aside from being the most terrifying fighter on the roster, he’s also one of MMA’s genuinely good guys, doing a lot of philanthropy.

Back home, we poured ourselves drinks (a negroni for me, a Japanese plum liqueur for her) and watched some YouTube videos from a channel called The Road Chose Me, an Australian who traveled big parts of the world with his Jeep. It’s our dream to go on a long overland trip but first I have to get that damn drivers’ license, and wait for the virus to go to the garbage can of history where it belongs. Then I made tacos, they were scrumptious if I dare say so, with dry-rubbed meat, refried beans (from a can), sour cream, lettuce and homemade salsa.

I started watching a documentary on a forgotten proto-punk band from the 70s called Death, made up of three brothers (both in the sense of blood relatives, and African-Americans). Then at 10 PM I paused it to hop on a Zoom call with my dad and uncles. It only took 33 minutes before they started talking about Donald Trump, which is still a bit surprising given how ol’ Donny is nearly irrelevant at this point.