Chapter 145

I got up at 7:30. My disciplined habit of being up at 6 on weekdays is falling apart, I felt like I needed extra sleep after a double workout and also I don’t really need to slowly start my day when I’m doing a whole load of fuckall all morning anyway.

I had a nice surprise waiting for me in the office, the metal zines I had ordered were there. It took over two months for the snail mail to bring them over from France but I was glad they finally arrived. I’ll have some nice reading to do over the next months.

No classes, the twelfth-graders are gone. I listened to some good ol’ black metal in the office, an Icelandic band called Misþyrming and a French band called Regarde Les Hommes Tomber, before switching to the complex deathgrind of Yautja, a band I had never heard of before today. Then I watched a documentary about inbreeding in the British-Pakistani community, which made me furious. Those people are extremely overrepresented in the rare genetic diseases statistics despite their small percentage of the total population, due to a bunch of them marrying their cousins. Some would say that such a documentary is white supremacy fodder because right-wingers might cite those stats in their anti-mass-immigration rhetoric but the main journalist in there is Pakistani-British herself, the doctors present the facts with their common near-autistic detachment, and plenty of young Pakistani-British are interviewed and say how much they oppose the idea of marrying one’s cousin and how it’s backwards and forced. I’d say it’s pretty damn objectively disgusting. Some of the suffering that their children experience is truly sickening, and even more sickening is the mother blaming (in Urdu with subtitles though she’s been in Britain forever) hospitals and doctors rather than her own gross negligence and adherence to the most backwards of customs. Three of her children are blind and do nothing all day but moan in pain, this shit is the very definition of child abuse.

I then found myself on Reddit on a page called “Chiraqology”, chronicling and glorifying the insane gang violence taking place in Chicago. I clicked on links I maybe shouldn’t have, seeing videos of young men gunning one another. What a fucked up culture. It doesn’t even seem to have the “it’s only business” underlying theme of organized crime, it’s just black kids making shitty rap tracks and murdering “opps” for no reason than the thrill of killing, which leads to a neverending cycle of violence.

Midway through the morning there was an awards ceremony for a science poster contest. Two women came from the corporate office and handed out trophies and certificates to the students, one by one, and then they called all of them and the teachers for a group photo. None of the students stood up, they looked around with puzzled expressions on their faces, before the head teacher repeated in their language. I sometimes find myself thinking it’s condescending to repeat basic instructions in Chinese but no, a bunch of our students (especially in grade 10) can barely understand three words of English, and the Chinese staff will try their best-ah to ensure it remains that way, god forbid they get a functional command of the language before going to their American or British university.

I went home and made myself a tomato sandwich and boiled some eggs to get some of dat good protein to feed my huge bulging muscles. I watched a video titled 25 Most Stupid Moments In Game Of Thrones, and boy oh boy were there some gems of extraordinary retardation in the steaming piles of shit that are the latter seasons. Those two writers truly are absolute derps. I also saw that Dexter is going to have a reboot and I have to say I’m somewhat looking forward to it, I didn’t hate the latter seasons and the ending nearly as much as many fans did, and it was (by design or by accident) left open for a sequel at some point down the road. The one article I read talks about a true crime podcaster finding out he’s still alive and out there, I foresee something similar to Season 2, in which Dexter is the hunted more than the hunter.

I had a pretty bad headache, not sure why, maybe from staring at a computer screen for too long. I took the dog out and he ran after a striped cat, but the cat didn’t flee, he stood his ground and clawed aggressively. Our dog yelled “E!” and ran away. He was unscathed, or at least he didn’t bleed, hopefully he’ll learn.

I rode back to school, listening to the Jocko Willink podcast. He had one of his SEAL buddies on and they were reminiscing killing people in Iraq the same way I swap old party stories with my buddies. I saw that the line-up for the second edition of the Global Grindcore Alliance online fest is out, and Gride will be there, a Czech punk/grind band with an extensive catalog of short, fast, angry songs. I listened to one of their compilations and it was nice ear candy.

We had a meeting, the principal had updates about the holiday and Covid policies. The Powers-That-Be published a list of 14 blacklisted countries, if you go there your Chinese visa and residence permit will be immediately cancelled. Among them are South Africa, the UK and Canada. “Big lad countries!” my British coworker cheered. That’s weird, I thought they were in the process of deconfining. Also the mandatory quarantine just got upped to three weeks. Sounds like pure hell, I’ll stay in China, thanks. We also got told not to merely let the eleventh-graders self-study but to teach them review classes, which is something I was planning on doing anyway, starting tomorrow, as their last exams loom over the horizon.

Half of Attitude Class is not taking further maths so they went home already, I watched the remainder study for 45 minutes before going home. I ate fried chicken and drank a Duvel IPA while watching a Dark Side Of The Ring documentary about Collision In Korea, that one time in the mid-90s when WCW and Japanese wrestlers went to Pyongyang. I went to North Korea a few years ago and it was awesome, it truly felt like traveling back in time.

I had errands to run and the dog wanted to run around, so I went to the park with a camping chair, a beer and my Kindle. There was a young boy and his grandpa playing with a kite, and soon he started running after the dog too, who was a very receptive playmate. The kid was very curious and friendly and asked me a bunch of silly questions, a good time was had by all. The sun was slowly going down and a lot of people were outside enjoying the nice weather, families, senior citizens, dogs, and though I can’t really say I feel a sense of community (I’m atomized as fuck and don’t know the names of any of my neighbors except Qiuqiu, Pengpeng, Niuniu and all the other dogs) I at least feel like it’s a nice place to live, especially compared to murderous southside Chicago or inbred Birmingham, England or dystopian Pyongyang. My morning reading depressed me a lot, there is some ugliness in this world, but now after relaxing in the park and playing with that happy little kid and watching the people hanging out, I felt better. I bought laundry soap, peanuts and beer and walked home.

I still had a headache and felt a bit under the weather though, so I went to bed around 9, read a metal magazine and then fell asleep.