Chapter 236

I woke up at 10 and cleaned the puddle of urine and the little pile of turds left on the bathroom floor by the dog. He’s fully trained now and we don’t even put those diaper pads on the ground, but he’s used to go for a walk early, something his dad is too lazy to wake up for, on his last few days of vacation. I took him out anyway, and we walked around the apartment complex.

I made English muffins and eggs and watched the Manny Pacquiao retirement fight. First there were two Mexican veterans going at it, and then Pacman against a Cuban guy named Yordenis Ugas. It was... pretty boring, dare I say. I love boxing as a discipline and the whole pageantry around it and its long history and culture, but high level matches like these tend to just be very linear, with little momentum changes and the guys are so tough and good at defense that they just exchange combos without anything really affecting their output. Despite 95% of the build-up being about the Filipino legend, Ugas won fairly comfortably and retained his welterweight title, well, one of the several welterweight titles.

I then wanted to listen to music while I read Musashi. Taake is a well-known underground Norwegian black metal band and aside from their solid catalog, the band got a bit of internet fame (in the obscure corners of the internet that I lurk) for a picture of the frontman performing live and his penis coming out of a hole in his pants. “Rock out with your cock out” was the caption. So even though it’s good Trve Norwegian black metal I can’t help to smile when I hear that band. Then I listened to At The Gates’s The Red In The Sky Is Ours, after browsing metal news and seeing that the legendary Swedish band is releasing an album and that I had only listened to their über-classic Slaughter Of The Soul, a monumental album that laid the foundations for melodic death metal and unfortunately outshines the hell out of the rest of their discography. The Red In The Sky Is Ours, their debut album, was in a similar vein but much more chaotic and with strange violin interludes, I enjoyed it. Then I played the new Sodom EP, with one re-recording of their old classic track Bombenhagel with plenty of seemingly improvised solos, and two new tracks. Sodom slays, nothing more to say about it, and I’m always happy when they drop a few tracks.

I had a Wechat conversation with an old friend, the guy I ate oat noodles with in Beijing. We often argue about politics, and after reading the entry from two days ago he disagreed with my premise that some cultures are better than others. We went at length debating mostly about the semantics and relevance of such a statement, and it was a fun discussion. I won’t rehash the arguments brought forth by both sides, because it would probably have a bias on my part, but it was a fun talk. I like having smart friends.

At night, I made hummus and pan-fried chunks of pork. We ate while watching The Office and then I played Mount & Blade for a bit, there’s one faction in the game who are kind of like the Mongols, and most of their offense is made up of horse archers. They’re very frustrating to fight, because they just buzz around like bees and the battles take forever to conclude.