Chapter 329

I had another weird-ass dream, I was in some kind of gritty warehouse covered with graffiti and Spill Your Guts were playing on stage. I stood on the sidelines, watching the band play and the hardcore kids mosh, when some policemen said it was too violent and ended the show. A big metal garage door slowly descended and blocked the view from the stage, and then we all had to exit through the creepy pastel-colored staircase from Squid Game. Weird.

I sent a picture of my grandfather, circa 1940, to the group chat I share with the girlfriend and her parents. Mama-in-law said he looks like me (something she says about nearly every Caucasian person) and asked if he’s the one who emigrated from France. I said no, he was the 10^th or 11^th generation, my first ancestor having arrived to North America around 1645. “Woah! That was during the Ming Dynasty!” And... yeah, a lot has happened in China since. I once wrote a short story, some kind of “historical what-if” in which I speculated what the world would be like if the Ming Emperor didn’t burn the imperial exploration fleet in a fit of autistic rage and instead encouraged the mighty admiral Zheng He and others to keep exploring, leading to their eventual arrival to America before the Spaniards and other Europeans. My fictional scenario led to a world roughly split three-way by the Ottomans, the Bengals and the Chinese, with medieval Europe being various vassal states of these empires, and eventually Chinese hegemony on the whole world. We’d be all speaking Chinese nowadays, and aside from a few improvements in the military or navel sectors, we’d still be living with 15^th-century technology, due to the Chinese cultural inability to innovate and their racist refusal to adopt inventions made by peoples deemed inferior to the GYR (Great Yellow Race). *

*If you think it’s racist to point out how racist the ancient Chinese were, I suggest you go take a look at primary sources from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. They were cartoonishly racist, and in fact that’s what led to their extremely isolationist policies and their near-downfall.

I wrote a whole bunch of essays and short stories, but they still sit on a hard drive, unpublished. I’ll see if one day I wanna put them out there.

I browsed the news, a high-profile tennis player named Peng Shuai accused some big honcho from the Communist Party of sexual harrassment, and now her social media accounts are scrubbed and her whereabouts are unknown. What the fuck?! This is cartoon-villain shit right there. I said it many times in many ways, but I like China. China has been good to me, and yes, I’m talking about both the people and the government. I admire how they went from third-world shithole to superpower in a span of time that’s barely believable. I think a lot of the criticism they get are unfounded, exaggerated, dated, or based on pure bullshit. I like the fact that a lot of problems that are just seen as “part and parcel of living in a Western country” are virtually absent here. I like and respect the Chinese patriotism and commitment to build their country even further, compared with the gangrenous western ethnomasochism. I see people who criticize China for taking an ever-increasing place on the world stage as huge fucking hypocrites, especially if they’re Western Europeans, doubly so if they’re Americans.

And I do see a lot of merit to the Chinese political system. But stories like that make me want to vomit. Even with all the above in mind, I could never fully get behind such a system, in which there’s damn nearly zero accountability. Yes, dictatorships can accomplish great things and bypass the grotesque inefficiency of democratic systems, but it can also very easily devolve in tyrannical abuse. Hell, I even feel weird putting this opinion online, and I’m under no illusion whatsoever that doing it anonymously protects me in any way. Fuck.

Aside from that, I went through my day like a good worker bee, teaching Catatonic Class and Crazy Class. They were a bit more attentive than usual, as I went through the answers of the post-lab reports. In the afternoon I had Strong Class, but when I walked in, they were all gone except one guy still hastily gathering his stuff. He said they have some activity and the last two periods are canceled.

“What activity?”

“A science fair”

Nonplussed, I went back to the office. My coworker also walked back with his stuff. He seemed a bit more peeved than I was about the lack of communication, and the quasi-insult that is not inviting us, science teachers, to a school-wide science fair.

So I chilled in the office. At some point, I clicked on a link to a ten-second video that got me laughing out loud, which is always a bit embarassing in an office. It was of a haggard-looking Joe Biden saying “Time is money. As one computer said, if you’re on the train and they say Portal Bridge you know you better make other plans.” I played it a second, and then a third time, and still have no fucking idea what any of that means.

I went home. It was a rest day, and the girlfriend wasn’t there. I looked for something to do, and ended up watching documentaries about pro wrestling. I also unwrapped the sausage I made and cut a slice, it was good, but a bit bland. I salted and peppered the outside, brushed it with liquid smoke and let it air-dry on a rack. I also made chicken broth with leftover bits of carcass, onions, celery, carrots and garlic, and after two hours simmering, I drank a bowl. And another one.

I rode the longboard with the dog to go meet the girlfriend at her workplace, and she drove us back. She was all alarmed, apparently there’s been like three Covid cases reported in Shanghai and now she thinks our lives are all gonna be flipped upside down. My fate is in the hands of Jesus Christ and Xi Jinping, and I submit to Their will.

We walked the dog to the mailboxes, got the package of wine, gin and whiskey I had ordered, and then watched an episode of Foundation together. It’s entertaining but also a little stupid, and the Israel Adesanya-lookalike main character gets on my nerves. I heavily dislike the cliché trope of the young but misunderstood character placed in a position of power and who is communicating exclusively in sassy, sarcastic and brusque one-liners. I was ready to go to bed when it finished, with the help of a tasty glass of whiskey, but I had a Skype call scheduled with my dad. We discussed new possible or confirmed developments in our respective lives, it will soon be two years since we met in person and will likely extend into much longer, with the grinding halt on easy international travel and what not. Still, he is very supportive of my endeavors and I appreciate that a lot.

We also talked about current events, he’s slowly waking up to the shenanigans orchestrated by malicious actors pulling the strings and causing all the western ethnomasochism, notably in that cringeworthy circus act of “apologizing for being on unceded Native American land”. But he doesn’t seem to understand how this extends to the racist terrorist attack that happened in Wisconsin two days after the Rittenhouse verdict (coincidence?), in which a militant black nationalist plowed through a crowd with a truck, and the media pretty much covered it up, obfuscating the rather undeniable motive and thus ending up protecting a black man. Perhaps in 1965 that would be an absurd idea, but given how hell-bent they are now at pushing the narrative that “white supremacy” is the most dangerous thing in the USA now, it makes a lot of sense. (See also: Timothy Simpkins)