I just found this video from my archive. It showed how I celebrated New Year with Ned and Ivan at Ivan’s bunker in Beijing. It was the year 2005. As usual we cooked up a storm. It is our pleasure to share the secret recipe with our loyal readers and wish you all a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Tattoo admonishment number 47: Make sure your tattooist is literate.
47.a: If your not fully literate, do not get a tattoo.
I have warned Ivan that if he doesn’t get a tattoo, he will be deported from America!
Our friend Ivan tells us that his fiancee, Hypatia de la Pink, has given him a gift certificate for Christmas, to go to “Ahab’s Tattoo Parlor” and get a tattoo. This offer will remain valid throughout the 12 days of Christmas, until January 6, 2009, the feast of Epiphany in Ivan’s barbarian Catholic Church which so savagely refuses to acknowledge sodomy as a sacrament.
Ivan has suggested a few ideas for his tattoo. Upon his suggestion, Catherine and I have begun a poll. But our friends are all welcome to make other suggestions for Ivan’s tattoo.
This is a continuation of a discussion that I have been having with our friend JR at JustRecently’s Beautiful Blog. I at first intended to post this as a comment at JR’s blog. Unfortunately it contains too many links and has been causing some technical problems. So I am posting it here instead. I would like to advise our readers to read the original blog post at JR’s first before reading my comment below. I would also like to invite you to leave your comment about this video at JR’s blog. To that end, I have decided to close comments for this blog post.
To JR:
I understand your argument. But I also want you to know that I did not invent the possible scenario about the video being a spoof. This is the link to the Chinese BBS thread that I consulted last night before I left my comment at your blog. I have no intention of translating any portion of that BBS thread because I only translate articles from an authenticated and worthwhile source. I know your Chinese is good enough to read most of them. But if you have problems with some of the Internet slang, send me an email and I’ll be happy to give you a hand.
There have been more developments about the video since I last wrote to you:
After TPD accused anti-CNN of orchestrating this “2009 Go China” saga, the people at anti-CNN claimed to have joined hands with the Human Flesh Search Engines and apparently hunted down the author of the poem. The poem’s putative author is now accusing the so-called pan-democratic right-wingers at the blog portal “club2.cat898″ of wrongly publicising the video as some kind of subversive anti-government propaganda. She then declared her patriotic intention in filming the video. She also condemned the netizens concerned for politicising a totally innocent school event for their own purpose.
Here are some relevant links if you are interested in exploring further:
1. The link to the anti-CNN BBS thread in response to TPD’s accusation.
2. The school website that contains a New Year celebration gala event program, which features the performance of this poem.
3. A blogger at Bullog pointing out the presumably subversive messages in the poem.
4. The author of the poem’s self-defence against the accusations of subversion.
5. The author of the poem’s public announcement (and confession) of her position in this matter.
In my humble opinion, this whole thing sounds very much like a re-enactment of the Cultural Revolution. The truth is: we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. To add more flavour to the pot, I want to point out that the school concerned is a Senior High School. In other words, the students in that school are older than those in the video. If you search the school’s website, you will not be able to find the name of the poem’s author among the names of the teaching staff. Meanwhile, there is suddenly a blog post at Bullog calling for the criticism of Lian Yue 连岳 and his recent article on education reform. Lian Yue is considered one of the most popular and influential bloggers in the Chinese language blogosphere. His article on education reform is listed as the most popular blog post at Bullog. When I logged on a minute ago, the article had been read 52778 times. There were 260 comments, some very well written. There were also a total of 420 recommendations.
My question is: What is TPD doing in the midst of this second coming of a Cyber-Cultural-Revolution?
Bullog 牛博网, a progressive blog portal, becomes the next victim of a purge that has swept across the blogosphere in China since the release of Charter 08. As a result, Bullog lost two of its most popular bloggers: Ran Yunfei 冉云飞 and Baozuitun 饱醉豚 (literally translated as the Gluttonous Suckling Pig). It is believed that both bloggers were suspended for publishing articles about the Charter. Ran Yunfei is also among the first group of 303 signatories.
It is regrettable how Luo Yonghao 罗永浩, the owner of Bullog, once considered a very “bull” (Chinese Internet jargon for “cool”) blogger himself, had to succumb to pressure from the CCP censors in order to protect his site from closure. Read the rest of this entry »
Click here for a special online Russian lesson, as a Christmas present from our friend Ivan to all of you.
Catherine and I just want to share this joyful Christmas music, from China, with all of our friends:
Our friend Ivan, formerly of the China-Blogosphere, has moved back to America. Here’s an email he sent us for Christmas Eve:
Dear Ned and Catherine,
Christmas greetings from Idaho!
First I want to thank Ned for the case of vodka, my favorite brand from Kazakhstan, the one that comes in an assortment of different unlabeled jars. And thanks for the gift subscription to Soldier of Fortune magazine. I’ve ordered one for you too, using your name and address on the postcard that said “bill me later”.
My fiancee, Hypatia de la Pink, gave me a lap dance for Christmas at the place where we first met, in the third booth from the left at her place of work. And according to our personal little tradition, she invited me to stuff a ten dollar bill into her g-string. I always ask her if it’s “sexual harassment” for me to do that at her workplace, but she always assures me that it’s not.
Her children, my soon-to-be-stepchildren, Josiah-Reagan (age 13), Manuel (age 15, according to Immigration) and Shanika (age 16), all look forward to Christmas Eve in “Uncle Ivan’s” bunker. Hypatia appreciates my multicultural sensitivity, especially when it comes to her children. She says, “Ivan, you’re the only man I know who’s ever been able to make peace between those little bastards.” But multiculturalism isn’t so hard, if you have enough weed and vodka and ammunition.
Little Josiah-Reagan has finished his first year of missionary training in the Church of the Aryan Savior. Now (did I tell you yet?) as I recently converted to Mormonism, I’ve been able to mediate as a neutral between Josiah-Reagan and his stepbrother Manuel, who is a devout Catholic. Manuel says he loves “Jesus and Che”. But he seems to think “Jesus” (he pronounces it “hay-zoos”) is the guy who tattooed his name on Manuel’s chest. Anyway, whenever Josiah-Reagan and Manuel begin calling each other “Yankee Imperialist” and “Godless Communist Scum”, I remind Manuel that it is insensitive to call Josiah-Reagan a “yankee”, as he regularly attends KKK rallies. And I remind Josiah-Reagan that it is insensitive to suggest that any native speaker of Spanish is a Communist, because most Hispanics have very Christian names like “Fidel”.
As for Shanika, she will soon give birth to her first son, and she plans to name him “Barack the Secondiferous”. I’ve given her a Koran for Christmas, and she told me, “you know where you can put this”, and I knew she meant “under the tree”.
And I’ve invited some local members of my local Mormon Church over for some vodka. Several of them have showed up already, after their businesses were ruined by “homosexual community” boycotts. Now that they’re unemployed, they do deserve a few drinks.
So you see, I really do believe in “diversity”. Actually, I believe in it far more than most Americans do. Here’s a song by (Jewish) Tom Lehrer, which summarises my thoughts about the American cult of “sensitivity” in the Age of Obama:
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