Well I’m getting pretty restless over here and miss my life and friends back in Hangzhou terribly but check out what I found in my front yard the other day.

This is something that almost never happens in China. Largely because China has no wildlife because the land is too dirty. Oh they have rats, and a few squirrels protected in their national parks, and that “special” wildlife reserve where they don’t allow the patrons to throw lit cigarettes and all other sorts of inedible detritus at, like, the three pandas they got left. Which is sad because unlike China’s spoiled monkey population the national animal of China will never be able to inulge in the calming, smooth burning joy that is a cigarette from a 3 kuai pack of Sichuan’s finest tobacco concern. But I digress, all I’m saying is it’s damn rare you get to look out your front window in China and watch a large bird of prey swoop down and totally bitchslap a rodent which I think was a chipmunk or squirrel but it was hard to tell because only the bottom half was left. I got about five feet away from it before my dogs barrelled out of the house and scared it off, but prior to my idiot dogs ruining my reconnection with nature I decided to go out and rediscover the wildlife in my own back yard. Here are some pictures.

I live in Florida which is like living in a perpetual nature documentary, if nature documentaries were filled with slack-jawed fuckin’ rednecks. Not to speak too begrudgingly of my home state but it’s chock full o’ fuck nuts. It’s a beautiful state and thoroughly modern, no mass transportation (sorry poor people), but nice. And with the exception of the mosquitoes, love bugs (thanks a bunch University of Florida) and the huge cockroaches, it’s a nature lovers paradise. And if you, like me, have a soft spot for the herpetological check out this picture I took.

This particular species is commonly referred to as the Giant Camo Blood Devil Dragon of Hades. Hey, I don’t name’em. I just read the scientological books where the facts are contained about this DEADLY species. Measuring 6 feet from stem to stern (reptilian for: head to tail) and having “enviro-adaptable” scales this species blends in with its background laying in wait for its favorite prey…people. I was able to sneak up on this one while he was sunning himself on the warm gunwale of an overturned, rusting, Civil war ironclad that’s nearby my house. A relic of the famous Battle at Ne’erhappenedon it provides an ideal location for bloodthirsty dragons such as this one. To give you some idea as to the size of this unrelenting beast look at the chain link. One of those links is as big as I am (which is enormous). Apparently I got too close to this ornery son of Gorgon and Garoyle and it began to LITERALLY bark flaming piss at me. I made myself scarce and headed to what looked like the calmer area of land when I snapped a photo of this elusive bird.

The Cobra Necked Cunt Bill! Deadliest of Florida’s water birds. At a staggering 21 feet tall the Cobra Necked Cunt Bill boasts an impressive 86 foot wingspan. Weighing in at half a metric ton the bird, affectionately referred to by locals as “Ol’ Cunty,” loves to gorge itself on Hillshire Farms Christmas Sampler Baskets and Big League Chew. Thanks in no small part to its under wing lasers and razor sharp “cunt” bill Ol’ Cunty has no natural enemies other than crocodiles, which are laserproof, and man, who has bigger lasers and is, more oft than not, a bigger cunt. After snapping this photo with the glimmer of the setting sun rippling off the lake I had to pause a moment at the majesty of this bucolic scene and whisper, “My God, that is one regal cunt.”

So as I while away my time here waiting with baited breath for the call that brings me back to Hangzhou, I find solace in sitting at my front window, my camera in tow, waiting for nature to reveal itself to me in all its glory.

This is the result of the sexual preference test I took. And they are accurate too. Because this test was totally on the internet. The following are the results. Telling you who I am sexually.

Straight PreferenceYou scored 22 (-52 being completely gay, 0 being bisexual, and 52 being completely straight)

You are not exclusively heterosexual, but you prefer the opposite sex over the same sex. While you might be willing to fool around with the same sex to some extent, you would go all the way with the opposite sex. If you are sexually inexperienced (which I’m totally not), it is possible that this could change after you do some experimenting (Could it? I think not. I draw the line at second base for men. Sorry Wilson. [insert pimped out ‘96 Prelude driven by a frowny face smiley.])

And that’s the graph that shows where I am. And you know it’s scientific because IT’S A GRAPH. In your face wags. Scientific proof I don’t get it on with men unless they get me drunk first. You can pick me up at 7 Wilson. Make sure that lowered Civic is modified…with bourbon and Lionel Ritchie.

If you want to find out who you are and what you want…sexually (wink wink, British, Vincent Pricey accent and mustache twirling) click the following: The Sexuality Spectrum Test http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=12680914741600896164

part 1 of an ongoing series:

I don’t really have a lot of time to write out a big post about being back home in America, but I felt compelled to comment on this due to the sheer, undeniably blatant irony of it. The following is an excerpt from George W. Bush’s most recent speech to the American people:

“Some call this evil Islamic radicalism. Others militant jihadism. Still, others Islamo-fascism… we’re not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We’re facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world.”

Hmm. A, “radical ideology with unalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world.” Why does that sound so familiar? Where have I heard this before? Could it be that…oh yeah!…that statement completely and totally describes how the rest of the world views the United States. A bunch of power hungry, oil stealing, mass murdering fuckwits, who have given the proverbial finger to the international community and invaded not one but two countries that have done very little to us (especially our pure American soil.) Man, I can’t believe Bush pulled that off with a straight face. The fucking audacity of that idiotic cunt. And the IRONY!! Oh the sweet, sweet irony. Yeah I can’t tell you how much the Middle Eastern community in central Florida has been busting my ass to join the nation of Islam. Compared to the right wing fuckin’ southern Baptists, not that God damn much. Although I will say that the Middle-Eastern community did enslave me to hummus. But that stuff is just delicious, and healthy. I was a willing victim in that flavor jihad. Just start bombing me with falafel and pita bread and I’ll be one happy camper.

Speaking of irony, last month, I came back home to what I think is still the “land of the free and the home of the brave” (though that might have been axed with the approval of the newest Patriot Act) to find that I have less freedom here (in a country that was founded on it), than I did in a authoritarian communist country. I had more freedom in CHINA than I have in the United States of America. For Christ’s sake the news is arguably more objective on CCTV-9 than it is on any of the major American networks. The thing is, in China there is no doubt who’s running the show. The citizens of America are sitting idly by and not doing a fucking thing about it. What’s worse is a whole fucking lot of them are buying Hummers! Gas is $3.00 gallon you fucking vomit twats! George W. Bush (who granted is a figure head) and his tyrannical handlers are sinking this country into the deepest circles of hell and not only are they getting away with it people still ACTUALLY SUPPORT them!

I almost have to tip my hat to the Bush administration and say, “Well done old chap. Well done indeed.” They have kicked the shit out of the American people and are standing with their jackboots pushing against our collective windpipes and we’re struggling, not to free ourselves from their stranglehold, but to unzip their pants and jack them off while they kill us.

We, as American people, have failed. We deserve the misery we allowed George W. Bush and his administration to sink us into. And I for one will be the first to recognize China as the next great leader of the United States of the People’s Repulic of China. So while I still have the freedom of speech that our constitution grants us, I’d like to say to George W. Bush,

“Fuck You. Fuck you for raping and defiling the country I love so much. Fuck you for vilifying the American people in the eyes of every other citizen on the face of the planet and fuck you for allowing them to be justified in their caustic opinions of us. You’re an ignorant, oblivious, evil man and you are to blame for the destruction of this country. Oh and nice work in New Orleans. You fuckin’ retard.”

VIEWER MAIL!!

In a recent post located below entitled, “Sticking It to the Man,” I talk about how I paid a “suspect” power bill with a whole lot of jiao. Since posting I’ve received a veritable flood of comments (4). But one stuck out the most which you can read uneditted as follows:

“Dude, 225 US dollars for a year’s bill, I hope your parents didn’t have to mortgage the house! This same kind of thing happened to me, I got stuck with a $300 cell phone bill for 10 hours of international calls, those bastard phone people! They didn’t even have the common decency to have bills hand-delivered to me twice daily by the CEO. But I’m such a BADASS I showed them, I sent 33,333.333 anthrax-laden checks for 0.9 cents (like you see at gas stations) each. 46 people died as a result, it was AWESOME. You bill me? I DON’T THINK SO! Ok I made that up, I’m not really a retarded douchebag asshole who can’t handle paying a bill I quite obviously earned.” jeebs | 08.01.05 - 3:39 pm |

I was quite taken aback by the vituberative tone of his comment so I went back to reread my post to see where it might have sprang from. It was then that I realized that in order to spare my school’s already “sterling” reputation I left out a lot of important information that would have clarified, for people like Jeebs, why I chose to pay the bill the way I did. So to show all you out there that internet super-stardom has not gone to my head like it has with others (John Pasden at Sinosplice…Feel my sting!!) I have decided to reply to this comment personally. I would have sent Jeebs a private email but he chose to leave his comment anonymously (like a man) and under, what I suspect is, a pseudonym (equaly manly). So please enjoy my open letter to Jeebs explaining why I paid my utilities bill with a lot of jiao.

Dear Jeebs (if that is your real name),

Thank you so much for your sarcastic and belittling comment. You are obviously a man of high moral standards and integrity. However, allow me an attempt to explain why I paid this bill in such a manner. Perhaps I didn’t make it obvious enough in the original post but the bill you say I, “quite obviously earned” is something of an untruth. Unbeknownst to the heads of the university I teach at (and, believe you me, it was a hard job to get on account of my “retardation”) the building managers of the teachers’ residence building (where the teachers live) have an unsavory practice of housing themselves, their cronies, and their mistresses in the vacant rooms that are reserved for and to be used by the university’s teaching staff. The building managers and their friends/family/fuck buddies use these apartments (conveniently located next to, across from or adjoining the foreign teachers’ residences) as a sort of “clubhouse home away from home.” [Their actual homes are located a few floors beneath ours.]

So when the monthly electricity bills come to the building manager showing the amount of electricity that they “never used” because they are “forbidden” to reside in apartments reserved for teachers they doctor the books that show room by room usage and tack on their expenditures to the closest rooms to the ones they are “not” using which, unfortunately, happen to be mine and the other foreign teachers. As long as the money is accounted for the building managers’ superiors tend to not notice the fact that there are vacant rooms that are continually running up bills. All they see is the doctored room by room usage sheet that they create and submit. So Jeebs, I wasn’t just paying my bill, I was protecting their corrupt way of life by paying for electricity they used. Oh, and should I add that these same building managers make it a regular practice to enter into the rooms of the foreign teachers and steal things? I left that out as well because I didn’t feel the need to jeopardize this school’s already tentative reputation because of a couple corrupt rapscallions.

In conclusion, I hope you now understand that I wasn’t just inconveniencing some poor, innocent Chinese people for a gag and a giggle, but inconveniencing a couple of thieving, lying ne’er-do-wells who’s only purpose in life is to get as much as they can by doing as little as they can with no regard for the legality of their actions. I may be a, as you say, “retarded, douchebag asshole,” but I fight the good fight. Something, I would a assume, a self-righteous prick like yourself would appreciate.

Yours fondly and forever, Greg

P.S. You should try not to use “retard” or any of its derivatives as negative jibes against another person. People affected with mental handicaps like Down’s Syndrome already have an uphill battle to fight. Their struggle should not be our fodder for jokes. I would expect a man as beyond reproach as you to have chosen a more suitable word with which to degrade me. What are you? A fuckin’ retard?

I’m Awarded Teacher of the Year

The Spring semester ended with little fanfare, then about 3 days after I entered my grades into the computer to let my kids know quantitatively how much they suck I received a phone call from one of my collegues in the foreign language department who informed me that my combined (Fall/Spring) teacher evaluations were the highest of any of the other teachers and they would be awarding me with “Teacher of the Year.”

Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised. I always knew I got evaluated, though I’d only ever seen one of them, and I’ve always been told they were good but I’d never gotten any confirmation as to how good they were until I received this phone call. It was a wonderful surprise. The driving motivation behind my teaching (which has now been gauged as THE BEST…EVER) has been my genuine care for my students. Not only in their linguistical development, but in their development as a person. I strive everyday to help my students achieve their dreams and more. To not only succeed as a student, but to succeed in life.

Now that I have concrete, scientific proof that illustrates ON A GRAPH! that I’m the best ESL teacher…IN THE WORLD, I thought I would share with you some of the strategies I’ve used that have made me “Teacher of the Year”…FOR THE ENTIRE GALAXY!!

1. Instill confidence in them. Anyway you can. If you want to be the best…IN THE WORLD…like me, you have to get your students to understand how great and capable they are. This is an uphill battle in China considering their educational background. Chinese educational methods do nothing to develop a student for the future. It is a soul shattering, confidence squashing maelstrom of memorization and ideological programming. There is no room for independent thought hence creativity and analytical thinking skills are almost non-existent by the time they get to college. Chinese students don’t want to learn English, they want to memorize it, and you can’t memorize a language. Language is amorphus and evolving , there is no formula you can plug in to generate intelligble output to received input.

Example: Chinese students hear the phoneme string “input”, “haOW R U,” and collectively respond with the preprogrammed “output”, “Fine, thank you. And you?” Their coherent reply gives the impression of understanding when in fact there is none. Change the input to, “How are all of you doing today,” or “How’s it going?” and the students do not respond. They look dumbfounded because they were expecting to hear something else. They hear but don’t understand.

1. Emphasize usage and comprehension over mandatory test preparation. China’s test-based method of student evaluation is fundamentally flawed when evaluating students’ language skill, comprehension, and fluency. This is due to the fact that the majority of their Chinese English teachers can not actually speak English. So instead of adequately training Chinese English teachers so that they can actually teach English, they, the Caring Compassionate Powers that be, develop inane tests like the CET-4. I’ve had students that passed the CET-4 and CET-6 the first time they took it but could not hold a five minute, casual conversation with me:

Me: How were your exams?

Random student who passed the CET-4: (10 seconds of “Uh”s and “nage nage nage nage”) I go canteen to (“uh” proceeded by miming the shoveling of food into one’s mouth).

On the other hand I have students struggling to pass the CET-4 who have no problem conversing with me on a wide range of topics. The following conversation actually took place in one of my sophomore Oral English classes:

Me: Tell me what you know about Japanese culture.

Student who failed the CET-4: They enjoy eating pooh!

Me: Excuse me?

Student who failed the CET-4: Really. They eat pooh. It’s very expensive to buy.

Me: (sighing) They buy pooh?

Student who failed CET-4: Yes, it’s documented. I read it on the internet.

Me: So….has anybody seen the new Star Wars movie?

This student who had previously admitted to me that s/he had failed the CET-4 twice had no problem perpetuating and expressing his/her racist, stereotypical knowledge of Japanese culture to me in the English language. What does this prove? Obviously, the second student had a higher level of English ability than the first, yet as far as the school was concerned the first student was more apt due to his passing of the CET-4. Proving to me…THE BEST ESL TEACHER IN THE WORLD!! that standardized testing cannot accurately gauge a student’s actual language ability. It only proves, like most standardized tests do, that some students are better test takers than others.

1. Explain to them and make them understand that everything their previous Chinese teachers taught them about the English language and how to learn it is wrong. I don’t mean to make big, sweeping generalizations about the low quality of education provided by Chinese English teachers. I happen to know more than a few exceptionally talented Chinese English teachers, but they are outnumbered by about a thousand to one. And considering this country lives, breathes and exists on big, sweeping generalizations I don’t feel bad using one to describe how much Chinese English teachers suck. I wouldn’t be so brusque about this if it wasn’t so blatently obvious that entire generations of this nation’s children are receiving an inadequate education and this viscious cycle will continue on and on until something is done about it. The fundamental problem is that so many of these teachers can not speak the language. I took Spanish in high school and college. I can speak it rather well. Do I attempt to teach it to anyone else? No. Why? Because when it comes down to brass tax I CAN’T REALLY FUCKIN’ SPEAK SPANISH! Hola! Como esta usted? Yo estoy bien, y tu? does not a fuckin’ Spanish teacher make! If this is all you can really say in English you shouldn’t be an English teacher.

2. Make lessons fun and have them build upon one another. Show how basic skills, once mastered, can be used to construct more advanced levels of communication. Teaching Greek and Latin roots really helped my students excel on their reading comprehension tests. I made them all “codebreakers” for the day and we had contests to see who could decipher common words found in science, math and nature the quickest. Now when they read and their eyes fall upon a big words they don’t recognize they don’t just freeze up and go for their electronic dictionaries but attempt to find the greek or latin roots in it and break the word down and define it themselves.

3. Encourage them to ask questions. Make them understand that their is no shame in asking questions, just like there is no shame in not knowing an answer. If you are going to master a language you have to love making mistakes. That previous sentence is a quote from some famous person I can’t remember, but I can tell you he or she isn’t TEACHER OF THE YEAR this year. I know because I AM…IN THE WORLD. I tell my students all the embarrassing encounters I’ve had since I came to China and made mistakes trying to communicate in Chinese. It helps put them at ease.

4. Do whatever you can. Do whatever it takes. It’s easy to get frustrated teaching over here and it’s easy to give up and I know I come off sounding like a complete asshole on this website but I wouldn’t be over here for as long as I have if I didn’t love helping these students. And if you haven’t figured it out yet this site is for laughs and is not indicative of my true personality. Since I started here at ZUCC I’ve seen 12 of my students from my very first class, who when I first met them wouldn’t speak a word of English, go abroad to study and can now hold entire conversations with me in English. And that’s what it comes down to. That’s why we put up with the all the bullshit. And that’s why I’M THE FUCKING TEACHER OF THE FUCKING YEAR!! SUCK IT!

Here’s a picture of me in action:

Sticking It to the Man

Here’s a tip for all you ESL teachers in China. When you decide that your tenure at the school you are teaching at is drawing to a close, delay telling anyone at the school (Namely your Foreign Affairs Officer, or any teachers that are vying for your sweet “Foreign Teacher Liaison” position.) until the last possible minute. Better yet, don’t tell anyone at all. Take flight under cover of dark. Escape like a thief in the night. I say this because if your school is like mine, and from what my 3 readers have told me, they (schools in China) are all similar, they will try to bilk as much money out you as possible. They don’t see you off as warmly as they welcomed you. No, they release you from your contract as if they were forced to hire you from some prison rehabilitation program, and they KNOW you’re back to your old bootlegging ways.

I’ve been teaching here at Zhejiang University City College for the past two years. Every semester I was highly rated and well liked by both students and faculty. I almost never missed class, barring sickness, and really bad baijiu hangovers. I was always prepared and never lost my temper with students. I also never dated any. My composure and attitude towards my classes was almost always professional yet upon the announcement that I was leaving the bills came pouring in for excess utilities usage.

Since ZUCC began hiring foreign teachers, no one has ever paid a utilities bill. Until now. You see they haven’t changed the contract since they began hiring foreign teachers 3 years ago, yet utility costs have quadrupled in that time. We also had a particularly long, cold winter this year, so my heaters were running quite often. I have no doubt I went over the alloted RMB 200 they provide per month for utilities, but I would greatly prefer a monthly bill as opposed to one yearly bill they calculated at almost RMB 1800. They slid this under my door, at the end of the month when I have the least amount of money, and gave me 4 days to pay. Thanks a bunch.

I told them flat out, “Hey, I know what the contract says about excessive fees and I’ll pay it not like anyone else ever has, but for future reference and for the well being of the rest of the foreign teachers here, why not send them notices when they are going to run over on their utilities allowance and send them smaller monthly bills as opposed to not saying anything for 12 months and then dumping a big bill (with no documentation validating the charges on it [that’s right, I even speak in parentheticals]) on them 2 months before they return home.” So here I am, their best teacher ever (see above post), trying to leave the school as amicably as possible, and they douche me with this massive bill right before summer (we don’t get paid over summer). How am I supposed to pay this and still live comfortably on the meager salary (a pittance really) I’m paid.

Then it hit me. I’ll pay’em in jiao.

For those of you who don’t know (mom and dad) the jiao is the second smallest denomination of money China has next to the fenwhich is completely fuckin’ worthless. Seriously, back in the U.S. when Publishers’ Clearinghouse sends you the fake check for millions of fake dollars and at the bottom it states, “actual value 1/20 th of a penny,” that fake check is actually more valuable than a fen, that’s how worthless it is (please don’t check the math on that I’m just trying to make a point). Realizing that collecting that much fen in the time permitted would be near impossible to pay said bill I decided jiao was the way to go.

In two years I’ve collected a lot of jiao, but hardly the 18,000 I needed to fully pay the bill. However, I did have a lot floating around and I wasn’t going to waste them by just letting them continue to collect dust in my house so I got them all together and bagged them up. If I’m going to be the only person to pay this bill at least I’m going to make them work for it. Needless to say, even with the donations from other teachers (and I can’t thank you guys enough) here I fell far short of the amount I truly wanted, but I had way more than enough to piss off the corrupt bill collectors I had to pay. Here’s a picture of my actual payment with the bill:

Needless to say they weren’t pleased when I presented them my payment, but I explained to them that money’s money and if they expect the teachers to pay suspect utility bills then they need to get used to counting jiao. I got to tell you, it felt pretty sweet. It took’em over an hour to count. Mess with the bull, you get the horns.

Isn’t This a Sign of the Apocalypse?

Apparently there’s an outbreak of Bird Flu going around in Western China OR 8,000 birds collectively realized they live in Qinghai and killed themselves because Qinghai sucks. Either way, steer clear of Qinghai . That place blows, like Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny blows (no pun intended). Holy Whisky-Swilling Christ, anybody who has endured that fucking flick deserves to not only get blown by Chloe Sevigny, but get to lay waste to Vincent Gallo’s penis and testicles with a meat tenderizing hammer whilst she do it. That movie made me want to barf up my life. I’d prefer a bout of Bird Flu over a second viewing of that soul-shatteringly bad movie. Seriously, I’ll make out with an infected pelican like a two-tongued Frenchman before I subject myself to that, “World’s Greatest Waste of Celluloid,” a second time. Nazi propaganda films were in contention for that World’s Greatest title and The Brown Bunny still came away with the crown. That’s right, The Brown Bunny is less palatable than Nazism. So in conclusion:

= BAD

=WORSE

In Case You Didn’t Already See This (or for some God awful reason visit my site for the news*)

On CNN.com they have a story on China’s plan to further restrict internet blogging and expression. You can check it out here: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/06/07/china.internet.reut/index.html

You know China, I’m having a party this Friday. If you don’t cool it up some I don’t think you’ll be invited. Only cool coutries get invited to my awesome parties. Like Cameroon, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Those guys know how to party. And Iceland. They’re pretty slick too.

United States of America you know the deal. No invite until Bush is out of office. Don’t act like you don’t care, I got girls coming to this shindig. And I’m working on a new shot that combines Jim Beam and instant oatmeal. I call it a “Sludge Hammer.”

*Who am I kidding? No one reads this site.

Things the Chinese Really Wanted to Protest Before They Settled on Japan

For J. Doom

Since the start of the anti-Japanese protests I’ve been glued to the news, not so much the TV news because there isn’t much there and God knows not the newspapers; I believe the headlines in last Sunday and Monday’s editions of the People’s Daily were, “TV’s Webster Really Psyched About New Seafood Restaurant” and “Yao Ming Contemplates Amount of Cotton Used to Make His Shoelaces” respectively. Hardly a word could be found on what could be the start of a potentially serious international incident. For mainland Chinese folk the act of “losing one’s shit” is, by and large, an activity frowned upon by the Caring, Compassionate Powers that be. However, said powers know that once in a while people need to vent. Just so long as what the people are venting about is something completely unrelated to anything that even remotely resembles what they’re doing . Which brings us to Japan, the most obvious “external outlet” onto which the Chinese can safely vent their frustrations. I won’t get into particulars because I’ll assume most of you already know the reasons why these two countries have such a tentative relationship. So for the past three weekends hundreds of thousands of Chinese people have taken to the streets to protest Japan. But why?

What has Japan done recently to elicit such malignance from the Chinese? Okay, you got the new History textbooks, but no one’s really using them. You got them trying to get a seat on the U.N. Security council which, may not be in China’s best political interests, is their right. Mexico and Germany are also vying for spots on the U.N. Security council but I didn’t see any Chinese people burning piñatas or knocking over bratwurst carts. You got the atrocities caused by the Japanese during WWII, which is valid, no doubt, but it happened over 50 years ago, and Japan has apologized (though not formally like they did with South Korea) numerous times and invested hundreds of millions into China’s economy. I’m not saying any reason stated above isn’t valid or understandable but I think there was something more. So I went out on the street and interviewed thousands trying to find out what was really at the root of these demonstrations, what was really driving these marches and I found some shocking reoccurrences.

So below, I have the list (in no particular order) of the 40 things the Chinese really wanted to protest before they finally settled on Japan:

1. The growing gap between rich and poor

2. Adequate rights and protection for the working class

3. Enforcing Traffic Laws

4. Bob Seeger

5. The guy that sings that “Er ling ling” song.

6. Chinese Finger Traps

7. Not being allowed to protest

8. Rampant Government and Corporate Corruption

9. Consistently under-valuing the Yuan

10. Rice

11. Animal Rights and Protection

12. Those stinkin’ Laowai!!!

13. Avocado

14. Can’t get reservations at the “Hotel California”

15. Improved mine safety

16. The Tele-Tubby that likes smoking pole

17. Outlawing irony

18. Legalizing hypocrisy

19. Montgomery Ward

20. Letting bygones be bygones

21. The Ban on Porn (I’m leading that march)

22. Curbing air and water pollution and the subsequent illnesses associated with it.

23. Hickory Smoke

24. Trapper John M.D.

25. Lack of fat, stacked ass (That may just be me though. You don’t see many girls here wearing the J. Lo jeans is all I’m saying.)

26. Sexual and social discrimination

27. Me

28. The Right to Fight for the Right to Party

29. More Boobs

30. Lanolin

31. Chinese Education System

32. Eddie Money

33. That small penis stereotype. (I know some lads that are real keen on ushering in the “Hung Dynasty.” For real.)

34. German Hip-hop

35. Bull Durham

36. Wrongful arrest and incarceration

37. Fresca (any grapefruit soda at all for that matter they aren’t particularly fond of)

38. The non-existence of a supportive, psychological/psychiatric field

39. The new Pope

40. Countries better than theirs

Astonishing isn’t it? Bob Seeger and Eddie Money!! David Allan Coe I could understand but Seeger and the Money? I was shocked. More than a few interviewees stated The Allman Brothers and that girl from TLC that burned down Andre Risen’s house but not enough to make the list. In summation, when looking at the evidence, there is simply no reason why the Japanese should have to bear the brunt of the Chinese peoples’ anger when most of them really just don’t like two not really kick-ass rockers from the 1980’s. So this weekend why don’t you file out into the streets not with hate in your heart but love. Get a shitload of plastic beads, liquor, and hurricane mix and a Quiet Riot CD and rock your asses off, and when you’re good and hammered (you’ll know when the time comes because girls will be flashing everyone and the guys’ll be kissing each other in platonic comradeship) invite the Japanese over to join in the fun and bury the fucking hatchet. (Unless it’s Molly Hatchet.) There’s no time for all this fussin’ and a feudin’. Push all that hate out and let the love in.

There but for the Grace of God…

MARYVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A man caught by police last summer on his 23rd birthday running naked and covered in nacho cheese pleaded guilty Monday to burglary and four other charges.

Michael David Monn of Maryville appeared before Blount County Circuit Court Judge D. Kelly Thomas and pleaded guilty to burglary, theft, vandalism, indecent exposure and public intoxication. In a plea bargain with prosecutors, Monn was sentenced to three years in prison but was given supervised probation.

He also was given a judicial deferral, which means if he stays out of trouble for the next three years the charges will be expunged from his record. Thomas warned Monn that if he violates the sentencing requirements, he must serve the sentence in a state penitentiary.

Early on the morning of July 18, 2004, Monn “was highly intoxicated, broke into the John Sevier Pool snack bar area, stole some snacks and did some damage and was caught naked with some stolen snacks,” Blount County District Attorney General Mike Gallegos told the courtroom.

A police officer found Monn that morning in the parking lot of the pool facility after Monn had apparently scaled an 8-foot-tall fence and was seen running toward a Jeep with a box of stolen snacks and a container of nacho cheese.

In addition to being naked, Monn had nacho cheese in his hair, on his face and on his shoulders, police said. He also had a strong odor of alcohol and was semi-incoherent.

In his Jeep, Maryville officers found clothing and an open bottle of vodka.

If Chinese people acted more like this proud Christian soldier, this country would rock a lot more ass.