Saturday Jottings

• Evel Kenevel is dead.  I think of him as a seventies pop icon famous for jumping over barrels and buses with his motorcycle.  His feats inspired the famous episode of Happy Days where the Fonz  jumped over barrels in front of Arnold's.  I wish instead I could be talking about the deaths of Evil Castro and Evil Chavez and Evil Ben Laden.  And while I am at it, I would love to Michael Moore tried to jump over a wall of matchboxes stacked one high.  I bet he couldn't do it.
• Video #239 on Youtube.  See if you can tell me what Tony says.
• I like Americans for the most part.  I would add that if you don't like Americans, you hate humanity completely.  But the Conservative in me is well aware of human limitations and the inability to achieve utopias on Earth.  I can't unabashedly love anyone except the Toner and the Wife but I know they are going to test me.  The three Americans I met last night at the Blue were alright.  Myron bought me a beer when I told him about it being Tony's 100th day.  Brent, the Reds fan, was like a Southern gentleman.
• Video #237 on Youtube.  More of Tony B Smooth.
• I heard that MI5 says that the Chinese are engaged in Industrial espionage on the Internet.
• This explains everything. Maybe.  The picture of the mandala is nice.  I don't know enough to comment on the physics.
• Will China's environment ever improve?  This article skirts the true causes of China's environmental trouble.
• My father's doctor in Canada is from Ethiopia.   Great medical system we have taking doctors from the third world where they are in short demand.
• Patterson (who works at English First) is looking good.  I can't get over how handsome he is.  I saw him Friday night at the Blue.  He was saying that EF's new location is not close to a good restaurant.
• Luke Wells says The Wire is a good show.
• Chicken Littleism?  The issue of world population is interesting being in a country that has a one child policy.  Despite the huge population, China has a generation of children growing up lonely because they don't have siblings just a lot of adults to live with.
• The Chinese, I have been told, play pickup basketball like they drive.  Whereas on the road, they will cut you off and do all sorts of "not cricket" maneuvers; on the court, they will foul hard until you ask them "w.t.f.?".  Then it is "oh, sorry, sorry, sorry!"
• In my apartment building, the Chinese often bring their bicycles and scooters on the elevator.
• I am not the only one to notice long fuel lineups in the Wuxi area.  Others, at the Blue Bar, tell me they have seen them too.  That is what happens when the government subsidizes fuel prices.
• China's Doomed.
• Thursday night, Tony turned towards me and gave me a big smile.  Great feeling.
• Trying to teach how to tell time to a primary school class yesterday was like trying to teach the dead.  How can 7:05 look like 45?  I don't get it.  It must be the teacher.
• Ape_Unit is going to show the students a Woody Allen film in Saturday's afternoon movie salon.  The film be Annie Hall.  I wonder what they will think of it.
• Yi Jianlian is China's second NBA star.  It is a good thing for an ESL teacher.  One can get sick of talking about solely Yao Ming.
• Bradley got a shave and a haircut.  Looking clean!
• Half the windows in the apartment are left open.  I am freezing in the morning.  But that is what the Chinese do.
• Chinese women wear thick leggings that look like Soviet pantyhose.  This is if the Soviets ever were able to produce pantyhose.  It seems odd to see otherwise elegant looking women were Granny clothes.