Olympic English.

If you have seen some of my rooftop photos, from my apartment, the past few weeks you will know that the big Wuxi snow of '08 is melting away.  However, on the streets of Wuxi, there are piles of unmelted snow.  Today, I saw workers in the downtown clear these piles by taking shovels and throwing the snow onto the street so the cars and the sun could clear it away.

I did an Olympic English event on the tenth floor of a non-descript office building near the corner of Renmin and Jia Feng Roads.  Twenty students along with fifteen or so adults watched as I showed flashcards and acted out some Olympic events.  Photographers were there also so Lord knows where my picture will show up.

I fucking hate the Olympics.  I think they are a propaganda exercise for big government whether in a democracy or a fascist dictatorship like Communist China.  They have no proven economic benefits.  The Olympics movement has been morally bankrupt for a long time now.  I don't think the Olympics ever recovered from the debacle of 1936 when the then dictatorship of the moment used the games as a propaganda exercise.  The Olympics of my youth were all disasters.  In '72, terrorists used the games for their own nefarious ends.  In '76, Montreal showed the world the competence of Canadian governance (really, has it all changed that much for Canada?).  In '80, the Americans at least had the decency to not attend.  But why would the IOC give the games to the Commies in the first place? 

When I do these Olympic events, I put on a fake face and go along with it.  But, really, I wonder if I am selling my soul.

I see I should read J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun.

I have photos on Flickr and Picassa.

I have a new video on Youtube:

 

Nicknames I have seen given to Hilary Clinton:  Hilarious, Hitlerary, Bilary, and Bitchary.

I see have no choice but to wish that John McCain wins the U.S. presidential election in 2008.  Even though McCain was not my first, second or even third choice of the  2007-08 Republican field to take the nomination, he is a far, far better choice than those two Democrats.  Hitlery and Obamanation are beyond the pale.  I would label them Ted Kennedy, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale and George McGovern in skirts or with a tan.  The present Democratic candidates are not all that different in policy and idea formulations from those four losers.  The only real intellectual question that could rise out of this election is a hypothetical one:  Who would you choose: the present President Bush or the  '08 McCain?  For me, it is a coin toss to decide.

When I spell check my blog entry before publishing, I find it amusing that every time the spell-checker comes to "McGovern", it suggests the correct spelling should be "Misgovern".

And speaking of Misgoverning, I see Fidel Castro has resigned the presidency of Cuba.  I suppose you could say better late than never.  But really you cannot.  If only the Bay of Pigs invasion had succeeded for as John F. Kennedy (of whom Obama is supposedly the heir) said in December 1962:  "The Cuban people were promised by the revolution political liberty, social justice, intellectual freedom, land for the campesinos, and an end to economic exploitation," he said. "They have received a police state, the elimination of the dignity of land ownership, the destruction of free speech and a free press, and the complete subjugation of individual human welfare."  I don't think JFK could have earned the present day Democratic Party nomination saying things like that.