Gratitude:
I have many things to be
thankful for. Unfortunately for the sake of originality, they
are the always the same things every week. But that is a reason to
be thankful. The things that I can be thankful for are the permanent
things, not the things that fly by for a night or so.
Acknowledgement:
When I do these
little headlines in the AKIC Weekly, I am often baffled as to what to
put in them that might be original. So I acknowledge that I rarely
have anything original to say. [ Gómez Dávila warns against
making a purpose of it to think originally. More important, he says,
just to think.] I also admit that I can be a despicable shit.
Requests:
Email at andiskaulins@qq.com
if you are a fan, or not a
fan of my reactionary views. I only had one response to my request
last week.
The
AKIC Week in Brief: I was in a
defiant, giddy, and depressed moods the whole week. Other than that,
it was just another week of taking the bus to work and then taking
the bus home. I had one original thought which I may publish one day
in my anti-blog – something about Leftists and
middle-of-the-roaders being more concerned with preserving the means
than with ends. I also had an idea for the AKIC Weekly – Look
below!
About
AKIC: If you want to learn
what Andis & AKIC are
all about, you
can visit here.
If
there are things about AKIC you don't know
about, like places and people I mention in the entries below, you can
go here to
find out what they are all about.
AKIC
Weekly Features:
I
in in China!
这个星期，我读了三本书。我和我的同事没谈。你问为什么？他们是不好人。
I
am Canadian!
One thing that I like about China is the
fact that they don't have government liquor stores. Canada in theory
is not Communist so why is it that in Communist China, you can buy
beer at the corner store, but not in Canada?
I
am Latvian (sort of)! I got a
Latvian name. I gave my son Tony a Latvian middle
name.
Wuxi
Peach Maoists Update: Visit here
to find out how if your Peach Maoists have finally won a match-up.
Politically
I am Conservative/Reactionary!
A victory for Obama is not a loss for Conservatives. It is a loss
for civilized values. Although, I am optimistic that Obama's seeming
victory in the latest debt ceiling showdown will turn out to a
Pyrrhic. Obamacare is turning out to be an epic failure much faster
than I expected.
I
teach English! In my last
class of the week, I had a
student say “I have ever.” Why do they do that?
I
am not a freak! Sure, I
knowingly put myself in a situation that is freakish, but I am just
living with the consequences of it.
I
like to Read! Here
is what I had been working my way through the past week:
Don
Colacho's Aphorisms. There are 2,988 of them in this book
that I compiled for myself. I try to read at least one aphorism
a day. I cut and paste the better ones -- they are all profound
actually -- and I put them in my weekly blog entry. (See below)
Ulysses
by James Joyce. I am following along with Frank
Delaney as he slowly guides podcast listeners through
Joyce's hard-to-read novel. Delaney figures he will have the
whole novel covered in about 22 years. Delaney completed
episode #175 this week and is working his way through the chapter
that introduces Leopold Bloom. I am getting ahead of Delaney as far
as reading the book. I will be finished my reading of it, I
figure, in a year. I read the novel despite its many blasphemies.
It is best to be aware of this stuff because the world is full of it,
and the world will always find a way of slapping you in the face with
it
The
Holy Bible King James Version. I have finished
The General Epistle of Jude and am now reading the Book of
Revelations.
Columns
by Father Schall. I have been
able to take all
his archived writings and place them on the Dotdotdot app.
The
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Finished reading it on Oct. 16th.
Like Father Schall's writings, I had been able to place its contents
on the Dotdotdot app. It is a great read.
Very informative. Well written. Inspiring.
Mao
Zedong: Man, Not God by Quan Yanchi. A Hagiography given to me
by a local.
Quo
Vadis by Henrik Sienkiewicz. One of the first Catholic novels if
my source on the Internet is to be believed. I put the book on my
Ipod, thinking I would read it when I didn't have access to my Ipad,
but now I am reading it on my Ipad.
Memoirs
of Life and Literature by WH Mallock. Finished
reading it on October 15th.
Another great book. I can't believe I hadn't heard of this writer
till this year. He ends the book with some great advice about
writing. I see that I will have to completely renounce any writing
ambitions I have. I am not in this author's league when it comes to
writing or thinking.
Royal
Beatings by Alice Munro. I read
this story just to see what the Nobel winning writer was all about.
This story was rather grim.
The
Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature edited by Joseph S.M.
Lau & Howard Goldblatt. I
am reading stories at random from this book. There is a story called
Hands that I am quite taken with. I don't know why I didn't “pick
up” this book sooner. Reading the few stories I have has told me
more about China than reading a history ever could.
The
Niomachean Ethics of Aristotle.
Now that I have finished the Catechism, I will read this and then
begin to read the Summa.
Why
Paul Krugman should never be taken seriously again by Niall Ferguson.
It is not a book but it is such
a long piece that it might as well be one. A Nobel Prize winner was
giving himself a super hero name. Krugnatron or something. For me,
proof positive that Krugman was nothing but a Democrat Party hack
occurred when he blood-libelled Sarah Palin after the Arizona
shooting incident. In this piece, Ferguson gives many additional
reasons why Krugman is a menace.
I
like to take photos
I
publish them in the following blogs: AKIC
wordpress , TKIC
blogspot,
TKIC
wordpress, Views
of China from Casa Kaulins Blogspot and Views
of China from Casa Kaulins Wordpress.
I
like to make videos
Here
is my
Youtube Channel and my
Youku Channel.
I
like to cut, paste, and sometimes give my take on quotations:
Anthony
Esolen: Racism: The
contemptible belief that we should judge a man by the content of his
character, rather than by the color of his skin. [LECTOR:
Isn't this backwards? ANDIS: Yes but this is the updated modern
definition.]
The
wisest thing Pat
Buchanan ever said is, “Compromise is the surrender of
fundamentals.” [I really enjoyed Pat's column about the conflict
between Goldwater and Rockefeller Republicans. The Goldwater
Republicans who stuck to their guns and principles won out in the end
said Pat who sees the Tea Partiers as the people who will benefit
when Obamacare goes to pot.]
W.
H. Mallock
…,
I have always felt that no man is fit to encounter an adversary's
case successfully unless he can make it for the moment his own,
unless he can put it more forcibly than the adversary could put it
for himself, and takes account, not only of what the adversary says,
but also of the best that he might say, if only he had chanced to
think of it. [Sound advice.]
…Mr.
Kidd had a semi-Socialist audience ready for him, who lived mainly by
sentiment, whose sentimentalities had anticipated his own, and who
were only waiting for some one from whom they might learn to sing
them to some definite intellectual tune.
[This is true of many political
writers today.]
Aristotle
…Goodness
is simple, ill takes any shape.”
Nicolás
Gómez Dávila:
345
The modern sensibility, instead of demanding the repression of envy,
demands that we suppress the object which arouses it.
346
The prejudice of not having prejudices is the most common
one of all. [To my way of
thinking, this ties in very well with my hatred of the term
middle-of-the-road. People who use this term are trying to say their
are unbiased and reasonable.
In reality, the usage of this term betrays a lack of thought. For
one thing, the middle of the road is not the place to be – you
will get in the way of people travelling in either direction and
impede them to no good end. For another, middle-of-the-road is used
by left-wingers since their left-wing stance was thoroughly put into
disrepute by the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the fall of the
Berlin Wall. Furthermore, middle-of-the -roaders are declaring that
they define themselves by what others think. They should really call
themselves fence-sitters, and given their predisposition to
justifying any kind of sexual depravity, they should be fence-post
sitters with the fence-post being stuck in their you-know-whats.]
348
The soul that climbs to perfection often abandons the lands
conquered down below, where subordinate demons install themselves,
ridiculing and dirtying that soul. [My
soul is far from perfect. To say this seems a truism, I know, but I
need to say this lest any rare reader may think that I somehow think
that I think that I have somehow ascended to perfection. I am in the
process of ditching things, not because I have conquered them. Lord
knows, I haven't conquered them and been repelled by them in my
feeble and meek efforts to conquer them. I am the state of ditching
the desire for them. It is a surgical operation involving complete
amputations of demons.]
351
Resignation to error is the beginning of wisdom. [So true.
I have been wrong on so many things. And plus, the age of prophets
has passed.]
352
Questions only fall silent when faced with love. “Why love?”
is the only impossible question. [This depicts my current
existential crisis in a nutshell. I am stuck in a loveless age, a
loveless culture, a loveless milieu. And I am fighting it with
passive aggression.]
355
Modern individualism is nothing but claiming as one’s own the
opinions everyone shares. [I notice this tendency a lot among
Leftists. How often do they say that their opponents are unable to
think for themselves. It is a common refrain among them.]
New
Feature! The AKIC List of the Week: AKIC's Ten Most Frequently
Visited Websites
- Essays in Idleness David Warren is a Catholic Reactionary of the worst kind. He is my favourite anti-blogger
- Duff and Nonsense My favourite blogger is English and no fan of the Barabbas Obama.
- Taki's Magazine Its writers are very un-p.c.
- The Catholic Thing A column a day of wisdom from the most inspirational site on the Internet.
- The Drudge Report I am never one to visit news site but I can't help but visiting this site when I am bored.
- Sullivan's Travellers My favourite blogger Alan Sullivan died a few years ago. He was an interesting fellow: an admitted homosexual who converted to Roman Catholicism late in his life after reading a column by David Warren. He mentioned my blog a few times and offered me best wished on my spiritual journey. Sullivan's Travellers is blog run by his rare readers. Sullivan did have as few rare readers as he pretended. I can rightly say I have rare readers.
- Crisis Magazine Another great Catholic site that I visit daily.
- The Peter Hitchens Blog The less-famous brother of the late Christopher Hitchens seems to me to be the most interesting writer of the pair.
- Arts and Letters Daily This is probably site that I have been visited for the longest time.
- Yellowbridge.com The one site I visit about China. I have spent hours using its character flashcards.
To
be honest, I don't spend much time visiting China sites. There are
just too many know-it-alls who have a superficial knowledge of China.
Earlier
my Chinese blogging career, I realized that there was no way that I
was going to be able to compete with these other China bloggers and
sites. For one thing, there was no way that I was going to be able
to garner the resources and the contacts to become a China expert or
Sinologist. For another, I came to China on a whim in my middle-age.
I never had romantic notions about China. So, I decided that it was
best if I talked about just Andis Kaulins in China. I say the blog
is a Wuxi blog but I should drop that label as well. I have
negligently and sometimes deliberately not made that many contacts in
Wuxi. My concerns in my blog, are my family, my reactionary
political interests, my recreational interests and my spiritual
journey. If it wasn't for the Internet, China would play a greater
part in my thinking.
I
prefer to read about China in books – especially the old books at
Project Gutenberg.
I
fashion myself to be a 21st Century Pepys
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