Mosquitoes; Getting Local Drivers Mad; Trump Kills Salami; Iranian Funerals; 63 “Canadians”; Company Drives To and Fro

• Lots of mosquitoes in our apartment. Have no idea why. Five a night have kept me from sleeping by buzzing in my ears as I am in bed.

• Every once in a while I get a local driver mad at me. They seem to think that they can go very fast without consideration for others and when I block them off, they don't like it. I have had a few then try to cut me off after my blocking them. Revenge is sweet.

• What do I think of Trump having that Salami or whatever-his-name-is-Iranian-wacko killed? I am conflicted. I like the idea of the Americans having the most powerful military in the world. I also agree with the idea of the Americans not using it to advance an American empire. I have come around to agreeing with them not using it to advance the neo-con agenda. What Bush Two's war in Iraq showed was that the people of the Middle East are a bunch of barbaric cretins and it was rash fantasy to think that they were capable of Jeffersonian democracy. But I have no problem with the Americans using their military might to tell others not to fuck with them. So the Iranians arranging an attack on an American Embassy deserved a counter strike, and I clap one hand for Trump having killed this Salami fellow. But ideally, it would be nice if America got out of the middle east. Let the tent-living, camel riding, boy-diddling Arabs and Persians to their own perverse devices.

• Thirty five people killed at the Salami funeral. The Iranians are as good at arranging funerals as the Chinese are as driving in traffic.

• 63 "Canadians" killed in the flight that crashed (or was shot down) in Iran. All these "Canadians" whose names I have heard have Iranian names. Because you have to wonder what so many "Canadians" were doing in a country with which Canada doesn't have diplomatic relations.

• I was driven to and from this company in the Hui Shan District in an area far from Casa Kaulins. I did a class there. The class was the usual; it was the drives that gave me some material for which I could blog. On the drive to the company, of which there are many possible routes, I was taken down a stretch of road I had never seen before. It was like I was driving in the downtown of some district, as I passed many hotels and restaurants and shops. The driver told me that in this area there were knock-off restaurants that took the names of popular chain restaurants but only changed a letter. So for example, if there was a chain called SJW, the knock-off restaurant would name itself SWJ or JWS, keeping the logo and color scheme of the restaurant it was copying. On the drive from the company to my home, I saw my driver do a maneuver that would grit my teeth if I was in another vehicle. There were three cars waiting at a light to make a left turn. My driver, seeing that the light was about to change, "gunned it" so she could pass all three cars by driving around them on the left. She giggled as she made this maneuver, indicating she had an attitude of "Yeah, it is wrong but WTF!" I said nothing. She then told me that her plan for the upcoming Spring Festival was to fly with family to Beijing. She was going, she told me, because her parents had never been in a plane before, and her father wanted to see the corpse of Chairman Mao in Beijing. I said nothing. (Sometimes, when I am in a prickly mood, I like to tell the students that Chairman Mao is responsible for the death of more innocent human beings than anyone else in history.)