Spring Festival Plans; ESL Grifters; An Analogy for Pelosi; 699, Teaching versus Stand Up; The Silent Treatment

• We plan to go to the wife's hometown for Spring Festival, but not for long, which suits me. Spring Festival, as it is currently, is a waste of time. A holiday with no spirit or soul or purpose.

• Grifters. The Z Man had a blog entry about grifters on the Internet. The Internet is a great place for them to thrive he says. The China ESL game is a great place for grifters as well. The people who own or manage them have created a racket. Many of the foreigners who come here to teach are also grifters as well. And having been here in China for too long in this racket, I should know because I have meet many of them. Sadly, the locals can often be taken in by them. I have been taken in by a few of them myself, I will admit. I should have beaten these cons with a baseball bat, but I left it at just having little to do with them as possible. The most pathetic of the grifters are the obese ones. And then there are the Sexpats....

• Pelosi, the speaker of the house, tried to make a analogy where she said that Trump killing that Salami guy was akin to the Iranians killing a ranking member of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and thus the killing was so terrible. I think Trump was doing the Iranians a favour. Getting rid of that terrible man would be akin to the Iranians getting rid of the Democrat members of congress or more specifically, Pelosi herself. The Iranians in that case would be doing the Americans a favour.

• Ma Yuan's 699 idea (six days, 12 hours of work per week) was necessary for China development said one of the students. Fuck off! I didn't say.

• Teaching akin to stand off comedy? Perhaps. Sometimes, it sucks and you want to get it over with. And your audience are mostly morons: perfect marks for grifters.

• The silent treatment. That's my way of dealing with people who annoy me. I don't even tell them why they have pissed me off. I let them form their own stupid theories.