April Fool's Day is Superfluous in 2021

Since we have been living in Clown World for the last year, April Fool's Day would seem unnecessary for we have endured a year of April Fool's Days.Since we have been living in Clown World for the last year, April Fool's Day would seem unnecessary for we have endured a year of April Fool's Days.

Since we have been living in Clown World for the last year, April Fool's Day would seem unnecessary for we have endured a year of April Fool's Days.

How to top the real headlines that have occurred the last year?  It can't be done.

Maybe this year, April 1 should be April Intelligent Day.  It would be nice to see our rulers act intelligently, even if only for a morning.

Walking around Tony's Campus; Stumbling Joe; The Two Micheals; The Second Show-trial; IPhone Repair; Cherry Blossoms; A Stab in the Back?; Tony's First Ball Game

My son Tony's school, an international school, was built in the middle of the countryside of Wuxi. I was walking the area near Tony's baseball field and saw nothing but about-to-be demolished houses and empty fields. Presumably, the empty lots will eventually contain concrete apartment towers built because they would be close to Tony's school.

I saw a foreigner at Tony's baseball practice. I assiduously avoided him. I am too used to my isolation and exile to want to deal with the experience of talking to a foreigner. I am really scared that this foreigner is all on board with Clown World.

I got great joy out of seeing OBiden, Stumbly Joe Buy Dung fall up some stairs. I posted a video made of Trump hitting golf balls at Biden on a Canadian WeChat channel. A person, who was sympathetic to Biden, said that Biden was in better shape now than Trump was four years ago, and that Biden did go up those stairs fast. Talk about being in denial! You can't argue with people who will go to great lengths to try to deny the obvious. (I could have retorted that the reason Biden went up the stairs so fast was that the wind was pushing him.)

I have to confess that I didn't know who the Two Michaels were, I hadn't been following the story. I did know of these two Canadians who were put in prison by the Chicoms. However I wasn't aware that their trial was about to start. This was big news in Canada and this is what my contacts in Canada were going on about much to my befuddlement until they told me. Boy! Did I feel out of the loop!

No one outside of Mainland China thinks they will get a fair trail. I suppose I will follow with interest the reaction to the verdict.

Speaking of verdicts, I think that there will be a show trial going on in the United States as well: the trial of Dereck Chauvin. Why the trial hasn't been moved out of Minneapolis is a mystery to me. How can he possibly get a fair trail there? If by chance, he can be acquitted, it would be a miracle and a slight sliver of hope for America.

Took my son's Iphone to a repair shop at Buy Now Way near WuAi road in Wuxi. Interesting to see an IPhone being taken apart and put together again. So many parts and so many small screws!

Cherry Blossom season in Wuxi. So I have seen a lot of people taking pictures of them. Their trees on the street near Casa Kaulins and I have seen people taking photos of the blossoms at a tree beneath our apartment, as well as trees near our apartment building.

My Chinese wife Jenny and I never discuss politics, or at least very rarely discuss it. On a Thursday night, she gave me a warning about boycotts of major companies over accusations of mistreatment, including enslavement, of Weghers in Xinjiang. These allegations were being "stupid" said Jenny, and added that I should avoid saying anything about it.

Well, I will say a few things here:

First, this represents a failure of globalism. The globalists are now fighting Xi Jing Ping's Chinese Nationalism who had been their allies when their enemy was the nationalist Trump. 

I caught a headline which said that China was claiming they were being stabbed in the back. I first had to wonder how they could claim to be stabbed in the back because it means to be done it by your own kind or your friends. You would think that the first group who would stab the Chinese in the back were other Chinese. But this was not what this proclamation meant. Clearly, the Chinese meant they were being stabbed in the back by the globalists who had been their allies against Trump.

I should ask some mainland Chinese if they miss Trump. Trump, for all his bluster about China, was a nationalist trying to get the best deal for his people, not a man focused on hating China. The globalists, on the other hand, are trying to make things good for themselves and not their people. I would posit that because they have fatally over-reacted to Covid, they are needed a bogeyman to blame for their screw-ups. With Trump not around, they are going after China where the virus did originate from. Better to deal with Nationalists than with Internationalists is the lesson the Chinese should have learned. The Internationalists want to get involved in everyone's business.

China telling the world to mind its own business makes them look guilty like sin. They look like the southern states using the concept of states' rights to defend slavery. (I say this in spite of the fact that I do support the idea of states' rights. There were arguments that could have been made, and were born out by experience, to defend what was happening in the southern states.)

Nike one of the companies that has earned the ire of China is ironically an anti-Trump company. They had earned the ire of the MAGA crowd through their sponsorship of the failed QB who started the kneeling during national anthemns movement.

I have no dog in this fight. This current spate about Xinjiang is a skirmish among global elites.

Tony played his first ball game a week after the practice I mentioned earlier. His team playes a team from Suzhou. His team lost. Tony had one at-bat. He showed a good eye and got a base on balls. He then stole second base, and later scored a run on a passed ball.

Updated List of Nicknames and Ways of Referral for Joe Biden

Alleged Catholic Biden

Alleged President Biden

Apparition Joe

Blinken Biden

Bubble Biden

Chairman Xiden

China Joe

Cigar Store Biden

Creepy Uncle Joe

Dementia Joe

Diaper Joe

EO Joe

Forgetful Joe

Fraudulent Joe

Green Screen Joe

Gropin' Joe

Idiot Joe

Joe B, the revenant in the White House

Joe Biden, America's first idiocracy President

Joe Blow, Father of Hunter

Joe Buy Dung

Joeloco

Joe Chi Minh™

Joe Braindead

Joe Stolin

Joey No-Pulse

Mumbly Joe

OBiden

Old Bedpan Bidet

Old Joe

Old Senile Joe

Our Totally Legitimate (P)resident Biden

Pedophile Muppet Biden

Potato Joe

POTATUS: President of the After Trump U.S.

(P)resident Deepfake

Racist Joe

Resident Joe

Rutabaga Joe

Senility Joe

Sleepy Creepy Biden

Sloppy Joe

Slo Groppy Joe

Sniffing Joe

Sniffer Joe

Sniffy Joe

Stairmaster Joe

Stumbling Joe

The asterisk president

The great pretender

Traitor Joe

Trippy Joe

Vegetable Joe

Wheelchair Joe

Zhou Bai Den

Made You Look Documentary; Uniformed Karen; Got to get off the Beaten Track; Flannery O'Connor; Righteous Vengeance

On the recommendation of a writer at the American Sun, I watched this Netflix Documentary: Made You Look, which was a story of a modern art scam that took place in New York City. I appreciated the recommendation because the documentary was good and very un-woke. It could have been made by right-wingers. There were so many things about the Documentary for which I will comment.

Modern abstract art seems a fraud. I wonder how rich people can spend so much money on that stuff. The pictures seem to me to be nothing but swirls of paint and shapes that a five-year-old could make.

The forged art pieces first struck the people who saw them as being beautiful. However, these pieces of art didn't command such a high value because of their beauty; they were expensive because they were thought to be made by famous artists. When they were revealed as being "nothing" but skillfully done forgeries, they had next to no value at all. So, you wonder what these rich people are paying for when they buy art.

The forger in question was from China. And he lived actually in Shanghai, by the end of the documentary, having to escape his Long Island house to get away from the Police. In Chinese culture, the documentary said, originality was not considered such an important thing and copying the masters was considered okay, a way of deriving inspiration from it and getting the skill needed for painting.

The female director from the Art Gallery, which bought and sold the fake slash forged paintings, was the central person in the documentary. Viewers were left to wonder if she was in on the scam or whether she had been fooled by the scammers. People interviewed in the documentary were divided on this question.

The scam came to light when the woman who brought the paintings to the gallery was discovered to be married to a man who had been charged in Spain were selling art forgeries. A lawyer who had a huge speaking role in the documentary said it was discovered that the woman had kept all the money herself rather than passing it on to the secret people she said had owned the paintings. But there were clues all the while that something was not right but people wanted to believe

The rich people who bought the fake paintings were impressive individuals, appearance-wise. They dressed well and had great style. However, one had to wonder how they could waste their time with such trifles as owning authentic pieces of modern art that can be easily copied.

The story taking place in New York, I would bet that all the people involved in this world were not the sort of people who voted for Trump. The rich people also seemed to be Globalists, members of the elite that rule over us. And if that is case, God help us all!

Some uniformed person on the Wuxi Metro told me to get my mask to cover my face up to my nose. I was annoyed at him.

The next day, a young woman, with the same uniform, told me as well to put my mask higher on my face.

I have also been told that policeman having been patrolling the trains taking photos of people not wearing their masks without bothering to inform them. Presumably, they were to be identified later using face recognition software

I was sitting at the end of train by myself because I thought it was a good place to put down my muzzle.

Recently, I have had these urges to go off the beaten path that I have been going on since the panic started.

What I find particularly interesting are these narrow streets running off main drags.

I have been reading a real book. Every evening at bedtime, I read a chapter or short story from this anthology of Flannery O'Connor writing put out by the library of America. I understand the stories much better now that I have started to study Catholicism in great detail.

Righteous vengeance? I was driving. A car in front of me stopped to make a turn. I stopped behind him. However, the vehicle behind me didn't stop, didn't even slow down, and narrowly swerved around my car to pass me. This maneuver didn't really earn the driver any big advantage. I ended up driving right behind him as he had to stop at a light. Annoyed at his stupidly rude and aggressive maneuver. I honked my horn at him for at least thirty seconds. It undoubtably annoyed him but I felt the driver deserved it. I wonder if the driver knew that I was honking at him to indicate that he drove like an idiot.

Joe Stolin; Pains Replaced by other Pains; 2704; Dumb Local Driving; Other Traffic complaints; Film Reviews; Only Saw One Foreigner Last Week

The Biden nicknames keep rolling in!

I came upon another great nickname for Biden: Joe Stolin. Other ones include OBiden and Joe Chi Minh.

My toothache, that I mentioned in a previous entry, went away. But now, I have other pains like a mild headache.

After hemming and hawing on my wife's part and indecision on my part, it seems we will be buying that apartment which will be on the 27th floor of this apartment complex being build next to the Hui Shan Sports Center. Apartment 2704! This building will have central heating!

I saw a car pass a right-turning car on its right. Talk about impatience!

I find myself cheering for accidents as I watch traffic. So many close calls between people being impatient and in-courteous!

So many times, have I been side-swiped by e-bikers coming from behind.

I just watched Little Shop around the Corner. Great Flick. Very sappy, but I was in the mood for sap when I watched it. A major character's (played by Frank Morgan from the Wizard of Oz film) attempt at suicide after having mistakenly fired the Jimmy Stewart character didn't seem probable but yet... The film ends on Christmas Eve (my birthday) and talked of cucumbers and sour cream, a favourite of mine when I was living with Ma and Pa.

I watched a film I Care a Lot because it was mentioned in a recent Peter Hitchens column. I was cheering against the protagonist in the film who was an evil Lesbian chick. She was battling against a character played by the dwarf (or midget) actor from Game of Thrones. Alas, she was only assassinated in the end, and made to die like a martyr.

Only talked to one foreigner last week. Not that I am complaining. I'm just passing the info into the record. And I can't decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Running into a foreigner in China, for me, the odds are less than ten percent, that the encounter would be worth having. There is nothing more annoying than foreigners who don't realize how mad the world is now.

This is all way of introduction to Tony's baseball. I have been driving him to Sunday Morning* practices. I know that one of his teammates has a foreign parent. I can't decide if I want to meet this fellow. I had a chance to meet this person on a recent Sunday, but I saw him from a distance and decided to turn in the other direction (I was walking around a sports field track). It was painful to do this and yet it would probably have been more painful to meet him.

*I pray the rosary, listen to the Daily Decade Podcast, and read mass text while he practices.

Lent Goes Along; How I Compose My Blog Entries; What I am Reading these Days; Tony is going through a Phase; A New Freeway; Pain; Tony and the Experts; Tony's Brilliance

I am observing Lent in my own way. Which I hope is better than nothing. I am praying every day. I am trying to consume more spiritual media on my smartphone. I am trying to make it hard on myself physically by cutting out some habits I have like listening to pop music, drinking lots of coffee and having a bottle of beer every day. But alas these things probably don't suffice.

I had been in the habit of composing my blog entries in QQmail, and then cut and pasting them to Hotmail, which I would then use to publish the entry by mailing it to a special email address on BlogSpot. But for some reason, QQmail would lose my work. An updated entry would not be saved. On two consecutive days of my work being lost, I decided to go back to my old habit of typing and updating the entry on a text editing program.

What am I reading these days? Lots of poetry, a translation of the Iliad, and the Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton. I try to read some poetry and something spiritual every day. I am also trying to read books that are old school and very un-woke.

My son Tony is going through a phase. The phase where he doesn't care so much for the company of his old man. I had report from his school of an incident at the dorm where he got angry about something his classmates had done to him, and where he had to be talked to by the dorm master. Trying to ask him about it, I found that Tony was reluctant to talk to me. When I pressed him on why he was reluctant, he said he didn't want to make me worry. He also didn't like my lecturing him.

A new freeway has been completed that connects our area to the rest of Wuxi. It is a godsend because it makes our drive to Tony's school much quicker. The freeway takes us though Tianyi, through the Hui Shan Mountain tunnel, the Taihu tunnel and onto Tony's school which is located near the new Wuxi CBD. However, the freeway is changing traffic patterns in the area. I encountered a traffic jam on a road that hitherto had never had a traffic jam in my experience: it was all these vehicles going onto the new freeway. Previously, all these cars would have taken the Hui Shan big bridge to go south into Wuxi.

Pain. Pain in my side which I suspect are stones of some sort. And now pain in one of my remaining teeth. My teeth are horror show but I have been able to endure discomfort. But this pain was bad enough to have me imagining the pain of Jesus during the Passion. It was my way of dealing with it.

I had said that in a previous entry that Tony was going to go to Shanghai to see experts to deal with cognitive troubles he has exhibited at his new school. This may not happen. It is too bloody expensive. We will have to find other ways to help him. Maybe, he will have to do what I did which is to will himself into getting better grades at school by really concentrating on what he is studying.

I sent an email to Tony telling him I was suffering with a sore tooth. Later on, in a phone call, I talked about how I had to endure it and brought up an example of Michael Jordan enduring a fever as he played in some crucial playoff game. Tony knew the details of the game where that happened and knew what Jordan's stats were for that game. Brilliant on the part of Tony!

Resident Biden Nickname Collection;

I notice that there are lots of nicknames for Joe Biden in circulation.  I am trying to collect them as well as make my own.  Here is what I have so far:

China Joe

Creepy Uncle Joe

Dementia Joe

Diaper Joe

EO Joe

Forgetful Joe

Joe Blow, Father of Hunter

Joeloco

Mumbly Joe

Pedophile Muppet Biden

Potato Joe

Resident Joe

Rutabaga Joe

Senility Joe

Sleepy Creepy Biden

Slo Groppy Joe

Sniffing Joe

Sniffer Joe

Sniffy Joe

Traitor Joe

Vegetable Joe

Wheelchair Joe

Zhou Bai Den

A bonus joke:

Resident Biden is double-diapering to fight incontinence.

My Lent; Rain; White This or That; The Good, the Bad and the Sad about My Son Tony; No Restaurant for a Year!;

I need to do more for Lent.  I am praying a lot.  However, I am not doing enough self-denial.  One afternoon, I did wait until my stomach was growling before I ate.  I have not listened to pop music.  (Tuesday morning, I successfully withstood the urge to listen to music on my Iphone.  In particular, I wanted to listen to a song by New Order.)

A period of rain in Wuxi.   Meanwhile in Canada, there was snow and very low temperatures.

Is White Nationalism or White Supremacy a real problem?  NO.  Is a made-up problem so that the oligarchs don't have to deal with the bad decisions they have made about trying to promote ethnic diversity.  People of different ethnic groups have habits which are annoying to people from other ethnic groups.  There is no way around that unless you end up with a monoculture which isn't diversity.  And these differences are intolerable to somebody.  Examples of this?  Chinese drivers.

Any race talk that is popping its head up is a reaction to bigotry of anti-racists and to the realization among people of European descent that the desire for a world where people are judged by the content of the character and not the color of their skin is not shared by people of non-European ancestry.

At my son Tony's request, I have put the songs by the band Badfinger on the usb that I use as a source of music when I drive.  Listening to a few of the songs, I can see that Badfinger is quite good.  This was a discovery of Tony.  Not something I played for him.

Tony is playing baseball, but he is having trouble hitting the ball.  I will try to help him by showing him some books I have about baseball and hitting, and what he should keep in mind when he is at bat.  Tony is a not into details and he should get into them as the I will now tell you...

Tony is currently attending an international school in Wuxi.  He likes it.  He likes the teachers.  The classes are smaller.  He can play basketball in the evening.  He can stay away from his overbearing mother.  However, he is not doing well academically.  He has bilingual language skills, however his ability to understand advanced or more difficult concepts in either of the languages is limited.  I have heard that this is a problem for children who are bilingual from the time they start speaking as infants, and that it would be better for them to speak in one language.  Tony's mother tongue is Chinese; his father tongue is English. 

The teachers at the school have concerns about his cognition.  I have concerns too.  For example, I have explained to him a hundred times about boiling and freezing and evaporation, and he still confuses them.  We have to find a way to train his mind to remember things.  So, the teachers have recommended that we take Tony to these special places in Shanghai to have some tests done which will then hopefully help us to come up with ways to improve his learning abilities.  Hopefully, these consultations can help.  I do have to accept that it could well be that Tony is not so clever. If that is the case, then we will have to find something for Tony to do that would make him a useful adult.

The Majestic King of Wuxi who now lives in Winnipeg, Canada, has told me that on account of covid, he hadn't been in a restaurant for a year till last week.

Are they discriminating against foreigners in Wuxi?  If they are, it's not a problem with me.  I keep to myself mostly, but the locals who deal with me have be fine.

CoTD.  I make them on SoTD.