Friday, June 30, 2023

29,059 Page Views in June

 It’s an AKIC record that, like Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak, will never be repeated.

How it came to be that I had so many views is a mystery to me because no reader has responded to my request for email. I may also have turned off comments.

The stats on this blog indicate that a lot of the views came from Singapore and from Twitter.  But that still does account for the increase.  Perhaps, it’s a bot.

National Day in Trudeauland. Who gives a….!

Canada’s National Day is July 1st.  The holiday’s official title is Canada Day.  In more enlightened times, before 1982, it was called Dominion Day.  In ‘82, in a provincial mood of Canadian Content Nationalism fervor, the Liberal Party of Canada which had previously desecrated the national flag (see below) decided to change the name of the national holiday.  




Dominion Day had a romantic feel to it.  It represented the true founding nature of Canada in that it was loyal to the British Monarchy. 


July 1, 1867 was not the birth of Canada. Canada had been around since at least the 17th century.  All that really happened that day was the establishment of another level of bureaucratic government.  That a nation is defined by its bureaucracy is a sickening notion, not the stuff of fairy tales.  Nations need romantic origins. That is why Canada Day is so wrong!


Think of how stupid it would be if other countries named their national holidays like so: China Day, France Day, United States of America Day, Kenya Day, Latvia Day, England Day. Poland Day, Hungary Day and so on.


It’s why I am writing this screed against the holiday as it is currently constituted.


And a Canadian national holiday cannot now be celebrated as long as the sin of the suppression of the Canadian truckers is not atoned for.  People who supported the suppression are still in power and have escaped punishment for that and all the other Covid measures.





(If the Maple Leaf flag becomes the symbol of the Canadian Truckers, then the flag design may be redeemed.)


Do not celebrate Canada Day!  Honor the Canadian truckers!  Curse the people in power who turned Canada into a tyranny!

My Verdict on the New Indiana Jones Movie? Meh!

 My 16 year old son enjoyed it.

I thought it was nothing special.

So many times while watching it, I had to suspend my disbelief. And I had to wonder why the bad guys didn’t kill Jones when they had him dead to rights.

Two stars out of five.

Thursday, June 29, 2023

We’re going to see the Indiana Jones movie.

 Thé Chinese Family Kaulins will see the latest Indiana Jones movie this afternoon.

It will be in English with Chinese subtitles my wife tells me.

It will be the first time I’ve seen a film in the cinema since the before times.

Hopefully, it won’t be woke or have some female character do stunts that they aren’t physically capable of doing,

Government Office

So many government offices in the area. 


So many government offices to get so many needed documents.


Recently, my wife and I went to this government office where she got the deed for the new apartment and where she was able to apply for a passport.  The office was in an area where I hadn’t suspected there would be a government office.  The office was unbelievable crowded.  I hadn’t realized how lucky I was to get a parking spot by the office until I went to the office the second time and had to drive around the building twice before I could park.


The office was full of desks, counters and self serve machines.  Most of the seats in the waiting areas were occupied except these ones I had discovered in a separated back area. It was in this oasis that I spent my time waiting and reading Arabian Sands and Fear and Loathing.


Strange details.  I saw abandoned plastic file packets full of half-filled out documents, photocopied documents and identification photos.  I saw a group of government V.I.P.s touring the office.  They wore white dress shirts and dark pants. Their .visit was being photographed.

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Colonoscopy

 Survived.

Recovering at home.

Speaking of home, they will soon started decorating Castillo Kaulins.

And now for something completely different!

In my worldview, I am not a conspiracy theorist - not that anything is wrong with that - yet. I define a conspiracy theorist as someone who believes that the stupid things that the elites have been trying to shove down our throats that past few years (like the Covid panic, Climate Change regulations, gun control, and woke pride) are done out of sheer malice.  I am still more of a believer in clown world - that is, the elites are idiots these days.

Speak some Chinese!

was walking home (the Wuxi soon to be old apartment) with my wife Jenny from the local mall.  I was talking with my wife about our son Tony and what he would be doing at the Red Lion where he will be working during the summer holidays.  Apparently, he’ll be serving tables.


I noticed the presence of this older man who seemed to listening to our conversation as he was walking near to us.  He was then walking besides me when he tapped me on the shoulder.  “Why don’t you speak some Chinese?” I replied “我会说一点!”  In Chinese, I said I could speak a little.


This raised the question in my mind that I will try to truthfully answer here:  Why is it that after living so long in China, your Chinese is not very good and you basically stand around like a dumb mute in all social situations?  


I can offer so many excuses: laziness, the difficulty of pronunciation and the tones,  variations in local usages and official mandarin, preference to study other languages (such as French, Spanish and Latvian), lack of interest in local matters. a preference to live on the dissident American right corner of the Internet, my solitary nature, and the fact that I don’t really need so much Chinese since I can get my wife and son to deal with communication problems.


I do know some Chinese.  It’s just that I haven’t learned enough to be fluent. 

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Monday, June 26, 2023

Wordle 738: Finally! A Hat Trick!


 Thus endeth the slump!

My 41st hat trick of ‘23!

Wilfred Thesiger & Hunter S. Thompson

 I’m reading Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign  Trail ‘72 by Hunter S. Thompson.  I was referred to the first book by a recent blog entry by David Warren, my favorite blogger, at Essays in Idleness.  I’ve heard of the Thompson book but it was Tucker Carlson who finally got me to want to read it,

The two authors are remarkable individuals.  Thesiger wrote of his adventures in the deserts of Arabia and Africa.  He seems, from what I’ve read so far to be a genuine reactionary,  Thompson, from what I’ve read so far, is a great journalist. The Fear and Loathing book is a page turner.  But Thompson is too much of an idealist for me to think that he ranks anything but a distant second behind Thesiger as a man.

Getting Old

 I went to the hospital today for a checkup.  I will have a colonoscopy done later this week.

I also learned I had a hernia for which I will get an operation in August.  That operation will knock me out of commission for five to seven days.

It is a relief to know I have a hernia.  For two months, I was being discombobulated or discomforted by the thing, not knowing what it was.  There I was imagining it was a cancerous tumor, and that I would face up to my mortality a little sooner than I was hoping.

Meanwhile, my viewing stats on this blog are astronomical. I could have over 25,000 page views this month.  It doesn’t seem right because I have not received any direct communication from any readers,

If you really exist, email me at andiskaulins@protonmail.com

Sunday, June 25, 2023

What to make of the Russian “Coup”?

The Wagner coup was a surprise.  But I suspected that this internet chatter I heard about it being Putin’s downfall and the start of a Civil War was overhyped because the people saying it had been wrong in all their previous pronouncements about the war in Ukraine.


What actually happened was a damp squib or a nothing burger more or less.


Putin seems to have consolidated.


Or is it a sign of a crack in Russia’s resolve?  Some say that Putin had been restrained in his running the war and then some factions wanted him to be more hard ass and really serious about using nukes.


The Ukes really can get much solace from the Wagner incident.

Wordle 737 4/6


 My 71st “par” of 2023.

The Future Site of Castillo Kaulins


 It’s the building in the center of the picture towards the back.

Wuxishire and Janguyyan in the same photo


 In the photo above you can see the Yanqiao Metro Station and  the Hui Shan White House.  In the far off horizon, you can see the Hua Xia Village Tower.

Hui Shan Sports Center


 The New Castillo Kaulins is nearby.

Saturday, June 24, 2023

Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation

I’ve just read this article on the Steyn Online website about my favorite documentary series;

https://t.co/OvLXNGzno9


Here is the first episode of the series:





Coup in Russia?

 Who knows?

Russia is an enigma wrapped in a riddle or something to that effect.

Lots of speculation to be found on the internet about it.

The Titanic Submersible

 The news said the submersible imploded.  Everyone with half a brain should have guessed that when it became known it was missing.  But they had to go through the pretext of searching for it,

Strange Lands & True Homes & Our Purpose

 From Baltimore Catechism:


“Heaven is our true home, and that this world is only a strange land in which we are staying for a while to do the work that God wishes us to do here, and then return to our own.”


This world is a strange land.  It seems even stranger now to me.  It can’t be my true home.  I completely agree with that,


But what is the work that God wants me to do?  I pray a rare reader can help me to find my purpose.  I don’t think I have found it.  


Should I do more to fight the evil arising in this age?


andiskaulins@hotmail.com

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Twitter: @wuxiandis

WeChat: wuxiandis

The Heart of the Matter

 From a recent Substack from Paul Kingsnorth:


This way of locating people in space is very ancient. Who are your people? it asks, and what is your place? It’s a way of seeing that is dying now, and would not be found amongst the new urban generations, for whom all places are much the same, all mediated from within the digital non-place we drift amongst. But this old question - where are you from? - is the universal, aboriginal enquiry. It cuts to the heart of the matter. 


So, Andis who are your people?  I don’t know.  The Chinese aren’t my people.  They are as much my people as the people I never talked to in Canada.


I have no people because I have no place.  When I was asked where I was from in Canada, I answered that it was hard to say because I was a base brat and I had moved all over Canada.  In fact I have lived longer in Wuxishire than anywhere else.  Wuxishire is not a place one can think of as having any uniqueness to it.  It has turned into a place with a lot of soulless apartment blocks.

Hunter Biden

 Hunter Biden isn’t going to jail.

One side will say that it is because the whole Hunter Biden affair was a tempest in a teapot, nothing to look at.

The other side will say this is proof of the corruption of the US federal government bureaucracy.

I believe the latter explanation.  I have seen too much nonsense from the Biden supporters and the Trump haters to trust anything they say.  In fact, I assume the opposite of what they claim is in fact true.  Hunter should have gone to jail and taken his father with him.

Dragon Boat Festival

 The Dragon Boat Festival is quickly approaching.

My son Tony will have Thursday and Friday off from school.

Does the K Family have plans?

No.  Chinese holidays means annoying crowds.  Best to avoid them.

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Wordle 732 5/6


 I thought after two guesses that I would get a hat trick.

It wasn’t to be, alas.

Wuxishire

 I’m sitting at a Tim Horton’s in Wuxishire.

Wuxishire?  Well.  I mean Wuxi, China.  But that’s what I’m going to call it from now on in this blog.

If you don’t like it, tough!  Go pound sand!  I don’t care! I just want to have plausible deniability from now on.  Or do I mean denialable plausibility?  

Whether it’s pd or dp, it’s up to you.  No skin off my derrière!

This month if June, if the stats are to be believed, I have had the most page view ever.  15,000!

Monday, June 19, 2023

Wordle 731: the Drought Continues


 I still do Wordle.  Today, I had a bogey.

Tom Wambsgans & Bill Wambsganss

 


I discovered this link when I was watching the 1958 film Teacher’s Pet.  The Clark Gsble character and another character competing for the affection of Doris Day, discuss whether Bill Wambsganss made his unassisted triple play in the ‘20 or ‘21 series.  I immediately thought of Tom Wambsgans from Succession.  I saw their names were not spelt the same, but were pronounced the same.

I wonder if some writer for Succession named Tom after Bill.