6:43 PM View

 Well, we went out and done did things today.

We being my son & I.

Anthony wanted to go out and do some walking.  How our roles have switched!  A year ago, it would have been me wanting to stroll about while Tony was reluctant.  Now, it’s Tony taking the let’s go for a walk initiative.  I go along  with it because it’s good to see him to do so — even if I should be reluctant to walk given my sore right heel.

After we did a little prepping and studying at the Jiangyin apartment , we took a Didi to the area of. the Jiangyin sports stadium.  There, we went to the Jiangyin museum, only to discover it was closed.  So, we crossed the road and went to the nearby mall where, on impulse, I bought a cheap baseball glove. We then wandered the Star City mall for about ten minutes because that’s all there was to see.  We then walked around the stadium — again it was Anthony’s idea — where there was an electronic board that took your picture so that you could go to it again and find out how many meters you had walked around the stadium as well as how many calories you had burned.

Tony decided he wanted to walk to Monte Carlo’s Bistro for food.  Using the phone, we learned it was 1.7 km from the stadium, so we walked. We walked under the freeway that takes one to the Jiangyin Big Bridge, and past the tall and somewhat imposing Jiangyin city government building that looks like it was built in the 1980s.  We visited a park where the great chairman of Hua Xi village had his image included among a display of zhongguo hao ren, 中国好人, Chinese Good People.  The walk improved my Jiangyin bearings because I saw how close the Bistro was to the stadium.

At Monte’s, we had a big meal.  A few people with UK, possibly northern England accents took a table as we sat.  As I say, their accents certainly weren’t poncey.

From Monte’s, we walked towards Ba Bai Ban.  Tony, unbelievably, wanted to walk some more.  We came upon a Metro Station — the Zhongshan Park one to be exact — and, on impulse, made an historical first entry into a Jiangyin S1 line station.  We waited ten minutes for the train that took us to the Jiangyin Train Station.  The stations look like the Wuxi stations I have been to — what will be interesting about the line will be the parts that run above ground line Xiu Xia Ke Road to Wuxi.

7:21 AM View

 What do I know this morning?

Lenin, that be Vladimir Lenin, died a hundred years ago today.  John Derbyshire says he was the worst person of the 20th century,  I agree.  Lenin set the dictator totalitarian model that subsequent leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Biden and Trudeau have followed

And speaking of would be Nazis, Biden supporters, if there really are such people, are proclaiming that Trump is in cognitive decline.  Talk about projection,  The joke goes that Trump can do stand up before stadium sized crowds while Biden can barely stand up.

I’ll bake some cookies for Tony.

I’ll be packing for Wuxi.

I’ll spend two hours prepping for the next school term 

I’ll make a video with Morrissey’s head,

Who’s the most overrated person in Rock ‘n Roll?

A good question.  And one that I’m going to have to think about.,

Lawrence Welk?  I joke.

Mick Jagger?  It was the first to pop to mind.

Pink Floyd?  Someone in that band.  I never drunk the Kool Aid about the Floyd.  Their only hit song is unlistenable now.

David Bowie?  He spent most of his career being David Bowie and he could be said to be blamed for the trans nonsense we’re currently enduring.  He was also so 1970s. He was very pretentious.

Bob Dylan?  He won a Nobel Prize which usually is awarded to the overrated.

Axel Rose?  He comes to mind when the question is contemplated.

One of the Beatles ?   Blasphemy!  I know.

KISS?  All of them could be number one.  Their signature song is nonsensical.

Jimi Hendrix?  One good song maybe and the antics with the guitar? Stupid.

Jim Morrison?  It’s been said that he was a CIA plant.  A product of marketing; nothing else.

Elton John?  Someone that famous and annoying has to be overrated.

Bono?  He has become visibly pretentious so he has diminished himself.  

Suggestions I make in this entry, and it seems I might as well make a list of who I think are the most significant or well known rockers and put them on the list of being overrated.  None of these rockers are in the same league as Sinatra or Ella.  They are interchangeable and their significance is a product of marketing.

4:51 PM View

 

Pat myself on the back.  I worked on a PPT for school for a couple of hours this afternoon,  I got Tony to pretend to me that he had studied for an hour today,

I finished watching a documentary about Hunter S. Thompson called Breakfast with Hunter.  It showed he was a celebrity and it showed him not handling it gracefully.  Some of his attempts at being unconventional were clunky and not becoming of a genius.  I mean I would have thought of doing them like dressing for the beach in a snow storm.  The documentary had a segment where HST’s hatred of Nixon was pathological.  I could very well see HST suffering from TDS had he lived to 2016.

My darling wife Jenny has suggested that Tony & I take the subway to Wuxi, pick up the car, return to Jiangyin, pack and then return to Wuxi.  However, the subway was crowded today, I heard.

I will try to use the journeys method to memorize a poem this holiday.

7:13 AM View

 By this time yesterday, I had done two views.  The holiday has begun.  Hopefully, I can make some PPTs this afternoon.

What do I know this morning?  My ankle is still sore.  I want to have coffee.  William Kunstler dropped his latest podcast,  Havenstein has eclectic pop music tastes.  Justin Trudeau is still PM.  A good nickname for Biden is dementia Hitler.  My Duolingo streak is 1455: six days away from it being four years.  Orange Jesus is you know who.  WEF meeting: Zman thinks it is silly rich people playing at being important,  It rained yesterday.  Tony had late dinner with his buddies yesterday.  Farmers are protesting in Germany.  I baked a cake yesterday. I defrosted a drawer of the fridge freezer.  I got this idea getting from the  litany of the sacred heart of Jesus phrases to express surprise in comment sections.  Jesus is Lord.

8:50 PM View

 It’s the holiday so I can stay up late.  Maybe after this, I’ll do some reading.

My son Anthony is having a late dinner with friends,

I’m listening to two Z-Man podcasts this evening.  The regular, for me, Friday evening podcast, and a Coffee and a Mike podcast with him as a guest which was dropped as I was listening to the first one.  I also listened to a Jimmy Dore and another Coffee and a Mike podcast.

The exciting thing this weekend in Jiangyin is the opening of the subway line which links downtown Jiangyin to Wuxi.  I will be able walk to the station near our Wuxi apartment and take a train to downtown Jiangyin.  The school unfortunately is nowhere near the line.

Sadly, it looks like I won’t be able to get anyone to come to our apartment warming dinner.

5:05 PM View

 So far, the holiday’s been a real barn burner.  So much is happening, I’m at a loss to describe it with words that would do it justice, but I’ll give ‘er the ole college try just the same.  That is, if you don’t mind.  Not that I would care either way what you thought since you lack the courage, the foresight, the forbearance and the virility necessary, it seems, to make comments or send me emails.

What pathetic readers I have!  Screw ya!   Especially if you can’t take a joke.

So far, on this holiday of holidays, I have gone downtown in Jiangyin to have some Mickey D’s, buy a MUSU beer and some cheap paper towel or toweling.  I mean we:  that is, my son & I..

That overly long ceremony of earlier today got me to thinking which lead to me lamenting.  Thinking about my past, I realized it was a strange and fortuitous journey to get to be sitting in that theatre on a campus in Jiangyin, China.  While I have had to endure some humiliating situations that I am loathe to speak of, I realized I had managed to make it so far without ever succumbing to things like drug addiction and divorce.  There was a time in my life where I moved a thousand miles to a place just hoping to get a job when I got there.  It was the longest bout of unemployment I ever had in my life and the stress cut me to the thick.  But I landed a job.  It was minimum wage and I didn’t have a car. I bought lots of books though.  I endured it because the place I lived in was beautiful.  But it was lonely too.  The only thing that saved me was someone, I delivered pizza to, offering me a driving job that made more money.  From there I was able to go to China, live there for 20 years. meet Jenny, have Tony and somehow end up teaching in Jiangyin.  What I lament is that my personal story would not resonate with the students we have at our school.  It probably wouldn’t resonate with the Chinese in general because my journey wasn’t conventional.

12:05 PM View

 It’s lunchtime.  The first term is officially over now that we sat through a ceremony (where was the human sacrifice?) that ran an hour over.  

Our holiday is four weeks long:  said that way, it doesn’t seem that long.  I won’t have enough time to relax.

Haven’t rustled anyone to come to out Wuxi apartment homecoming.  Twenty years in Wuxi and that’s the best I can do?  What’s wrong with me?  Or what’s wrong with the rest of you?  Fuck you all!

7:08 AM View

 “I’ll get up at 7:00 tomorrow!” said my son Tony.

7:00 AM: “I’ll get up in ten minutes!”

An