All My Kingdoms Turn To Sand And Fall Into The Sea

When I returned from Israel I fully intended to write about it some day without making it political. It is all too rare to see anything about Israel that is not obsessed with politics or terrorism, even though the country itself, like most other countries, has little to do with politics or terrorism. I wanted to focus on the culture, architecture and food without dwelling on the people who want it to be whatever they want it to be. Instead, I wrote about politics without making it about Israel. As it turns out, Israel is not what I wanted it to be.

When I went to Israel I wanted to see just how normal Palestinians are. As a bleeding heart liberal, I fully believe that the average Palestinian is your basic decent human being. It is always the leaders in dictatorships that do the wacky shit that makes headlines while the people are simply trying to get by. Unfortunately, I came away with an impression of the average Palestinian that is not entirely positive. I never met any of the dictators, so I really cannot comment on them.

Comparing Palestinians with Israelis is inevitable. The leaders of Palestine want the land that is currently the state of Israel. Some of Israel’s leaders want large chunks of land currently occupied by Palestinians, which Palestinian leaders want to be the future state of Palestine. The people of both nations do not seem to share the fervor of their leaders. It is as though they simply want to keep what they have and be left alone. People who speak at the UN talk about borders. Most Israelis and Palestinians will never speak at the UN.

From my experience, Israelis are terribly friendly people. Maybe not as friendly as Africans, but who is. Israelis have been compared to New Yorkers in their attitude toward strangers. I see no problem with that. New Yorkers, like Israelis, are often misunderstood by people who think that everyone should deal with people in the same way. But when you look beyond your own ideas about how everyone should act, you will find that your typical Israeli and New Yorker is mostly positive and will probably not stab you in the face if you ask for directions. Parisians are another matter. They genuinely do not care for outsiders.

There is an old joke. Jersey girls ain’t trash. Trash gets picked up. Say this about someone from “the heartland” and they will be morally offended. Say this to someone from New Jersey and they will laugh. Say it to someone from New York and they will agree with you.

We went to a shop in Tel Aviv that sells tchotchkes, baubles and assorted knick knacks. The Israeli shopkeeper had the typical you want buy, you no want buy, you let me know, I over there attitude. He seemed happy to see us enter his store. Maybe he is a people person. Maybe he was stuck in a tiny shop with his wife all day. I cannot say. We walked away spending very little money. The Wife bought some postcards. She is going to buy postcards from whatever city we are in, so it might as well be from this saba’s shop. He made enough money off of us to buy a bottle of water, but he was friendly throughout our brief stay.

We went to more than a few shops in Jerusalem that sell anything from spices to kippot. Many of these shops are owned and/or operated by Palestinians. Some are owned by Arab Israelis. Fewer still are run by Jewish Israelis. The level of customer service between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was graphically apparent. Whether this was because Tel Aviv is far more liberal than Jerusalem or because Jerusalem’s population is quickly shifting from predominantly Jewish to Arab is beyond my level of comprehension. There could always be other reasons, but then that takes away the black and white fun of it all.

Most of the Arab shopkeepers were aggressive. It was very important to them that we buy whatever crap they were trying to unload. The Wife made the mistake of trying to haggle for some cheap bauble of which she was not entirely interested. In East Asia, she would try to lower the price to something ridiculous and then walk away if the owner refused. But the Wife is clearly neither Jewish nor Arab. She is obviously a foreigner, just as I am on her side of the planet. When Arab shopkeepers see her Chinese face they get dollar signs in their eyes, just as Chinese shopkeepers react when they see me. I found it amusing. Soy sauce for the duck and all that.

But where the Chinese will inevitably lower their prices from the standard 1000% markup to something reasonable, Arab shopkeepers seem to think that haggling is knocking off two percent. Many of them were personally offended that my millionaire wife did not want to pay $50 for 10¢ trinkets, even when she actually wanted to buy them. She learned her lesson in Paris. People sell Eiffel Tower trinkets at the Eiffel Tower, of all places, for €25. After she bought a few, we noticed a small shop on Place du Petit Pont (the blue one near the phone booth) that sold the exact same thing for 50c. In South Africa, she wanted to buy some brightly colored wooden animals that are sold pretty much all over the dark continent. Despite her preternatural fear of the Big Black Man, she got into a heated debate over carved zebras.

Loud arguments over prices are common in East Asia. That is how people haggle. In the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, I found my white American ass completely surrounded by dark hairy Arabs. It started with the Wife and some shopkeeper going back and forth over prices. When I haggle, I give up fairly quickly. If we cannot agree on a price, I move on. The Wife can haggle, some would say argue, all day. Other shopkeepers, apparently not too terribly occupied, gathered around. When the first shopkeeper suggested that we follow him into some back alley to look at additional merchandise, I suggested that we probably should not. Mostly because I had better things to do. But when the Wife is shopping, there are no other considerations.

We eventually walked away with some cheap crap that the Wife was proud to have bought for 8% less than she saw somewhere else. It was only later that I reflected on my white American ass being surrounded by dark hairy Arabs.

At no point during our Old City trinket shopping extravaganza did I feel that my or my wife’s safety was in jeopardy. What bothers me most about trinket shopping is that it is a complete waste of time. I am also not too excited about turning a place with such a rich history as the Old City into a shopping mall. Jesus walked on this very road, buy a commemorative thimble. That house was built five thousand years ago, half off baseball caps. Being surrounded by Arabs in the Muslim Quarter was just like being surrounded by Christians in the Armenian Quarter. I doubt anyone saw me as the enemy. I looked more likely like a giant bag of cash. The locals have seen plenty of people who look like me, though less dashing, spend far too much money on tourist bullshit. If only they knew how little money I had in my pocket.

Arab shopkeepers, like African shopkeepers and Chinese shopkeepers, are just trying to make a living. They are mostly not criminals. Other than their ridiculous markups. If they wanted to violently rob people, they would probably not sit in front of their shops smoking all day.

I feel no fear in these back alleys surrounded by people who refuse to be white because I do not believe that all Arabs are terrorists, all Africans are thieves, all Chinese are Triad. If there were anything to paranoid white xenophobia, there would probably not be very many white people left. About half of the world is Arab, African and Chinese. Whitey would not stand a chance.

Our European forefathers enslaved half the world in their travels, so one might assume that these people do not fully appreciate our loud visits to their most sacred sites and the Big Mac wrappers we leave behind, but in my experience most people are not nearly as vindictive as we are.

And the Old City has uniformed IDF soldiers with M16s all over the place. Few places are safer for the white man.

What I was very conscious of was the disparity in the quality and cleanliness between the Muslim Quarter and Jewish Quarter. The Jewish Quarter was about as clean as you can get a million-year-old stone and dirt city to be. The Muslim Quarter reminded me of China. Not in the suicidal driving and public urination, but in the use of their own streets as garbage cans. At the end of the day, the Muslim Quarter looked like a place where Fred Sanford would be comfortable. The Jewish Quarter looked the same day and night, other than lighting and crowds.

Someone could probably argue that the Muslim Quarter becomes a garbage can at night while the Jewish Quarter stays clean because the Israelis in charge of waste management treat both areas unequally. I have no idea if that is true, but regardless of what the Israeli authorities do, there is no requirement that people dump all of their trash on their own streets. It is just as likely that people throw their garbage on the streets to force the Israelis to do more work. It is even more likely that they simply do what their ancestors have been doing for as long as they have been there. People in cultures older than mine have a funny way of not always doing things in the most modern and progressive ways.

Another amusing difference between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was our hotels. I spent a bit of time before the trip looking at hotels and maps of Tel Aviv. For my effort, we ended up in what has to be one of the better hotels at which I have ever stayed. I did far less research for Jerusalem and simply went with one of the hotels recommended by the organization that was hosting the Wife’s conference. I mostly chose it because it was around the corner from the conference hotel. We would have stayed at the conference hotel but, try as I might, I simply cannot get money to grow on trees.

The Jerusalem hotel is supposedly five stars and well beyond our price range. But there was a substantial discount through the conference and I thought it might be a nice idea to stay at a highfalutin hotel for a change. I could have found a much better hotel at a lower price had I done any research.

The Jerusalem hotel also claimed to have Jacuzzi bathtubs in the rooms. I live in a country where large bathtubs are seen as a luxury, like soap. If I have a choice between a hotel room with a large tub that shoots water out of the sides and one without any kind of tub at all, I go for the watersports. Probably not in a deviant way.

Israel, like the rest of Asia, most of Europe and large parts of Africa, is a smoker’s paradise. Most of the people on this planet disagree on pretty much everything and are willing to kill and die to show that their opinions are more important than yours. Humans will happily kill in the name of their religion, nationality, race, social status, economic classification and favorite sports team. The one thing that most people can agree on is that shoving into your face a stick full of twigs and chemicals which will kill you slowly and painfully and lighting it on fire is a good thing.

As someone who prefers not to breathe in noxious fumes, I am a minority. But unlike those whiny Indians who are still complaining that we stole all their land and killed most of them, or someone who tortures and murders babies, I have no rights. I am not recognized by anyone anywhere as a minority and I will get no preferential treatment from any university or court of law for my status. What I will get are annoyed looks from hotel personnel who find it inconvenient that I do not want to be poisoned.

The Jerusalem hotel booked us into a smoking room. I reserved a non-smoking room, of course, but what one reserves and pays for in Asia often has little to do with what one actually receives. I had hoped that Israel would be different from the rest of Asia, but even though we think of tiny hairless people with funny eyes when we say Asia, Israel is still in Asia. The reception staff at the Jerusalem hotel was none too happy that I wanted a different room and that they had to push two buttons on their keyboard and click their mouse once or twice. I got tired just watching such strenuous labor.

This may be why the room we were eventually placed in was a bit of a dump. The smoking room was probably nicer. If you can ignore the hideous stench. Or perhaps this was simply not a five star hotel. The service was certainly not five star. It only took them a few minutes to show how much my existence was bothering them. Nice hotels usually wait at least an hour to show their disdain.

I ordinarily do not care about five star service. Just give me a relatively clean room with a refrigerator and the fewest number of insects crawling over me at night as possible and I am satisfied. But when I pay more, even at a reduced price, for something that advertises itself as five star, I do not look forward to one star service. I have no doubt that the room would have been nicer had we paid full price or even accepted the smoking room. When groups like the Wife’s conference get package deals on rooms, they do not usually get the best rooms. I knew that our tiny room would look nothing like the two bedroom family suite decorated and professionally photographed on the website. I understand how these things work.

But I do not expect a five star hotel to treat me like a waste of their precious time. The people at the front desk were offended when I shamelessly asked them where the nearest grocery store was. I often print out my own maps when I go somewhere I have never been, as I did for this trip, but your average hotel will have maps of the city or neighborhood, and sometimes their maps are better than mine. Given time, I will always wander around the hotel and see what the neighborhood has to offer, but I have found that the easiest way to find something very close to the hotel is to simply ask someone at the front desk. They usually know where they work. When I asked if this hotel had such maps, the response might as well have been, “They’re over there, asshole”. And they were not in a display case easy to see from the lobby. They were in a box behind the front desk.

The attitude of the staff was nothing compared to the quality of their work. We tried the hotel’s breakfast on our first morning there because the Wife likes hotel breakfasts for some reason and the Tel Aviv hotel had the best hotel breakfast I have ever had. This is not much of a compliment since most hotel breakfasts are little more than airline food at hotel prices, but the Tel Aviv hotel had quaint neighborhood bistro breakfasts at no price. We thought that great hotel breakfasts might be a nationwide situation. It was not.

The Jerusalem hotel’s breakfast was horrible. Outside of Tel Aviv and Japan, I have very rarely had a good hotel breakfast. This was worse than soup kitchen food. I have had better meals in high school cafeterias. And I did not go to a five star high school. My high school cafeteria actually burned down, and their food was better than this.

The housekeeping staff had a habit of not cleaning the house. I do not insist that the bedsheets are tight enough to bounce quarters. I do not even care if they are not changed every day. I do not change the sheets at home every day. But I am enough of a spoiled American to want the sheets and pillow cases that I will sleep on to have the lowest volume of blood stains available. When the Wife and I returned from our outing one day, it looked like someone was twirling razor blades between their fingers while making the bed. Each stain was little more than a few drops, but there were hundreds of stains all over the sheets and pillow cases. There is no way that anyone but a blind person could not have seen all the blood while making the bed.

When I called the front desk and very calmly, but maybe a little more sarcastically than necessary, suggested that most guests probably do not like bloody sheets, the person on the other end of the phone accused me of lying. Not on the bed but about the bed. I asked her why anyone would possibly make up such a story. She had no idea, but my call clearly interrupted her game of minesweeper.

The reason all of this was important, other than the health issues of sleeping in someone else’s blood, was because this was the first time the Wife and I had been to Israel. Your first trip to any country decides whether you will ever return. Your hotel can make all the difference in the world. Travel snobs say that the hotel is only a place to sleep and that most of your time should be spent outside, but where and how you sleep will most definitely affect your attitude and your impressions of what you see and do outside.

I stayed at a nice little hotel the first time I went to Korea. It was nothing fancy, but very clean and very comfortable. The only bad thing about it was that the Krispy Kreme across the street did not yet exist when I was there. That hotel helped give me a good first impression of Korea, and I have been back a few times. I stayed at a dump the second time I went to Korea. It was a cockroach motel in a terrible location. Had that trip been my first, I would never want to go back to Korea.

While Israel is an impressive country, the Jerusalem hotel left a giant blood stain on our memories. Even with all of the conference discounts, it is not a free trip. This is not somewhere we can go every day. Had we only stayed at that hotel on this trip, I doubt I would ever be able to convince the Wife to go back. Fortunately for us and Israel, we also stayed at an exceptional hotel in Tel Aviv. The staff at the Tel Aviv hotel went out of their way to make us feel welcome. I interrupted whatever they were doing several times with my existence, but they never let on that they had anything better to do. We checked in at 2am, because shit happens when you fly from Hong Kong to Tel Aviv, but the service at the front desk was as good as it would be at 2pm. All hotels should be like this, but most are certainly not.

The Jerusalem hotel was supposedly five star, but nothing about it felt like a five star hotel, except the price. I think the Tel Aviv hotel was supposed to be three stars, but it felt more like a five star hotel to me. I have nothing negative to say about the Tel Aviv hotel, and I know how to find the negative in pretty much any situation. I suppose I could complain that one of the free bicycles we rode around town had a slightly flat tire once, but I am not even sure how that is the hotel’s fault. And by the time we came back from using other free bicycles, the flat tire was fixed. Also, the free laptop that they let us use with the free wireless internet did not know Chinese.

Israel is one of those places that tend to have a lasting effect on people. It is where three of the trendiest and the two most violent religions were made up. Millions of non-Hindus travel to Israel every year to see where someone did something and told other people to do things. It is where Moses brought back his people after Yul Brynner let them go. It is where David Bowie killed Willem Dafoe to free the rest of us from sin, thus ensuring that we are never sinners. It is where a Danish cartoon learned to challenge the corrupted word of the Great Turtle in the Sky and teach people the true meaning of fashion. Sadly, there are no good movies about this.

Jerusalem is important enough to enough people that it has been fought over since the dawn of time. Countless people have died to conquer and defend it. Jerusalem is a good looking city, and that new light rail system is a blessing, but it is too close to the desert for my taste. If an invading army came to massacre in the name of their one true god who is the same as everyone else’s one true god, I would go to Tel Aviv. I prefer coastal cities.

Some people go to Jerusalem and buy Old City snow globes. Some people develop a messiah complex. I never buy souvenirs.

I walked the Temple Mount and Via Dolorosa and saw grown men openly weep. I had a front row seat on Calvary and waited in line to look at an old tomb where women cried. I touched the Western Wall and felt nothing other than relief while entering the tunnels. The naturally cold shaded stone walls are a miracle when it is 35 degrees outside. I sat at the Torah ark and popped open a book, surrounded by people looking for knowledge. Not being able to read Hebrew, I came away without much enlightenment. I left Israel with neither Chinese-made t-shirts nor Jerusalem syndrome. But the hummus was fantastic.

I have been to a few places that tend to have a lasting effect on people. Africa is one of those places that wraps itself around you as soon as you get off the plane. Like walking into an air conditioned shopping mall in summer. New York and Amsterdam are cities where I would gladly work in the food service industry just to be able to live there, if only it were economically possible to survive in New York or Amsterdam on food service paychecks. But I am not at all willing to kill and die for these places. There is always somewhere else to go.

Perhaps it is because I am a soulless heathen.

A Stone’s Throw From Jerusalem

As a bleeding heart liberal lunatic, I am supposed to support Palestine over Israel. I understand why. Palestine is the downtrodden underdog. Liberals are supposed to support the underdog. But I see Israel as the underdog. Palestine is much smaller than Israel, but Israel is much smaller than its Arab neighbors. And they have all invaded Israel. Some of them want to see Israel completely obliterated. Israel has expressed no desire to wipe any Arab states off the map. A fifth of all Israelis are Arab. What percentage of any Arab state is Israeli?

The more you look at it, the more lopsided it all is against Israel. The United Nations, with sixteen or so Arab members and only one Jewish member, has passed about 150 resolutions against Israel and no resolutions against Palestine. There have been more condemnations of Israel for violating human rights than there have been for every other nation in the world combined. According to the UN, Israel is a greater human rights violator than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, Rwanda, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, Pakistan and every country where women are property. Israel’s great violation of human rights, according to the UN, is that Palestinians have been evicted and foreigners must pass through checkpoints to enter Israel. Apparently this is worse than mutilating little girls and executing people with opinions.

Going through an Israeli checkpoint is far easier than entering most nations. You stop and answer questions. If you seem suspicious, they ask more questions and search you. If something does not seem right, they go with their instinct and training. This is not a violation of human rights. This is good security. If not having open borders is a crime, most of the world is guilty.

Palestine, under the control of Fatah and Hamas, has no freedom of speech, press or religion, discriminates violently against women, arrests, tortures and executes people without trial. These are all violations of human rights according to the UN. These are all far worse crimes to a true liberal than forcing foreigners to pass through checkpoints.

Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that is ranked favorably by organizations that rank human rights and freedom of the press.

To their credit, Kofi Annan, Ban Ki Moon, and representatives from the EU, US, Netherlands, South Africa and Canada have condemned the UN’s “disproportionate obsession” with condemning Israel.

Hundreds of thousands of Arabs have left Israel willingly or been forced to leave since 1948. There are many UN resolutions condemning this. There is not a single resolution condemning the hundreds of thousands of Jews that willingly left or were forced to leave Arab states since 1948. There are several resolutions calling on Israel to let all Arab refugees and their descendants return to Israel as citizens, no questions asked. There is not a single resolution calling on any Arab state to let any Jews or their descendants return to those states.

The most noticeable difference between Jewish and Arab refugees is that Israel lets any and all Jews become part of their society. Jordan is the only Arab country that has ever allowed some Arab refugees to become citizens. Other Arab states keep them locked up in refugee camps. There have been no UN resolutions condemning this inhumane practice.

The Second Lebanon War ended when the UN, Israel and Lebanon all agreed that Israel would end its blockade of Lebanon while Lebanon disarmed Hezbollah and UN security forces ensured that everyone did what they promised to do. As soon as the blockade was lifted and Israeli soldiers went home, the UN announced that it had no mandate to do much of anything, despite its mandate. Lebanon and the UN quickly announced that they were not going to bother disarming Hezbollah. There were no UN resolutions condemning the UN for ignoring its promise.

The UN condemned Israel for the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. A lone Israeli nutjob went apeshit and shot a bunch of Muslims at a mosque. The attack was condemned by Israel’s prime minister, government, religious leaders and Israeli society as a whole. And by the UN.

But the UN has never condemned any nation for any of the thousands of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, schools, hospitals and synagogues. Palestinian leaders often praise the terrorists who kill the most Israeli civilians. Palestinian children are told to dance in the streets when Israelis die. Any real liberal would have a problem with this.

The UN has condemned Israel several times for defending itself against military aggression and for initiating that Suez Canal invasion. They have never condemned any of the nations that have invaded Israel. They have never condemned any of the nations that allow terrorist groups to operate in their borders. They have never condemned any of the nations that supply weapons and money to terrorist groups that attack Israel. The UN has condemned Israel several times for the thousand or so Palestinian terrorists and uknown number of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel. The UN has never condemned Palestine for the thousands of Palestinian civilians killed by Palestinian terrorists.

While I am supposed to side with the disenfranchised Arabs over those Jews who control the world, I have a hard time favoring oppressive dictatorships over an open democracy. Israel is far more liberal than any Arab state, in every possible way. All Israeli adult citizens can vote, regardless of gender, religion, race or sexuality. Most people living in Arab states have never voted in a democratic election. This is mostly because there are no Arab democracies.

All adult citizens of Israel have the same rights, regardless of gender, religion, race or sexuality. Women in most Arab states are property. Most religions are either illegal or violently discouraged. Not being Arab in an Arab state is worse than being Arab in the United States. You might as well be a black man in China.

Israel is more open to homosexuals than is most of the world. Adam and Steve cannot marry in Israel, but if they are legally married elsewhere, it is legally recognized in Israel. Not only is their marriage not recognized in any Arab state, but they would likely be executed in most. Homophobes might like that idea, but few people get off on the fact that heterosexual women can be executed for having heterosexual sex in some Arab states.

Women can be executed in all Arab states for a wide variety of supposed crimes that are not illegal for men. Many Arab states, as well as China, the United States and Iran, execute children. Israel executed no one. Except in 1962. But that guy was asking for it. The UN passed a resolution against that, too. This is disproportionate bias at its best. The UN passed a resolution condemning Israel for executing a high ranking Nazi, but has passed no resolutions against Texas or China for executing children or the mentally unbalanced. On the other hand, if Texas were not allowed to execute the mentally unbalanced, who would they execute.

I understand why Republicans support Israel. It is the sole democracy surrounded by often brutal dictatorships. I have no idea why Democrats hate Israel so much. Yet in the United States, Jews are far more likely to vote Democrat than Republican.

A lot of people have been trying to bring peace to the area for quite some time. Israeli leaders have agreed to hold negotiations almost anywhere at any time. Arab leaders have always only agreed to participate with preconditions, many of which would only cause Israel’s destruction. Israeli leaders have agreed to cede large chunks of Israel in exchange for an absence of terrorist attacks. Every time they give up more land they are thanked with even more terrorist attacks. Arab leaders have never agreed to give up one inch of land and have never taken any responsibility for any of the terrorist groups operating within their borders.

Every Israeli prime minister has recognized the right of its Arab neighbors to exist. About two Arab leaders have recognized Israel’s right to exist.

What we always hear now from Arab states is that Palestine should be an independent nation and that Israel is to blame for every effort that Arab leaders have made to stop this from happening. While the West Bank was under Jordan’s control from 1948 to 1967, absolutely no effort was made to create any Palestine. Israel offered most of the West Bank and all of Gaza to a future Palestine in 1991, 2000 and 2005, the only conditions being that Palestine recognize Israel’s right to exist and stop firing rockets. Arab leaders refused each time.

Today’s version of Israel was born in 1948. There could have just as easily been a Palestine, but the Arab League refused to allow it and immediately invaded Israel. Since then various Arab states have invaded Israel with the goal of driving the entire Jewish race into the sea. Israel has initiated a few reactionary invasions over the years, but has never made any attempt to destroy any of its neighbors.

Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel off and on since the dawn of time. In the middle of the twentieth century someone decided that Jerusalem should be the capital of some future nation called Palestine. Apparently no one found it questionable for a state that did not yet exist to take the capital of a state that already was. When the city was divided and Jordan took control of the Old City, Jews and pretty much everyone else were denied access to the holiest sites in Judaism, as well as many important Christian sites. Desecration was the order of the day and half of all Old City synagogues were destroyed, along with countless graves and important religious buildings. There were no UN resolutions condemning any of this.

Under Israeli control, the Old City is open to everyone, except for areas under Arab control. Anyone can go to the Western Wall (as long as you put on a hat) and Church of the Holy Sepulchre (as long as you take off your hat), but the Dome of the Rock, under Arab control, is generally closed to infidels.

Much is still being made of the Arabs who were moved from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City 45 years ago, even though each family was paid about US$150. Not a fortune, but not bad for 45 years ago. No one ever talks about all of the Jewish families that were forced out and never paid anything.

The issue of Jewish settlers in the West Bank is highly contentious and is almost always one of the Arab preconditions for any negotiation. Israelis have slowly but steadily made their way east and built villages beyond Israel’s borders. The UN condemns this on a regular basis.

The Arab, and UN, position is that those Israelis have no right to be there and should be removed immediately and forever. Yet both groups think that all of the Arabs who flooded into Jerusalem after the Six Day War and during Jordan’s occupation should be immediately made Israeli citizens. There have never been any UN resolutions against attempts to populate Arab-occupied territories with more and more Arabs.

As a liberal lunatic, I am supposed to side with Palestine on every one of these issues since the people of Palestine are oppressed and abused. And they are. When Israel gave control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority in 1993, the people of Gaza lost many of their basic human rights. When Hamas took over in 2006, the people of Gaza lost whatever freedom they had. Terrorist dictators that see you as ammunition and human shields are usually not the nicest overlords. The UN does not seem to have a problem with how Palestinian leaders and terrorists treat the people of Palestine, but any liberal should.

As an American, I am supposed to be endlessly fascinated with the Israeli/Arab situation. This is mostly because Americans love to find a cause that they know little about and take a side without really understanding the people on either side. Since our politics are always a clear case of our side always being right and the other side always being a bunch of mentally unbalanced dullards, we find it very easy to believe that any one side in any complex sociopolitical shitstorm is as pure as a nine-year-old Arab girl on her wedding night.

We liberals are especially guilty of jumping head first into a cause with only our bag of misinformation, disinformation and self-righteous indignation. It makes us feel better about ourselves to talk to each other about the poor huddled masses in Palestine, Tibet and Myanmar without going to these places and learning anything about the people. Like our hippie forefathers, we can say we fought the good fight without actually doing anything for anyone.

Israel is easier for our corporate media to condemn because the people of Israel are mostly middle class, technologically advanced and every bit as developed and civilized as we are. It also helps that the Arab media condemn them every day and Arab textbooks teach their children that Jews are pigs. If we fight in our minds for the people of Tibet, we have to take on the non-white, non-middle class people of China. Siding with the downtrodden of Myanmar requires opposing the equally brown and undeveloped leaders of Myanmar.

Liberal middle class white people are supposed to side with poor colored people in undeveloped backward countries. Siding with liberal middle class people in a developed state would be wrong.

But any liberal that claims to care about human rights has to have a much bigger problem with how China treats Tibet, how Arabs treat Palestine or how Saudi Arabia treats everyone than how Israel treats Palestine. So why do we and our liberal media talk more about Israel than any nation that is truly butchering people and their rights? Is it simply because we hear far more about Israel than about Tibet, or do we simply care more about our own self-interests than about human rights? After all, when China forces a mother to abort her baby, it does nothing to my bank account.

Some people say that Palestinians have as much right to their own homeland as Jews have to theirs. As a bleeding heart liberal, I agree. That homeland is called Jordan. Arabs that we now call Palestinians are genetically the same as Arabs in what we now call Jordan, which is why most of the former British Mandate is now Jordan. Culturally, they are pretty much the same as the Arabs in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya, Bahrain, Algeria, Qatar, Oman, Yemen and etc. Ironically, they are all semites. The size of all of the Arab homelands combined is about 600 times larger than the size of the one Jewish homeland.

There is only one reason to keep trying to make the Jewish homeland smaller and smaller. It is also the only reason for our disproportionate obsession with Israel over other conflicted parts of the world.

Socialist Fascism In 21st Century Sound Bites

In the interest of partial disclosure, I will point out something that is patently obvious to anyone who has ever met me and completely unknowable to my wife. I tend to lean a little to the left on the sociopolitical spectrum. By which I mean I am the most bleeding heart, socialist, tree hugging, spendocrat, liberal lunatic of anyone I know. Though I do not recall hugging any trees lately. And I probably spend far less money than anyone who will ever read this.

By liberal I mean the dictionary definition of the adjective. A political ideology advocating constitutionalism and the rule of law, due process, regulated government, freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly. I’m down with Lakoff’s definition of liberal morality. Fairness and empathy, helping those who cannot help themselves, defending those who cannot defend themselves, letting people fulfill their lives as best they can and taking care of oneself as a means to help others. I do not especially practice that last bit. My body is more of a Hooverville shanty than temple, but I agree with it in principle. And I rarely actually do anything to help or defend others. I practice Lennon liberalism. I want to save humanity, but it’s people that I just can’t stand.

I agree with Kennedy’s definition of a liberal person. “Someone who cares about the welfare of the people; their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties.”

In American politics, liberal and conservative have nothing to do with Democrat and Republican. Most of the world would call Democrats conservative and Republicans stingy and hateful. Many mainstream European politicians are far more liberal than any American who could ever get elected. American politicians are more ideologically aligned with Persian ayatollahs, without any knowledge of or insight into Islam, and the British National Party.

Democrats are not liberal. They call themselves liberal, or at least they used to before Republicans told them not to, but their spineless insouciance of human rights and their undying devotion to political correctness, whatever that happens to be this week, show their obedience to self-interest above all else.

Republicans are not conservative. A conservative would not spend such enormous buckets of money without any consideration of the consequences the way Republicans do. Today’s keyboard pundits would say I just mocked the Bush administration, but Republicans were building up debt long before Dubya smashed his first beer can on his forehead.

And their usurpation of Christianity is simply hilarious. Jesus would only vote Republican if he got hit by a Nascar and suffered retrograde amnesia. Or he simply wanted to fuck with people.

Baby Jesus never said that hostile multinational corporations will inherit the Earth. He never said that man gains the whole world through profits and losing his soul. He never said hate your neighbor and treat people like shit. I do not remember him saying that it is better to be rich than be a fat man in the eye of a needle. I could be wrong, but I doubt he ever said, “Fuck the poor. Screw over whoever you have to to make it to the top. Whoever dies with the most toys wins.”

I can see Jesus voting for a Democrat. He did seem to enjoy lost causes and raising the dead.

“Conservatives say if you don’t give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they’ve lost all incentive because we’ve given them too much money.” - George Carlin

I think Barbara Boxer is too conservative and Franklin Roosevelt did not go far enough. I believe that every human being, even Republicans, should have free access to medical treatment. I think the quality of American school lunches is child abuse. Most of the crap Americans feed their children is child abuse. I think there is little reason to save the Earth. It will survive long after we have destroyed our own ability to live on it. I believe that homos should have every right to marry each other. Why should only straight people suffer. I agree with pretty much everything George Carlin ever said after he got sober. This things I believe.

As a tree hugger, I am supposed to want to adopt plants and give them names while preventing American businesses from their god-given right to sodomize the Earth. But I do not care much for flora in the home. I think it looks best at a distance outside. But if it has to be a case of nature versus corporate greed, I know which one I would rather photograph.

The Earth has been here long before man, and it will be here long after we are gone. It is human nature to deny things that will inevitably destroy us and it is nature’s nature to clean up the debris after the dust has settled.

As a peacenik, I am supposed to support taking away everyone’s guns and repealing the Second Amendment. But I think screwing with the Constitution should always be a last resort. I do not support amending it for anyone’s cause de semaine, whether it be flag burning, smoking in restaurants or declaring Ronald Reagan a god. However, I am all for taking away everyone’s guns.

“But if you outlaw guns, only criminals will have them”. That is a stupid argument. Even if I were a gun totin’ deer assassin I would think that is a stupid argument. If you outlaw murder, only criminals will commit murder.

People talk about war as if it is a case of right versus wrong. Our cause is just, so we have every right to invade and conquer. But few people, especially those “family values” types, ever seem to give a shit that children are always victims of war. One of the great things about the United States is that it has the luxury of conducting its wars nowhere near its own soil. As such, Americans never have to deal with dead collateral damage children. Who cares about foreign babies anyway. They are not in our family and they may not share our values, so fuck them.

As a spendocrat, I am supposed to want to tax everyone out of all their money and give it to billions of lazy junkies and all those useless children who refuse to go out and get jobs. But I think taking away everyone’s money might make it difficult to ever come back for more. I do not especially care for paying taxes, but I would rather not have to fill out forms and wait for the credit check while my house is on fire.

I am under no illusion that Democrats care more about children than Republicans. Both parties care more about winning elections than anything else. But I am amused when family values Republicans conveniently ignore the fact that their fuck-the-poor policies affect children and families far more than they affect all those lazy non-corporate welfare recipients who were stupid enough to be born poor.

As a bleeding heart, I am supposed to support abortion as a form of birth control, euthanasia as prescriptive medicine and a government war on religion. But I do not consider these political issues. What a patient and doctor talk to each other about is none of my business. I cannot see how it could ever be the business of a bunch of old rich white men who will probably never be pregnant any time soon. If some people were morally offended by prostate exams, it would never be an issue. Where these old men die is also none of the government’s business.

I see religions as systems created to control large populations in a time before television. They were also the easiest way to answer complex questions without the hindrance of any empirical understanding of how anything works. Is there a better way to explain the universe to people without a basic knowledge of biology, meteorology, geography, astronomy, quantum mechanics or a little old fashioned rock and roll. Wikipedia is a great source of misinformation and whatever wacky shit someone decides to type, but it has to be better than presocratic oral histories.

Religions bring comfort to people who are afraid of dying, and occasionally provide charitable services. I take no issue with religious symbols on state property and do not care what fantasy any politician worships. Most of them worship money anyway. My primary complaint is all that killing and torture. Democrats and Republicans generally act like childish assholes when talking to each other, but at least they do not have thousands of years’ worth of murder and genocide on their CVs.

As a liberal socialist communist fascist, I am supposed to blindly follow Obama and worship the ground he walks on. But I did not vote for him in 2008 and have no intention of voting for him in 2012. He may have been constitutionally qualified, but so was Zachary Taylor. I found both terribly inexperienced. I miss the days when one term in whatever office the candidate holds is not enough to become president. James Madison served in various legislatures for 21 years and was Secretary of State for 8 years before becoming president. Andrew Johnson held several elected offices for 37 years before his boss was capped. Neither was the greatest president in the world, but they had good resumés. Obama was in office for five minutes before Oprah crowned him president.

Liberals are supposed to support a black candidate, but a true liberal knows that voting for a black man because he is black is just as racist as voting against him because he is black. Real liberals supported Hillary Clinton in 2008. Any liberal can tell you that an intelligent woman is always a better choice than an inexperienced man. We will never know what might have happened had the Florida and Michigan primaries been handled properly. The Democratic Party screwed her over for an intern.

American political discourse is so devisive these days that you cannot even call it discourse. It more closely resembles the enlightened conversation between two eight-year-olds who each want to take to the monkey bars first. Except that children use more common sense and have a stronger grasp of fair play.

If you tell a Republican about your liberal thinkings, he will likely assume that you blindly agree with all of this week’s Democratic talking points and disagree with all of this week’s Republican talking points. This is generally because he blindly agrees with all of this week’s Republican talking points and disagrees with all of this week’s Democratic talking points. The days of thinking for oneself to form an opinion are over. We are now told what we are supposed to believe by whichever television programs align most closely with our preconceived notions of how we wish the world would work.

Most Americans vote for a party because it tells them that they should. That is like choosing McDonald’s over a meal at home because McDonald’s has more commercials. Actually, most Americans do not even vote. We are always told that only a Democrat or Republican can win. If all of the people who never vote or if all of the people tired of voting for the lesser of two evils would vote for a third party candidate, that rich white man would win in a landslide. Then we could have an additional party as a corporate whore.

As a bleeding heart liberal lunatic, I am supposed to watch MSNBC for information. The problem with this is that MSNBC blows. We do not get it at home, but I have seen bits and pieces whilst out of town, and from what I have seen there is very little news going on. It seems to be only short programs of people with questionable qualifications screaming their own political opinions. This to me is not news.

We also do not get Fox News, but from what I have seen there is very little news going on there either. They have their own talking heads, albeit more blondes, giving their own opinions. They also seem to give a lot more helpful advice to their viewers, such as which new i-toy to buy or which new cookbook to buy or which new outdoor grill to buy. These were not commercials. They were part of the “news”.

Watching MSNBC and Fox on my latest trip told me absolutely nothing about what was going on in the world. There was nothing about the endless protests and civil wars in the Arab world. There was nothing about Aung San Suu Kyi’s election to Myanmar’s legislature. There was nothing about the British tabloid cellphone hacking soap opera. There was nothing about the latest bombing in Kenya. There was nothing about France’s new tiny president replacing the old tiny president. The only mention of Europe’s economy was buried under how Obama and/or Romney will absolutely save/destroy it all.

Critics of each network love bleating on about how biased their disinformation is while supporters claim that only there can one get the real truth. Anyone with any common sense should see that it is all bullshit, frequently interrupted with advertisements for more bullshit. Even politicians know this, although they give lip service to whichever network tows their party’s line. But everyone knows that a politician’s lip service is worth about as much as a Cambodian street walker’s.

Republicans complain about CNN, and it is indeed a half-assed excuse for a news network, but at least they will occasionally report the news. They are as fair and balanced as Fox, but they will report from anywhere in the world as long as it has something to do with American corporate interests.

Something I think would completely flummox most Americans is how open minded, unbiased and informative Chinese international news is compared to American international news. What the Chinese tell the Chinese is a joke, but what they broadcast to international audiences is the way I imagine American news may have been when Ed Murrow was sucking down cancer sticks.

I saw a Chinese political commentary program with a Chinese host and a guest from Hong Kong. They mocked each other’s uniforms (the host wore a Communist Party uniform and the guest wore a business suit), but they discussed the issue at hand calmly, using logic and reason to state their positions. It was all very adult and civilized. It was nothing like the American entertainment shows that pretend to be political analysis. And they both spent a lifetime in the fields of whatever they were talking about. They were nothing like the American self-appointed experts. They were qualified.

I cannot pinpoint exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the line Communist Chinese news became informative and insightful while American journalism became The Gong Show.

People talk about why the United States is going down the toilet. Republicans blame Democratic programs while Democrats blame Republican programs. I blame our collective acquiescence of the complete and absolute dumbing down of American culture. Corporations pander to the lowest common denominator, which has little use for critical thinking. News became opinion. Journalists became entertainters. Prime time became game shows.

Democracy cannot exist without a well-informed populace.

NB

I went to the post office to pay the Wife’s bills, as I often do. As a foreigner, I wait in line until it is my turn. I use the word line loosely. What we call a line and the British incorrectly call a queue, the Chinese call a bunch of people all trying to be first all the time.

There are four easy ways to tell that I am a foreigner. I do not even look vaguely Chinese, I rarely spit on public floors, I know what soap is and I wait for my turn. More often than not while I am waiting in line one or more Chinese will push their way to the front. It is not that they are all selfish assholes. That is simply the Chinese way. Also, they are all selfish assholes.

When it is my turn and some selfish Chinese pushes their way in front of me, I usually tell them in Chinese that they have lost face, or I call them selfish homosexuals. This is when they suddenly act surprised that someone else exists. No matter what batshit stupid thing they are doing, they are always baffled whenever anyone calls them on it. Even after all these years, I am still amused by how surprised these people are when they discover that they are not alone on this planet.

I might as well point out that I have no phobia of homosexuals. Except lesbians. Any woman who does not want me clearly has issues. But calling Chinese people homosexual shocks them. They do not care if you call them monkeys, and calling them pigs only mildly annoys them. But if you call them gay, they react as if you just shot their dog. But not really, since these people treat dogs as common sewer rats. I simply used that expression to convey my point. I could also say they react as if you have stolen their television. Losing your television or being homosexual is a fate worse than waiting your turn around here.

When it was my turn at the post office today, some selfish Chinese pushed her way in front of me, as they often do. Rather than engage in a futile attempt to educate her on the most basic points of living in a civilized society, I simply grabbed her money and threw it on the ground. This was probably not the most polite thing to do, but people tell me I need to act more like the Chinese. One cannot be polite and Chinese at the same time.

It should be noted that grabbing someone’s money around here does not elicit any police attention. I could pick every pocket in a room full of dirty smokers and the police officer watching me in the corner would do absolutely nothing. As long as I do not disturb his betel nuts or rob the business that paid him a little extra under the table to be there, he genuinely could not care less. The last thing these police want to do is any paperwork. Preventing crime or apprehending suspects simply requires too much effort.

The Chinese woman whose money I threw on the floor seemed surprised to discover that someone else exists. I cannot read their minds, Buddha be praised, so I will paraphrase what she was thinking.

“Foreigner throw monies? Me no like! All I do push in front, me go, I busy, me go now! Why foreigner do?”

Obviously she was not thinking this. That would indicate an understanding that actions have consequences. When bad things happen to the Chinese it is never because of anything they did. That day was simply the unluck. They can only comprehend consequences when it is someone else’s fault.

A special note to you politically correct douchebags: characterizing a Chinese person as saying “me no like” is not racist. “No likey chop suey” might be since there is nothing called chop suey around here and no one says “no likey”. But I have heard hundreds or thousands of Chinese say “me no like”. English grammar is incredibly complex compared to Chinese grammar and even the best students struggle with it. So, as Gandhi used to say, “Take your PC manual back to Lillypop and Gumdrop Land where all men and womyn are evolved equally and learn something about the world outside your little utopian bubble before you open your smug hippie mouth.” Sometimes the Mahatma really laid it down.

I also want to point out that while the Chinese woman was on the floor picking up her money and I was paying the Wife’s bills, the clerk never even raised an eyebrow. This is not only because they are physically incapable of raising a single eyebrow and are always baffled that we can. He simply did not give a shit about what I did any more than he ever gives a shit about the thousands of people he sees pushing their way to the front of the “line” every day. I cannot read his mind either, but he was mostly thinking about how many minutes there were until he could go to the nearest KTV to get drunk and participate in some illegal but ignored prostitution. I assume.

Putting myself in their shoes, I would be ever so pissed if someone grabbed my money and threw it on the ground. But it is very difficult to put myself in their shoes. Figuratively, of course. Most Chinese rarely wear shoes. I simply do not think the way they do. Once again, I cannot read their minds, so I have no idea what they are thinking when they do the horribly selfish things they do. But I know from firsthand experience that they are oblivious to the people around them, whether they are walking in the middle of the street, urinating on public benches or driving on the sidewalk. And this is as dangerous as it sounds.

For someone to grab my money at the post office, they would have to physically pry it out of my cold, live hands. To grab their money, one simply needs to take it off the counter where they have thrown it down as a way to lay claim to that space, as if to say, my money is now in front of you, therefore it is now my turn.

I cannot imagine wanting to hate my fellow man as much as they do, but this may be my own lack of imagination. Perhaps there is some benefit to being such a selfish asshole that I cannot fathom. I would feel bad about pushing everyone out of my way, treating public spaces as public toilets, killing children, raping the environment, sneezing in someone’s face, stealing wheelchairs and blocking fire exits. But maybe that has more to do with my own cultural hang-ups than the inherent flaws in their culture. Maybe my culture’s ideas of right of way, first come first served, do unto others, don’t kill everybody, a waiting room chair is not a toilet are flawed and the free wheeling Chinese idea of everyone do whatever the hell you want is the way to go. Different strokes.

From my point of view, I would have to be a horribly selfish asshole to act as they do. But that is not their point of view. One could argue that I am a visitor in their land. If I live here until the day I die, and this is very possible what with the way they drive, I will always be a visitor. Their culture should feel no need to adapt to the ways of my culture. As the foreigner, I should adapt. And indeed I think I have. I never complain when they scream at the top of their lungs into their cellphones. Even when it is in an elevator or other small space. I never scream pointedly into my cellphone anymore. When they eat with their mouths wide open and food spills out all over themselves, their tables and the floors around them, I never even notice anymore. I will sometimes point the food on my wife’s shirt out to her, but never in a what-the-hell-kind-of-pig-are-you way. We both usually laugh about her inability to keep food in her mouth. And I cannot remember the last time I saw a mother help her child urinate in the middle of the street because it phases me not. They treat their own country as a giant garbagie can. Who am I to say that this may not be ideal.

I still complain early and often about their horrendous driving, but that is only because I take issue with being killed and watching others killed simply because these people would rather kill and die than wait their turn. No matter how much I adapt to their ways, I like to think that I will always have a problem with being murdered by some selfish asshole.

When I paid the Wife’s bills and walked away, the woman whose money I threw on the floor took her unrightful turn before everyone else and did whatever she was there to do. No one said anything to me about what I did and no one besides me said anything to her about what she did. It was simply another day at the post office.

Somewhere there is a Chinese Facebook entry that reads, “Foreigner throw monies in floor! Unbelieve! Dinner tonight cat! Making delicious!”

Slow Boat To China

They say your life flashes in front of you before you die. But while flight 968 was plunging toward the East China Sea, I was not thinking about my third birthday party where I had frosted cupcakes and chicken pox or about how I took my first date with a girl to McDonalds because she had a coupon. I know how to treat the ladies right. While I was sitting next to an emergency exit (which I try to get as often as possible since it has the most leg room in the poor class section) and the possibility of actually having to use it, I was thinking about what a royal pain in the ass it took to get here.

When I first moved to China I thought it would be a good idea to visit China as long as I was in the neighborhood. They have a famous wall near Beijing that people seem to like and some fancy old buildings. I might as well go while I was living relatively close. I have also noticed that wherever I go I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time climbing stairs and steep slopes. I will spend the night in my car if the elevator to my fifth floor apartment is broken, but I never give a second thought to taking on twenty thousand steps up Notre Dame or walking up the side of Mt Kilimanjaro. My enthusiasm for physically exhausting myself whenever I am out of town seems to be waning exponentially with age. It might be best if I climb that famous wall before I am in a wheelchair and diapers, or before this decade is over. Whichever comes first.

The problem with going to China is that it is one of the few nations on this planet that forces people of my nationality to buy a visa. As long as I have a job in the part of China where I live and work I will have a visa to live and work here. Or until they decide I should not live and work here. The laws can and will change at random. But I need a different visa to go to the part of China that has the famous wall. One cannot get a visa to that part of China from this part of China unless one lives and works in this part of China. Fortunately, I am one. Unfortunately, I cannot get a visa from here to there because I cannot live and work here without a visa. Sometimes it is worth remembering that the Chinese invented bureaucracy.

If I were a citizen of this part of China I could get a visa to that part of China as long as I had pressing business there. The standard procedure is to let some travel agent fill out all the forms and provide the bullshit letters of introduction that show how pressing is your business. I have no doubt that the Chinese government is aware of all the lying on all the forms, but as long as everyone is doing it, they seem not to particularly care. The unenforcement of any given Chinese law is directly proportional to the number of Chinese people breaking it. Murder is a very serious crime because it rarely happens. If Chinese people murdered each other like it was New Jersey, it would not even be frowned upon.

As a citizen of my nation it is much easier to get a visa to China. All that is required are a simple visit to the nearest embassy, properly filled forms that meet the definition of properly filled as interpreted by whichever civil servant happens to look at them at any given time, and a sack of a few hundred happinesses.

But there are no Chinese embassies where I live. And why would there be. If this is China, as the Chinese say, why would there be a Chinese embassy. There is no American embassy in New York. As a citizen of my nation I am expected to go to a Chinese embassy in my nation. That may be reasonable for people who live in their own nations, but for those of us who live in parts of China that have no Chinese embassies it is inconvenient. Traveling to the other side of the world just to get a visa for this side of the world strikes me as somewhat asinine.

As luck would have it, back when the British were hell bent on world domination and drug addiction, they took over the Hong Kong part of China and made it the kind of place where pretty much anyone not from China could go without a visa. Anyone with a passport from the same nation as mine can go to the Hong Kong part of China from any other part of China. Ironically, anyone with a passport from any part of China other than Hong Kong needs a visa to go to the Hong Kong part of China.

In September of the Year of the Rabbit, I flew from my part of China where I have a visa to the Hong Kong part of China where I do not need a visa, in order to get a visa to another part of China. This was at the end of Ghost Month, when it is unlucky to travel or make travel arrangements. Not only did I travel, but the sole purpose of my travel was to make arrangements for more travel. I am the unluck.

It has been said that the Chinese invented bureaucracy. Scroll up if you doubt my veracity. Being a highly bureaucratic people, they do not simply hand out visas like Junior Mints, which are impossible to find here. Or umpossibow, in the local patois. There is not a single person in the known universe who can give concise and accurate instructions on the obtainment of a legal Chinese visa. Illegal visas are pretty easy.

I cruised the information superhighway before going to the Hong Kong part of China. There was very little information. More accurately, there was very little accurate information. There was plenty of information, but everything I read contradicted whatever I had previously read. The official Chinese government website designed and maintained for the sole purpose of giving out information about visas contradicts itself from page to page, and often on the same page.

Talking to live people is about as useless as asking the Chinese why they tilt their windshield wipers up when they park. Ask a billion people and you will get a billion different answers. Although in all fairness, I have not yet actually spoken to a billion Chinese people about either issue.

Talking to other foreigners is simply useless. Foreigners in a country like China are generally the worst sources of information about countries like China. Myself included. My experience in any given situation will likely not be similar to anyone else’s experience in the same situation. The laws change without notice and are enforced arbitrarily.

If a Canadian and I go to a government office for the same reason at the same time, we will have to follow completely different protocols because our passports are from completely different nations. Despite the fact that Canada is little more than the 52nd state. Puerto Rico comes first, hosers. If an American and I go to a government office for the same reason at different times, we will have to follow completely different protocols because the clerk behind the counter might not be the same person or is in a different mood that day. This is one of the reasons I give absolutely no advice whatsoever to people who may one day need to know how to do something I have already done. Another reason is that I simply don’t give a shit.

China is also the kind of place where foreigners come for two weeks and think they understand the culture. Taking a foreigner’s advice about how to do things in China is like taking a five-year-old’s advice about contemplative meditation. Several years ago I read a blog by a Canadian about living pretty close to where I now live. This was back before only shut-ins and people with Asperger syndrome had blogs. When I read it I was all like, “Dude. What the hell, eh?” It seemed to me that he was talking about a completely different place. Then I bothered to look at the dates and noticed that it was all written several years before. So much had changed from his time served and mine that we might as well have been in different countries altogether.

After minutes of exhaustive research I just went ahead and followed the official government website’s opinions vis à vis the visa. For my convenience, they even have all the forms one needs online that can be printed out on the Wife’s printer that always needs ink. Filling out those forms before entering the Chinese visa office saved me several hours.

My experience with getting a Chinese visa in the Hong Kong part of China was interesting only because it was very easy and relatively quick. I arrived at the visa office on Monday morning and picked up my visa on Thursday afternoon. I could have paid extra to get it earlier, but I have no strong desire to give these bureaucrats any more money. Americans already pay more than anyone else to get Chinese visas. This is partly because we are all billionaires and mostly because our country makes it terribly difficult for pretty much everyone else to get an American visa. There is also no guarantee that I would actually get a visa from a country that rarely follows any known guidelines for giving out visas. Like every visa office in the world, they keep your money whether they say yes or no. Staying in Hong Kong longer was more expensive than paying extra to leave earlier, but I still won. Because I say so.

When one enters the Chinese visa office one is inclined to mutter to one’s self, “Holy Hell. There are a shit ton of people here.” Large crowds are nothing unique in the Chinese part of Asia. China is about the same size as the United States, but it has a billion more people. One hundred people on a bus designed for fifty is a slow day.

Despite the huddled masses yearning to breathe communism, this particular Chinese government office is run efficiently. This is unique to the Chinese part of Asia. Efficient is not anything anyone has ever said of any Chinese government office. Except this one. I was both gobsmacked, befuddled, dumbfounded and stupefied.

There was a line of people near the door and uniformed agents giving out information. The Chinese are not known for their willingness to wait their turn or give out information. Yet here were people waiting in line for people whose purpose was to tell us if our forms were properly filled. If so then we were given a number and allowed to wait. If not then were were given the option of joining the biometric mass at the far end of the room filling out forms or, if this seemed like too much trouble, we could always lie down and die.

Having already filled out all my forms and copied all the necessary copies, I was one of the lucky many to get a number and wait. When I sat down on a predictably uncomfortable Chinese government office plastic chair, I looked up at the rather large electronic tote board and saw that the latest number being served was 23. There were nine windows wherein one could argue with a government employee and all of two were open. The number in my hand read 14,864. I knew that this might take a while.

With time to spare, I decided to observe the people around me. This turned out to be an unpleasant experience, so I went back into my fantasy world of a dystopian society and robots that make a pretty decent sandwich. The O Henryan ending is that they use too much mayonnaise.

If I leave behind only one slice of wisdom from my time at this mortal coil it is that you should never trust a Chinese sandwich robot.

Some time later, never mind how long precisely, having little money in my pocket, I approached the appropriate window at the appropriate time and gave the bored woman all my forms and copies. She looked at everything without enthusiasm and told me to give her cash, as bored women often do. Receipt in hand, I skipped jauntily into the oppressive Hong Kong humidity. I used to feel apprehension about handing my passport to a complete stranger and leaving the building, but that poor little booklet has been manhandled by so many that I never even think about it anymore. Especially whilst skipping jauntily.

When I arrived back at the office on Thursday, I went directly to the pick-up line and waited. While there, I could not help but notice an American who was dissatisfied with the service. Americans in foreign lands have a way of making themselves noticeable. He was bitching and moaning to no one in particular about how overly complicated the system was. I laughed to myself because I found the system uncharacteristically simple and because I derive joy from the pain and suffering of others. Then it occurred to me that he would probably go home and tell Facebook about how horrible the Chinese visa office is and write something garrulous with Moby Dick references that nobody gives a shit about. I thought that was funny because Facebook is a stupid waste of time for losers, while blogs are hip and happening.

I have to wonder how many times I have written about some horribly wanton experience that a similar foreigner found satisfying. But as Socrates famously said, “Introspection is for fags. Y’all should just watch tv, yo.”

In January of the Year of the Dragon I was in the Chinese part of China. The Dragon symbolizes strength and power, and Dragon years are prosperous with great happinesses. Not so much for Bruce Lee. As a Dragon year, 2012 is supposed to be lucky. This contradicts the Mayan version of 2012, unless lucky is the same as absolute annihilation. The Maya were destroyed by the Spanish; the people who invented religious conversion through torture, and paella. The Chinese were destroyed by their own apathy. Which ancient and ultimately useless culture you choose to believe should boil down to one simple factor: would you rather eat Mayan food or Chinese food?

There was a time when traveling from this part of China to that part of China required going through the Hong Kong part of China. But when the Chinese leapt into the 20th century three or four years ago they decided that since so many people travel from here to there, it might be a good idea to make it physically possible to travel from here to there. Now there are direct flights from select cities.

That was the good news. While I had to go to Hong Kong to get a visa to go where I wanted to go, I did not need to go back to Hong Kong to go where I wanted to go. The bad news was that I decided to go during the Chinese New Year, which the Chinese do not call Chinese New Year. Traveling to, from or through any Chinese territory during the Chinese New Year is generally a bad idea. Since every Chinese person on the planet is supposed to go to wherever their parents live or risk the ultimate shame of losing face, and since every Chinese person on the planet seems to live nowhere near wherever their parents live, there is considerable moving to and fro during the Chinese New Year. Planes and trains and boats and buses characteristically are filled to the brim with Chinese people. Not at all coincidentally, prices for everything increase dramatically.

Flying from any part of China to the civilized world is usually considerably less expensive than flying from one part of the civilized world to another. Flying from any part of China to the civilized world during the Chinese New Year tends to be as expensive as flying to and from civilization. Flying from any part of China to another part of China during the Chinese New Year is just stupid. That is why most of your Chinese types will take a train to get to wherever their parents live. That and the fact that standing on a train for eight hours surrounded by a hundred people within sneezing distance who have never heard of soap is a pretty good time. If you think you are going to sit on this train then you have clearly never ridden a Chinese train during the Chinese New Year. If you think the people constantly pushing into you like a New Zealand teenager on a sheep farm are going to cover their mouths when they sneeze then you have clearly never spent any time in China.

There is also the issue of hotels. While almost all of these Chinese travelers are going to visit their parents, most of them have no fervent desire to stay in their parents’ homes. This increases the prices of hotel rooms in and around all Chinese parts of China during the Chinese New Year. Since I was going to the Chinese part of China and had no intention of staying in anyone’s parents’ home, a hotel room was virtually the only option available to me.

However, for reasons that make no sense to anyone, my plane ticket was more than reasonable for any time of the year and the hotel was at a bargain basement price. I have been told that it was because I flew just before the actual New Year’s Day, but that is the same time that everyone else flies. The flights and airports were not especially crowded, which supports the price, but contradicts the fact that every Chinese person on the planet was also traveling on that day. I have also been told that I am simply the luck.

What I would learn not long after arriving in the Chinese part of China was that the hotel I had chosen was a bit of a dump.

The Chinese propensity for inefficiency quickly reared its ugly dragon horns when the plane from my part of China landed in their part of China. My experience with landing at airports has generally involved either the plane stopping directly at the gate, with passengers disembarking via a jetway, or the plane stopping somewhere on the apron and passengers unloading themselves down a flight of rickety stairs. When disembarked on an apron, passengers are usually shoved into a bus and driven to the nearest (or farthest) available gate.

In this particular instance, we were all herded into a bus where we waited for every last man, woman and dog to waddle down the stairs. It was at least ten minutes between the bus doors closing and the bus moving in a forward direction. And ten minutes in this age and day of microwave ovens and push button telephones is an eternity. When the packed bus finally moved, even the inefficient Chinese passengers were surprised to be taken all of ten feet away across a narrow street. It would have taken seconds to simply walk across this street directly from the plane. Crossing a Chinese street is usually very dangerous, but this was a small service lane at an airport. The only traffic I saw was our slow bus, and it spent more time stationary than moving.

What I liked about this unnecessarily overcomplicated operation was that it forced the Chinese people who always push their way out of the plane to arrive at the gate at the same time as everyone else. They ordinarily force themselves in front of everyone only to move much slower than the rest of us as soon as we are all inside the building. Here we all had no choice but to arrive at the same time. Maybe this is what communism is all about.

We stayed at 闽南大酒店, which I chose because it is listed as a four star hotel with Motel 6 prices. What I already knew was that four stars in China are roughly equal to two stars in the civilized world. Hence the Motel 6 price.

When we checked in they wanted to see both my and the Wife’s passports. Showing my passport at a hotel means nothing to me as this is customary pretty much everywhere in the world. But the Wife was having none of it. She saw no need for them to look at her passport since the room was in my name. I saw no need to point out to her that it was standard operating procedure and not some fiendish Chinese scheme since I have to live with her. For their part, the Chinese peons simply wanted to make sure that my Chinese wife was not Chinese Chinese. Your average international hotel in China has television and newspaper access that the Chinese government does not want their people to see. Even at a four star Motel 6. Chinese indolence prevented the hotel staff from really caring about it either way, and the Wife won in the end.

I quickly noticed that our room had no refrigerator. One of the first things that I check when I enter a new hotel room is the refrigerator since it is likely either turned to the warmest setting or turned off entirely. Refrigerators in East Asia hotels are as standard as vacuum tube television sets. Your standard Asian would find a room without either completely unacceptable. But the standard Asian definition of refrigeration does not entirely match my own. I like cold drinks cold. The standard Asian likes cold drinks at room temperature. If this makes one wonder why they insist on having refrigerators in their rooms then one is using western logic and ignoring the mystical ways of the Orient.

The websites that I used to find and book this hotel all said that there were refrigerators in every room. I did not doubt this since refrigerators in East Asia hotels are as standard as hard mattresses. This room had the hard mattress and low definition television, but no refrigerator. It took some time to convince the front desk minions that our room with a refrigerator had no refrigerator. I expected them to move us to another room since we had just checked in and that is what most hotels would do in this situation. But they brought up a refrigerator to our room instead. Eventually.

One thing they never wanted to bring to our room was toilet paper. Apparently there is a shortage in China. Or perhaps the housekeeping staff was simply too lazy to keep house. I could assume that Chinese people use less than normal humans, but the things these people eat has to result in using more.

One of my least favorite things to do in a hotel is to sit on a hard mattress with a tepid beverage and watch local television, but I was lucky enough to do that more than once here because I was with the Wife and when you are with the Wife, you wait. This is not a Chinese thing. All married men understand. Since I am married more often than most people, basic math dictates that I understand this more than most.

While waiting for the Wife on the hard mattress, tepid beverage in hand, I watched the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics on the low definition television receptor. I checked with the clock next to the bed, because you never know, and it was indeed 2012. There was no explanation as to why they were showing the 1984 Olympics or why they only showed the opening ceremonies.

It was interesting to compare the very low tech 1984 opening ceremonies with Beijing’s digital laser and fireworks show of 2008, especially as Los Angeles knows all about putting on an ostentatious show while Beijing is mostly known for KFCs on every corner and a bicycle every four inches. Four inches being a great length to Chinese people. It was disappointing to remember how popular pastels were in 1984.

Beijing had a million drummers doing the Chinese Bang with Dolby digital 6.0 surround sound while Los Angeles had John Williams wearing a tuxedo in Los Angeles in July. The Beijing torch runner ran the torch up the side of the stadium. Literally. The Los Angeles torch runner went up a staircase and lit a fuse. Beijing had a laser whale swimming on the roof and eating imperialist plankton. Los Angeles had a dude in a jet pack. Beijing had a few crouching tiger flying dragons doing wire dances all over the place. Los Angeles had some local cheerleaders spelling out USA.

The most noticeable difference between the two was that Los Angeles’ opening ceremonies can be shown on commercial television with only a few interruptions. Beijing’s opening ceremonies took 37 hours.

My favorite part of the endless parade of athletes marching into the Memorial Coliseum was watching the tiny teams make their way in; Singapore – 5 athletes, Sri Lanka – 4, Syria – 7, Togo – 6, UAE – 7, followed by the United States – 615. People from the big countries love to brag about how many medals they win, but when you have three times as many athletes as China or Australia, you probably should win. If Djibouti’s three athletes take home the most medals, something is wrong.

I cannot say that I remember much about the 1984 Olympics, or even 1984 itself, but I am almost sure that Ronald Reagan was involved in some way. He was president of the host country at the time and had lived and made some dreadful movies in Los Angeles several centuries before. He was completely absent from the Chinese broadcast that I watched. I also believe the modern Chinese commentary was inaccurate in its declaration that China won the most gold medals in 1984. As far as I remember, the United States won the most medals since the Soviet Union and its lackeys boycotted the games.

Outside of the hotel I learned that this Chinese part of China in January is colder than a blind date when she sees what kind of car you drive, and that the Wife is terrified of cats.

They say that cat people are more compatible with cat people and dog people with dog people. I like cats and agree with Thomas Jefferson about dogs. The Wife is perfectly comfortable sharing Chinese streets with packs of roving dogs but cannot eat if a cat is present. She says that she does not like cats because she was born in the Year of the Rat. But I was born in the Year of the Dog.

We went to some shitty restaurant that she thought would be good because it was “American”. Ignoring the fact that being American is not necessarily a good thing, what the Chinese call American rarely resembles anything that I might call American. There were a few American flags in the restaurant and I believe I saw a cowboy hat nailed to a wall, but the food seemed more Chinese to me.

There was a mechanical bull in the corner with all the KTV equipment, so I suppose the restaurant was more American than most. Nothing says American dining like KTV and mechanical bulls.

This American restaurant was also entirely outdoors. It looked like a restaurant with all the random and pointless crap nailed to the walls and was certainly not one of those plastic stool restaurants where the food comes from the back of some dude’s truck, but there was no interior.

Since this part of China is as cold in January as was previously mentioned, the American restaurant had a few tiki torches spread out. Nothing says American dining like KTV, mechanical bulls and Polynesian bamboo. While sitting under a precarious flame and eating our American mifen with seaweed and mung beans, we noticed a cat lurking about. It seemed to want to get as close to us as possible, either because we had the fire stick or because we had food. I was going to give it some food just to see how brave and/or aggressive it got, but the Wife practically panicked as soon as she realized there was a cat fumbling about her feet. When I pointed out another cat perched on a potted plant a few feet away from her, she froze. I mentioned that being mostly motionless is probably not the best way to keep a cat from filchering some food.

It soon became obvious to me and my anxious wife that there were more than a few cats lurking about this American restaurant. I found it interesting since China is infested with packs of roving dogs. One does not ordinarily see many stray cats in a place with so many stray dogs.

In addition to the American restaurant that did not remind me of an American restaurant, this part of China also has an American grocery store. It looks and smells nothing like an American grocery store, but it had more than a few genuine American products that I have never seen outside of the United States. These were not things made and packaged in China with “make in Amerca” stickers. These were honest to Buddha American grocery store items made, packaged and sold from the good ol’ US of A.

What amuses me is that despite all the anti-American rhetoric, China has absolutely no qualms about buying and selling American goods. Most of the cheap counterfeit crap is supposed to be American; not British, African or from some lesser country. Conversely, Chinese people do not seem all that interested in American products. Barack Hussein Osama recently said that “anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned doesn't know what they're talking about”. I assume he did not mean that people want to buy American crap. The American restaurant was practically empty. And it may have well been a Saturday night for all I remember. The American grocery store mostly sold Chinese products. Their American variety was impressive, but they had more Chinese than anything else. I have seen a few stores managed by and that cater to foreigners with nothing but foreign goods. They have all gone out of business.

American goods are most definitely in decline and the American influence over Chinese culture has more than waned. It has been replaced by Japanese and Korean culture. Forty years ago Chinese people wanted nothing more than American blue jeans. Today they want Japanese electronics, many of which are made in China, and Korean music.

Back at the hotel, we both noticed something that everyone should notice about every hotel in China, and indeed in most of East Asia. Our non-smoking room was in fact a smoking room. Most Asian hotels will gladly rent you a non-smoking room, but what makes it a smoking or non-smoking room is whether or not you smoke in it. Since five out of four Asians smoke, this never bothers them. Better hotels will do what they can to drive the reek away, but your average four star hotel with Motel 6 prices will simply open your window for you. This pretty much never does anything useful and is essentially a bad idea in the middle of winter.

As luck would have it, your average Asian is deathly afraid of sunlight, and most hotels have very heavy blackout curtains. These come in handy when your sleeping options are freezing to death or wearing an ashtray respirator.

The funny thing about smokers, other than how selfish they are and their horrid stench, is that they will use the cold to rationalize their smoking. Apparently it keeps them warm. This is also why they smoke in summer. Alcoholics are just as delusional, but only smell like shit up close.

What I will probably remember the least about this particular trip was how polite and efficient the airport security were when I left. We again had to wait for a bus to take us from the boarding gate all the way across the street to the plane, but the journey from check-in counter to shopping mall was as easy as any I have ever seen. It probably helped that I was there at the crack of dawn, before the shoving hordes of Chinese arrived.

After checking in, which I always do since the advance check-in system at whatever airport I happen to be in either does not apply to my flight or is out of order, I moved lively to the immigration desk. This is usually the slowest part, whether there is a line or not. Tiny uniformed people in tiny booths love to look at every single page in my passport, and the new American passports have a lot of pages. The Chinese woman at this airport went straight for the Chinese visa page, stamped her little stamp and sent me on my way. I assume she spoke no English and she likely assumed I speak no Chinese. This is useful when you have nothing useful to say to someone.

There was no one in front of or behind me at the security line and my bag and I went through faster than I have ever gone through any security checkpoint. My bag was mostly full of food, which often causes problems, but this airport’s x-ray machine did not seem to care. The tiny uniformed man manning the machine may have been asleep.

With the entire process taking mere minutes, I had more than enough time to indulge in the one thing I loathe more than waiting for the Wife on a hard mattress while watching local television; waiting in the airport shopping mall.

I have no idea when airports became shopping malls, but they all seem to be today. Even the smallest airports seem to be designed for shopping first, with all that pesky flying to and fro an afterthought. Hong Kong International is more shopping mall than anything else, but they used to have an area near the old food court where you could sit comfortably and listen to the bad loudspeaker music, almost like what they still have upstairs at Schiphol. Now it is more shopping.

Maybe someday someone will put a library in an airport. I suppose that is unlikely since most people would rather buy overpriced trinkets and eat overpriced microwaved food than read a book. Maybe I should buy one of those electronic books the next time I eat a pretzel at an airport.

They say the music you think about just before you die is the soundtrack of your life. While flight 968 was plunging toward the East China Sea, I could not get the Ofarim version of “Cinderella Rockefella” out of my head. I am glad I did not buy the CD at any of the twelve record stores in the airport.

A Terse Cultural Observation

I live next to a hospital. The building in which I live is owned by the hospital in which it is near. I live here because the Wife works at said hospital. It is terribly convenient to live next to a hospital where one’s wife works when one requires a visit. It is not so great when the hospital is Chinese.

I seem to remember signs from my youth in the real world telling people to be quiet in hospital zones. This always made sense to me. The last thing you want while dying in a hospital bed is to hear a marching band outside your window. For many of us, the last thing we want to hear at any point in our life cycle is a marching band outside our window.

Such signs do not exist in Chinese countries. Such signs cannot exist in a culture where everyone is too self-involved to take anyone else into consideration. The Chinese mentality is to do whatever the hell they want regardless of how it will affect others. Other people are other people’s problems.

I have more than a few students who are just becoming teenagers. Experience has shown me that this is never a good thing. The nicest, most polite children become typical raging Chinese assholes once they fumble into puberty. One such student announced at the end of class yesterday that she did not care about anything. She used to be the top student in the class. Now that she is becoming a teenager her scores are plunging down the toilet. I asked her why she was doing worse in class. She said that she did not care. This was an unusually honest answer. Few of them care, but they usually come up with excuses for their apathy. I asked her if she wanted to fail the class and take it over again. She said that she did not care. I then asked her if she would rather eat cockroaches or mosquitos for dinner. She knew that she was trapped, and the rest of the class laughed at her predicament, but she was as obstinate as a teenager and said that she did not care. This brought more laughter from the class. Few things embarrass a Chinese teenager more than being laughed at by their peers. But it is far better to be laughed at than to compromise.

When I asked her how she would feel if both of her parents died she said that she did not care. This was probably more truthful than stubborn. Teenagers and parents are a bad mix in any country. When I asked her if she wanted to go home she said that she did not care. So I told the rest of the class that they could go home and told her to stay. When she said that her parents were waiting for her I told her that I did not care.

This is typical Chinese adult behavior. These people simply do not care about anything beyond what they want to do at any given moment. When their actions have horrible consequences they blame everything on bad luck. When your atrocious driving kills someone, it is simply the unluck. If your wife leaves you because you spend every night with KTV prostitutes, your marriage must be the unluck. Fired from you job for stealing everything that was not nailed down? Unluck.

When blaming your dipshittery on bad luck no longer works for you, kill yourself. Suicide is a national pastime around here. Chinese culture tells people to follow ritual superstitions to have good luck, and if you have too much bad luck you can always open a few veins. This is not a dust off your boots and get back on the horse kind of culture. Their motto is if at first you don’t succeed, stab yourself.

The Wife’s oldest sister considered suicide about a year ago when her husband’s business tanked. They consider themselves rich, although in the real world they would be middle class, and the greatest pain rich people can suffer is poverty. They still have several cars and a big house, so I would imagine they are further from poverty than they think. And if all else fails they have more than enough relatives with more than enough spare space with which to live.

When the Wife told me that the Wife’s Sister told her that she was thinking about taking a dirt nap, I told the Wife that there was nothing to worry about. People who say they are going to do it rarely do. People who actually kill themselves usually surprise those around them. But this perspective only works in my culture. Chinese people kill themselves at the drop of a hat. The Wife had more than a few colleagues who are no longer this side of breathing because their boyfriends dumped them. Transitioning from enough money to buy jewelry and furniture to just enough money to pay the bills is more than enough to send these people over the edge.

This is one of many reasons that these hospitals are always full. Another is that the health care system is dirt cheap and people will go to the hospital whenever they sneeze. But the biggest reasons for crowded hospitals are cancer, which would take a worldwide lifestyle adjustment to eradicate, and traffic “accidents”, which are utterly avoidable.

Spending time in a Chinese hospital is a very different experience from spending time in an American hospital. I spent a sleepless night in an American hospital listening to the IV dripping. It was far too quiet for my liking. When a selfish Chinese driver was kind enough to break my ankle for me I never could have gotten any sleep in the Chinese hospital. The patients around me were all screaming into their cellphones, screaming at their visitors, screaming at the nurses and screaming while eating. The din inside a Chinese hospital is excruciating. It is little wonder that no one would complain if a marching band were outside their windows.

Despite all of my tours of duty in this country I still think like a foreigner. Since I work nights I prefer not to wake up at eight o’clock in the morning. I take out the garbagie at my convenience, not when some truck plays its horrible song. And I absolutely refuse to wear a coat when it is thirty degrees outside. The calendar may call it winter, but I dress according to the actual weather.

So when the marching band outside my window woke me up at eight o’clock this morning I considered it inconvenient, unnecessary and terribly rude to the patients dying in the hospital next door. Starting my day far too early will not kill me. I prefer not to wake up twelve hours before I go to work, but it is not the worst thing that could happen. In my foreigner mind, waking up dying hospital patients with a marching band could be the worst thing that happens to them. To the Chinese it is morning. Time to wake up. If any patients die because of the marching band or the nine to five construction that has been going on for several months, obviously they were the unluck.

Addendum of 3 January

With my advancing years I have neglected to mention that Mr McCartney now offers special “soundcheck” packages with his concerts. For about US$2000 or more, one can buy a single ticket to one of his shows, along with entrance to that show’s soundcheck earlier in the day. The package includes a buffet lunch (which is not always vegetarian, apparently), tour poster and baseball cap. The length of the soundcheck depends entirely on how long it takes the sound engineers to play with their knobs. It could be a mini-concert. It could be one song. Customers have no choice, or foreknowledge, of where their seats will be. The bulky men in small t-shirts tell you where to sit, or stand, when you show up.

It is this extra milking of fans that prompted this diatribe in the first place. So naturally I never bothered to mention it.