Beacon, Flies and Poop Maps

As published at SubStack, 9/3/23:

[Pakse, 9/2/23]

Two copulating flies have just landed on my laptop. I leave them alone. Though immobile, they’ve been going at it for nine minutes now. Most men can’t last that long, at anything. Maybe they’re dead. Is this the ideal way of exiting this perplexing realm? Maybe it’s an illustration of hell. At eleven minutes, they’re still frozen. Maybe they’re embarrassed at having been watched all this time by some fly pervert.

Getting up before 3AM, I watched some YouTube videos to see what’s happening beyond my tranquil city. No one shouts or gets publicly angry here. Teenage boys don’t try to prove they’re homicidal gangstas. Unharried men shoot billiards. Everyone’s facial muscles relax.

[Pakse, 8/31/23]

There’s a 9/1/23 video by Victor Davis Hanson, “The De-Civilization of America.” Showing scenes of rampant homelessness, flash robs, cars being broken into and a poop map, Hanson explains that businesses and residents are fleeing this once gorgeous city, because it’s no longer safe to live or do business in. With cops demonized, violence glamorized, laws eviscerated and meritocracy mocked, San Francisco and other Democratic strongholds are becoming Detroit, Hanson concludes.

Just going to your office downtown, you may step on human excrement or a drug needle, “Is that what you want? Everybody says no, I don’t need that, not with 13.3 income tax rate in California. What’s very funny about these people is they created all this, and they made a desert, as I said, and they called it civilization, and now they don’t want to live in it […] They’ve created a Frankensteinian monster that’s devouring them.”

I have a brother in Cupertino and a half sister in San Francisco. My freshman year in high school, I spent in San Jose. I bought my first jeans with my own cash at the Gap in Eastridge Mall. Sweating over woks, I made so-so Chinese-American grub in my father’s kitchens in Redwood City and Santa Clara. I gave poetry readings in SF, Berkeley and San Jose, and I was a writer-in-residence at UC Berkeley. Too zonked out to trudge further, I curled up on someone’s porch swing in El Cerrito. At Candlestick, I witnessed Hideo Nomo’s first MLB game. I roamed through Oakland’s worst neighborhoods, hung out in Fremont and took a ferry to Sausalito.

[San Francisco, 5/9/13]

Having observed the Bay Area over decades, I was no stranger to its seedier and sadder aspects, but what I’m seeing now from afar exceeds anything I encountered, and that’s true, too, of Philadelphia, a city I knew well.

With its nodding or knocked out zombies, Philly’s Kensington has become internationally famous, so YouTubers have been rushing there to document the horrors. Just two blocks from each other, Allegheny Station and McPherson Square are always shown. Having walked by each a hundred times, I always saw messed up people, but never so many as now, on YouTube.

In Kensington, I’d hang out in Bentley’s Place or Jack’s. Once, I sat next to some old broad who chugged an empty beer mug for over an hour. It beat going home. On the street, I ran into a shirtless guy who was not shy about displaying his grotesquely burnt body and face. He called himself Jesse James. Showing me his miserable property, a landlord grinned, “I’ve had people die in every single room of this house.”

When a Bentley’s Place bartender collapsed after downing too many shots, an ambulance had to be called, but she promptly woke up as it rolled into the hospital. Jumping out, she managed to walk back to the bar, to bartend, and liquor up some more. If a customer hadn’t shown up in a while, she simply assumed he had overdosed or been shot. When an old regular reappeared, she nearly screamed because she thought he was a ghost. Bentley’s Place is permanently closed.

This morning, I also watched a video of San Jose by Metal Leo. Heart of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area’s largest city, it’s also losing population, with its desolate downtown now filled with empty stores. When I lived there in 1978-79, San Jose had no major league sport. After the Earthquakes then Sharks appeared, even the San Francisco 49ers moved south, an indication of the shift in wealth and prestige in the Bay Area.

Though San Jose has its roving homeless and tent cities, it still doesn’t look as bad as San Francisco, but I suspect it will soon surpass its northern cousin. Warmer, it’s more amendable to sleeping outside. Plus, its industrial parks and corporate campuses are perfect for post-collapse Americans. Apple’s circular headquarters already looks like a massive Hakka group home. Its size, though, may require more than one warlord. Each night, there will be skirmishes among zombies in the hallways.

Since too many blacks and Hispanics couldn’t pass algebra in 8th grade, San Francisco decided to only teach it a year later, thus retarding the entire math curriculum. In the name of equality, idiocy is ushered in. A New York Times headline from 10/25/22, “California Students Have Dismally Low Math and Reading Test Scores.” Though worst in dumps like SF, it’s a nationwide problem.

In his video, Victor Davis Hanson blames America’s unraveling on Democrats and the left, so there’s a backlash that includes support for Trump. It’ll be interesting, he says, to see how Democrats who have fled to red states vote in the next election, so, again, we’re stuck in this Democratic, Republican bullshit.

Nothing will be solved until Americans realize these blue and red puppets all serve those that want to divide, bankrupt or even kill them. After triumphantly launching Jewjabs, Trump has never reflected on their evil consequences, so there’s no remorse, he did his job. Nearly three years into this horror, Biden still pushes boosters.

With the media hinting at the return of Covid mask mandate, lockdown, travel restrictions and vaccine requirements, many Americans are uneasy, so protest videos have been posted online. Compiling a bunch, Del BigTree has this message, “‘There’s only one way we stop this. There’s only one way we prove them wrong, and that’s by making everyone we know stand up with us. It’s time to stage, side by side, not to say by ourselves, ‘Oh, hell no,’ but a cacophonous, resounding, gigantic, screaming roar, ‘Hell, no!’ We will not do this again! We’re the citizens of the United States of America. We’re the beacons of light and hope and freedom and liberty for the entire world. If we go down, the world goes down.”

It’s a rousing call, but the jingoism at the end does jar. Increasingly, the world sees America only as a beacon for endless war, financial swindles, Jewjabs, Satanic music, sick movies, child mutilation and cross dressing freaks, and that’s why it’s moving away from the belligerent pervert.

Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have just joined BRICS, but these countries also applied: Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Indonesia, Kazahstan, Kuwait, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam. That’s a lot of oil, natural gas, gold, minerals, food and human capital realigning.

After the US-engineered coup in Ukraine, John McCain paid that doomed nation a visit, then quipped that its supposed enemy, Russia, was “just a gas station masquerading as a country.” Disdain, contempt or ignorance colors America’s view of every country, foe or ally.

To many Americans, the Third World is just a collection of “shitholes,” but consider Laos, one of the poorest Asian countries. Having spent time in Pakse, Vientiane, Luang Prabang and Phonsavan, I can definitely say these cities are cleaner and safer than most American ones, with much less squalor and no human shit visible. Although drugs are cheaper and more available here than in the US, I don’t see zombies staggering around. Although despair is hard to quantify, there must be less of it here.

For the longest time, violence in American cities was repackaged as grittiness or even glamor, so immature males over much of the world started to look and act like the worst American assholes. To be loud, obnoxious and always ready for a fight over nothing was hip or cool, the last an obvious oxymoron since there’s no composure or manliness in such behavior. Luckily, this American contagion has not spread to Laos or Muslim countries I’ve visited.

Playing to his navel gazing audience, BigTree has it wrong. If Uncle Sam collapses, much of the world will only cheer.

I began this article with two flies, so let’s end with one more, William Blake’s:

The Fly

Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

If the absence of thinking is death, then some places are clearly ahead of the rest. From sea to toxic sea, poop maps spread. The beacon is long dead, and the lighthouse has become a pestilent toilet. As language and math die, flies pester all your senses. Impotently, you swat.

 

[Vietnamese boys in Pakse, Laos on 8/31/23]

[Pakse, 8/31/23]

[San Jose, CA on 5/29/15]

Irresistible California

As published at Smirking Chimp, Unz Review, TruthSeeker and LewRockwell, 8/26/19:






Last month in Saigon, I hung out with my friend of 40-years, Giang. We were freshmen together at Andrew Hill High School in San Jose">San Jose, then I had to move to Virginia to escape my psychotic stepmother. A screaming machine, she’s still daily enraged, I’m sure. A horrible marriage will do that.

In the late 70’s, San Jose was like today’s Fresno, with nothing slicked up about it. There were no Cisco, eBay, PayPal, Adobe, Yahoo! and Google, etc. With Oracle, Apple and Atari newly born, it was still a minor league city, dotted with fruit orchards. There were no giant, futuristic corporate headquarters. The Sharks hadn’t surfaced and the 49ers were still wind-blown in Candlestick.

Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo!, went to Andrew Hill, but it was actually a day asylum for poor kids, with more than half of them immigrants or children of immigrants. Our principal was a mustachioed Mr. Jaimez. With my judo background, I outwrestled a bigger Mexican in gym class, to everyone’s delight, but a very muscular black decided to nearly drown me in the swimming pool, just for the hell of it. He finally let me surface when I clawed some DNA from his chest.

In the library, there was an oil portrait of Andrew Hill, but I still don’t know who he is. It’s probably taken down, for as a white man, Hill had to be a racist, misogynist, animal abuser, resource glutton and world-class polluter. Unlike us people of color, he had no rights to park his bulbous white ass on beautiful California, built and maintained to this day by brown and yellow coolies. Suffering endless lashes from sneering white masters, their screams pierce your heart, even if you’re white.

The Golden State is meant for the Golden Horde, entiende? so Mexicans, too, should keep moving inland. Whites who balk at this manifest destiny will be sent to the worst reeducation camp ever, UC Berkeley. As for Hill’s bones, they must be dug up and tossed into Half Moon Bay.

Within days after I left, Giang called to say he had persuaded his dad to let me move into their household. We had lived on the same street, Locke Drive, a cul-de-sac opening onto the vast city dump, with its attendant funk and seagulls. I thanked Giang but declined, then we gradually lost touch. Before the internet, it was expensive and inconvenient to communicate long distance. Eastridge Mall, school lunch burritos, cholos, Ben Davis pants and California itself faded into nothingness.

When Giang sent me a basketball for my birthday a decade later, I barely remembered the guy, but then my life was a mess. I could barely focus on what was right in front of me, an older woman, a feverish grappling with Catholicism, my cold shell of an apartment, a sweet and confused cocktease, my delirious end as a radio host, a botched novel, rushed, desperate paintings, a sudden fondness for Southern Comfort and the realization that I was already a joke, and not even a funny one. It’s not easy to become an adult. I had just turned 22.

Giang married a Vietnamese-American girl he first spotted in his college library. She, too, was a virgin, but much quieter, and more observant than Giang. He got his business degree, became a salesman, rose up the ranks, bought expensive gifts for his wife and three Bay Area houses. She made decent money as a nurse. They had two sons.

On business trips to Japan, South Korea or Singapore, etc., Giang stayed in his hotel room when not meeting clients, for he couldn’t enjoy himself without his wife and kids, he told me.

Giang’s obsessiveness and occasional bombast must have grated on his family, however, but this wasn’t really an issue until he was laid off during the 2008 economic downturn. Giang stayed unemployed for more than two years. Home nearly all the time, Giang’s increasing crankiness made him insufferable. His wife’s contempt hardened. They divorced.

With all his efforts at reconciliation fruitless, his kids not talking to him, two of his houses gone and still jobless, Giang drove to BestBuy to buy a rope, researched online on how to tie the right knot, then emailed a laconic goodbye to a handful of people. Before my mildly overweight friend could dangle, however, his brother rushed over to prevent his descension into an even deeper hell.

Gradually letting go of his ex, Giang dated five women in the next two years or so, all Vietnamese-Americans roughly his age, with three of them divorcees. I met two of Giang’s girlfriends. Seeing my buddy’s chaotic love life, I had to sound off, “You can’t just keep fucking them then dumping them, man. That’s not right.” He grinned guiltily.

Living within a 20-minute drive of his parents, Giang saw them three or four times a week, and at least half of his San Jose friends were Vietnamese-Americans. Despite this, his Vietnamese is weaker than mine, because, well, he’s not preoccupied with words, but this doesn’t explain why he never returned to Vietnam until 2012, much later than me.

Frankly, I’m more Vietnamese yet more American than he is, not that he cares. When Giang visited me in Philly, I took him to the Liberty Bell, but he had no idea what it was about, and didn’t even know that the American Revolutionary War was against the British. He retained even less from Andrew Hill than I did.

As a refugee from Communism, Giang identifies with the Republicans, because he thinks they stand for freedom and democracy, and Trump really turns him on, because the guy’s a wheeler and dealer, so must be the right choice, supposedly, to fix America’s broken economy. Trump will also get America “back” on the moon within the next five years, as promised.

Betrayal corrodes the soul. Tired of it, Giang found his new wife online. A Saigon businesswoman, Mong owned an import, export company and raked in at least $5,000 a month, so she’s not a desperate gold digger, Giang reasoned. Never married at 35, she’s still trim, pretty and 17 years younger than him. The gap was a bit much, but hey, Giang had obvious leverage as a Vietnamese-American. Each man grabs what he can. The Donald is 24-years older than Melania, and she’s merely his official lay.

Giang flew back to Vietnam, and they hit it off immediately in person, right at the arrival gates. Moments later, he was in her bedroom, and it was almost supernatural how comfortable and familiar everything was. After nearly a day airborne, he couldn’t experience a softer landing.

Giang visited her well-organized office, met her employees then flew with her to Binh Dinh, her home province, to be introduced to her family. Mong’s parents had been married for nearly four decades, a great sign, and her mom doted on her dad. Her brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles were all sweet and candid, and he even hit it off with everyone’s children. It was like he had always belonged to this family.

Coincidentally, Giang’s father is also from Binh Dinh, so this must be fate, he thought. Giang had spent all his life across the globe only to be wedded, finally, to his ancestral province, with its unique dishes and sweet, resonant accent, though outsiders tend to find it either too coarse or coy.

Reassured, Giang went ahead with the wedding, for which he spent lavishly. Three hundred guests were invited. As soon as the paperwork was out of the way, Mong could join him in California, but there was a slight twist to this. Having made several trips to Vietnam in recent years, Giang became comfortable enough with the country to entertain the idea of moving there. With some trepidation, he told his wife about this possibility, but she didn’t flinch, “Fine, we can live wherever.” Of course, he’ll give her a grand tour of the mythical USA. They had already traveled to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea for their honeymoon. When Giang gushed about Seoul or Singapore, Mong would say, “I can’t even imagine New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco.”

Back in San Jose, Giang waited for his wife to join him, but the day before her departure, a slew of emails from an unknown blew up everything. Attached to each were photos or videos of Mong with another man. They sing karaoke, lounge by a pool, attend a party, embrace or kiss. In one photo, she’s naked and sleeping in bed as this man smiles at the camera. In a video, she pulls her panties down so he can rub lotion on her ass. In many of the images, Giang could clearly see the wedding ring he had given her.

This dramatic turn I heard from Giang as we sat in 4P’s, an upscale Vietnamese chain founded by a Japanese expat. We drank Tiger beer and had two ricotta cheese, Parma ham wraps, a pizza with Japanese ginger pork and a plate of carbonara with camembert and seaweed. Each time we get together, it’s Giang’s treat. At a nearby table, a headphone-wearing Vietnamese boy of about 13 spoke loudly in English. Annoyed, people turned their heads.

In Saigon, you can’t walk a block without seeing an English language school, and sometimes several, with each showing a smiling white teacher on their poster. Toddlers are given English nickname, from Johnny to Pepsi, and spoken to in broken, pidgin English by their parents, for they must become an English-speaking “global citizen” and “leader,” as advertised at the language academies.

Sharing the 6th floor with 4P’s was California Centuryon, a gaudy, expensive gym. We were on top of Saigon Centre, a chic, busy downtown mall with lots of good eating. After his sad confession, Giang was still in good spirit, but the guy is always “goofy,” as we used to say in South Philly. Even wearing a noose, Giang was likely grinning.

“So she had a little fling before flying over. It’s like a bachelorette party!” I laughed.

“No, no, man, this went on for a year!”

“A year?! So who is this guy?”

“Her old boyfriend, and her employee! He’s her manager.”

“He really planned this out, didn’t he? How old is the guy?”

“Around 40. Just look at him,” Giang pulled up a photo on his phone. “He’s ugly.”

“Oh come on, man. He’s younger than you, tall, without a beer belly. He’s actually pretty good looking!”

“Fuck your mother!”

“So what did she say?"

“She said she was pressured.”

“Bullshit! She wanted to get some good sex in before she ended up with you!” I laughed.

“Fuck your mother!”

We were speaking in Vietnamese, by the way, though sometimes Giang would switch to English, or intersperse English words into his sentences. There were four young ladies at the next table, so we had to keep our conversation somewhat hushed. A waitress brought a birthday cake to the English speaking brat. The twelve people at his table clapped, then sang “Happy Birthday to You.”

“Look at this,” he turned over his left forearm. There was a long tattoo, “MONG LOVES GIANG.”

“What the fuck! When did you do that?”

“Right after she got hers. She did it in India, while on a business trip, and she sent me the image.”

“And you were moved?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you, a fuckin’ teenager?!”

My friend grinned.

“So now you’re back together?”

“Yeah, but every two or three days, we’d fight, because I would bring up those images. I can’t forget. Even when we have sex, I’m thinking, She’s being screwed by the other guy!”

“So you shouldn’t be with her. She’s just using you, man, as a plane ticket.”

“But she’s so sweet, and she takes great care of me. I’ll be old soon.”

“And she’ll be gone, man!”

“Fifty-seven of my relatives went to my wedding. None is talking to me. They think I’m an idiot. Even some of her relatives think I’m an idiot.”

Sometimes, the consensus view is actually correct. By the end of the night, Giang decided he would divorce her, but stay in Saigon. When we met a week later, however, Giang said his wife was pregnant. “I’m still leaving her, but I’ll take care of my kid.”

“For at least twenty years.”

“I’ll do that.”

We talked about this new complication, then I realized, “She’s not pregnant, dude.”

“She’s definitely pregnant! We went to the doctor.”

“This is Vietnam! Anybody can be paid to say anything.”

“I saw the ultrasound.”

“How do you know it’s hers?”

“Maybe you’re right. It did seem a bit weird. She went into that office by herself and came out only two minutes later. Man, I feel much lighter now!”

Mong, then, won’t soon land in California. Driven and successful, she put off marriage because she didn’t want to stay in Vietnam. She was much better than that. She deserved to kick back in Santa Monica, at least, or maybe even Malibu. To drive down Route 1, she was even willing to sleep each night with someone she found disgusting.

Yesterday, Giang skyped me. He’d just moved into a Saigon high-rise. For $500 a month, he has a nicely appointed, fairly spacious apartment overlooking the city. “In San Francisco, this would cost me $3,600!” Cheerful as ever, Giang, too, won’t soon fly to California.

Chinese money has inflated real estate prices up and down the state. More than a trillion in debt to China, the US can neatly pay this off by handing over San Francisco, homeless shit and all, and they can have Oakland too. Take it or leave it.





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"Police shooting in San Jose stirs Vietnamese into action / For many, woman's death proves a springboard for getting involved." In 2003, 4'9" Cau Bich Tran was murdered in her own kitchen by a cop who claimed she had a meat cleaver. It turned out to be a vegetable peeler with a 6" blade. A witness testified that cop shot victim within three seconds of entering her home through the kitchen door. He said it was five to seven seconds. Cop was not indicted.

The reason cop came in the first place was because a neighbor called to complain that two young children were playing unattended outside victim's home. A second call reported that victim may have been arguing with her boyfriend inside their house. When cop arrived, the kids had come back inside and there was no argument.

In Vietnam, cops are hated because they're always stopping people on their motorbikes to shake them down for a phantom infraction. Only after forking over a few bills will you be allowed to proceed.



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[Supreme Master Television]



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My old high school district. I was only in San Jose for one year, though. Back in 1978, the Vietnamese had just arrived in the area, and many of them found work as assemblers in the computer industry.



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[Toyon Elementary School]




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Carl's Jr. EBT is Electronic Benefit Transfer, a food stamp card. There are roughly 47 million Americans on food stamps. With EBT, even a fast food joint can become a soup kitchen.

Across the street is a Bank of America, and in its parking lot was a Hispanic woman of about 40 selling a dozen crates of strawberries, mangoes and cherries.



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On Story Road near Coyote Creek, near where The Jungle tent city used to be. The city has erected a wire fence around the area.



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[City Hall]



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[City Hall]



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[In the shadow of City Hall]



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On the southern edge of San Jose's new and very beautiful city hall, there's a small homeless encampment. I approached this woman who turned out to be Maria. Since she could speak only a few words of English, we had to communicate in Spanish.

"I don't speak English."

Grinning stupidly, I asked, "You, Mexico?"

"No, Nicaragua!"

"Ah, how long? This country?" My pidgin confused her. I pressed, "This country. Five years?"

"No, no. Thirty-two years! And I'm a citizen."

"How come no English? Work?"

"Yes, I worked, worked and worked. I never learnt English."

Grinning stupidly, I asked, "Relatives here?"

"Yes."

"Ah, no help you?"

She looked confused. "I'm happy. I need nothing."

"Happy!"

"Yes, I'm happy, and serene. I come here to sit. No one bothers me."

"Ah, you don't return to Nicaragua?"

"No."

"Relatives in Nicaragua?"

"Yes, and I have two houses in Nicaragua."

"Two houses! Here, you nothing!"

"No, no, I'm not homeless," and she took out her ID card to show me her street address. "I live on William Street with my son. I live near here."

"This," I pointed to the shopping cart. "Not you?"

"No, no!"

It turned out that Maria just likes to sit there every day. It's one of her spots. Since she did have a baby carriage with all kinds of stuff on it, you'd probably think she was homeless too. Seventy-years-old, Maria's in good health. Sensibly, she said she'd rather sit outside among people than at home in front of the television.

"No one bothers you?"

"No."

"Dangerous?"

"No. They speak English, so I cannot talk with them, but no one bothers me."

With animation, Maria told me about the new canal being built in her native country by the Chinese. There are lots of Chinese there, engineers and workers, and Chinese restaurants are popping up all over, she said. She thinks this enormous project is a good development, and she's not worrying about the huge displacement of people or environmental impacts. It will be completed in five years, she said.



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Gerald Anthony Martinez was born on August 22nd, 1949. Thinking I was Japanese, Gerald barked something in Japanese. When I told him I was Vietnamese, Gerald said that he had almost been dispatched to Vietnam, "but I got drunk and they didn't send me! The Viet Cong would have killed me. I would have died!"

Gerald said he just loves Orange Crush soda, 75 cents, and 7-Eleven's Big Bite hot dog, "You can get everything on it, and it only costs three bucks!"

Noticing his white hair, high forehead, broad face and black hole of a mouth, I said, "You look like my father."

"God bless you," Gerald said as I walked away.



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