Say Whatever, Masked

As published at SubStack, 9/8/23:

[Pakse, 9/3/23]

I have a new subscriber, Rotting Teeth. His SubStack only has three entries. An excerpt from 9/6/23:

I think about sex a lot. I dream about sex a lot. It’s on my mind, in the media I consume, in my worlds and in my fantasies. I hate sex. It’s gross and uncomfortable. I’ve been with my ideal, I disliked it. Why do I fixate on something I can’t stand. It’s the wombman in me, it wants to reproduce. The female focus, need to breed. Too bad, I’m deformed. It’s a battle and the wombman lost. I’m a volcel. I should have been a nun, a temple virgin.

Did he dislike his ideal man, woman or the ideal itself? Maybe Rotting Teeth is Uncle Sam!

Arriving in Pakse on 4/14/23, the first business I entered was Amor Fati, because it’s directly across from my hotel, Lankham. Writing this, I’m sitting there again.

At a nearby table, there’s a Vietnamese couple with a four-year-old girl. The woman is also pregnant. The girl sings, “Một, hai, ba, bốn, năm! Sáu, bảy, tám, chín, mười!” [“One, two, three, four, five! Six, seven, eight, nine, ten!”]. With love and safety, everything is magical. Dipping a spoon into her dad’s tea, the girl laughs.

It’s 9:20AM. For breakfast, I ate a stick of fatty pork for 35 cents. The sugar in the marinade turns slightly acrid during the grilling. Sometimes, I go to that ramshackle stand just after 6AM to get my hot meat before anyone else. Of course, you’re envious. Walking away, I feel a childish yet vaguely vicious satisfaction that’s clearly tinged with revenge. Naturally, I’m deformed, like everybody else.

At the next table, a black woman and white man, both young and attractive, are speaking rapid French. It’d be nice to eavesdrop, for nothing anyone ever said is uninteresting.

On 9/4/23, Joe Biden declared in Philadelphia, “Where I come from, I learned women can do anything a man can do because all the women in my family are smarter than I am.” Entirely meaningless in all ways, it’s fascinating.

Then, “Folks, in this Labor Day, let me tell you what we’re celebrating. We’re celebrating jobs, good paying jobs. Jobs you can raise a family on, union jobs. You’ve heard me say it before, but my dad used to have an expression, I swear to God. He said, ‘Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck, for real. It’s about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about being able to look your kid in the eye and say, “It’s going to be okay,” and mean it when you say it.’ He was right. I’m determined to make that a reality for every family in this country. We are making it a reality. Nearly 13,500,000 jobs just since you got me sworn in, in January of 2020. Eight hundred thousand new manufacturing jobs […] It wasn’t that long ago, we were losing jobs in this country. In fact, the guy who held this job before me was just one of two presidents in history […] He was one of two presidents that left office with fewer jobs in America than when he got elected office. By the way, you know who the other one was? Herbert Hoover! Isn’t that coincidental?”

Even if you believe Uncle Sam’s accounting, what’s ignored is the Covid factor, with millions of jobs lost due to tyrannical lockdowns. Thousands of businesses were snuffed out for good. With the return of pseudo normality, there are more jobs, sure, though many can’t cover basic necessities, so even working Americans are forced to live inside a car, closet or tent, or on someone’s couch. From Anchorage to Miami, boarded up stores, shanty towns, staggering zombies, daylight crimes and human shit sightings have become much more common, but fine, let’s believe Joey, with his “come on, man!” blue collar touch.

Long divorced from reality, most Americans don’t care about evidence, so they’ll believe or say whatever. Just look at what has just happened in Lahaina. With sirens silent, water turned off, terrified families prevented from escaping and schoolkids given a day off so they’re at home, unattended and helpless, there’s still no widespread doubt, much less outrage, over the official narrative.

With cars burnt at a much higher temperature than possible from any forest fire, “Ron” has this explanation, “The geography of Kaho‘olawe and Pacific wind feeding the fire turn the area into a natural kiln. This explains the higher forest fire temperatures able to melt metal. Nothing extra ordinary if you have been to Hawaii and have experienced the Pacific breeze...”

I don’t know if Ron is a man, woman, bot or limited hangout functionary.

On 9/6/23, “Gigolo Joe” claimed there were no war refugees in Europe, “They are NONE fleeing from warzones (save the actual terrorists we employed in Syria and Afghanistan), they are nearly all military aged males.” So there’s no war in Ukraine or Syria, I suppose. A while back, he was very vehement about the non existence of nuclear bombs, so fine, let’s call them mushroom effects, kosher holocausts or instant urban renewals, but whatever the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki should worry us all, no?

Since the US is a roiling sea of bullshit, a bobbing citizen is liable to latch on to anything, a broken toilet seat, a half digested book or just some shitty slogan. Armed with such “knowledge,” he’ll barf it up at every opportunity.

Just now, I posted at my blog a YouTube video by a young Chinese-Canadian, “Why People are Leaving Canada.” Notice she says “people,” and not “I.” Immediately, it triggered this response:

She’s voted for Socialism her entire life. She loves immigrants and minorities and food banks and homeless and drug decriminalization. She thinks poor people need free stuff. That new regulation? For it! Ukraine!

She’s moving to a red state where her enlightened views will make her feel superior to the ignorant, non-green, non-save-whale, non “hate racism” and pro family bumpkins. She’s the epitome of virtue! The high school where her kids will go someday must eliminate football, build a trans locker room and fly the Pride Flag! Repeat repeat....

There is no escaping these locusts. She only eats vegan Brie and drinks organic vodka from sustainable countries. Please recycle. Can you upgrade me to Business Class? When is Burning Man? Like my Coach bag?

From the anonymous comment, you’d think the YouTuber is some raving wokester moving to a red state, but she says, right at the start, that she’s been living in Southeast Asia.

These are her explanations for folks fleeing Canada 1) high cost of everything, especially rent, now made worse with inflation, “What’s the point of a good salary when most of it goes to rent?” 2) High taxes. Many people she grew up with must work two or three jobs to stay afloat. 3) Lousy public transportation. By contrast, there’s “a dramatic difference” in Asian cities like like Tokyo or Taipei. 4) Rising homeless population, “I was living near Chinatown and downtown [in Vancouver]. Whenever you pass by that area, you just kind of feel like it’s an apocalypse. There is a fentanyl crisis that’s taking over.” Just riding the bus through downtown, she could “feel the dark vibes.” 5) Poor socialist healthcare. Since it can take two years to see a specialist, many Canadians go to the US or even Asia for treatment. 6) Brain drain. With much higher wages just across their border, smarter Canadians book. 7) Few opportunities to make friends, as opposed to, say, Thailand or Vietnam. With night markets common in Southeast Asia, no one has to sit home alone, ever. With their freezing weather, Canadians are used to being cooped up inside.

Did the hissy commenter watch the video? Perhaps half his screen was taken up by YouPorn, but what else is new? Focus is dead. The inattentive and impotent love to be triggered. When you’re catatonic, spasms are welcomed.

On a shelf at Amor Fati, there are Penguin editions of Descartes, Lao Tzu, Curtius Rufus, Mencius, Confucius, Nietzche and Seneca. Surely, you don’t expect such a selection from some cafe in a lesser Lao city, but life, when seen, heard or felt directly, is never what you thought, so ditch, as much as possible, your steel box and screens.

Shunning unalloyed reality, Americans are paradoxically rewarded with an unmatched roster of realists, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, John Cassavetes and Edward Hopper, etc.

In an unreal land where millions couldn’t live without antidepressants, reality TV and laugh tracks had to be invented. Now, they can vent online.

Apolitical, the Canadian YouTuber didn’t mention Justin Trudeau, but she must breathe easier being so far away from his ickiness. With similar leaders, Western nations overflow with folks speaking out of their ass, but it doesn’t matter, since we rarely know who’s talking. When words have no weight, meaning disappears. There’s only this persistent stench, by design.

It’s 7:30PM, so dark, but right in front of me, people are constantly walking by, with none anxious looking or threatening. Lights shine from Pakse Korea and Friendship convenience store. At Subinh Hotel, a woman is singing, accompanied by a guitar. At Sésé one block away, the French owner’s two kids are probably running around, so it’d be fun to head there for dinner, or I can just wait for another 35 cent stick of pork in the morning. No one hurries here.

[Pakse, 9/7/23]

[Pakse, 9/7/23]

[Pakse, 9/7/23]