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::: posted by Alf at 1:19:15 PM Thursday, November 28, 2002 ::: good little article in the NYtimes about unemployment Besides the obvious implications of an increased unemployment rate on Bush's political futre, I found this to be the most interesting part. The biggest benefit from rapid growth coupled with low unemployment rates may well have been the first significant increases in wages and family incomes since the 1960's. Over all, family incomes, for example, rose far more rapidly from 1996 to 2000 than they did from 1991 to 1996 or even from 1984 to 1989 � the last five years of the fairly rapid expansion under Ronald Reagan. In particular, incomes for lower-income families rose as rapidly as for other income groups for the first time since the 1970's. In other words, income inequality stopped widening at last. Family incomes at the 20th percentile � low-income families who earned more than 20 percent but less than 80 percent of all families � began to rise as rapidly as family incomes for those in the 80th percentile in the mid-1990's. In fact, incomes rose at about the same pace for all income levels in these years. By contrast, in the early 1990's, when the unemployment rate averaged around 6.5 percent and economic growth was sluggish, family incomes grew much more slowly at all levels � about half as fast. But incomes for lower-end families grew the most slowly. ::: posted by Alf at 10:48:20 PM Wednesday, November 27, 2002 ::: I was thinking about changing my no spelling policy, but then I realised that was just the evil pussy side of my brain talking and that I have to stay true to my punk rock life style, so fuck that spelling shite. Speaking of keeping it real, the other weak I was just thinking that the onion is weak now compared to the onion I knew in my youth. When I was but a wee 14 year old on the cold streets of milwaukee, each week I was delighted to find a new copy the onion near the door of our local subshop. Besides all the "massage parlor" and "escort service" adds in the back, the Onion had hardcore content back then. Every week they published, "the drunk of the week" with a picture of a very drunk person, and some entertaining facts on them. They also pulled no punches with their stories, I remember one that had a title of "New Georgia O'Keeffe painting found" under an unedited picture of a pussy. At my tender age it took me a couple of minutes to figure out what was going on, but when I did I was blown away by the combination of the snobbishly obscure O'keefe reference and the ubsurdity of publishing a "wide open beaver" in a newspaper that was availble on virtually every corner. So I was glad to see that the Onion was back on it's game for those of you to pussy to click the link "In the end, Leslie said, only one scenario proved both orgasm-inducing and feasible to record: the direct ejaculation of the male member onto a corresponding female partner's face, with the woman's head positioned only inches away. "For some reason," Leslie said, "no other set of circumstances produced the desired effect. Oh, and the woman has to have high-heeled shoes on, too, even though she's otherwise undressed. We don't know why that is, either." The scientists acknowledged that such riddles may never be fully solved. "The male orgasm, like the song of the nightingale or the simple beauty of a rainbow, remains a glorious and beautiful mystery, one whose timeless wonderment cannot be fully explained by something so cold and clinical as scientific analysis," Roehnert said. "There are many factors at work here that science will likely never understand."" ::: posted by Alf at 9:43:55 PM Are people really this stupid? Nytimes asrtivle about China wanting to have more power on ICANN, the non-profit group that is in charge of domain names. The leader of this group makes this idiotic statement. China's enthusiasm for Icann is rooted in a desire to raise its profile, rather than exert control, believes Mr Tindal: "It's about being seen to be part of the international internet community." Hmmm, maybe Chana wants to raise it's profile and it's control. We aren't suposed to worry because the Chinese representivives on the board will be from Chinese corporations. Wow, I sure trust Chinese corporations to respect free speech and dissent. In the end I think it all comes down to profiteering. Devon Sean McCullough, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, complains: "Icann delays and stops creation of new names. Artificial scarcity of names is very profitable to Icann insiders and cronies." Controversially, Icann's board voted in Shanghai last month to remove the representatives voted in by internet users in favour of appointees from industry. Internet users rail that their voice is ignored while that of a government known for internet censorship is being heard; Icann says the reforms are necessary to bring in a less unwieldy management structure, which will speed up decision-making. ::: posted by Alf at 11:52:20 AM Monday, November 25, 2002 ::: the horror of private education *edit, it is worse than I thought. It turns out that this fucking school is a public school. Hmmm, ever hear about seperation of church and state "Each one of us should remember to do as the Pilgrims did and thank God for all our blessings in America" here is a nice historically inaccurate jingoistic statement "Although the Pilgrim mothers and fathers were very happy in Holland, they did not want their children to grow up to be Dutch people." ::: posted by Alf at 11:11:53 PM from a post at dave's esl cafe "it most certainly is true that employers use pictures to weed out the less attractive people. it is certainly true here in korea, where the employers are very blunt and up front about it. whats more, the students take attractiveness into account during the evaluations; just like they judge fashion sense, sociability and a myriad of other things that have nothing to do with teaching competence. for example, i once worked with a handsome, amiable, talkative and very social person who was also an unreliable drunk who blew off classes, showed up for work straight from the clubs in hongdae and taught his students next to nothing. the result? the highest approval ratings and retention rates in the school. is it fair? of course not. but it is reality and most people learn to deal with it. " hehe, teaching is asia is the bomb ::: posted by Alf at 9:33:30 PM Sunday, November 24, 2002 ::: here are some good links I don't want to hate corporations but it is just so hard Hey, war costs money? That second link is based off an article in the newyork review of books that I read about half of but then lost the links. It does a good summary anyway. ::: posted by Alf at 10:19:21 PM Interesting day today... So I am out with one of my students who is one of my better friends, and he tells me that he is dating the girl that had a crush on me earlier this year and who I think got in trouble for coming to see me alone. I introduced them to each other, so I guess i am morphing into some kind of Chinese match maker over here. I should try to get them to have sex now, Chinese college students need to have more sex, espiacially the girls. I'm not just saying that because I want to have sex with them, I truely believe that they are repressed and it probably causees all kinds of trouble when they get married. The divorce rate and affair rate is rather high in China at least compared to in the past. One of my chinese frinds told me that when he greats his married friends it is common to joke "have you got divorced eat" as substitute for the chinese greeting have you eaten yet. Anyway, I thouhgt that it was amusing that these two are going out because the way this guy told me was all cautious, "oh I have something to tell you...." all mystrerious like. Then he tells me he is going out with this girl. And I say that it's cool, but he is surprised that i think that. But I do think it's cool and wasn't disapointed or jealous (well beyond the fact that I'm a jealous fuck and get pissed whenever I see a moderatly cute girl with another guy, but thats a different post). It explains why this girl has been acting so strangely around me for the past couple weeks. I thought she was very busy or depressed or something, since she had told me about her family troubles in the past. It's funny that she felt she had to hide it from me, I wonder if it just cause she is embarresed because she has a boyfriend, or if she thinks it will hurt me to know she dosn't like me any more. Speaking of chinese girls thay still seem to be falling out of the closet. I went over to the house of the girls I met at the disco for luch and it was an interesting experiance. they live in a village maybe 15 minutes bike ride away from the edge of town, so I got to see what a real chinese village was like, boring and dirty. So I go to their house and of course it's freezing in there cause they never close the damn door, but its cool cause I'm flirting with the girls and making jokes. So then we have the meal and it's good, classic henan noodles and potato and carrots meal, with fresh roasted peanuts that were damn good. But the mother want's to drink Beijou(or beijiao?), chinese white "wine," with me. This stuff isn't wine at all but nasty sourgam vodka. (Well i am actually starting to like some of it but this shot was the worst), I just wawsn't in the mood, but I couldn't refuse. I'm thinking that these girls are probably pretty wild if their mom drinks beijao. then tonight, this dude starts to talk to me, blah blah blah, I want to be your friend, where are you from, blah blah blah, tell me something about american culture, blah b;ah blah, One of my friends would like to meet you, blah blah, She (my years perk up) is an english teaher at a highschool, she is very beutiful all the boys try to be her friend. Oh yeah, I say, of course you can be my friend, come on over, oh give me her number, I'll call her we will go out to eat.... So I'm a bastard and I'm using this dude, but there are to many girls in china to waiste time on the guys... Oh yeah I also went to this english competion at our school tongight where I had to judge. It was ok and kind of amusing at times with all the bullshit propaganda that the students were spouting about working hard to help the country grow strong. Then I had to give a little speech at the end and everybody was impressed by my bullshit ability, about how great all the speeches were. i guess that leberal arts education paid off after all. ::: posted by Alf at 10:13:00 PM Saturday, November 23, 2002 ::: show me, Show you Kikoman bonaza! again via tom tommorow ::: posted by Alf at 10:13:31 PM fixed a problem with my archives, now you can go back to the begining of in Xin Xiang and see where it all began... ::: posted by Alf at 12:01:44 AM Friday, November 22, 2002 ::: oh shit,i just noticed that the title of my webpage is spelled wrong. Thats pretty funny ::: posted by Alf at 11:41:37 PM Dudes, thanksgiving is next week right? Everybody in Cina seems to think it is this week but I keep telling them it is the fourth thursday of november. It's strange how often you get these misconceptions of america. Like everyone here thinks that america has 56 states and they don't believe me when I tell them it's fifty. So leave a comment telling me I'm not crazy and that thanksgiving is next week. ::: posted by Alf at 11:05:37 PM here's what I'm up against in China This article basically says that China's kids work really hard and do good on tests. No surprise since they get the shit beaten out of them by their parents and teachers if they don't. The article is crap anyway because only a tiny percentage of China's students get to go to top notch schools when compared to america. The real story about education in China is how expensive it is and the incredible sacrifices people make to send their kids to school. But it did get me thinking about the future of China's youth I like to think that China right now is like america in the 50's, People are still suffereing from the shock of extreme poverty and the cultural revolution, like america was still suffereing from te shock of the great depression and WWII in the 50s. i suspect in the next 15 to 20 years you are gonna see a lot of social unrest, as the next gneration grows up without th memory of very harsh times. Is this a valid comparison to make or is china and america too different? China is less individualistic than america and people are more connected to their families. But look at america during the fifties, it was an incredibly uniform culture, (for white people), and I don't think most of them expected or would have predicted the unrest in the fifties and sixties. Much of the unrest was driven by politcal issues like civil rights and Viet Nam, what could drive dissatisfaction in China. Democracy immeidiatly jumps to mind as the major issue. I don't think future Chinese citizens will be so happy to sit back and let the Communist party rule everything, espiecially with looming unemployment and lack of healthcare and education for a large part of the population is likely to make many people dissatisfied withthe goverment. it'll be intersting to watch and see who is right. ::: posted by Alf at 1:57:18 PM So we caught a terrorist, my question is why didn't we try to capture the dudes in Yemen? they were not an immediate threat and I'm sure we have a way we could have tried to capture them, what with our cool military and everything. The attack in Yemen just baffles me. ::: posted by Alf at 1:28:07 PM hmm, now the only people that post on my site are from washington DC.... I wonder if there is somekind of goverment conspiracy to watch me, and if Mary and Fan are part of that conspiracy... Anyway I'm thinking of getting rid of the comments because it makes me depressed when I come here and no one posts anything, and I feel it takes away from my editorial integrity, because I might subconsciously start to make posts that cater to the people who comment at my site. I don't know, havn't decided yet. ::: posted by Alf at 1:10:19 PM Thursday, November 21, 2002 ::: Brad Delong has a post from the WSJ on Bush's lack of a a fiscal policy. The one strong point of the Clinton policy in my opinion was his fiscal policy, espiecially during his first term and before he and Dick Morris started to use policy for politics. His presidency is likely to be viewed by economists as a resounding succes for keeping interests rates and the defiecit down. Bush on the other hand is persuing policies that will raise the deficiet, this will slow the economy in the future. ::: posted by Alf at 11:23:10 PM I'm sorry for saying anything bad about Fan. He is obviously my only true friend, since he is the only one to post on my site. I think he is sexy and smart and has an enoumus penis, so if you are a hot, you should have sex with him. ::: posted by Alf at 10:35:44 PM Wednesday, November 20, 2002 ::: here is an intersting article about Micheal Moore, it says he is a lying hack. I find it rather convincing. ::: posted by Alf at 5:15:29 PM I'm bored with the asian girl comments, so it is no longer neccessary to have every post include a comment on the hotness of chinese women. This isn't because of the haters out there (fan), but like Jerry Sienfield, I know when to end a good thing. Speaking of annoying Chinese guys, the last couple days chinese me have just been pissing me off. I'm really getting sick of all the Hallooooo's being yelled at me and then fallowed by giggles and them talking loubly about me when I am right next to tem. Dumbass, I know what Laowai means. In general the men are just nerds, espiecially in my school. Sqaures everywhere, they make stupid jokes and do stupid shit and are just annoying in general. I think their are cool guys, but none of them speak good english. Then the drinking over here. It's all fucking ritualised so you have to toast this person when the fish is served and blah balh balh. I just wanna sit back and get drunk if I feel like or just drink a beer if I feel like. People always ask me how many beers i've drank? I'm sure if I could figure out the most beer I've ever drank i would blow them away, but I stopped keeping track once I figured out I liked to get drunk. The only point of counting how much you drink is if deep down you think you are a pussy and feel the need to show the world you are a man by drinking alot. Chinese drinking culture is all about showing the world that chinese men aren't pussies, but paradoxically it proves that they are pussies at the same time. (now I'm not saying that you are a pussy if you don't drink, just that if you make a big deal out of how much you drink you are a pussy. Real men are secure in their states of inebration or lack there of). The women are much more polite, you will get them staring at you a lot and maybe a timid hello and giggles, but that is endearing and not as grating as the middleschool antics of the men. Most of the time they don't mean any harm, but instead is just to point out that you are different. you really appreciate what a multicultural society america is and also respect cultural sensitivity. For all the bullshit political correctness produces it is a lot better than the complete lack of cultural sensitivity here in China. enough bitching.... ::: posted by Alf at 4:53:29 PM Tuesday, November 19, 2002 ::: on more thing... This is the greatest thing I have ever seen again from Tom Tommorow ::: posted by Alf at 11:03:16 PM If you can't tell I've been on the internet all right, (I felt i needed a ninght alone after all these endless orgies with nubile young asian nymphs). Despite all this time by myself, I couldn't come up with a topic for class tommorow. So if any of my millions of readers would like to suggest something, drop me a comment or an email.... ::: posted by Alf at 10:58:55 PM Tom tommorow has a good run down of the worsening situation in Afgahistan. You know things are bad when even USA today says the admnistrations policy is failing From USA Today: Other Afghans also say life here is different � and far more dangerous � than they expected a year ago: * The U.S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai has little control outside of Kabul, the capital. And the new government is racked with dissension. * Warlords continue to control much of the countryside. Already, several factional power struggles have broken out. * Extremists, in hiding outside the well-protected capital, wait for an opportunity to strike. Taliban and al-Qaeda forces lurk in the mountains. U.S. troops on patrol in search of terrorists in eastern Afghanistan face almost daily hostility and attacks. "The fundamentalists and the warlords are in charge. The gunmen have the authority and the power, and actual rights the government says we have are not given," Mujahed says, "and where are the hot asian girls we were promised?" ::: posted by Alf at 10:53:22 PM Paul also asks about my experiance teaching in China. It's allright, though it is difficult to teach people when you do not understand the language. I am finding that having a book makes a big difference, I'm just not a good enough teacher to be effective bullshitting my way through class. If I have a book I can point out subtleties in the language and the students can read along with what i say. Chinese students are kind of a pain in the ass to teach, because their vocabulary very good, their grammer is ok and their speaking and listening are crap. In small classes this is not so bad because i can make people talk and easily split the calls up into groups, but if they don't have a certain level of motivation and english pfoficenciancy and I don't have a book (which describes this pain the ass class i had this afternoon), it is difficult to do anything productive, even with a small group. With larger groups it is even worse as it is difficult to get them to talk so I just have to stand up there bullshitting. i would like to teach them something constructive like vocabulary or grammer, but they are already pretty good at that, and their listening skills aren'y good enough for them to understand me explain complicated subjects. On the other hand with motivated students and a (shitty) book, my classes are pleasent and I feel I am getting something done. This past week I had my english major students, hold a little election for class president to see how democracy wored. I was shocked to see how different the two classes were. One each person prepared a three page speech, that were full of nice lines of rhetorical bullshits, like "i may not have a way with pretty words, but i will be the best president" and they gave 2 minute answers to questions posed by the rest of the class. the other class didn't even prepare speeches and wasn't even willing to ask questions, fuckers. I think the classes are split by ability which is just stupid because most of the learning gets done by individual memorization and it would only help the worse students to talk to the better ones, fucking China. Damn this post is to long and I havn't even gotten to the biggest problem with teaching, that is all the hot girls in my class looking at me with their sad eyes when they don't understand. They just need to come visit me I can teach them lots.... ::: posted by Alf at 9:21:48 PM This would actually be a good use of american military power. This article proposes to set up a military base in a port of Eritrea. Hopefully this would lend some stability to the region and help the economy. It says in the article that eritrea's goverment is becoming increasingly authoritirian, but I don't think it is as bad as Zimbabwe or someplace like that. Even though I oppose the war against Iraq, I am in general an interventionist. I think it was good to intervene in Kosovo and Afgahnistan, and we probably should have intervened in Uganda. But Iraq will likely be worse off after we go there, we will kill alot of people in the process, we will likely increase the risk of another Al Qeuda attack. it's like paul said in an email a while back if I was to campain for office, (which I couldn't do because there would be to many scandals about my affairs with hot asian women), I should run on the NSAWAR* slogan (No stupid ass war against Iraq). The most important words in the slogan are stupid ass. I would support a smart war against Iraq that woiudn't kill a shitload of peopl ewho did nothing to harm the US, and incite a new generation to join Al Qeuda. If the administration puts forward a plan like that I would still be relectant to support them, just because you can't believe a word they say, so whats the use in political discussion any way. I'm gonna go have a beer. The acronym NSAWAR is wonderful because it can also be made into the feel good message of my hypothetical campaign. Naked sexy asian women are radical. ::: posted by Alf at 8:47:30 PM I think I have discovered a flaw in my new commenting system. I have already waisted considerable time sitting here and reloading my webpage waitng for someone to comment.... This could take time away from flirting with girls! ::: posted by Alf at 6:47:00 PM Seeing as how I am an html genious I got around to putting up the ability for all of you to post comments on my page. Now you can all sing the praises of beutiful chinese women. ::: posted by Alf at 5:13:08 PM Sunday, November 17, 2002 ::: Editorial in the NYtimes by a former weapons insopector, says that there are ways that are less than a full out invasion tp make sure Iraq is disarmed. if we go straight to war I think we can be pretty assured that GW is in it for the oil. To bad iraq only has oil and not Hot asian chicks. I'd be the first to sign up for the war if that were the case. ::: posted by Alf at 11:12:07 PM notice to the write the new policy here in my humble little blog. I will try to follow through with it but I might not be able to post alot, what with all the sex I'm having with hot Chinese girls. ::: posted by Alf at 10:49:54 PM I got this from one of my students (who I think is this hot girl with these killer eyes, but I'm not really sure because i don't recognise her name),. It's pretty funny communist propaganda about how great jiang zemin is. He gets to attack a bunhc of terrorists from counter strike then all the terrorists get in a plane from Japan but it gets shot down. Sometimes it dosn't load write but it is worth trying to get it to work right. ::: posted by Alf at 10:31:29 PM Annie emails me and asks about my impressions of China, If I am still startled by how different everything is. She also says she dosn't like my horney comments about Chinese women. So now i'm going to try to include a comment on the fine chiinese ladies in every post. Annie asks if China is so different that I do not lose my sense of strangeness even after being here for a while, (I'm hung over so my writing is going to suck today, but I met this chinese girl last, "fucking hot" as my canadian friend said...) I am pretty familiar with China now, it dosn't seem like that strange of a place. When I first got here I was pretty overwhelmed by all the people, the people seeling strange food on the streets, the donkey carts going by, the kids taking shits in the street (and of course the incredibly hot women). but in a short time I got used to most of the strangeness. i think that it is in large part my personality. I'm pretty openminded, in the sense that I can accept different ways of living, and I don't judge people quickly. That sounds kind of pompous but I don't mean to say that I'm morally superior to people who do judge quickly, just thst my mind works in a certain way. Sometimes I'm still surprised ny what I see, like the time I say a dude with half of a pig carcass on the back of his bikw driving along the street, the ends of the carcass dragging along (of course I am still amazed at how many fine ladies there are on the street as well). I kind of live a sheltered life and can really only really get to know my friends who speak english. Maybe when I get to learn more Chinese I will see more cultrual differences. (I need to learn how to speak chinese quick, that girl I met at 21st centuray, the most happening dance in Xin Xiang, only spoke chines. So I had a tough time tellingher that she should come see my pad, yeah baby. I has drunk to so all could do was say "hao" = good "bu hao" = no good and make jokes about how big my nose was... but she called me this morning so I guess I was on my game) ::: posted by Alf at 2:30:26 PM Saturday, November 16, 2002 ::: shit I gotta go out so i gotta blog this fast. Paul asks about my thoughts on thje cross coiuntry season and I should get em up before the race. I think that steves trains you for regionals and not for conference and historically our team has been much stronger at regionals than at condference so i think that despite what may have been disappointing races for some people at conference everybody can expect to run well at regionals. So if you are in Iowa go out and cheer on macalester crosscountry. ::: posted by Alf at 7:16:10 PM good article about the slippery slope to civil war in Iran I find this paragraph interesting because it seems to contradict the conventional wisdom that Civil war in Iran will cause the fundamentalists to fall from power. The majority of the population doesn't want a civil war, partly because they know they would be fighting religious fanatics, and partly because they fear this would bring about a harsh police state, run by corrupt Islamic fundamentalists. As much as a third of the population support the Islamic fundamentalists, and that's enough people, especially if armed with guns and fanaticism, to dominate the rest of the Iranians. ::: posted by Alf at 2:33:46 PM Friday, November 15, 2002 ::: What is "european american class music"? ::: posted by Alf at 8:44:04 PM This is an article about the public relations firm hired to spin the Desert storm II. It also tells about the lies used to sell Desert storm I. Basically the lesson I take from this story is that you can't trust this administration as far as you can through Dick Cheney. How are peaople supposed to make informed decisions with all this disinformation. ::: posted by Alf at 8:38:28 PM MMmm, what should I blog today.. what a stupid word, "blog" Not so many chinese girls have been coming over to my place lately, what a pity. I think all my students are scared for some reason, no one seems to call me except for lame ass dudes. I met this cute accounting teacher that wants to learn english, but she seemed very proper. I had a nice long talk with this 40 year old chinese chick who looks like she is thirty, an interssting women, married to a taiwanese guy. She said that Chinese girls wanted to be protected.... Water water every where and not a drop to drink In case any of you thought I was wrong, with what I posted to days ago about the immence of war with iraq and Saddam's decision to accept of inspectors, you don't understand the subtleties of the issue. The fact that the iraqi "parliment" denounced the inspectors shows that Saddam thinks he cannot be seen to be bending to the will of the UN or else he will lose credibility in the face of UN and american demands. Plus the fact that earlier this year Cheney and Rumsfield, who I condsider to have the real power in the administration, have said that the thought we should attack Iraq no matter what the UN said. This is a sure recipe for a confrontation, which will lead to a military attack. If it will also destroy the credibility of the UN is yet to be seen. updatetold you so ::: posted by Alf at 12:05:13 AM Thursday, November 14, 2002 ::: steve sent me an email askinghim why he should visit me in China, tis is my reply that is the original, I leave it there for your amusement, it should say Steve sent me an email asking me why he should visit china, this is my reply I'm glad you like my website, people seem to think I bitch to much, fuck them. It would be cool if you came to China. The city i am living in is in the middle of the country near the yellow river, Henan province (not hunan). It's called Xin Xiang and is kind of a shit hole, but I like it anyway. It is definitly "the real" China. People stare at you all the time and clothes, food and beer are ridicoulusly cheap. 2 dollars for 10 620 ml bottles of beer. Also the city is close to some intersting sites, most being 2-3 hours away. Zheng Zhou, the capital of Henan, is an hour away (1 dollar on the train). It is a nice big city and has a pizza hut and that kind of thing, but you can still tell you are in China unlike in Shang Hai which I hear is pretty westernised, though still a fun place. From Zheng Zhou it is an hour to Shao Lin Temple, of Kung Fu Fame. It is pretty and it is cool to watch all the kids training for Kung Fu. It is a little touristy, but still cool. Also about an hour away from Zheng Zhou are KaiFeng and LouYang, to ancient capitol cities of China dating back 1000's of year. I got bored with chinese tourist sites pretty quick and found that Shao Lin was my favorite because it offered something beyonf te generic budda and Qing dynasty arcetecture found in most places. The Kung Fu was cool and the mountains were pretty. Zheng Zhou is a major rail crossing so it is easy to gt to. If you are going to Bei Jing or Xi'an, you will probably go through it anyway, so it would be very easy for you to stop in and see me. I'll be in China at least until July. Thaks for writing hope to see you. Alf ::: posted by Alf at 12:01:41 PM Tuesday, November 12, 2002 ::: Well shit, here we go to war. It looks like we've gotten to the point in this silly game of chicken, where neither side is going to call the others bluff and we are going to go to war. My only hope is that the best case scenario that the administration pretends is the most likely scenario will occur, and Saddam will be overthrown. Not that the shit won't hit the fan in that case, but at least we would avoid war war in Bahgdad ::: posted by Alf at 10:13:03 PM this is pretty funny ::: posted by Alf at 5:42:10 PM this is a great read of John Stewart being interviewed by a dude on CNN, stewart rips him a new asshole ::: posted by Alf at 5:35:49 PM Monday, November 11, 2002 ::: "These skills suffer to a great extent from the "juggler paradox"; the principle that juggling is such a stupid fcking skill that the better someone is at it, the stupider they are, because they've wasted more time on that pointless, stupid skill." from a brilliant post at d^2 ::: posted by Alf at 11:02:45 AM ben asked what I thought were the most imporant issuers these days Thats a pretty difficult question. The most important issues on a day to day basis are economic ones, but the vast majority of politicians dosn't care about real economic plans, only ones they can spin to help them get reelected. And since the electorate is so ignorant of economic issues, they tend to believe what ever they are told. The war is probably the biggest issue. No stupid ass war with iraq, would be my campaign slogan. Along with Iraq, weapons proliferation is a very large issue. Ukraine and Pakistan have both shown that they are willing to deal arms to "axis of evil" states and both have nuclear weapons. While it's not that important in daily lives, fixing the civil liberties problems that the patriot act caused would be important for the general health of the nation. Then i guess you have health care and insurance problems, coparate governence issues tht aren't really being looked into. The raising cost of college and the lessening of need based scholarships. Moer basic science research. The environment, though I think we should focus less on global warming and more on sustainable clean energy. The imf should probably stop fucking around with thrid world countries as well. --- Ben Knudson > alf, what are the top three political issues most > important to you as a voter/citizen. > three is an arbitrary number. ::: posted by Alf at 10:53:38 AM Went to the suana tonight. It was nice to sit in there after I got trashed last night. Fuck, I went to this bar just to see what it was lik eand have a beer, and this guy who drives a car for our schol is there and he knows the owner of the bar (boys and girls club) so I get all this free beer and I get all fucked up and I'm super hungover. So today I go to this sauna, with some other lao wai in the city. We have a nice time i get the skin scrapped off me and have some dude clean my balls for me. We go upstairs to tyhe room we change in. And this girl comes in with a little leather skirt on and a small little top. She look slike sh's 14, but in china it's difficult to tell people age, she could be 23. So she starts to give us a face massage which is cool, but after that, she's like starts hinting that we want something else. But we have to turn her down, Sex for money just isn't my thing... ::: posted by Alf at 12:37:29 AM Saturday, November 09, 2002 ::: what the fuck, NO one told me about the new get your war on? y'all some poussy ass bitches ::: posted by Alf at 12:00:35 AM Friday, November 08, 2002 ::: Damn i'm talking to this chinese dude right now and I don't really know who he is. The chinese are all into internet chat and whatnot, so i got this ghetto chinese chat program QQ installed on my computer and I am talking to this dude through it. This is i don;t know if he is a cool chinese dude or a lame chinese dude. i have determined that there is a particualr type of lam chinese dude that wants to be friends with me. I can't stanf these fuckers. They allways want to come over and ask me some stupid fucking questions, like "what do I do in my freetime?" and then they try to give me some advice like, "you are shy, you should talk more." Maybe it's just cause you are a lame ass mother fucker and i am to nice to tyell your ass to get the fuck out of my face, I'm not shy, u just suck. So tonight I had english corner where I have to go and tall to whoever wants to talk to me and I get to be like a rockstar and have lots of girlies around me, but also lots of lame wannabes... So there was this one dude who couldn't speak english very well, but he was pretty cool, He asked me some intersting querstions about politics and if i liked to go out and drink and taought me how to say "old monkey," cool shit like that. Even with our linguistic barrier I could tell he was a cool guy and he wasn't trying to be a fucking bitch and get all up in my shit. So then this other dude come up, and he speaks english really well. He is a friend of Wang Shu Do, the lamest teacher in school, who thinks he is my best friend, anyway this dude spewaks good english but he acts like he is my motherfucking best friend. Bitch is like wher do u live what do you do in your free time. Oh you must be very lonely I'm sure you'd like to spend your free time with me. Then the fucjing bitch is like "we are friends right?" What the fuck? Since there were all these people around me I couldn't say no, so I said yeah we are friends. So then he was like what is your phone number. and I told him but I said it real fast. Then this fucking bitch gets his mobile phone out and tells me to put my number in. i'm like no you put it in, so I tell him my phone number and he leaves. What a cocksucker, like i'm ever gonna do something with that bitch. Lame ass chinese bitch. Now this fucker I am talking to wants me to take him to my english class, my special english class. with omly 15 people wher I get paid the big bucks, i can't dp this shit cause their are 50 people in his class and if I take him, every one else will want to go to, WTF, Chinese dudes are so lame, If only there were only XX chormosomes here... ::: posted by Alf at 11:46:55 PM mmm, y'all are some lazy mofo's so i'm just gonna take uyp all my space and post this big ass article by Brad Delong. Even in my prsent drunken state I can tell this is some good thoughts.... After the Fall of Harvey Pitt: We Are Still in Bigger Trouble than We Realize J. Bradford DeLong A First Draft -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Harvey Pitt was in bigger trouble than he realized. He is now gone: he submitted his resignation as Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] on the evening of 2002's election day. But his resignation does nothing to get the rest of us out of big trouble. There is drastic, urgent need for significant and immediate reforms in the way that we regulate our financial markets, and those who staff our executive branch seem to be without a clue. We have a president who regards the mandatory disclosure laws regarding insider sales (to provide outsiders with timely news that insiders think that a stock is overvalued and that it is time to bail out) as things to be broken as casually as one pushes the speedometer needle up to 5 mph above the posted speed limit. We have a vice president who regards firms' requirements to disclose "material" information as extremely elastic. And we have a chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board [PCAOB] who shows no hesitation in firing an accounting firm when it informs him that a company's financial controls are insufficient. A year and a half ago, almost all of us would have been surprised to be told that financial-market regulatory reform was or would become an important issue. Back when Harvey Pitt was overwhelmingly confirmed as chair of the SEC, it was expected that he would have a quiet life. Under the Bush Administration, it was thought, the SEC would not grow in funding or shift in its mission, but would at most be subject to a few tweaks to make it kinder, gentler, and--with luck--less addicted to pointless red tape. To be sure, there were a couple of tricky issues: (i) Could Generally Accepted Accounting Principles [GAAP] be modified to make headline earnings numbers more meaningful, and if so how? And (ii) Were Arthur Levitt's restrictions on the selective dissemination of corporate news a laudable effort to level the informational playing field or a disaster which made it nearly impossible for anyone to learn anything? But these were two threads needing attention--threads that were barely visible in the apparently-majestic tapestry of American capital markets and their regulation. Almost all of us who have an academic, fiduciary responsibility-based, or personal financial interst in the regulation of America's capital markets looked forward to watching the sleeping dogs lie. We were badly wrong. Now it is clear that we need the greatest financial reform in two generations. Our system of corporate control is the mixed private-public system that monitors and disciplines the managers of American capitalism. Our system of corporate control has proved very strong and durable. This very strength has led to overconfidence, and as a result we have failed to protect the system's one weakness: its critical need for high-quality public information about the financial status of America's companies. But first we need to back up: How did we get into our current mess? In fact, we need to back up further: What, exactly, is our current mess? America (and also Britain) has, compared to other advanced industrial countries, a peculiar system of corporate governance. In other countries--for the most part and to grossly oversimplify--a key part of the social task of making sure that corporate managers are doing their jobs properly and of figuring out which corporations should grow and which should shrink is delegated to one of two relatively small groups. One group consists of a few large--universal--banks, which vote large blocks of shares, hold large chunks of debt, and can go through its books and operations of client companies with a gimlet eye. (But this system only works when the universal bank remains focused on supervision. And there is no one to watch the banks themselves.) Alternatively, family dynasties of industrial princes hold the whip hand. These family dynasties use elaborate--even inscrutable--structures of pyramidal holding companies and special classes of stock shares to exercise control disproportionate to the share of the capital they have committed. In this system, public shareholders suffer when the industrial princes decide that it is time to divert corporate resources--whether directly in the form of wealth or indirectly in the form of fame--to themselves. Our system is different. Attempts by small groups--the universal banks and the industrial princes in embryo--to dominate industrial finance in the United States faced serious hurdles as American capitalism developed. The United States saw an antitrust movement in the first half of the twentieth century dedicated as much to breaking up large concentrations of private power as to increasing market competition. The possibility that we might have our corporate managers watched by a few "universal" bankers was foreclosed by the New Deal. Our economy was just too big for even those as rich as the Mellons or the Rockefellers to easily establish a dominant initial position as overseers of corporate managers. And both public and private authorities were not friendly toward the special classes of voting stock that European plutocratic dynasties use to maintain their control. Thus we have a system that, instead, relies on a surprisingly open market for corporate control. And the prices in this "market" are, essentially, the prices at which one can buy large blocks of stock. Occasionally, a low stock price will prompt a hostile takeover of a company by investors who think they can find managers who will do a better job. More often, the market for corporate control will work indirectly. A steep decline in the stock price will trigger a directors' revolt, for the directors will see the decline as the market's judgment that the management is pursuing misguided policies. Shrewd and on-the-ball managers do not give the directors time to revolt. Instead, the fear of a revolt or a hostile approach induces incumbent managers to take whatever strategic course is favored by the stock market. Although a CEO and her time have some latitude to go against the market's judgment for a while, the market calls the shots in the long run. Indeed, the market calls the shots in the medium run. And back before the mid 1990s it was very common to hear managers complain that the stock market called too many of the shots even in the short run. But for this to work, the market has to know what it is doing. Thus the U.S. model rests (or, rather, surfs) on top of a massive torrent of high-quality public information about how our corporations are functioning. Attention is limited. Even the most industrious and sleep-deprived professional investor cannot construct the information base to evaluate de novo which companies need new management or general shaking up. Outsiders simpoly do not have access to enough of the requried information. So we all must rely on what corporations report--and this means that sometimes the reports must be unpleasant. And that means that the information must fit into the straightjacket provided by GAAP, for the wiggle room to avoid unpleasant news must be very limited. And that means that the information that flows out must be trustworthy. And for the past century, to an astonishing degree, it has been. An extraordinary level of trust in the torrent of information guided by GAAP that pours out of American companies has been essential for our system of corporate control to function, and has been a principal factor leading to high levels of investment in America. This, however, is our system's Achilles heel. When public information stinks, our mechanisms of corporate control break down. When our mechanisms of corporate control break down, fewer will be willing to invest in America: How can anyone dare buy stocks when they fear that the insiders know a lot of things you don't, are laughing at you, and plan to take as much of your money as they can? If a handful of universal banks or if industrial princes dominated our market for corporate control, it wouldn't matter much if GAAP became a joke and if the numbers stank. They would ahve other, non-public sources of information. They would have private access to books and operations. Their financial (and social) dominance would lead managers to curry favor by telling them the real deal. A year and a half ago, we had no idea of the damage that the stock-market bubble of the 1990s had done to our collective system of corporate surveillance and supervision. Few would have thought it possible for a firm's officers to try to pump $3 billion out of a public company, as happened at Adelphia. Even those who were most suspicious of WorldCom's acquisition frenzy would never have guessed that it was busy overstating its "EBITDA"--earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, a semi-useful proxy for the difference between the amount of money the corporation is taking in and the amount of money it is paying out. Who would have imagined that Enron could simply not disclose massive financial obligations and its Chief Financial Officer's [CFO's] massive ethical conflicts of interest, and that everyone--outside directors, audit committee members, auditors, the SEC itself, prestigious legal counsel, and others--would simply not notice or would not care? These three situations exemplify our current mess: sustained dissemination of material errors in statements of financial position into the marketplace. These were big lies, and they had real effects, which are worth examining in detail: Adelphia's games made it look like a profitable, successful concern even as it paid through the nose for its most recent cable acquisitions. Investors and competitors looking at Adelphia thought, "Aha, look at how profitable it is," and concluded (reasonably) that those recently-acquired cable systems were worth their high prices. Thus (i) investors were spurred to imitate Adelphia and to sink money into acquiring cable customers at high prices too, and (ii) competitors upped their estimates of the worth of a cable customer. Ultimately, somebody may make money via cable: cable customers may be a source of revenue and profit. But much of the belief that they were was based on the sustained dissemination of erroneous information. WorldCom's accounting tricks, especially from 1999 to 2001, also made its business model appear too successful. Competing executives looked at its numbers and felt pressure from investors to imitate it or be fired, as investors punished companies that could not match WorldCom's success. Was this the source of the entire telecom crash? Certainly not. WorldCom was but one piece of the puzzle. Was it a contributing factor? Certainly. WorldCom was one piece of the puzzle. Billions of dollars of financial capital and a great deal of human capital was wasted--allocated to the wrong industry sectors at the wrong time--as a consequence of the way that WorldCom misrepresented itself. Not all of WorldCom's representations were improper--some was garden-variety puffery--but a lot was. Finally, Enron's shenanaigans gave the appearance of tremendous profits to be made in the emerging field of energy trading. Pressure to keep up with Enron convinced many energy companies to flock into Enron's business. (And the resulting competition meant that Enron had to defraud harder just to keep its numbers up.) Current stock and bond prices suggest that this was unwise: there was no pot of gold. The companies that decided to copy Enron, and the investors who funded them, bear responsibility for their actions. It is a free country. But Enron's shenanigans made these mistakes in judgment easy to make. So this is our mess. Real, reputable companies fed the marketplace huge inaccuracies (to put it politely) over an extended period of time--Big lies, lots of them. Such lies enrich the wrong people: insiders who know or suspect the truth and sell their stock while its price is artificially supported by fraud. Such lies enpoor the wrong people: investors who trust that material information about corporate finances will be disclosed in a timely fashion. Such lies, moreover, inflict two more types of damage. First, they raise the cost of capital to honest firms in the future: stock prices will be depressed and bond interest rates raised by an Ebbers or a Fastow factor. The capital market functions well only when such default, fraud, and risk premia are low, not high. Second, such lies, while undetected, lead to judgments that put capital in the wrong place. Real investments--not just paper profits--turn out not to be worth what people had reasonably expected. Economic growth slows. The country is a poorer place. The financial markets are, after all, social capital allocation mechanisms: our equivalent of the investment directorate of the late Soviet Union's GOSPLAN. Our financial markets work a lot better than GOSPLAN--but not if the information they are fed and that they act on is made out of garbage. Had we been smarter, we would have started taking care of this problem three or more years ago. There were signs that things were going wrong. The collapse of the highly-leveraged firm of Long Term Capital Management [LTCM] in the late summer of 1998 was one such sign. The creditors of LTCM had an interest--an overwhelming material interest--in understanding the firm's portfolio and operating procedures: yet they did not. Or consider the extraordinary situation just after 3Com had sold a part of the shares of its subsidiary, Palm: stock prices valued 3Com's Palm shares as worth less than half of what other Palm shares were worth. An investor could buy an equivalent ownership interest in Palm by buying 3Com shares for half the money he would pay for Palm shares. Equivalent ownership interests, trading on the same exchange, possessing similar liquidity characteristics--the financial markets were functioning so poorly that it took more than a season to iron out even the most obvious violation of the law of one price. The violation of this fundamental law was a clear sign that the marginal buyer of technology stocks was stunningly uninformed. And when a lot of stunningly uninformed people show up at the poker table.... So we shoul dnot have been as surprised. But we were. And we are. Some observers argue that the situation has already taken care of itself: that the market has fixed it. Because there is low trust, the slightest hint of an accounting irregularity will crush a company's stock price. So every accountant and every manager will strive to be squeaky-clean and there is now no problem. Such observers are half right and half wrong. They are right in that hints of accounting irregularities will cause investors to flee in panic. Consider Merck, a company that overstated its revenue and its costs to equal degrees so that the net effect on its profits was zero. Nobody today knows anything about Merck's profits that makes them lower than people thought three months ago. Yet Merck's market value fell by eight percent on the revelation that its accounting was somewhat... unusual. Once investors presume that numbers are unreliable, the flow of capital through financial markets will not be smooth and capital itself will not be cheap. Moreover, the market for corporate control will not function. Investigating a company and learning anything about its internal operations becomes much more difficult. We need trust. Trust does not mean that people will be preternaturally honest, that we should take what Wall Street salesmen say at face value, or that only the virtuous will become rich. But trust does mean that we can all be confident that the system has suffiicent checks that large, reputable companies cannot disseminate sustained, material misinformation into the market place. no more big lies. Are there (relatively) simple things that can be done to create such trust? Yes. Given goodwill, the tasks are not overwhelmingly difficult. Big lies are pretty easy to stop, for they are big. All we really need to do is to take seven simple steps: First, we need to make public companies change their auditors every few years. Auditors compete on reputation: the auditor with the best reputation gets the most clients, and the former partners of Arthur Anderson will tell you that an accounting firm that has lost its reputation collapses astonishingly quickly. How can we get auditors concerned about whether their actions are putting their reputation at risk? The PCAOB is one social mechanism, but it is not a foolproof one--its staff will, after all, be composed of those rotating to and from accounting-firm partnerships. Knowledge that a hungry competitor--not just the partner down the hall--will be checking the audit in five years searching for mistakes and misjudgments may concentrate the mind better, and is certainly a valuable second bowstring. Second, professionals who provide information to the market need to stand behind what they say--financially. Current due-diligence standards for underwriters result in due diligence that is... perfunctory. The SEC should pursue underwriters and legal counsel who performed due diligence and chip away at them in the courts. Bring the egregious civil cases, and take them to trial. Put CEOs and Managing Partners on the stand defending their perfunctory efforts at due diligence. The due diligence culture may change. Third, the SEC needs to work toward a system in which boards of directors are stronger. The easiest mechanism is to separate the post of CEO from that of Chairman. If the Chairman of the Board has an independent reputation to protect, there is one more potentially-effective watcher of the CEO. Fourth, prohibit loans--all loans, by anybody, not just by the corporation of which they are an officer or director--to corporate officers and directors that are backed by stock. Putting high corporate officials in a position where a stock price decline triggers their personal financial ruin is asking for *real* trouble. Desperate people act desperately. Far more people will lie, cheat, steal, and defraud to avoid loss of high status and wealth than would defraud to gain it in the first place. Fifth, require *real* disclosure of insiders' financial incentives. This means clear disclosure of CEO pay. This means disclosure of any and all side deals relating to stock. When a CEO collars her stock--finds a bank that will pay him if the stock price falls in exchange for his paying the bank if the stock price rises--she has effectively "sold" the stock as far as the *economic* risks are concerned. But at the moment, we are in a ridiculous situation: the market does not know insiders' real economic exposure because it does not learn about their personal derivative books fast enough. Sixth, make it clear exactly how the market is allowed to dig for information. Arthur Levitt's "REG FD" tried to level the playing field by prohibiting the selective and non-public disclosure of information. But it is becoming clear that its major function is to shield corporations that want to hide bad news. When some analyst or investor shows up with tough questions, they say, "You're wrong. There's an answer to that. But I can't tell you what it is because of 'REG FD'. The market can do a lot of the heavy lifting that will prevent sustained misinformation when it is given a chance. So make it clear what kinds of information are OK for market participants to ferret out, and then let them do it. This will make it much harder for deceit to fester for a long time. There is a downside to getting rid of REG FD. It does tilt the playing field more toward Wall Street insiders. But--at least starting from where we are now--helping to prevent sustained misinformation seems more important. Seventh, the SEC needs to produce some bright-line rules about what is and is not "material." You see, corporations need to disclose things that are "material"--important. Corporations don't need to disclose things that are not "material." And nobody knows what "material" means. The lack of a bright-line definition hamstrings law enforcement. On the one hand, consider Halliburton's well-known failure to reveal an accounting change that boosted its annual income. Halliburton's executives knew that the bald-faced claim that the change was not "material" bought them a level of legal protection. In all probability this protection was a substantial factor in the decision to goose that year's earnings with an unrevealed accounting change. On the other hand, companies refuse to answer analysts' questions on the grounds that they cannot selectively disclose "material" information. We have the worst of both worlds: Call up a company and ask about an unpleasant fact and (surprise!) they won't answer because it would be selective disclosure of "material" information. But when it comes time for the company to file the publicly-available form 10-K... presto! the company's lawyers assure them that the unpleasant fact is not "material" so there is no need to disclose it. Until the SEC takes a bright-line stand on what "material" means, "materiality" will be a barrier to and not a source of information to the market. Take these seven steps, we believe, and our system of corporate control will once again work relatively well, for it will be able to surf on the torrent of GAAP-guided information about corporate finances that is released every year. This does not mean that our financial system will be perfect. It will still have many flaws... the misuse of 401(k) plans to prop up the value of an employer's stock... the failure of Congress to mandate the diversification of IRAs and 401(k)s... more rapid and accurate public release of changes in corporate insiders' real stock positions... an end to directors and officers who don't take their stock disclosure obligations seriously... and others. But these other problems are old ones that we have lived with. Our current elephant-in-the-living-room is new. A decade ago, the Federal Reserve did not have to worry in its internal deliberations that investment was depressed because of fears about corporate governance. Now it does. Will we fix things? At the moment, it doesn't look very likely. We have a President who regards Harken's "sale" of Aloha--and presumably, if he has thought that far, the analogous Enron financing vehicles--as in a "grey area" where things are not "black and white." In his past career, he was part of the problem. We have a President who didn't listen to his substantive economic advisers on the tax cut and the government's long-run fiscal balance, he didn't listen to them on the steel tariff, and he didn't listen to them on the farm bill. We have a Congress that has for a decade been half-bought by those who think they have an interest in muddying the information flow (for what can one make of the argument that options are such a wonderful economic mechanism that is such a wonderful thing for a firm to do to boost shareholder value, and yet nobody must be allowed to easily find out that a firm is issuing them?), and that is half-panicked by the fear that voters whose 401(k)s have fallen in half will someday decide to punish them. We need a new Chair of the SEC who understands just why her job is so important, and that she has a lot to do. ::: posted by Alf at 11:15:38 PM I posted this over at stand down, it's about the killing of the Al Qeuda leader in Yemen. I've been thinking about it more and I just don't understand. The Bush administration would not have leaked this information unless they were sure they got their man, but how were they so sure? Does this whole episode seem very strang to anyone else? Even in afgahnistan it seemed like we were trying to keep some of the terrorists alive so we could get information from them. This was leaked to the press so quickly. How were they so sure that they got the right man? I'm not doubting that they killed who they said they did, but I wonder How were they so sure that they got the right man? The drone itself couldn't have been able to identify the Al Qeada leader, (it dosn't have X-Ray vision). That means we had someone in the inside, so why did we just kill these people instead of doing the more useful thing and try to capture them? If we had someone on the inside, that means we knew there was an american involved. This whole episode is very strange, I can't figure it out. ::: posted by Alf at 10:02:49 PM It seems that the war on terrorism not only allows the indefinite detention of american citizens, it also allows the execution of american citizens. This shit's for real people. The Bushies routinely shit on the constitution, why do they hate america so much? ::: posted by Alf at 1:53:26 PM "Got this Chinese chick, had to leave her quick' Cause she kept bootleggin my shit - man" - Jay Z Sorry Jigga man... ::: posted by Alf at 1:22:31 PM Thursday, November 07, 2002 ::: I just found out that CDs cost a dollar over here, (bootlegs of course) and I was surprised by the selection that they had in the store. I picked up a copy of the Wall, JZ unplugged (with the roots!), Nirvans unplugged, Coldplay, a rush of blood to the head, some John mcLaughlin disk, Lil' bow wow (whom I condsider our generations Jacson five). And some random chinese CD, called, Area L.M.F. crazy children, SFLMF sci-fi Lazy robot machine type, which I am listening to right now and is a trppied out Hip Hop CD. The MC is actaully pretty good, but some of the beats are just too strange... ::: posted by Alf at 11:57:41 PM Wednesday, November 06, 2002 ::: Fuck, stupid fucking voters don't now the right people to vote for. Good job voting in the party of the top .0001 percent of income earners. Stupid fucks. (To back my statement that these people are stupid fucks look at this statistic, 20% of people think they are in the top 1% of the population and another 19% think they will be there one day, fucking morons). i don't know what happened in Minnesota, (*I didn't vite so I'm partly to blame), I think what lost it for the DFL was Wellstone's memorial service and the way the Republicans used it to attack the Democrats. I blogged about this below, I think people should be able to say just about anything when they have a shock to the system lik eWellstone dying. To bad the electorate sucks and dosn't realise this shit. ::: posted by Alf at 8:39:24 PM Don't you think that most misic reviewers are pretentious wankers who are just bitter at their own lack of musical talent? I do. ::: posted by Alf at 12:58:14 PM This is the most tasteless opinion piece i have ever read, and that's counting Anne Coulter The aptly titled, No Class This on the other hand is one of the greatest things i have ever read. Tupac, speaks from the grave. My thoughts on the wellstone memorial service run like this. Wellstone wasn't just your average politician, he was a role model in the best sense of the word. People looked up to him as an example of how to live their lives. When he died in the middle of a hard fought campaign, his supporters were crushed much more than your average politician in training would have been. At his rally, people were in grief and they didn't know how to express it. So they vetted their anger over a senseless loss by booing some republicans and making calls for victory. Whee these people trying to use Wellstones death for political advantage? Hell no, if anything the tings said at the memorial service where politically very stupid. What they were was honest expressions of grief. They weren't the pretty words you usually coming out of politicians mouths, they had real emotion behind them. The response to Wellstone's death has really sickened me. I can say that I actually hate Peggy Noonan after reading that audatios hypocritcal piece of shit that I linked to above. I really can't imagine i'll ever turn into a conservative in the future. ::: posted by Alf at 12:25:24 AM Monday, November 04, 2002 ::: I meet this old Chinese dude to day who is supposedly a famous painter. I was going to ask him for some paintings but he is an oil painter not a chinese style painter, he's still probably pretty good. He was really talkitive, and told me about how hard it was during the cultural revolution. He said that he actually had it pretty easy because his job was to paint giant portiats of Mao on the walls every day. But one time he got in trouble because they cought him listening to the BBC on his radio. A pretty intersting guy. One of my chinese friends had an interesting reaction to him. She is about 24 and she said that she didn't like him because he always talked about politics. She said that politics was not fashionable, that people just didn't talk about these things anymore. I wanted to ask her more, but i couldn't tonight. But I I think she was telling me the truth, it's not that the Chinese goverment dosn't let the peopl etalk about politics, they actually don't want too. I'll try to drag a better explanation out of her. ::: posted by Alf at 11:37:00 PM This guy, Gabe Hudson, wrote this book, Dear Mr. President, about the war in Iraq and sent a copy of it to Bush. The pres actually takes the time to read the book and sends a letter to Hudson, calling the book ridicoulus and unpatriotic. Hudson thought this was pretty cool so he set up a contest where you write a letter to the president. The best one will be sent to the president and the winner gets a copy of the book. Here is the letter I submitted, I come off as kinda of a dumb ass but I was trying to write on the BW's level. Dear Mr. President I gotta say that I am impressed that you read the book. Most presidents would probably be to uptight, to waiste time reading a book of short stories. But I can see you there picking up the book, you think, "this guy wrote a book specifically addressed to me and I'm gonna read it." Even more impressive, is the fact that you wrote him a letter, and apperntly didn't get a staffer to write it for you. This means you actually thought about the book. Now I havn't read the book so i can't tell you whether I agree with your conclusions, but as they always told me in school, it's important to think independantly. I also got to tell you that I feel your pain when people make fun of your speaking ability. I don't always talk or write correctly either. (I'm not gonna spell check this letter just so you can see how bad my spelling is). But I feel like I'm a pretty smart guy, despite lacking the ability to put together a pretty phrase. One thing I gotta ask you is what's up with this war on Iraq? Al Queda is popping off bombs left and right and to me it seems like invading Iraq is just going to increase the liklihood of another terrorist attack, and Iraq just isn't that big of a threat compared to say Pakistan or lost nucler material from the former USSR. I hope you know what you are doing and you rstance now is just a front for your real secret plans involving Ninja's taking out Saddam and bringing peace and Democracy to the middle east, but if that isn't the case, don't listen to Cheney and Rumsfield. Look in their eyes, do you really trust them? Anyway, if you ever want to have a beer (it's ok you can have just one), just drop me a line. Sincerly Alf hickey ::: posted by Alf at 11:29:36 PM Results from the MIAC cross country championship, men and women. men 6 out of 11, women 7 out of 12. Plus Sky and Roscoe are the two fastest freshmen in the conference. Also in running news, this sounds like a pretty bad ass race. (via letsrun.com) ::: posted by Alf at 1:00:40 AM Sunday, November 03, 2002 ::: Allright, I'll tell you what I did tonigt even though it is closer to Hallowmas than Halloween. My polish friend in town calls me up, he wants to go to a chinese Sauna... Allright I'll go along might be fun. We go there and he tells me its 38 yaun, at first I'm like, damn thats expensive I could buy about 35 620ml bottles of beer for that(I don't know why the beer comes in this size? Fan?), but then I realise that its less than 5 dollars so it's cool. We get to the place and for the 35 rmb, you get a suana, a rub down, and you get to go into a vat of brown liquid filled with chinese "medicine". Oh yeah they give you socks and underware too. Also if you want to pay extra you can get a through massage, but if you want a girl you need to pay more, something about how she will walk on your back4(Fan?)... Inside room with the suna is a bunch of naked old chinese dudes, so my and the pollack shoot the shit with them using the five chinese words we know and sit in the suana and the hot tub and have a nice time. Then comes the rub down. The guy who gives it, dressed in tighty whities, grabs a piece of sandpaper and starts scraping it across my pack. Skin was peeling off all over the place, it looked like he was tearing a wet paper label off my back but it was my skin. Then its time for me to turn over... So he starts rubbing my chest down and then gets lower and lower. he bumps my balls a couple times, I'm like, watch out buddy, but he keeps going until he spreads my legs to make sure he can rub my ass with the fucking sandpaper. So that was pretty much the highlight of my Halloween weekend. At least i can say I got some action. ::: posted by Alf at 2:11:45 AM Saturday, November 02, 2002 ::: Edify yourself here ::: posted by Alf at 5:17:33 PM Friday, November 01, 2002 ::: Since no one has emailed me any votes in the email Annie poll, I am going to close it. i think the votes came out to something like A. 3 against emailing annie B. 2 for emailing annie C. 2 for doing neither. Since this Blog is based in China, the vote dosn't matter and i'm going to do whatever i want. So I am going to go with option C and am going to email annie a selction of qoutes from emails that Doug has sent me. i feel that since Annie and Doug have a special relationship and are both fairly irresponsible with their use of email, this will be a good solution to this impass. Oh yeah if you are reading this doug, don't worry. i will only send annie contect free qoute, so she can enjoy the pure beuty of your language. ::: posted by Alf at 10:16:44 PM Damn, Beck is the man, y'all better go watch his show when it swings through your area. He has put his whole album on the internet for free!! Just go to his website and go to the news section and download the seachange player. My favorite song is "side of the road"... ::: posted by Alf at 10:00:02 PM During luch hour they play music erally load over the load speakers on the Campus here. Usually this pisses me off because it is extra shitty Sino-pop. Today was a little better in that they were playing classical music. The strange thing about it was that it was classical music that you would never hear in America as background music because they already have cultral significance. These are songs like pomp and circumstance, Auld Lang Singe and a couple other more obscure ones that I associted with Charlie Chaplain. Listening to Pomp and Circumstance being played and knowing that everyone around me just thought it was a pretty piano song and not a message that you have comleted one part of your life and will now move onto a beeter things, really got me thinking about cultural differences. There are probably equivilent chinese songs that we hear in america. I never really realized what kind of cultural baggage we carry with us. The Chinese are on the recieving end of a lot of American trends but there is no way they understand where they are coming from. The other day i saw a fashion show with some Chinese people dressed in retro 70's style clothing. It is entirely possible that the people wearing and designing the clothes didn't know they were retro or didn't know that wearing them is making a Ironic statement about fashion in general. The other day I went out to by a coat and I didn't really like the chinese styles, so I asked my Chinese friend if she knew any used clothing stores. She was aghast at the idea that i would want to buy used clothes and didn't understand what I meant when I said "old clothes are cool." This attitude is understandable, I wouldn't want to wear clothes from the decade of the cultural revolution either. And if any of my legions of readers think that these above paragraphs reflect to much time at macalester thinking about things like the "Ironic semiotics of retro clothing," I think that these huge differences in cultrural baggage are important on issues across the spectrum, from democracy to Hip Hop. it is impossible for cultral institutions to switch cultures. Despite these obstacles, I am trying to venture into Chinese culture. My vehicle is the Monkey King, an ancient Chinese story that is more complcated than the the lord of the rings. The main charecter is a monkey and his best friend is a pig. So far i have had a conversation about whether or not women like men with the charecteristics of the monkey or the pig. A surpising amount liked the pig. Understanding Chinese women may be harder than I thought.... ::: posted by Alf at 9:32:47 PM © A. A. S. H. |
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