September 29th, 2017

Hey there,

This is the time of year I miss Seattle most.  Most say that the PNW is best in the summer, with long days, blue skies and the hydros.  As man who identifies as an Autumn,  I love the chill in the air, breaking out the fleece, and taking the kids to the corn maze.  In Taiwan, it is still so hot that all we can do is go to the popcorn maze.

They love themselves some stinky tofu in this town.  You can smell it everywhere at all times of day. Will admit that it tastes OK, but even the biggest lover of it will say that it smells awful.  A little about the concoction from Wikipedia: "The traditional method of producing stinky tofu is to prepare a brine made from fermented milk, vegetables, and meat; the brine can also include dried shrimp, amaranth greens, mustard greens, bamboo shoots, and Chinese herbs. The brine fermentation can take as long as several months."  It goes onto say that in Taiwan, "Stinky tofu is usually served deep-fried (often served drizzled with sauce and topped with sour pickled vegetables), grilled, or added to a Sichuan mala soup base (with solid goose blood, pickled mustard greens, and pork intestines)."

I'll wait while you try to settle your stomach.

While they may all like the stuff by now, ingrained in their taste bud DNA over epochs, it has the added benefit of hiding the populace's body odor.  I didn't complain about the weather last week, but it remains consistently awful...well over 100 degrees every day.  Every day.  Every day.  Today for instance...

Yep...it feels like 122.  In Celsius, that's 50, which is halfway to boiling.   I don't care how well you can regulate your body temperature, you are gonna stink and the pickled pork intestine stew brewing in all directions is a perfect masking agent.  The local version of "is that you or is it stinky tofu."  Realized this as we were on the subway one late afternoon after a roaster of a day, and the mix of sweaty humanity from all walks of life was exposed on the sterile train.  Gag me.

An addition to my list of things to do if I were the Pope of this Dump, which includes disbanding the Taiwanese armed forces and legalizing weed, had an idea for Taiwan as to how they could combat their low birthrate while simultaneously making a takeover by the mainland less appealing.  With the second lowest birthrate in the world, they face the issue of an aging population without enough young people to feed the coffers or take care of the elderly that many Western nations are starting to feel too.  Stagnant wages with the minimum being US$4.00 means more living at home as an adult, and starting a family is not something that a government can turn on/off at will.  So what is the answer?  Whether you like it or not, immigration seems most logical.  Japan is adamantly against diluting their gene pool, but Taiwan?  My thought is that there are already a ton of migrant workers here, mainly in the needed service industries of health care and construction, and mostly from Indonesia and Philippines.  And there is a significant but hard to measure group of undocumented children of those workers living in this legal limbo where they aren't residents of any country.  Let's start by legalizing them and provide a path for some legal immigration from the area countries facing overpopulation.

Have added this to my list of talking points and it is immediately dismissed as the Taiwanese (re:Chinese) would never allow it in the same vein as Japan.  First, this island didn't hold a majority of Chinese people until the late 20th century with the aboriginal population and island not being fully subjugated until the 1920's...by the Japanese.  I wonder how the aboriginal population would feel about it.  Second, the Filipinos that are here already fill the immediate needs in the business sector and they could now go on the books.  Third, with a diverse ethnic make-up, wouldn't that make the mainland less inclined to assume they are part of one culture?  I get that while they talk about Taiwan being an inexorable part of the mainland, it was not even thought of as anything until 1945 and is only desired for strategic regions.  I am no fool to discount the racial prejudices of a society directing nationalistic policy, but I am 100% right about it and am 110% sure it would never be considered.

Quick recommendation...follow it on Facebook and know it is on other platforms, the site "Drunk People Doing Things" is totally worth adding to your feeds.  Just sayin'

In US college news today, this.  American University ranked second in the nation as most socially minded, altruistic university.  Could not figure out what/who the 'Pillrs" site represents, and the methodology seems decent but shallow, but anytime American gets ranked in the top tier of anything is worth a mention.  It might mean that fewer of us could get real jobs.  Regardless, got this weird feeling I've never had about my alma mater.  Not the usual one of disgust or nausea...could it be pride?

I keep a notebook with me at all times.  Mainly to offset the onset of forgetfulness that seems to be one of the lovely things about aging.   It contains lists of all kinds; codes, reminders and things to include in this space.  Something that has been on there for at least a month has been to complain about flag wavers.  Since the president weighed in with the usual colorful language so appropriate to the office, felt the need to spout. 

Side note, that he added the bit about the NFL product being worse because the players were afraid to hit each other anymore in fear of becoming brain dead slobs by the age of 40 felt way under reported and was equally egregious.  That he was denied entry into the NFL club on multiple occasions couldn't have had anything to do with it as he isn't the vindictive type.

Have a Facebook friend that is an old boss from the LA days, and he has always been a bit of a pompous poster with entries complimenting himself on his cooking, touting rare scotch, and those get off my lawn swipes at protesters disrespecting America.  I appreciate that he served in Vietnam, but was always an uninspiring boss that attained his position by marriage and drove the company to dissolution.  I had to finally unfollow him cause while I could look past the privileged posts, the "I'm not a racist" racist posts got too much to bear.  Am not going to delve into a diatribe as to how much I think flag wavers are really hiding behind it.  I certainly won't digress into equating the people that wave the flag the hardest and the people that thump the bible the strongest are usually the poorest representatives of both.  Have had a few exchanges with folks on social media where I tried to lay out the reasons why I don't equate protest and patriotism in measured and non-inciteful ways, but let me say it clear in this space...the folks that get mad at people kneeling in protest are idiots, and even though they don't think so, even in their heart of hearts, they are racist dolts.   If you spout the lines you heard on Fox or Breitbart that rich players shouldn't complain cause the are privileged, or that they are disrespecting the armed forces, here is what the rest of us know about you.  You are "Believer", likely from a long line of them, that is too effin lazy and/or stupid to open your mind to facts and have zero empathy for anyone that isn't "you".  People far more articulate and accomplished have written/said beautiful things (Steve Kerr and Dan Rather for instance), and have yet to see a cogent argument why they are wrong to do so, although NASCAR has weighed in, but they may confusing it with the Confederate flag.  But what I want to talk about today is the difference between dicks and assholes.

If you read this diary, you are aware that there are scatological references galore, but if that offends you, stop here and check back next week cause it gets graphic fast.


This is not a discussion of the difference between an actual penis or sphincter as that seems fairly self explanatory.  What interested me was thinking about the reflexive way people throw those terms out and if there is any difference between them.  You don't just get knee jerk reactions here as the staff did some thorough research.

Have to limit this discussion to those two words as there are hundreds of others that could be mentioned.  Would love to break them all down, but maybe some other time.

OK just one.  Never liked that balls = bravery.  It takes balls, balls to the wall, etc.  Whenever anything gets near mine, will wince in horror knowing the pain that will come if they even get a glancing blow.  They look awful, haven't stopped heading south since the day they emerged from their cocoon, and they marinate in their own juices at temperatures above 40 degrees (Fahrenheit).  Other than the weird satisfaction I get from peeling them off of my thigh, cannot think of a single instant in time where I was glad they were there.  Suck my balls indeed.

I get called an asshole.  Not as often as you'd imagine, but plenty.   This summer, had to buy the Boy a book for his summer reading and it was on a table where you could buy three books for the price of two.  There was one I was interested in so got a third for free, and it was a full tome on what it is to be an asshole (Assholes: A Theory by professor of philosophy Aaron James).  I read it and didn't glean much info about the term or insight into myself.  Got bored quick and was able to speed read it on a flight from DC to Seattle and didn't feel it worth giving it to a friend and so abandoned in the pouch in front of my seat.

Merriam Webster says that dick is "a mean, stupid, or annoying man " while an asshole is "a stupid, annoying, or detestable person".  The absence of the word man in the asshole definition is a natural one and the replacement of detestable for mean is informative.

An interview popped up on Vox this week by a Stanford professor who wrote a book about the art of avoiding assholes.  Let's just say, am not convinced all of the greatest minds are collected there.  Mostly about the workplace, the best piece of advice he has is to get away from the asshole, but I found this sentence in his interview the most telling...

"We would talk about this explicitly when we were making hiring decisions. Stanford’s a pretty passive-aggressive place, so it wasn’t really in your face. But if someone was acting like a jerk, we would gently shun them and make life difficult for them. The idea was to avoid hiring assholes if it all possible, and if one squeezed through the cracks, we would deal with him or her collectively." 

You are a supposedly the smartest we have to offer, and you act like a deleted scene from Mean Girls?  Do have to concede that he nailed it when saying that Stanford is passive-aggressive.  Would rather deal with an in your face asshole than a team of elitist snobs looking down on whatever it is they deem as being an affront to their delicate sensibilities that day.  Feel it safe to speculate that many an asshole made scientific breakthroughs or have minds that think on a different plane than the passive aggressive types, but you go Stanford and limit your collective brain power cause Ralph took the last cup of coffee from the office pot and didn't start a new batch.  I'd bet a hundred bucks these guys bring their dogs to restaurants.

The gang from Team America discuses the issue at the UN.  While a bit circular in logic, they make some good points.

I did a google search on the difference between dicks and assholes and you wouldn't be surprised at how many porn sites I had to sift through before I got to the equally astounding amount of opinions on them grammatically.  The majority of the comments equate them but there are a few that dig deeper and touched on the way I feel,  Will not quote  them, but they are incorporated a bit below.

Assholes.  There is a crude saying that opinions are like them,  Everyone has one and they all stink. That has to rank near the top of the 'sayings that are true" list along with, 'if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle'.   

We are all capable of assholishness depending on our mood, events in our lives, or if we ate a piece of meat past the expiration date.  A lot of a-hole behavior gets classified as such even when it is simply an act or opinion that the other person doesn't like.  I suspect that Stanford guy deems a lot of things that way, like not stopping for a pedestrian 10 yards from the crosswalk.  As a self aware dude, I know I say and do asshole things, and have been around long enough to have seen plenty of others do them.  I would classify well over 50% of those acts as part of life, whether they be silent but deadly or letting a loud one slip on an elevator, every one's asshole is gonna do something that offends others and most of them are involuntary.  I am not here to justify that behavior in myself or anyone else, and even though it is shitty behavior, will try to give the benefit of the doubt to others for a first offense, and will self reflect and try to do better next time if I take a dump on you.  And everyone does it to some degree, so save the self righteousness.  Call it out when you see it in a way that is constructive as not only might that person be having a bad moment or day, but fighting feces with feces is not a successful strategy.  And if someone is defecating on you/society constantly, then by all means take Stanford's advice and get away from them.  

Dicks.  They are actively and knowingly aggressive.  Dick moves are always premeditated and have a specific intent as they desperately want to put themselves inside you and impregnate with their hate sperm.  They think it's for your own good too.  And they are inversely proportional as the biggest dicks tend to have the smaller ones.

There is a reason that women are not called dicks as the physical and metaphorical mesh as one.  Women are obviously capable of being dicks, but never feel that they are trying to screw you, but rather make you feel their pain.  Bitch is the typical euphemism for that and believe it comes from a feeling of being slighted, perceived or no.   Dude dicks are trying to get even for something their mommy did (or did not do) to them or to make up/hide their own short comings.

In summation, dicks and assholes are like cacti and succulents.  All dicks/cacti are assholes/succulents, but not all assholes/succulents are dicks/cacti.