Local news this week.
Babydoll has a fairly healthy sense of humor. She has to be resilient cause I am pretty consistent in making fun of everything all the time, including her, so has adapted a thick skin and her own bag of things she finds funny. What she is not (yet) is inherently funny, but she is working on it. She has been asking me recently if I want to hear a 'funny story' and inevitably, they are not funny and sometimes barely stories. To be fair, sometimes they have funny elements to them and that she is trying to develop her story telling, but the point I make to her is that if you come in announcing something is funny, you are setting it up to fail. Have given a couple of suggestions to lead with 'amusing anecdote' or 'something I found interesting' so you can undersell the funny and surprise them with it. Much better strategy.
That said, I found a funny local story to share. In the southern city of Kaohsiung, there was a major recall election last week that had the KMT mayor being ousted with a vote of 24,000 for and 940,000 against. That is some dictator-like vote count, but the KMT is on the ropes these days as they are seen as the pro-mainland party and this guy made some promises during his election run in 2018 that he immediately broke. I may be missing some crucial detail cause if his offense was breaking promises during an election, as an American voter, that would usually mean he gets reelected in a landslide. One of the mayor's chief lieutenants committed suicide 2 hours after the vote by jumping off a building. The conspiracy theorists were out immediately saying he was pushed, so those types certainly aren't limited to the States.
That wasn't the funny part. During the run-up to the vote, a member of the political party called "Can't Stop This Party" made a bet on the election. A couple of words about the Can't Stop This Party party...they were founded late in 2019 by a bunch of YouTubers and officially became the 365th political party in the country and the 15th with a legislative member in parliament. Is there any wonder that I miss some of the nuance to the local politics? I suspect they are liberal but have not researched their platform other than their mission being "to bring joy and laughter to Taiwanese politics." I'm listening...
Anyhoo, this party member predicted that the vote tally wouldn't go over 400,000 total, which was the minimum number of votes needed for the mayor to be recalled and if he lost, he said he would break a pair of chopsticks with his ass for every 10,000 votes over 400K. Remind me not to take this guy, whose YouTube name is Froggy, along to the track as there was over 530,000 more votes cast than he predicted so in losing his bet, he had to break 53 pair of chopsticks with his ass. And he did. That article is well written in the style of presenting bizarre facts in a solemn way and is worth a minute of your time, but if you don't want to read, here is the video.
Your heart goes out to the poor woman that is tasked with doing the count of the broken chopsticks and she would be a main character on the Taiwanese version of Mad Men. Before watching it, couldn't envision how one cracks them but seeing it done makes a lot of sense. Use your bikini underpants to hold in place and break them horizontally. The best part is when Froggy goes for three pair at a time and the lady bends over about a foot away to watch. I mentioned that the virus has been eradicated and social distancing guidelines have been relaxed, yes? Froggy has pretty firm buns, which has to be a requirement in this effort. Am not gonna try it at home cause I want to leave the image of my flabby ass attempting it up to the imagination. I will also call out all of the participants footwear...my mom was ahead of her time in making everyone take of their shoes before coming into her house (neat freak with white carpet), but it is absolutely mandatory by tradition here and everyone has a pair of cheap slides that they wear in the office or wherever.
One more local news story for today. I didn't know it, but adultery in Taiwan is illegal. Was illegal until last week that is as the supreme court struck down the law deeming it as criminal. Did a little research and the penalty for getting caught in the act was up to a year in prison for both the adulterer and their partner. For foreigners caught with locals, deportation was added after they finished their jail time. A large private investigation industry has grown up to catch cheating spouses and it is just another job description that is going away, like pony express rider or corrupt policeman. The country averaged 500 convictions a year for this offense but few actually went to jail as you could pay NT$900 (about US$30) per day of your sentence to stay out of the hoosegow. Apparently, Taiwan was the last country in the "developed" world that still had this law on the books. Gay marriage and now this? Good on ya Taiwan. Now let's legalize the weed, eh? In the news today came a report that users of Ashley Madison (a site where married people can meet for hookups) have risen 70% in Taiwan in the two weeks since the law was rescinded.
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