Fireworks, Dumplings, & Golden Pigs...

Red underwear be gone!!! The year of the pig is upon as, my year is now dog-gone. Chinese New Years celebration started up this past Saturday and brought with it four of the more insane days I have ever taken part in on this fair planet.

For those of you who have never been to China during their New Years, the only thing I can compare it to is Beirut circa 1982. If you missed out on that as well, you can check out the video below. I shot this beauty a few moments after midnight on Saturday. The street is a couple blocks from my apt and is home to Mr. Ma's dumpling joint, where we made our own Jiao Zi (dumplings) and then cooked them up at midnight while we lit off an absurd amount of fireworks alongside seemingly the rest of China. We did this, naturally, to chase away the bad demons that will keep us form having good luck and prosperity in the New Year.

The Spring festival goes on for a total of 15 days, concluding with the Lantern Festival. Until this day, demons must be chased away. Fireworks have been going non-stop, day and night, in all locations imaginable: streets, parks, courtyards, building tops, out windows, off remote control helicopters, your hand, anywhere...

Hopefully I'll get through it all, if not, well...at least I went out with a bang.

This might sound weird...

but I realized that my pits smell like the tap water I grew up with for my first 19 years in the burg.

Real Politik...

Utopia, as I define it, is no place. Most people should. I love idealism. I realize the beauty of it. I want it, and in those moments in time when I feel good, too good actually, I agree and say those ideas. The idea that no person should kill another and that pacifism rules the day is a thought that makes me do business in my pants. Its an idea that we can make the world a better place. Its an idea that we can control our instincts in a way that propagates the good of man. Its an idea that allows us to dance, dance, and dance our problems away so we can ramble on without the problems that make us dance in the first place.

As great as we are our, our chances are nil. Our minds are capable of analysis, and analysis of ourselves. Thats deep shit. We bury nonsense in this shit, nonsense being each other and the reasons for us being of course. The problem, however, is that while we think rationally we are not rational and we never will be.

Gun, Germs and Steel is a novel by Jared Diamond, and it does not touch on rationality, but it touches on rational thought. Read it and then think. Think about the points he makes, and then think about why u are here. Then think about why ur nation and u have passports. Whatever that nation is, and why it is here, and why that nation and the people and the future people that are in power will continue to be in power is not rational, which is why idealism rules not the day. Self-interest drives the self and thus drives the day. Real politik........