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JISHOU, HUNAN — Come listen, children, to this story of transpacific electronics shopping.
I haven’t quite graduated to be a wholesale exporter of electronic goods, but it seems every time I visit the USA, I end up being a courier of some sort of assorted gadgetry. This time, I even bought one for myself.
Last trip, I brought two media players from China to the USA as gifts. These Android-powered “MP5′s” cost about $45, play movies, music, etc., on a 4.5-inch touch screen, and are very popular among Chinese students. It seems they’re also popular in the US, since I had a request to bring three more with me on this trip.
Ditto my iPad courier service. On my winter trip, I picked up an iPad for a friend in China, and got to play with it for two weeks before I handed it over. This time, I had to get an iPad2 for his cousin.
While I was in Beijing, I visited the Zhongguancun district, where scores of computer and electronics shops huddle in several malls. Unlike American malls, most shops in China that sell similar merchandise are clustered near each other, making shopping and bargaining really easy for the consumer. I figured this was the best place to pick up the MP5′s (the brand name is Bmorn, model BM-581). We found a shop with good prices, but it was pretty busy. My friend Alex played with her iPad while I noodled around the Android tablets on display.
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 Education begins in the home. Permanent link to this post (6 words, 2 images, estimated 1 secs reading time) Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — Yesterday morning, I left my flat to head downtown. Ahead of me, I saw a young guy crouching down to take photos of a bright green garden snake who had gotten very lost. Here’s the little fella:
I say he (or she, kinda hard to tell) was lost because there’s nothing but yards and yards of concrete up where I live, and he was having no luck scaling the wall.
Anyway, the photographer guy and I are admiring the snake when an older woman walks past and starts freaking out. As far as I know, she doesn’t live anywhere near me, but for some bizarre reason she homed in on this garden snake with the intent to do it in.
First, she tried whacking it with a stick she was carrying. We stopped her. Then she picked up a chunk of concrete, and tried to bash the snake with it, all the while fussing loudly in local language (not Chinese). We tried blocking her again, but she managed to heave the chunk in the snake’s general direction. No harm done. Her pitching arm is in Little League, and the snake was wisely sticking close to the wall.
The Chinese guy tried to calm the lady down or shoo her away, but she was determined to flatten that poor snake. We weren’t sure what the lady would do if we picked up the snake and threw him to safety. As hysterical as she was, she might have bashed one of us with the concrete chunk. Mostly, we just ran interference.
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After all, why just send boring cellphone pix?
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JISHOU, HUNAN — An inept Photoshopping of some local Chinese officials inspecting a new road has generated a flurry of more creative versions of the same image among Chinese netizens.
A photographer took two photos of three officials out in the countryside, and decided to doctor them into a more appealing image for the county government website. Here’s the original images:
And here’s the ‘shopped version, as it appeared on the website.
You will note, I hope, that the three gentleman appear to be hovering over the roadway. The image was promptly removed from the website and the photographer reprimanded, after parodies of the doctored image went viral. Here are a few examples.
In President Barack Obama’s briefing room:
On the Moon:
On a movie set:
On the soccer field:
On Cristo Redentor, Rio:
More examples are here and here.
Permanent link to this post (141 words, 8 images, estimated 34 secs reading time) Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — I took a break from reading literature essays (18 down, 70 to go!) to peruse what constitutes news in the USA. Some people have their underwear in knots because New York (yay!) has made same-sex marriage legal.
One crazy lady, Linda Harvey, manages to connect New York’s Constitutional exercise of states’ rights (which conservatives normally champion) with an imaginary crusade by President Barack Obama to make every American fuck like bunnies. For example,
This “freedom” will include much more than a perpetual pansexual pagan party. It will, and already does, include libel, slander, intimidation, corruption of youth, revolt in congregations, suppression of parental rights, revision of language, disease, loss of employment and loss of life.
Oh, and did I mention public sex, the porn explosion and public nudity?
Welcome to entitlement sex.
Social Security is an entitlement — the government (so far, anyway) guarantees retirees a minimal income. Medicare is an entitlement — the government (so far, anyway) guarantees retirees minimal medical coverage. Medicaid is an entitlement — the government (so far, anyway) guarantees the poor minimal medical coverage.
If I understand Harvey correctly, she is suggesting the federal government is going to guarantee everyone a minimal amount of sex. Some congressmen are already getting more than their fair share (including those who work with both sides of the aisle, if you catch my drift), so it seems the federal government has already piloted this program among elected officials. Perhaps it started during the Clinton administration. Whatever the case, it seems only fair the rest of us benefit as well.
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 Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo My family knows I am a sucker for cop shows. I confess to a short-term addiction to Law & Order, especially the ones with the late Jerry Orbach in them. But, long before the L&O franchise took over cable TV, I had another favorite cop show, about a quirky police detective named Columbo, who seemed like he was perpetually half-asleep, but in the end, always solved the crime.
Peter Falk, who died yesterday at 83, made Columbo the icon that he is. TV detectives and cops come and go, but Falk’s Columbo was as distinctive as Sherlock Holmes. A squinty-eyed look (Falk had a glass eye), a rumpled trench coat (from Falk’s own closet), a beat-up old car (a ’59 Peugeot convertible), a half-smoked cigar and a distinct New York accent (the show was set in LA) all made Columbo a stand-out among TV’s cookie-cutter sleuths.
Falk didn’t create the character, but he breathed life into it. A masterful actor, he once explained his character as an anti-heroic Sherlock.
“Columbo has a genuine mistiness about him. It seems to hang in the air . . . [and] he’s capable of being distracted. . . . Columbo is an ass-backwards Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had a long neck, Columbo has no neck; Holmes smoked a pipe, Columbo chews up six cigars a day.” (Source)
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