Visualize this Strategy, People

A Break from Travel Writing.

Visualize, people...

A political move that would create a massive buzz, that would send a signal that politics is going to be played differently from here on in, a move that would both surprise and excite.

There's been plenty of inter-DNC back and forth these past few weeks, and the media assumption has been all narrowly focused on veep choices. But what if it's been broader? What if Obama's actually hammered together a cabinet, gone to each prospective and gotten from each a promise to serve (and perhaps also a tacit agreement that they'll withdraw should they be caught pre-election red-handed in some sort of tawdry scandal a la Edwards - a shame, as he'd be great for Attorney General).

Yes, I'm talking about the Clintons here. Bring 'em in. Would Bill turn down the chance to be Secretary of State? America needs a serious diplomat/snake oil salesmen to suck on the stepped-on toes of allies across the globe, and Bill Clinton - say what you will about the man - is someone who can simultaneously suck toe and sodomize. This is no mean feat. And Hillary? Put her in charge of the promised health care revolution, combination HHS Secretary & Healthcare Czar. Give 'em power, keep 'em close. The Devil has work for idle hands. Get Al Gore on-board as Secretary of the Interior, or perhaps a newly created "Climate Change Czar" position. Hell, bring in one or two of the pro-Obama anti war republicans, if they're on board.

Announce the cabinet on the convention floor, loudly and publicly, not with sly innuendo by the talking heads, but by the players themselves. Drag out the heavy names, let America know that they're not just there to make a speech and watch balloons drop, but that, come January 20th 2009, they'll be in the White House.

Imagine the signal this would send out. A completely united front. It isn't just about Obama anymore, but about taking back the whole kit & caboodle from the least popular major party in American history.

More importantly, think of the heavy gauntlet this throws down to McCain - He could either ignore it, look like a chicken-shit, and have his own convention drowned out by media buzz. Or he could name his own cabinet. The latter option pushes McCain into a political minefield. What 15 names could he pick from the rogue's gallery that is today's Republican Party that wouldn't wind up tearing the base apart? Think about how much trouble he's having just picking one. Multiply that by 15.

(posted originally at Barack Like Me)

But enough about me...

My good pal Richard Deming has just had some new poems appear on Web Conjunctions. In addition to being a long-time commentator to Snarky Tofu, Rick is also the man who suggested the name Snarky Tofu after a particularly Snarky post I wrote from Taiwan last year. His two new poems are excellent. "After Kurosawa" has reminded me that it's time to re-watch Rashomon; is it too late for me to pitch a sequel to Kurosawa?

My Obama Video Dying to be Made

So this is a video idea that I came up with last week & sent out to a few of my creative contacts. Anyone want to take a crack at making it? Drop me a line.

John's a Joker

30 second Advertisement Treatment

by Joshua Samuel Brown

Video

Fade In: 3-5 seconds of snippets from recent anti Obama ads "The One" and "Celebrity"; though perfectly recognizable, snippets should be grainy (perhaps shot directly from a television set), of low quality.

Audio

Background: poor quality audio track from original ads themselves (especially key would be scene of Charlton Heston as Moses - drive home blasphemy inherent in McCain ad)

Foreground: Cruel, mocking laughter, the sort that people will instantly associate with bloated plutocrats, Rush Limbaugh, and the mean spirited in general; perhaps even the "ha-ha" of Nelson Muntz (the boy on the Simpsons whose catchphrase is "ha-ha" - always in response to someone's misfortune).

Transition

McCain commercial fades into static image of McCain himself

Voice over

"John McCain's got a wicked sense of humor" (This should not be the heavy, gravatas laden voice so often heard in political ads. Instead, a lighter, friendlier voice would work better. Stephanie Miller would be an excellent choice)

Video

Static image of McCain replaced by video images of McCain telling "jokes"

For this segment, key moments would be McCain telling infamous "gorilla rape joke," McCain singing "Bomb Iran," talking about giving Iranians cancer. Interspersed with these should be other video segments, "accidental jokes," containing recent McCain flubs - mention of non-existent Iraq/Pakistan border (for full effect, map should be shown to drive home McCain's ignorance of geography) on "Good Morning America," two references to Czechoslovakia, a country that ceased to exist in 1993, mixing up of Sunnis and Shiites, reference to Vladimir Putin as president of Germany. If shots of McCain laughing or joking with Cheney or Bush can be located, these should be included as well.

Audio

This segment begins with "cruel laughter" track from first segment; however, as the segment progresses, this track fades down. As it does, a second track fades up, this one containing snippets of newscasters reading somber headlines. Topics for consideration should include recent flooding in Midwest, deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, global warming, worsening economy, rising prices of food and fuel. At the point in which the laughter track is completely replaced by that featuring somber news, the video should shift to a slowed-down shot of McCain laughing.

Transition

Shot of McCain laughing freezes into that unbearably pale, ghoulish smile that McCain does so well.

Audio

"John McCain likes making America laugh..."

Video

Frozen shot of McCain fades slightly as bloody words "Why So Serious?" are scrawled across screen

Audio

"But can America afford another Joker in the White House?"

Transition

Screen lightens and brightens

Video

Shot of Obama engaging in serious conversation with audience.

Audio

Only a few seconds of Obama's words need to be heard, chosen from among his many speeches offering mere snippets of substantive ideas for solving the myriad problems facing America and the world. This should fade into thunderous applause.

Any loyal minions of Obama w/light video editing skills want to take a crack?

Dude, I See Dead People!

To: M. Night Shyamalan
From: Joshua Samuel Brown
Subject: Potential Collaboration on Sixth Sense Sequel

Dear Night,


I just re-watched "Sixth Sense," and boy, let me tell you, I was even more impressed the second time around. Now I get it - Bruce Willis's character was actually dead all along. Brilliant!

Anyway, Night, I was wondering...in your story, what happened to the kid after the movie ended? This got me to thinking about a great idea for a sequel. Not to snip or anything, but your recent movies haven't exactly been critically acclaimed, if you know what I mean. Come on, Lady in the Water? The Happening? What's up with that, Holmes?

So I was thinking that you should go back to formula. I'm talking SEQUEL. It's box office gold, Night.

OK, so get this: Our story picks up ten years after the original left off. Whereas the story arc of the first movie - and it was brilliant, Night, which is why I can't blame you for wanting to repeat it again and again - was kind of an "emotional reckoning hiding inside of a horror story" type thing thing, this one will be more like a "scary college road trip-buddy" thing. I'm envisioning "Harold & Kumar" meets "Lost Highway."

I've gone ahead and scripted out a teaser trailer. If you think you can use it, call my agent and we'll talk numbers. I even put a cameo in it for you - I know how much you dig the Hitchcock trip.


Looking forward to hearing back from you, babe!

Joshua Samuel Brown
August 18, 2008
Groesbeck, Texas

PS - Not sure what this Osment kid is up to nowadays. Do you two keep in contact at all? If he isn't available - or just isn't "good" for the project anymore, what do you think about pulling a Jodie Foster / Julianne Moore thing and casting Seth Green instead?

The Sixth Sense 2:
Dude, I See Dead People!
A film pitch by Joshua Samuel Brown

VO

In 1999, M. Night Shyamalan shocked the world with The Sixth Sense...

(clip from original film: Young Haley Joel Osment faces Bruce Willis and says "I See Dead People")

Ten years later. The Story Continues....

Wide angle shot
Generic eastern college campus in autumn.

Camera follows now-21 year old Cole as he walks. Every few seconds he is approached by a random ghosts, much in the way a well-dressed person walking through skid row is a magnet for panhandlers.

Camera zooms in on COLE.

Cole
(speaking to each ghost without making eye contact)

Dude, you're Dead...
You too...
Sorry, get over it....
Not delivering a message to your wife. Sorry.
Didn't kill you, don't care who did...


Interior: Cafeteria
Cole is eating lunch, looking bored and annoyed. Another student is staring at him.

Cole

So you, uh, gonna say something there sport?

Student

Um....you're the dude that sees dead people, right?

Cole

(bored)

Yep. That's me. You got me.

Student

(nervously)

So...what's Chris Farley up to?

Cole

(huffily)

He's waitin' for David Spade to overdose so they can make Tommy Boy Two. That sound about right to ya, sport?

Student

(getting up)

You don't have to be a dick about it.

VO

...If you thought a paranormal-sensitive kid was creepy, wait until you meet this paranormal-sensitive 20-somthing.

Interior: Restaurant.

Cole is working his night job, waiting tables at a Philadelphia area Olive Garden, serving businessman

Businessman (M. Night Shyamalan, in brilliant cameo)

(brilliantly)

Waiter, this Pasta Primavera is not mine.

Cole

Sorry sir, I'll exchange that right...

(A bloody hand, belonging to a disco-suit wearing ghost taps on Cole's shoulder. Camera pans out to reveal that ghost has a feathered hairstyle, popular in 1970s. Also, there's an axe stuck in his head.)

Cole

(hissing at ghost)

Will you fuck off?!

Businessman (M. Night Shyamalan)

(Masterfully)

What?!

Cole

Not you, sir.

(Cole grabs plate from table, storms off followed by confused looking ghost)

Cole

(stops suddenly and grabs wide white lapels of ghost's polyester shirt)

Did you ever stop and ask yourself (mocking tone) "how come nobody dresses like me anymore?" Why does my wardrobe seem oh, three decades out of style?

Why? I'll tell you why. Because you're dead. that's why. Still wearing the same wardrobe you were killed in during what I'm guessing was a coke-fueled street brawl circa Saturday Night-fucking-Fever.

(Ghost looks hurt)

Cole

...Oh yeah, um, earth to dead dude: notice the axe sticking out of your head? Tell you anything, Sherlock?"

Ghost

(sheepishly)

You don't need to be a dick about it.

VO

With special guest appearance by Bruce Willis

Exterior shot: Philadelphia Park. Cole and Dr. Malcolm Crowe's ghost are sitting on bench.

Dr. Crowe's Ghost

...So I went by my wife's place again yesterday...

Cole

(bored)

How did that go for you, sport?

Crowe

(sighing)

Oh...she seemed happy. Off the pills. But...I can't help but think that Todd isn't right for her. I mean, he's an insurance salesman. Stable...nice...

Cole

Alive. Can't forget that. Big plus in his column. Big plus...

Crowe

(dejectedly)

I guess...

Cole

Did you...move stuff around?

Crowe

(sighs again, looks sheepish)

I...knocked a few things off his desk. Papers mostly. Insurance stuff, I don't know. Also...I, um...kicked his car keys under the couch.

Cole

(sarcastically)

Real mature, doc. Way to let go!

Crowe

(defensively)

You don't need to be a dick about it.

Cole

(rolls eyes)

Whatever...

Voice Over

The Sixth Sense 2: Dude, I See Dead People! From the team that brought you "Last Emperor Two - Son of Last Emperor" and "Bridge on the River Kwai 2: Not Another Bridge!"

...Coming soon to a theatre near you!

Busy, but I may be in love...

Working on a digital project that came up all of a sudden, so little time to blog or answer the two China-bashing commentators (I'll get to it, I'll get to it...and thanks for sharing). But in the meantime, I have found the most beautifully SNARKY blog...
(cue drum roll...)

...Cake Wrecks

I could describe it, but I'm on deadline, we have an exchange student on the way and still haven't cleaned up, and I've got acupuncture in two hours.

Really, just go look at it yourself. Trust me.

(I'm sure they won't mind if I snag just one image...as a teaser)

Fun With War Crimes

Just watched a series of hilarious videos at a sight I stumbled upon (why am I always the last to know?) called Fun With With War Crimes. The scenario: The Bush Cabal Put on Trial. They had me at Harpo. Go check it out for yourselves.

I am asking the people who produce this show to have a look at my John McCain/Joker ad treatment - I'm waiting a few days to post the treatment here, but if any readers have mad digital video skills and want to employ them for a good cause, drop me a line.

Olympic Commentary

I've just watched the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, and I'm not ashamed to say I wept openly. Perhaps it was the splendor and spectacle, or the idea that the nations of Earth can actually put politics, ideology & territorial dispute aside for one week, foregoing combat - virtual and actual - for play.

(This idea, by the way, of a unified planet - good as it seems, actually scare the shit out of bible belters and born agains. Something having to do with the coming of the Antichrist. If anyone can explain it to me without telling me to read the bible, I'm all ears. But I digress.)

The tears started falling for real was when the Chinese team came out, lead by Yao Ming and Lin Hao. Yao Ming you know; Lin Hao you may not. He's the nine year old boy who survived the collapse of his elementary school in Sichaun province earlier this year, reportedly returning to rescue his classmates after crawling out of the rubble. When asked why he went back, he told reporters that he was a class monitor, so it was his responsibility.

Anyway, I was moved.

I was moved in a different way every time the camera glanced over at our own Douchebag in Chief, who seemed not merely bored, but actually annoyed throughout the proceedings, as if he were somehow being imposed upon. Except for when the American team came out, he neither stood nor seemed to clap for any of the other teams. At one point the camera caught him limply slapping a small American flag against his knee for reasons known only to him while Laura sat next to him, unsmiling, looking mostly bored.

Can anyone tell me why George W. Bush is incapable of ever not looking like an asshole? Don't get me wrong - international relations present myriad situations in which presenting the world with a dour mien strengthens one's hand. But this wasn't one of them.

Anyway, I'm off on a tangent. We need a likable President.

On that subject, anyone with digital skills interested in helping me produce a pro-Obama commercial, drop me a line. I've got a treatment worked out.

Baboons Are Simply Too Small for Leopard Bait

Paul Collins over at Slate.com published a fun article entitled "The 10 oddest travel guides ever published." The quote above, "Baboons Are Simply Too Small for Leopard Bait" comes from the first guide on the list, 1. The Truth About Hunting in Today's Africa, and How To Go on Safari for $690.00, by George Leonard Herter (1963)


This is the sort of stuff I'll be writing soon.

Gratifyingly enough, Lonely Planet's "Guide to Micronations" clocked in at number seven. For those too lazy to click over to the Slate story, here's the blurb on LP.

7. Lonely Planet Guide to Micronations, by John Ryan et al. (2006)
This may be the only Lonely Planet guide in which armchair travel is probably assumed—for the countries themselves are about the size of an armchair. Self-proclaimed "micronations" include a kingdom of Danish schoolteachers, the spherical Republic of Kugelmugel, and the Copeman Empire—which, the guide helpfully explains, "is actually a small caravan in Sherringham, England." Amid the whimsicality—Whangamomona's combination border control/outhouse, say, or the Royal Wheelbarrow of the Kingdom of Romkerhall—the book's a meditation on just what it is that drives people to want to get away, even if only for a few square meters, from the hassles and history of the land they were born into.

Supper in Uigherville (now with political content)

China lets none of her adopted brood escape, and I am no exception. Ten thousand miles away, ten thousand years apart. It makes no difference. A program on China comes on the tube; no matter how cliche ridden - they are all cliche ridden - I watch it. The pudgy gourmet earnestly chomping down ma po dofu in Sichuan. The seasoned journalist reporting wide-eyed after travels from Shenzhen to Beijing on the fact that, unbelievable as it seems, China is no longer a Marxist country (as if this transformation just occured last week).

Next week I will watch the Olympics from here at Firewheel Farm, and if I were still a drinking man I'd take the advice of one commentor at Danwei to an article by Kaiser Kuo (Forbidden Clichés: A guide for visiting journalists) and down a shot (of Chinese Erguotou, preferably) every time phrases like "China's coming out party" and "Beijing is a city of contrasts" (or any variation of, or any of the six dozen or so other cliches that have been done to death in print, many by me at some point) came up.

Where was I going with this? Yes. Yesterday my friend Rick suggested that I write something about the Beijing Olympics. Today I got a letter from Robert McElroy,
publisher of the deeply detailed website The Week in Congress. Mac (I call him Mac, despite the fact that we've never met face to face, though at one point I'd asked him to be my agent) was looking for some insight on the recent bomb attack in Xinjiang, gathering data for a piece he's putting together in in reference to House Resolution 1370 (this is one of the things that Mac does for fun; you can read the resolution here). Because Mac thinks I'm a China expert - or, more likely, because I once published a story about scoring hashish from Beijing Uighers in an HK literary magazine (the story is "Supper in Uigherville," and I'll repost it below, because, well, its my damned blog, to do with what I will) - he posed to me the following question:

Do you think the Muslim separatists in Uyger are the threat the PRC says they are or would you side with human rights activists who say the PRC is trumping up the threat as an excuse to suppress that minority and continue Han rule in the region?

So I replied, with my limited knowledge of the conflict in question which may only be partially correct, that , that

Uygher (sometimes spelled Uigher) is a term like "Kurd" in that it defines an ethnic group rather than any specific place, i.e., there is not currently any specific place called "Uygher," though the area that the Uygher's call their homeland would encompass all of Xinjiang province as well as possibly parts of other Central Asian "Stans" Wiki has a good write up on the Uighers at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_people.

As to your question, yes to both. The separatists are by their very nature a threat to the PRC, because - as their name implies - they want to separate a chunk of PRC territory out of the China and into a newly formed nation, thus diminishing the size and power of the PRC itself. Whether they're right or wrong to want to do so depends of course on your point of view on the matter, not to mention your ethnicity.

I thought about it some more, and decided to throw out an analogy, one which will hopefully garner me some comments from of the "why do you hate America" variety from some of my more right-leaning readers.

Is China trumping up the threat as an excuse to suppress that minority and continue Han Rule? I don't think they'd see it that way. China doesn't believe it needs "an excuse" to continue Han rule in in Xinjiang or Tibet any more than the American government thinks it needs an excuse to continue American rule in Hawaii - or Texas, for that matter.

Mind you, I'm not saying that the two situations are 100% analogous, they're more so than you might think: A better analogy might be that China doesn't believe it needs an excuse any more than America in 1890 needed an excuse to continue to occupy native lands that had only recently been "incorporated" into the nation. In fact, if we use this analogy, China is even less in need of an "excuse" (for both Xinjiang and Tibet), because the Han can point back to various times in history when these areas had been part of a greater "Chinese nation" (the borders and boundaries of which have shifted over the past 30 centuries), and all that America had in 1890 was the idea of "manifest destiny," i.e., its our god given right to expand as far as we are able.

Anyway, that's my two fen on the the issue. And now, as promised, a story from 1999, when I was still trying to be the HS Thomspon of China-based expat writers. The story is true, though the Beijing described is long gone. Consider it a time capsule. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty.


Supper in Uigherville

Severin was mad, bad and dangerous to know. We hit it off well. His Svengalli-like magnetism and my own lust for excitement had brought me to Beijing to work for his English language weekly, accepting a dubious offer of housing, flight reimbursement, and a pick-up at the airport.

The last promise was the first to fall by the wayside. When I finally got him on his cell phone, it was close to midnight, and he drunkenly slurred out directions to a bar called "Glass Oinion" off the third ring road.

-	"Why didn’t you meet me at the airport?" Jesus, I don’t know my way around Beijing."

-	"I spaced." He answered "I had an important business meeting."

The next promise to be broken was the flight reimbursement, the "cash in hand" he’d mentioned in the email. "We’re having a cash flow problem." He shrugged, then handed me a pipe filled with black Xinjiang Hashish. And I felt better, much better in fact. But as any drug user will tell you, such harmony is transitory at best.

-	"This is the last of the hash." He said "We should get more soon."

Of course I agreed without reserve. We were responsible for putting out the finest English language weekly in all of China. Hashish would keep us productive. We stayed up late that night, swapping war stories of China and beyond, and wound up getting a very late start the next day. The next evening, I was busily writing my first story when Severin came over to my desk. After a brief look over my shoulder, he nodded approvingly.

-	"Looks good, way ahead of deadline. Lets go score some hash.

I didn’t need to be told twice. I threw some reporter gear into my messenger bag, and together we lit out through Beijing in Severin’s Toyota SUV. Somewhere around The Gate of Heavenly Peace, he lit a fat joint.

-	"This really is the last of the hash." He said, and passed it on.

So we drove, smoking in silence, and the space between working streetlamps grew further apart. By the time the joint was gone, the only man-made light came from burning trash cans. We were on a street that seemed to have been demolished some time earlier, piles of brick and rubble 200 feet deep were on either side of the road, beyond which was some dilapidated housing. This was a neighborhood not marked on tourist maps, a part of Beijing where few Han Chinese lived and police ventured tentatively and in large numbers. This was Uigherville, Beijing’s Muslim ghetto.

-	"Who knocked down the buildings?" I asked, and Severin shot me the sad glance of a teacher who believes that are such things as stupid questions.

-	"Don’t you read the People’s Daily? The structures were illegal. They were knocked down for the happiness and safety of the people. Look, can’t you see how happy and safe they are now?

I couldn’t tell how happy anybody was, but I wasn’t feeling entirely safe myself. The chemicals worming their way through my synapses did not mix well with the Beirut ambiance, and I felt that we were extremely conspicuous with our milk-white SUV and our pinkish skin. On both sides of the road were men in earth-colored gowns and round-knit caps, milling about, roasting bread and meat over open fires.

-	Don’t say anything to anyone. Let me do the talking."

My new employer rolled down the window and bought some pita bread, breaking off a chunk and handed it to me. It stuck in my throat like curry-tainted sawdust."

-

RAP! RAP!

A banging from behind made my head jerk violently. A bearded Uigher in snow white robes was smacking the car with the business end of a large cudgel.

-	"Shit…don’t talk to this guy; he’s an asshole," Severin said through a mouth full of bread. The man behind the cudgel did not wish to be ignored. He began yelling at us in toneless, staccato Chinese, as if he found the language distasteful, something best spit out like a mouthful of bad pistachio.

-	"Ni-Hao! Ni-yao-du-pyin-ma? Ni-yao-hash-ish-ma? Wo-gai-ni! Hen-hao! Hen-pyen-yi! ("Hel-lo. You want drug? You want hash? Very good! Best price.")

Severin rolled the window down a crack.

-	"Let’s see it."

-	"No have now. You give money. I go. Come, bring back."

-	"Bu hao! Fuck off."

Severin shut the window and went back to his bread. The rapping began again, faster, more insistently.

-	"Wo-ni-peng-yo! Bu-pyen-ni! Hen-pyen-yi!" ("I am friend! Not cheat you! Best Price!")

-	"Fuck this. We’re going to have to find it ourselves."

We drove half a block and parked. The man with the Cudgel continued yelling at us, telling us that he was our friend, and he would not cheat us. Other people were looking at us now, and I was ready to call the mission off then and there, to go back to the office and get drunk instead. But I wasn’t calling the shots. We crossed the debris and came into an alleyway crowded with people; walls of red brick and mud, doors and windows rose around us. This was one of those places where people disappear easily, sometimes by choice, sometimes, not. Severin quickened his pace, his eyes darting left and right.

-	"Don’t talk to any of these people. They aren’t Chinese. They won’t kowtow to you because you can bullshit in Mandarin about how much you like Chinese culture."

Indeed, these were not Han Chinese. And at the moment, one of them was robbing me. I felt a tug at my bag. I jerked at it and whirled around to see strange fingers on my camera case. I zipped the bag shut, clutching it to my chest as fingers and owner receded into the crowd. When I turned back, my new employer was nowhere to be seen. My heart rate shot up. I clutched my bag even tighter, searching in vain. Should I yell? Stupid idea. What the hell was I doing in a crumbling ghetto peopled by a bitter, oppressed minority group in the middle of Beijing? Did I really need to ask myself that? Were drugs somehow involved? Shit, shit, shit. I was too old for this. I kept walking forward through the crowd in the narrow, dirty lane. Rough hands grabbed at my bag, and tried to pull me into a doorway. Smile politely, keep walking. No sense in getting a knife in the kidney over a cultural faux pas. I was beyond panic, no longer looking for my new employer. I was just hoping for a glimpse of familiar rubble, something that would get me back to the SUV. Just then, an old man approached and spoke to me in gentle, halting English.

-	"You friend, he very worry about you. He say, go to car, wait,"

and pointed down a dark alley.

-	"Um…thanks. Thanks a lot"

What else could I say? I ran down the alley until I found the rubble strewn clearing from where we’d entered. I found the road, and the white SUV, without further incident. Severin was already there, engaged in heated negotiation with Cudgel Man and a few of his friends. He unlocked the door for me, and I hopped in.

-	"I told you not to get lost. These guys pulled me into a doorway and tried to sell me heroin. I got the hell out of there. Now this asshole says he’s got the hash on him."

Cudgel Man produced two wadded chunks of tin foil from inside his robe and handed them to Severin, who gave them to me, telling me to "check them out." The first rock crumbled into dirt and cumin at first touch.

-	"This is shit," I told him, and he tossed it back to Cudgel Man.

I examined the second lump. This was the bona-fide article, about half an ounce of sticky brown hashish. It, too, smelled of cumin. This was the source of our trouble – what we had come for. My new employer began negotiations, and after much gnashing of teeth, beating of breasts, and random threats from both sides, a price of 500 Yuan was agreed upon. Mission accomplished, we were now free to leave and get stoned in a better part of town. But something inside my new employer had snapped in that ghetto; some piece of his ego had been taken from him, and he was not prepared to leave just yet.

-	"There’s a good lamb place in this neighborhood,"

He said, parking the car 20 yards away from the spot where we'd just scored drugs.

-	"You're joking, of course. We can get lamb in our own neighborhood"

He gripped the steering wheel tightly, and turned to me, his eyes filled with a sad, eerie light.

-	"Look. You’re new here, but I’ve been in Beijing since before Tienanmen. This is my city, including this neighborhood. It’s a question of face. If we let ourselves be intimidated by this neighborhood, we’re beaten. They win. You can understand that, can’t you? Besides, this place makes fresh pita."

Before I could say another word, Severin was out of the car and walking towards the rubble. Of course, I followed him. Iggy Pop said it best. "You buy your ticket, you take your chances." And my ticket was bought the minute I got off the plane. Moments later, we were pushing through the crowd in the darkened alleys, Severin whistling in the dark for both of us by chatting up the restaurant – "famous in Beijing…great lamb…homemade bread." Black eyes stared at us as Severin poked his head into various doorways before finding the one he was looking for. He pulled me through an unmarked wooden door into a smoky, crowded little restaurant with six tables and a TV. We were handed a menu and steered towards the table closest to the door. We sat down, Severin grabbing the seat facing the door, leaving me with my back exposed and my eyes on Hwan Ju Ge-Ge, China’s most popular evening soap opera. I wasn’t hungry. The Editor ordered for both of us, barking imperiously at the waiter while I glanced around the room and tried to avoid meeting the gazes coming from all corners. To our left sat a table of Uighers reading The People’s Daily. On the cover was a photo of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, bombed by America a few weeks earlier, with the caption "The People of China are united against American aggression!" While I couldn’t speak for the people of China, the people of Uigherville didn’t seem overly pleased with our presence. I tried to ignore the icy stares, feigning interest in the soap opera, an ongoing tale of romance and intrigue set in the Ming Dynasty. My new employer stared out into space, stoned.

-	"I really can’t stand this show" he said.

Our meal arrived, slabs of bloody meat served with a side of char-broiled bread. My nerves were too shot to eat; I had a Pepsi. All eyes were on us as Severin wolfed down the meat with gusto, picked his teeth at the table, and asked for the bill. They were still on us as we exited back into the dark alley. Soon we were driving back through the heart of Beijing. We pulled up in front of the office, and Severin let me out, handing me the whole ball of hash.

-	"An advance on your salary" he said.

-	"What about your half?" I asked him.

-	"Don’t need it." He said as he drove away "I’ve got plenty left at home."

Travel blogs to follow

My travels are on hiatus.

No, that isn't quite correct.

My travel mode has changed, from airplane to motorcycle, from urban Asian backstreet to the hot, dry backroads of Eastern Texas.

Snarky Tofu has gone domestic. Local. Loco. It all fits in with my new persona, that of Gentleman Farmer. Liberal Texan Redneck. Unwashed Horde of One.

In the meantime, two people very close to me have taken a shift in the opposite direction, moving from sedentary writers to open-road ramblers who write. Bhanu Kapil is in India; her blog is Was Jack Kerouac A Punjabi?

And my sister, Eve Brown-Waite (whose book "First Comes Love, then Comes Malaria" will be published in spring of 2009) is traveling across Canada in biodeisel powered RV; her blog is called I'll Keep You Posted. Seriously: By this time next year Eve will be on Oprah's booking agent's speed dial, and Oprah will be introducing her as "a 21st century Erma Bombeck." So your window of being able to say you were reading her stuff before anyone else is closing fast.

"I'll keep you posted" is also her tag-line, by the way. She ends all her blog entries with the sentence. I think my blog needs a tag line, to hold everything together. So for the next several posts I'll be experimenting with a variety of tag-lines, and if one sticks I might use it indefinitely.

So let me know how you like my tag-line, and maybe I'll start ending my posts with the same one.

Tag-line #1:

Something in my office smells very, very wrong