Well, this is the first time I’ve managed to get back into wordpress since my last post. It looks as though the site is going to be mostly inaccesible while I’m in Shenzhen, so I’ve been trying out blogcharm instead.
My new site is http://www.blogcharm.com/huohuohuo/. I don’t like the way it looks right now, but at [...]
Moved Due to the Great Firewall
In China and Online
I’ve finally managed to settle in to an apartment in Nanshan and have spent today shopping for cleaning supplies in order to wage the Lave of Ganjing against the resistance forces of soot, grime and stray hairs that are holding down the fort long after the previous residents of my fangzi have gone. It’s not [...]
Mattel Culpa
With the second major toy recall in weeks, all hullabaloo is breaking out over toys “Made in China” (cue ominous music here), and the addition of tainted toothpaste and bu hao tires “Made in China” is enough to compound the issue into a general paranoia regarding all things “Made in China” (again, ominous music). As is [...]
Mingtian Wo Hui Zhongguo . . .
via Chicago and Hong Kong, officially at any rate. I’ve got 28 hours or so left before my flight takes off from BWI, and I’ll be spending most of those hours doing one of four things: sleeping, sitting in a dentist’s chair, committing random acts of forgetfulness or lamenting my lack of a carry-on-sized TARDIS*. [...]
Simpsonization III (Twice the Sugar, Twice the Caffeine)
”Give that can the whole CSI treatment–you know, lab tests, weird lights, shots from the can’s point of view. Yeah, that’s it–lots of flash, and no meaning.”
–Clancy Wiggum (another Baltimore boy)
The buzz on Buzz Cola is that it’s, well, cola. You pour it into a glass, and it foams, settles; it’s brown, and it tastes [...]
Tipping the Scales
Today I tried buying pants, with emphasis on the word tried. It turns out my favorite style of slacks (Dockers Go Khakis) has been discontinued, so I was forced to hunt through the other options available, only to discover that my size was absent from the shelves of five major department stores. When I asked [...]
Track Listings
Now playing in my CD player: Tomahawk’s Anonymous. On this, their third CD, Tomahawk is now working as a trio, with only John Stanier (former Helmet drummer and Baltimore-born), Duane Denison (former The Jesus Lizard guitarist) and Mike Patton (former Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, etc., etc. vocalist) appearing in the liner credits; once-bassist Kevin Rutmanis doesn’t appear. Anonymous is a [...]
Loading . . . Cannot Find Server
It’s miserable being a minority. According to the self-test on www.bandwidthplace.com, my download rate is 42.5 kilobits per second, meaning that my connection is a little better than average for Maryland dial-up connections. Still, such a connection is painfully slow and places me squarely in the minority among Internet users, according to the March 2007 Nielsen/NetRatings extrapolations posted at www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0703/; over [...]
Simpsonization part II (Review)
What follows is my take on The Simpsons Movie; don’t worry about spoilers, because there won’t be any, only general comments regarding the writing.
I’d gone into the movie with relatively low expectations, since the Simpsons’ beaux jours passed seasons ago and since I was skeptical about writers’ ability to utilize the comparative freedom of the big [...]
In Which Buddha Goes Visiting . . .
. . . and gets into a tight place.
I woke halfway through my first China dream today–maybe the first sign of a certain backwards homesickness, or the first sign of my subconscious turning over the uncertainty factor of returning to who knows what apartment. In the dream, Buddha* had been visiting me at my new [...]
