part III

we talked for the better part of the morning, walking through the rainy streets of beijing, passing a bottle of half-rancid saki that we found in a dumpster near the american embassy back and forth... he told his stories (chasing a shaman from ft. worth to the jungles of southern ecuador after getting burned on bunk yage, trying to convince the secret service he was spiro agnew's illegitimate son, etc.) and i told mine... and slowly, over this time, i realized how special this guy really was.

and still is. happy birthday, ian...

NOTE: The preceding posts are works of alcohol and marijuana-inspired fiction and do not necessarily represent the opinions of GWP, The People's Republic of China, PETA, Alcoholics Anonymous, Ike and Tina Turner, the corpse of Josef Stalin, Xiang Hoa Porcelain Company, the International Brotherhood of Village Witchdoctors Local #193, the Republican National Committee, the City of Otumwa, Iowa, or the endangered species of panda bears worldwide. No Chinese bathhouse attendants were harmed in the production of this blog. All work copyrighted 2004 by GWP, Inc. All rights reserved. E Pluribus Unum. Goodnight, thanks for reading and God Bless America.

part II

we stumbled out into the cold, rainy chinese night... ian's hand was dripping blood from the cuts the mug gave him after he smashed it a concrete bench and imperiously shouted to the attendants to "bring it on", waving a large broken shard around with evil intent... i thought it wise we split the scene immediately...

"did i evuh dell you de WEAL weason i'm in tyna?" he managed to half-speak... the paragoric and saki chasers had made his tongue somewhat numb... "nope", i replied, somewhat cautiously... he went on to explain that he came to beijing through the "back door", as it were, latching himself on to a diplomatic envoy sent by Nixon a few years earlier... he had been trying his hand at a panda aphrodisiac made from a crossbred monstrosity of bamboo and ayahuasca... funny thing is, the damned thing worked... pandas were hornier than ever and humping everything in sight...

except for each other.

unexplainedly, the food/drug caused uncontrollable panda erections in males while inducing heat in females, but for some reason, the pandas wouldn't fuck other pandas... no monkey, small bush, patch of mud, furry animal, nature photographer (animate or otherwise) or jungle denizen was safe from the amorous exploits of the bears... "had to shoot one of 'em in the kidney just to get the bastard offa my leg", he explained, showing me the panda tooth necklace he wore strung around his neck... "ever had a 600 lb panda try to get in your ass?? not comfortable. so i sez fuck the endangered species act..." his voice was beginning to falter and crack... he needed another drink, and desperately...

to ian on his birthday

part I

i sit here on tuesday night, nursing my third beer, and my thoughts can't help but turn to the first time i met ian... it was in an illegal bathhouse in beijing, 1975... he was gulping paragoric from a dirty brown mug that had a flaking profile of stalin on one side and "World's Greatest Uncle" in fading cyrillic on the other... i had wandered in offa the street, looking for a drink and whatever else may happen... he had evidently been quite a fixture there for the past week... seems he was taking advantage of a recent promotion by the Chinese government involving 10 free bathhouse visits for becoming a member of the Communist Party... he had showed me his little Red Card early on that evening that had seven holes stamped out in it to form a crude likeness of Chairman Mao...

"boy!" he bellowed across the empty pools (the place had been dead for hours... guess no one seemed to be interested in "cleanliness" at 4am on a wednesday night, even in beijing). ian, to his sneering, giggling delight, had been giving the spa boy a wicked time for the past three hours... he turned to me, leaning over precariously in his lime green reclining patio chair... "bastard doesn't even speak Xeno-Pyrennic Basque, the fucking yellow savage...", he hissed... i grunted assent... "boy! i'm not getting in that fucking bath until you clean the dead mantises outta it!"... the steaming water in the pool at which he was gesturing wildly was cystal clear... he glowered menacingly, one hand firmly clenching his mug , the other squeezed into a tight red fist which he shook brazenly at the simmering attendant... the entire scene - the coffee mug, the lime green patio chair, the heavy smell of the bathhouse, the frantic arm waving and fist clenching - produced a quite unnerving effect... i frowned and lit a cigarette... shit, this is gonna get ugly...

lemme tug on your coat a second...

life is filled with uncertainties... fraught with danger, etc... there are, however, a few universal truths:

1. shakespeare's plays were actually written by christopher marlowe (screw you, ian).
2. republicans eat their own.
3. texans shouldn't be presidents.

inre #3, to wit:

there have been four "texan" presidents, whether born there or politcally established from: Eisenhower, Johnson, Bush the Elder and the dreaded Son of Bush.

Ike got us out of Korea... this was obviously a good thing and there was much rejoicing at his determined american leadership, etc. etc.... he was considered a great american president upon his departure from the office... of course, he also turned a blind eye to McCarthyism and the evils it perpetrated, as well as promoting hatred of western ideas in the middle east with his "Eisenhower Doctrine"... no one's perfect, you might say...

Johnson was the first president to commit troops to Vietnam... also stirred things up in the middle east by allowing israel a free hand in the region... 'nuff said about that...

Bush ruined what economy was left after Reagan got ahold of it and started a war in the middle east... granted, other than these two items, he was about as exciting as a wicker chair, but hey, war is war, right?

and then we come to the present-day Bush... TWO middle eastern wars... millions of jobs lost... LITERALLY countless accounts of scandal, corruption, avarice... well, let's just say his bloodlust, impropriety and greed are well documented and leave it at that.

four men. four TEXAS men. and they all seem obsessed with fucking with arabs.

makes me wish santa ana had won at san jacinto.

the only viable alternative

well, the way i see it, it's either Kerry or Guns and Dope in 2004.

Dubya is simply not an option.

hey

if you haven't checked out Hunter Robertson yet, do so - and now...

the piscatawny chainsaw massacre

ahhhh yes... i can see it now... hundreds of people standing around... "folks, it looks like he sees his shadow"... a chorus of boos rise up from the crowd, steadily growing louder... half-empty styrofoam coffee cups flung through the air, accompanied by woolen hats and parts of gnawed donuts... the boos are replaced by menacing comments and thinly veiled threats... "it'll be a trick for that fucking mole to see his shadow after i rip his goddamned eyes out"... signs are quickly scribbled with worn-down sharpie nubs - "Piss on Phil" and "Gut the Gopher" - and thrust into the air angrily... the scene is turning bad, like SA bullies attacking a communist march in the early '30s... suddenly, bill murray appears outta empty fucking air, simultaneously reprising his roles in "Caddyshack" and "Groundhog Day", reliving the same boring golf match over and over...

first of all, i'm not a big football fan. never have been.

now that's outta the way, could someone please explain how, in this age of heightened security , where flights to Houston are cancelled by the Homeland Security Department, where Bush submits a $2.4 trillion budget, in part to help boost security in the country, where our surveillance technology has produced the quintessential Orwellian civil rights nightmare, a naked man could bypass all these security measures and shake his wang in front of 50,000 shit-kickin' gawkers?

look, i'm no economist or budget analyst or any other high-fallutin' -ist you wish to call it, but i do know that if a streaker can infiltrate one of the tightest security systems we can come up with, maybe we can spend all this money we're dumping into "homeland security" a little wiser. like say, maybe, education...

but that's just me.

cheer up, folks. baseball's right around the corner...