haiku 25 Apr 2018

Tales of ancient lands
Heroes who face villains dire
And fight for freedom

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

in China, briefly

In the winter of 2014, on a late-evening domestic flight from Beijing to Shanghai, I sit next to the deputy mayor of Taicang, a city in Jiangsu province. Excited to practice his English but not confident in his skills, he calls over his assistant, to translate. Over the next few hours we talk about families and cultures, politics and religion. They invite me come spend the night in their town. I accept.

We disembark at Shanghai’s domestic airport and squeeze into a minivan for a more than hourlong drive through the darkened Chinese countryside. Along the way, I realize that I have no idea who these people are, where I am, or where I am going, but the boisterous mood and smiling faces of my new bureaucratic friends calm any lingering worries. With the help of the assistant, a bespectacled, skinny man who speaks English well, I check into a Western-owned hotel near the modern center of town. We make plans to meet the next morning so he can show me around. Jetlagged and in unfamiliar settings, I get little sleep, watching reruns of classic Chinese movies subtitled for hearing-impaired locals.

I awake early, have a light breakfast, check out, and wander the surrounding area until the assistant arrives. On a Saturday morning, in an official Chinese government car - complete with driver. As we are making our way over to Zhouzhuang, an older town not far away, the assistant explains that the 15th Century explorer Zheng He was based out of the area, hence its enduring fame. We tour the ancient city, a wonder to behold, tidy wooden structures standing shoulder to shoulder, cunningly crafted stone bridges spanning narrow canals.

The assistant takes his leave, saying he wants to spend time with his children. I am deeply ashamed upon realizing that he has used his day off to show me around, and that I didn’t buy anything in the artisanal stores we entered. The driver heads for the highway. We smoke cigarettes and speak little. As we are approaching downtown Shanghai, I catch people in the cars around us staring, apparently trying to figure out who I might be, a Westerner riding alone in a chauffeured official vehicle.

I wander around near the Bund, harvesting graffiti and getting a feel for the city’s layout. Then, sensing my apparent loneliness, I attract a hanger-on, a fat and sweaty man who speaks good English. He tries to get me to buy gold at a gaudy shop. I refuse and walk out, but he’s hot on my heels. I buy trinkets at another shop he leads me to, however, a tourist trap that sells mass-produced items. Then, because the man claims he is broke, I treat him to an expensive pot of tea and the last of my Chunghwa cigarettes, which he enjoys immensely. Exhausted and out of cash, I hop the subway toward Shanghai Pudong international, and flee finally the madhouse scramble of another world city.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

in Mao's mausoleum

We approach the site where Our Benevolent and Wise Leader Chairman Mao lies sleeping, but it is closed, even though the sign says it should be open. By making the detour we also miss our chance to enter the Forbidden City; it has been sealed early to accommodate a Canadian delegation in town for the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Tired from having walked the compound's entire circumference we squeeze ourselves into a city bus for the trip back to her car, paying the cashier sitting in the one twentieth of a U.S. dollar. My companion warns me not to wander around the area at night due to trigger-happy soldiers who roam the streets keeping safe the Chinese equivalent of America's White House, which lies nearby. The next morning, she makes sure I dress warmly although my system is already accustomed to the cold and I tend to run hot, but I follow her instructions and put on a long-sleeved shirt before donning her wool-lined, leather men's jacket. The day before, she had informed me that on the night prior to my arrival Something Had Happened with her ex-ex-boyfriend, and that she is hence reluctant to continue the physical tryst we had started in Bali one month before. I wonder, briefly, if the jacket is his. Such is life. Due to traffic control regulations we cannot drive her car as its license plate number ends in one that is odd and this is an even day. Therefore, we walk then bus our way over to a Metro line that will take us to Tienanmen Square, direct. At least a hundred people are queued up to enter the system, some pushing but most dutifully putting their bags through the x-ray scanners and enduring the pat-downs and wandings. At the Square, we go through another security checkpoint, and again another to enter the mausoleum grounds, where my companion is escorted briskly out for having an actual camera in her bag. (My Chinese-made ASUS cellphone, with its built-in camera, passes muster.) Alone, I walk a serpentine path made by a high-tech, movable pedestrian corral that leads up to the building's front door, pausing only to buy a single white flower, which seems appropriate and only costs sixty cents. Plain-clothed security men wearing aviator sunglasses prowl the antechamber, which is overflowing with flowers, and I pause for a moment to admire the room's tasteful adornments and wood paneling, to my eye built during the late Seventies. Then it is into the inner chamber itself, where Our Benevolent and Wise Leader Chairman Mao (or, as some would later say, a wax likeness thereof) lies in state. A security man gestures to a pair of cushions to pad the knees when kneeling but I do not immediately understand and before I know it am being hurried along by other security men (and women) past Our Benevolent and Wise Leader Chairman Mao (or, as some would later say, a wax likeness thereof) and back out in sunshine and a clear blue sky, my duty completed and my heart at rest. Requiescat in pacem, pater.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

dollar store commies

As of these last few months of 2012, millions of American citizens are directly supporting the People's Republic of China, our country's primary economic competitor and one of the sole remaining bastions of the socialistic world-view. Every day, Americans support communism in the People's Republic of China; by demanding rock-bottom prices in cities great and small – from the rolling central plains to the rugged western coastline – countless numbers of red-blooded, patriotic Ynki contribute directly to the ascending might of the Middle Kingdom.

Dollar stores, which sell products ranging from shower curtains to miniature cast-resin busts of zebras, stand at the forefront of the Chinese invasion of, and its dominance over, the American economy. Purchasing an item that reads “Made In China” funnels funds directly into the rapidly growing Chinese economy (where most of the consumer items sold in dollar stores are made) rather than into the pockets of producers based in these United States. From the 1980s onward, the capitalistic oligarchy has taken for itself great portions of America's wealth saw an opportunity to further line their pockets, destroying the manufacturing economy in this country by shifting manufacturing capacity to foreign countries. As hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens lost their manufacturing jobs, they had few options than to buy the cheapest products in order to survive; they turned to dollar stores, thereby supporting the very system that had swallowed up their jobs in the first place. The capitalistic oligarchy effectively enslaved the American consumer to the whims of foreign nations by shifting production overseas to special economic zones that are, in everything but name, slave camps.

I welcome our Chinese masters, and greet them cordially by saying Ni-Hao-Ma. As a Son of the American Revolution and a descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims, my blood runs deep in this land. However, I am not blindly patriotic, nor am I inextricably tied to our prevailing economic model, Me-First Capitalism. In fact, I find our prevailing economic model – in which the fruits of the labor of an entire people are re-directed into the a pockets of but a few corporate officers – deeply and intrinsically un-American. I am personally boycotting dollar stores (and, by extension, Walmart, Target, and the rest of the big-box stores), not to harm the Chinese economy but in quiet mourning for our lost manufacturing economy. Join me if you wish, but know that this choice requires paying a bit more money for everyday goods, a sacrifice that rewards itself with feelings of pride and patriotic fervor. Remember – if you aren't buying products made exclusively in the U.S.A, you are party responsible for the gutting of the American manufacturing economy, for the demise of our middle class, for our slipping military hegemony, and for the Chinese government continuing to purchase significant portions of our national debt. In the long run, shopping at dollar stores will not have a positive economic impact on your personal finances, but it will certainly boost the profits of the plutocrats who sold us out to the commies. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

themed, useless crap

A cold war is being waged in this rural Pennsylvania town between the agents of two trumped-up organizations: the Steelers and the Ravens. From Pittsburgh and Baltimore respectively, the televised efforts of these two professional sports teams have so ensnared the imaginations – and, more importantly, the purse-strings – of the hard-working, blue-collar, middle-class denizens of this sad little place as to have hijacked the identities of people who spend what little free time they get eating potato chips, drinking cheap beer, and staring at self-illuminated boxes.

I imagine that the inner monologue of a fan of one of the many over-hyped national football league (NFL) teams goes something like this: “Do I donate to charity and help feed over three million starving American children or do I spend a hundred and fifty dollars on a ten-foot-high flag bearing the logo of my team? Do I perpetuate obesity and sloth within my family by stuffing cheese-doodles into my mouth as I sit on my financed couch with my eyes glued to an enormous television it will take me the next fifteen months to pay off? Do I send my check to an organization fighting poverty in this country's rust-belt or to a cluster of distant Chinamen cranking out solar-powered pathway lights emblazoned with an image of a highly stylized scavenger-bird designed by a wealthy corporation? You know what… fuck the poor, and fuck the kids – I need this overpriced bullshit so I can put it out in my yard and show my neighbor that I favor a different squad of men-in-tights than he does.”

I waste neither time nor money watching professional sports, preferring instead to read books on different and unrelated subjects, preferring instead to expand my mind by teaching myself languages and learning about organic gardening; I memorize neither statistics nor the success-rate of special trick plays, preferring instead to stay silent during useless NFL-related conversations, preferring instead to plumb the depths of my dark and twisted ego in order to bend it to my will, driving addiction and need from my life; I choose not to look on as angry fat dudes run into each other, preferring the freedom of a vigorous bicycle ride over sedentary slavery to a season of two minute warnings. I admit to puffing myself up here, to hoisting myself aloft in an attempt to differentiate myself from pig-skin-loving simpletons; as a Son of the American Revolution, however, and as a self-respecting and productive artist, I cannot afford to waste any more of my precious life on foolhardy pursuits than I have already wasted trying and failing to satisfy the root of mankind's evil, the ego. This, in my humble opinion, is part of the attraction of professional sports: they very often serve as proxy identities for persons too lazy or weak-of-will to do something unique with their lives worth talking about; they give pack-runners whose existence revolves around the act of consumption a topic to discuss that does not have to do with kids, jobs, or failing health. It is wrong of me to judge and to ridicule people for paying top dollar for jerseys or pennants or banners proclaiming that, “This Is Giants Country,” or something similarly absurd; the words I have written here are just as much driven by a darkly thrusting ego as are the shouted cries of thirty thousand star-struck fans. I am a worthless cunt for spending time crafting this article, but these thoughts well up inside me when I am shredding through town on my velocipede, and I know not where else to turn for release. On some level, I don't give a flying fuck (IDGAFF) what other people do, although I wish sometimes they wouldn't be so fucking flagrantly lame. Oh brother.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

on the pagan power of capitalism

  Capitalism, with all its evil and all its ills, has had one definitely positive affect on American society: to rid our pagan holidays of religious contamination. Neither morality nor meaning matter in the eyes of capitalism – the only thing that matters is making more money. For example: capitalism has freed the ancient holiday of goddess Eostre from the clutches of biblical oppression. As a holiday that once celebrated that goddess who makes women fertile (and the land grow green again), the festival we now know as Easter was high-jacked by religious forces and co-opted for their own narrow uses. In the last half century, however, the ever-grasping paws of capitalistic greed have freed Easter from the Shackles of Scripture, so that we once again celebrate lustful procreation (symbolized by the rabbit) and the return of the teeming things (symbolized by daffodils and other such flowers).

  Similarly, the holiday of the winter solstice, an occasion that has been marked throughout the centuries with lights mounted on pine trees. This holiday was taken hostage by the forces of Christianity, forces that bastardized the logical marking of the passage of time and tied it to the fictitious birth of a fictitious god in a land far removed in time and space. The passing of the winter solstice was only recently liberated by the uncaring hand of capitalism – an emphasis on Santa Claus and the profuse giving of gifts has replaced, thankfully, the (biblically) unspecified day upon which a young lady gave birth, in a (biblically) unspecified structure, in an (biblically) unspecified place, to a male child. (The story of Jesus is a precise retelling of the story of Horus, an Egyptian god born of a virgin who died only to arise from death after three days.) Now, instead of worshiping some stagnant and foreign godhead, during the darkest days of winter we celebrate the coming-together of loved-ones, and shower them with presents as a sign of our affection. Gone are the days of the churchly mandate – capitalism has finally, and for good, removed Christ from Christmas.

  And, most importantly (to me, at least), the uncaring and voracious greed of capitalism has removed any shred of religiosity from the delightfully pagan holiday of Halloween. What started as a heathen ritual to mark the beginning of winter was commandeered by Christian forces, who turned it into All Saint's Day, on which day only the dead of that religion were praised (in effigy). After centuries of suffering under the cruel, stifling blanket of this biblical slavery, Halloween has been dragged from its prison by the ever-hungry maw of monster-capitalism. Gone are the days when Americans celebrated the Christian dead – arrived are the days when we Americans celebrate inventiveness and the ability to take a good scaring, when we shower upon the children of the land many sweet gifts, when we might, for one short night, become someone other than our boring normal selves. (The proliferation of Halloween as a national holiday was made possible by profit-hungry corporations that recognized in it a way to sell cheap, Chinese-made costumes.)

  While I generally abhor capitalism for its tendency to make only a small portion of the American people rich, I celebrate it now for freeing our shared and common history from the clutches of religious oppression. We can ill afford to live according to the rules of a lost tribe of desert people, so it is fitting that the forces of our chosen economic model are wiping our history clean of religious contamination.

  The next time you are carving up a lamb on Easter, remember horny old Eostre, and give your spouse a long, lingering kiss. When you find yourself stringing lights on a tree, remember to go outside and enjoy the longest night of the year. As you are putting the finishing touches on an elaborate and dazzling costume, remember that its job is to scare away the sickness-bringing forces of the impending long cold darkness. Thanks to the religious impartiality of our capitalistic system, you can enjoy these events without being forced to fear the wrath of some jealous, vengeful godhead.

  America is not a Christian nation, nor was it in any way founded upon the Christian faith. Neither easter nor the winter solstice were originally Christian holidays – these pagan rituals were commandeered in order to facilitate the spread of one set of religious teachings. Just how non-Christian is America? We honor the Roman god Saturn on Saturday. On Wednesday, we remember the Norse god Wotan, and on Thursday, his son-brother Thor. In the harbor of New York there stands a large statue of the Roman goddess Libertas (whom we call Lady Liberty), a goddess who holds in one hand the Torch of Progress, in the other a representation of our most treasured of documents, the Declaration of Independence.

  Everywhere in this great land we witness the chaotic jumble of different faiths and systems of belief, all tumbling together and jostling to retain the slightest shred of relevancy. May the uncaring grasp of our institutionalized greed continue to keep American society free of religious one-mindedness! Thank you, lustful and rapacious Capitalism, you old sport, for doing you part to keep America jumbled, confused, and oppression-free.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

dollar stores = commie outposts

  As of these last few months of 2011, millions of American citizens are directly supporting the People's Republic of China, our country's primary economic competitor and one of the sole remaining bastions of the socialistic world-view. Every day, we in this country support communism in the People's Republic of China, and all across this nation, in cities great and small, from the rolling central plains to the rugged western coastline, countless numbers of red-blooded, patriotic American citizens contribute directly to the ascending might of the Middle Kingdom.
  Dollar stores, which sell products ranging from shower curtains to miniature cast-resin busts of zebras, stand at the forefront of the Chinese invasion of, and its inexorable dominance over, the American economy. Purchasing an item that reads, Made In China, funnels funds directly into the rapidly growing Chinese economy (where most of the consumer items sold in dollar stores are made) rather than into the pockets of producers based in these United States. In the 1980s, the capitalistic-minded oligarchy that has been allowed to accumulate the vast majority of America's wealth saw an opportunity to further boost their profits, destroying the manufacturing economy in this country by shifting manufacturing capacity to foreign countries. As hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens lost their manufacturing jobs, they had few options other than to buy the cheapest products in order to survive – they turned to dollar stores, thus supporting the very system that had swallowed up their jobs in the first place. The capitalistic oligarchy effectively enslaved the American consumer to the whims of foreign nations by shifting production overseas, to special economic zones that are, in everything but name, slave camps.
  I welcome our soon-to-be Chinese masters, and I would like to say Ni-Hao-Ma. As a Son of the American Revolution and a descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims, my blood has been in America since day one. I, however, am not blindly patriotic, nor am I inextricably tied to our prevailing economic model of top-few capitalism. In fact, I find our current economic model, in which the fruits of the labor of an entire people are re-directed into the a pockets of a handful of corporate officers, deeply and intrinsically un-American. I am personally boycotting dollar stores (and, by extension, Walmart, Target, and the rest of the big-box stores), not to harm the Chinese economy, but in quiet mourning for our lost manufacturing economy. Join me if you wish, but know that this choice requires paying a bit more money for everyday goods, a sacrifice that will instantly reward you with a deep sense of pride and patriotic fervor.
  So, remember – if you aren't buying products made exclusively in the U.S.A, you are in part responsible for the gutting of the American manufacturing economy, for the demise of our middle class, for our high unemployment rate, and for the Chinese government's ability to purchase a significant portion of our national debt. Shopping at dollar stores is unlikely to have a positive economic impact on your personal finances (as such goods' generally inferior quality will necessitate you buying more and more frequently), but it will certainly boost the profits of those very corporations that got us in this mess in the first place.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp