the fruit of the glutton

for the first time in the history of "ballin' in dalian", i have successfully been able to solicit a guest post. my guest author, being untrained in the ways of blogging, did not know what topic to write about. i thought for a minute, and decided to give my author something that i have been thinking about a lot as of late, something that is universal--that we as humans must all deal with. my author was very nervous to write a piece that could potentially be read by thousands of people around the globe, and my understanding is that they shook as they wrote, afraid that such a task might reveal too much. with out further ado, i am pleased to exhibit their work.

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if you are like me and like to eat foods in your house, you might occassionally get crumbs fall on the floor.  In this post I will share with you a primer about what to do if you see a crumbs in your house.  Your first decision is whether to ignore it or get rid of it.  If you choose to ignore it, maybe it will go away.  Insects or bugs might eat it.  Eventually, it might disintegrate on its own.  Some people don't mind a few crumbs around the house. But others think this looks unsightly and might cause guests to question the cleanliness of your house.  For this reason, you might want to consider removing the crumb.  If you choose to go this path, you must decide your method.  Some prefer to pick up the crumb between there thumb and forefinger and throw it away in the trash can, sink, or even outdoors.  Others like to use a broom or wet rag if there are multiple crumbs.  Another option is to use tweezers to pick up the crumb.  I have also had some success blowing on the crumb to make it go away.  Sometimes, though, this just makes the crumb go a different place in your house. If so, the problem isn't really solved.  You can become lightheaded from trying to blow the crumb from one place to the next.  So pleas use caution when using this method.  In sum There are many choices for getting rid of the crumb.  One is not better than the others.  in my opinion it is  a matter of personal preference.

How do you get rid of your crumbs?  Leave a comment with your tips!

the chuckwalla knows better

while ripping off chunks of jerky with flat paleo-teeth, some of my associates have made claims that animals are barely sentient and wouldn't know the difference between the bellagio and a slaughterhouse. on a moral level, i know this is false--my associates unfortunately just don't know any better. they probably haven't seen this dog who is living proof that animals at least have feelings:

but i have more proof than just this happy little doglet. there is also the chuckwalla, a lizard who knows the hard way that animals are indeed sentient. the chuckwalla knows there are some wounds that never heal.

when scientists saw the chuckwalla, they didn't see him as a rad reptile that enjoys lava flows, hanging out at Death Valley National Park, and eating yellow flowers. i'm sorry to say that all they saw was a stout-bodied lizard with a prominent belly.

and that is why the chuckwalla's scientific name is sauromalus obesus.

it is the rudest, most insensitive name scientists could have thought of. a few years ago a scientist named Bradford felt bad about what his predecessors had done and changed sauromalus obesus' name to sauromalus ater, citing that there was less variety of the sauromalus than originally thought, but everyone knows that this was just a feeble attempt at a make-good with the chuckwalla. plus, the damage had already been done, no one calls the chuckwalla by its new scientific name. petitions have been submitted to the Internatioal Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) to give precedence to the name sauromalus obesus over sauromalus ater based on its extensive use. the ICZN, clearly in cahoots with the scientist Bradford, denied the petitions, and went as far to call their claims 'dubious'.

make it through that crack? in your dreams, s. obesus. 

ever since the whole name fiasco, the chuckwalla has tried to keep a low profile and avoid both the jerky chewers and the forward thinkers alike. the chuckwalla never wanted to be the center of anything, much less controversy--it just wanted to bask in the desert sun in peace. as a result, chuckwallas all over the country have gone into hiding like in the picture above, which is what they typically do when they are "disturbed". they can't take the body bashing any longer.

so we have a disturbed lizard over here, and people are trying to tell me that animals don't have sentience? what a joke. next time you're cramming jerky down your gullet, remember the chuckwalla, our friend sauromalus obesus. treat animals how you want to be treated, and don't turn them into meat twizzlers.

happy mid autumn festival

today is my favorite chinese holiday, the mid-autumn festival. all you need to know is that on this holiday, you look at the moon from your windowsill and eat moon cakes, the famous yuebing. and you get a day off work to do this. what could be better than that?

mooncakes are so revered in china that they recently have been tied to corruption--high end mooncakes are often purchased by greedy chinese businessmen using public funds. after taking measures to stamp this out, luxury mooncake sales dropped 12%. i mean, if you're going to have corruption, at least it is over mooncakes and not something less savory, no pun intended :)

i found an interesting post today about the waste involved with mooncakes. it's an interesting look into the characteristics of china's consumer culture.

okay, i'm off to get my mooncakes at the only chinese bakery in chinatown. i hope they have my favorite, mung bean mooncake.

why are some people so mean

to survive living in china, i often depended on the kindness of people that were fortunate enough to be in my immediate vicinity in a time of need.  for example, i know there is a post in here somewhere about the evil apple vendor who sold me rotten apples in the dark, and how his neighbor, the pumpkin seed vendor, chastised him and tried to help me get a refund.

but america is not china, and i am not a special laowai here. i'd be hard pressed to find a random person in the street here that was willing to join my cause, and even more hard pressed to find a pumpkin seed vendor who was willing to join my cause. sometimes i question if it is possible to have any fun in this country at all.

we all need a little help from a stranger sometimes though. i personally always need help with directions if i'm going anywhere other than my house in DC. i don't have a gps, i don't have a smartphone, and i tend to print out google maps and forget to take them with me. some may say that i am foolish, i say that i take the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference....the difference being that i got to drive through the ghetto and you didn't.

the other day i took a wrong turn trying to get to my soccer game at a new field, and quickly found myself in unfamiliar territory. in these cases i typically call zach, but he wasn't picking up. i looked around desperately for help at each stop light, but my pumpkin seed friend wasn't around, and no one was paying attention to me. finally, i found a man with dreads and a rastafarian hat.  rastafarian=peace, so i figured this would be my best shot. he saw me look at him and roll my window down, so he did the same.

as i suspected, he told me i was way off track. even as he had to pull away because the light turned green, he continued to shout directions to me out the car window. that is a true compadre.

of course, this is not a typical interaction with a fellow motorist, which brings me to the title of this post: why are some people so mean? why can't everyone be like rasta man?

drivers are the meanest people of them all around here. i wish i had a picture for every face that someone has made at me through their car window. if i were to take all of those pictures and put them together to make some kind of conglomerate picture, it would surely turn out as a rabid monkey.

zach will say that i am a mean driver too because one time in the car i flicked off a taxi driver behind me and said "hey, **** you!" out the window, but i would argue that i did this in a "new york" manner--i was pretty annoyed that he wouldn't stop beeping at me while i sat a red light and couldn't turn, but my blood pressure was fairly stable and my veins weren't popping out of my neck. everybody needs to throw their hands up every once in a while and get a good "**** you" in, doesn't mean you gotta be super angry. that's new york, right?

the worst are the people who yell at the customer service reps at the front desk. dealing with irate customers has to be the most humiliating thing. i saw this happen last week in an auto shop and felt bad for the guy so i was very nice to him afterwards when it was my turn, and he gave me the VIP discount for my new transmission. it was like i was in china all over again. the lesson is that no matter where you are, good things happen when you are nice to people.

so it is imperative that we do something about all these mean people, they have gotten carried away.  i think humor and shaming work well to change people's behavior. rabid monkey PSA campaign?

lessons from the hair cuttery

tonight after work i decided to get a perm because i was bored with my hair. the perm took many more hours than i would have liked it to, and i wanted to give up during it. instead of saying that beauty is pain, they should say that beauty is pang, as in serious HUNGER PANGS. or beauty is pangs of pain from sitting for 4 HOURS. ahhhhhhhhh

while i was suffering i picked up a 'seventeen' magazine to see what i'm missing out on now that i'm not a teenager anymore. this is what i learned: 

jocks make good boyfriends because they are very disciplined from sports and will call you if they say they will call. 

so the jocks are the good guys now? 

hipsters make bad boyfriends because your date won't be any more exciting than swapping out pepperoni for mushrooms on a pizza.

OUCH

a good way to pick up a date at starbucks is to intercept their drink before they pick it up, write your name and phone number on the drink, and hand it to the boy with a smile. 

seriously? has anyone on the magazine staff actually tried this little trick? because if they had, i think they would have been yelled at and accused of trying to steal someone's drink. there's a difference between being bold and being a fool. 

there are 4 different kinds of faces--the heart face, the square face, the oval face, and the round face. each face type looks best with a certain kind of hair cut.

if you ever meet someone with a square face will you please introduce me to them, i'd like to have a word. all of the faces they used to demonstrate these face shapes looked exactly the same. 

funny advertisements these days use social media-related humor 

for example, an advertisement for pencil erasers: "i wish my awesome new eraser was also able to erase my mom's latest facebook post, har har har"

curvy girls should drape themselves in long skirts and sleeves to accentuate their curves

ie, you best cover that shit up

and i will end with a direct quote from an article i read about 2 best friends who grew up together acting. one girl said: "we have different body types, but we still have an appreciation for each other"

while that is the dumbest crap i have ever read, the editor who decided to highlight that quote in a text bubble off to the side is the one who deserves to be ashamed because he/she is a full grown adult. 

it's weird to think now that all those magazines i was reading when i was 12 that i thought were so cool were probably written by some 40 year old corporate stooge skilled in the art of marketing $5 face wash. perspective, all part of the joys of growing up. 

old age

I was trying to go to the UVA website today, and couldn't remember the exact URL, so I gave it my best shot: www.uva.com. That seems like a good guess, right? It took me to a page about high pressure grinding machines. Lo and behold, it is www.virginia.edu. I felt like a blithering fool.

My aging brain seemed significant enough to write a blog post.

back to the roots

"Look, here comes the liberal."

Who is that? It's me, I am the liberal, the only one. I have now officially entered the heartland of my forefathers, the land that is Western Pennsylvania. While my blood runs deep here, I am a foreigner--a city kid that doesn't know the ways of the "blue collar," that didn't grow up with countless members of my extended family surrounding me. Despite all my irregularities, I'm still kin, and that's good enough to be welcome here.

For Labor Day, Zach and I spent a long weekend at my Grandma and Grandpa's house in the motherland, driving through rolling countryside, eating freshly picked fruit, and visiting with relatives. My only regret is that we did not meet Frannie, my grandmother's Amish friend. This is what you do when you're in New Castle, PA.

Absolutely gorgeous Amish farm in an Amish community a short drive away from my grandparent's house

gma & gpa

The family on my grandma's side is big, and very close knit. Zach and I went to the county fair while we were there, and saw an award winning pumpkin grown by "Alan Gibson", who has my grandma's family name. Seeing that I am also a fan of large gourds, I could only assume that this Alan character was a distant relative. When I told my grandma about this, she replied, "I doubt it." It's not everyday that you find a potential relative that is a champion pumpkin grower, so I took little stake in what she said. However, when I told my dad the same tale, he also replied, "I don't think so." Apparently the Gibson's would never let a family member slip by undetected. Regardless, I still think he is my cousin, even if it is 50 times removed. Gourd growing can run in the blood too.

Me with my cousin's giant 900 pound pumpkin

Zach and I went to a family picnic and saw many of my relatives that I hadn't seen for years.  It's not that I am a bad person, it's just that some of these relations are really extended, but that doesn't stop them from all seeing each other on a weekly basis. At the picnic, one of my cousins lectured me about the importance of family, and that I should never forget that I come from a family of farmers.

But where is my hoe now?

Zach and I went to the county fair while we were there, and I have to admit that I was excited to see the cows, sheep, horses, goats, and the like. I probably see those animals as often as I see the pandas at the zoo.

Zach and I with the wild animals

So now that I am excited about the animals again, here are some pictures from the fair:

A mean-muggin chicken that tried to peck Zach

A friendly pig

A goose with a haircut

The most beautiful chicken I have ever encountered

Some sheep about to get sheared

A passed out pig

A llama with a sense of style

There's a lot more where that came from.

Anyhow, there are a lot of champions in my family in addition to Alan the pumpkin grower. One of my female cousins is a champion livestock raiser (or something like that) and my other cousin might as well be a champion, in addition to working a normal weekday job, he has a farm with over 250 cattle and hundreds of acres of corn to tend to. My grandpa is also a champion of sorts, he is 87 years old and just bought a tablet to check his email at the coffee shop. My great uncle is definitely a champion, he is a retired botanist that is now a reporter and blogger for the local New Castle newspaper. He keeps a police scanner in his house so he can be at the scene as soon as something happens. Last week he had to report on a man that fell under his tractor and died. 

If I had grown up there, life would had been very different indeed. For one, I probably wouldn't find Rooster Crowing contests and a Jr. Fair Goat Costume competition as amusing as I do now. In fact, I probably would have been a champion of both of those. 

But there's really no saying how I would have turned out. I doubt UVA gets many applicants from New Castle, so that probably would have been out. All I know is that I would be saying "you'ins" a lot, which according to Urban Dictionary is "Western PA for You guys. Common with 'more rural' types." And I probably would be running around barefoot a lot, because I love feeling fresh grass and soil under my feet, and there is a lot of that to be found up there.