Our son was given the choice of playing the guitar or the ukulele. To my horror he decided he wanted to play the ukulele.

In the process of deciding what instrument he would play I of course had visions of him leaping about the place with his guitar like a miniature rock god. All my dreams of being a guitar hero like Clapton, Hendrix and a host of others could now finally be realized vicariously through my son… brilliant!

Then came the crushing decision that he would like to learn the ukulele.

“Why?” I asked trying very hard not to sound at all disapproving or disdainful.

“Because it is cute!” He replied.

I was crushed.

We live in Taiwan and it is very close to Japan. Through this connection and under their own steam as well there is a disturbing tendency towards all things cute. If you need any understanding of this then search for and try to comprehend all that is, Hello Kitty. I think you should get the point pretty quickly.

Anyway the decision on the ukulele got me pretty worried that the Taiwanese cute virus had attached itself to my son and was beginning to take it’s toll.

The ukelele lessons have been going for about six months now and it turns out my son is rather good at it. But to be honest I still didn’t really “get” the concept of playing what seemed to me to be a “toy guitar.”

His teacher has a small band that plays around Taipei and on occasion they get my son to go along and play with them.

Last week they were scheduled to play for a local dance group and as it was an afternoon gig my son was invited along. My wife and I were asked to go and watch as well so we thought why not and went along for the show.

You know you learn something new everyday and that day was no exception. I learned two things.

1. I did not know that hula dancing was so popular in Taiwan.

2. I did not realize just how smart my son is.

Now I TOTALLY understand the ukulele.

This is a reply to Admin’s post (that’s his real name by the way – Klaus Admin) I am sorry to report that my colleague’s grasp of the Cyrillic alphabet is about at tight as his grip on reality.

As anyone who reads Russian knows, those emails are being sent by the Russian Historical & Cultural Rehabilitation Center. All they’re trying to do is say: “Hey guyniks. We’re sorry!”

Here’s a summary of the most common mails you’ll receive in your spam folder:

Communism – they want to say they’re sorry for all the confusion from this loser political philosophy and they feel really bad that the US, Britain and China (only China admits it) have been so badly infected by it and are calling it the Welfare State. (The operative word is “State”).

They know that no one listens to them any more but they still feel they have to say this: ‘Communism sucks, it always sucked and it will always suck. V.I Lenin was a dumb ass and should never have been let out alone.’

The Cuban Missile Crisis – a large misunderstanding…well, not really. There were missiles but they wouldn’t’ve fired anyway. They were filled with excess vodka – the stuff the locals wouldn’t drink – and plaster sculptures of Stalin. They’re sorry about the scare, and they’re sorry Khrushchev took his shoe off in the Security Council meeting but he’d been on his feet all day…

The KGB – A lot of people got upset with them because of the KGB but it started out as a harmless prank. Kropotnik’s Gay Bar was the original idea but somehow it got mixed up, maybe because of the tie-in with Lubyanka prison which was just around the block and, well, it got out of hand.

If the CIA hadn’t gone nuts and then needed it to keep their own budget alive it would’ve just faded out. Mea culpa to all those boychiks and girlchiks who got their butts kicked over the years. They wish they could make it up but now it’s a bit late…

The Gulags – It’s true they really weren’t holiday resorts – that was a fib – but they weren’t as bad as they were made out to be. Siberia is stunning and a great place to find your inner selfchik.

Stalin – This should be cool now but they feel they have to keep saying sorry for this guy because they’re still finding the bodies. Uncle Joe was a toad – okay they admit it. He did more to set Russian culture back 100 years, and bring moustaches really into vogue – than anyone else. Sorry for both those things.

That’s the gist of most of the emails – nothing about anyone’s “equipment”, Klaus. I think that’s your good old fashioned male anxiety showing thru…

They’re sending one that apologizes for the Marilyn-Monroe-Meets-The-Pope-In-A-Grain-Elevator jokes but I’ve never heard any of those and probably no one else in the West has either.

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Coming as we do from Australia there is much to be found that is different in our new surroundings and culture. Some good… some not so good.

For example sewerage pipes and restaurants. Sometimes it seems in Taiwan that there is some obligatory local council regulation that requires that any sewerage pipes in the vicinity of the front entrance to a restaurant must have some kind of fault or defect.

The purpose being to ensure that the smell of the aforementioned sewerage outlet is clearly and unmistakably detectable to the human nose.

Disturbingly, after a few years of being exposed to this, one begins to develop a kind of strange mental association between the smell of raw sewerage and the presence of food. “Hmmm… smells like shit, must be some good eating around here somewhere!”

Of course in the case of the sewerage outfall / restaurant presence closest to my house it is not such a strange occurrence because it’s a McDonald’s and the whole “poo equals food” thought process makes more sense… but I think you get my drift.

Anyway the other day my wife decided that I needed to go to the dentist. Of course what that really meant was that my wife felt guilty about not having gone to the dentist herself for a while so in her mind somehow this wrong would be corrected by her sending me to the dentist.

Having been married for many years now and knowing very well to choose my fights wisely I obediently agreed to go to satisfy the requirement that someone had to go to the dentist to balance the great dental cosmic karma that oversees such things.

Going to our dentist is a little like going to your mother’s house. Regardless of the fact that I am a 50 year old man who has fully proven himself able to support his family comfortably as soon as I sit in that chair I am instantly transformed into a ten year old child incapable of cleaning my own teeth. My dentist is a nice lady… but very stern and very serious about teeth.

Apparently my crime this time was that I have spent a lifetime incorrectly brushing my teeth… who knew? The result of these years of abuse was that the gums were being pushed back and that I would need to have reconstruction work done.

When any dentist starts talking “reconstruction” I start to worry with thoughts of injections, massive excavations being done and a total loss of dignity as I dribble and mumble incomprehensibly on my back.

So, an appointment was made for dreaded reconstruction and it was decided by my wife that the thirteen reconstructions could all be done at once by organizing a double appointment.

Now here’s the part that is just so cool about Taiwan.

I arrived for the work. It involved each tooth being prepared and the dentist applying a veneer of of some substance to each gum margin. She then had to set it and polish it off to a smooth surface. The whole process took about half an hour and the work was perfect.

Imagine the cost in almost any western country of that kind of dental work.

In Taiwan the receptionist apologised for the cost explaining that after all it was a double appointment. The damage? $200.00… no I am not talking U.S.$200.00 nor am I talking Australian $200.00 I mean $200 Taiwan. That translates into about U.S. $10.00!

You gotta love a country that comes with a dental plan!

Francis is a cat trainer, a highly successful one, which has gotten him onto the A list for charity functions attended by very old ladies with lots of money but decreasing amounts of time…

Here’s Francis’ letter from an octogenarian gala in Bangkok:

Today I’ve been out and about. Went to a concert again this afternoon. This was attended by the big & blue haired ladies of high society – and yours truly. About a hundred of them, I was the only swinging dick in the place. Probably the only one who wasn’t bothered about soiling the adult undergarments after the mushy buffet spread. The concert was a hodge-podge of gawd knows what kind of sappy Thai songs from an era even before their time. Prehistoric, in other words.

There I was, dying in my seat. What was I doing there, sandwiched between two of the oldest relics I’ve seen in a while? I was interacting with my clientele, all of them very old and powdered. I think I saw moth balls in their ears. I told myself had to get through this thing without going unconscious – I’m a robust snorer. I was also only two rows from the front and the only whitey, male, non-octogenarian, and there were cameras trained on me…

I spent the first two hours mentally recounting this morning’s funnys, redesigning my kids’ bathroom, balancing the checkbook – whatever I could do to stop myself from a self-inflicted case of strangulation on my own tongue. Finally, the audience’s Prozac must have been starting to wear off because the people near me began clapping and singing along. The coiffed and bejeweled performers began aiming the microphone at audience members. No! Not a sing-along, Karaoke style…

The band started up with some old American favorites and I realized that things might go from bad to apocalyptic very soon. The grandma divas in the next rows began trying to catch my eye, the wireless microphone was brought out, and beads of sweat formed on my upper lip and brow.

I had to get out of here, I had to run.

I spent the next 20 minutes shrinking in my chair, chanting quietly, “I’m invisible” like Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man. It worked. Mercifully, the MC introduced the last singer and the final song and I knew I was out of the woods. After all, what were the chances of me being dragged up on the stage for the Green, Green Grass of Home, especially when it was being performed so uniquely? I let out a deep sigh of relief, and quieted my trembling guts – I had made it through this concert without making an ass of myself…

No! Oh my god, they’d started into a spontaneous medley! Halfway through the first chorus of I Am A Women In Love my relief turned to anxiety, but it was a false alarm. “I am a woe-man in ruv, annai do iny ting do getchew into my hut” echoed around the auditorium – and without my help. I spent the last 5 minutes of the concert choking, coughing, praying for my own pair of diapers so I could wet myself…

Well, I made it out alive to the dinner and was rewarded for my efforts when our table was served a bottle of 1963 Baron Philippe Rothschild Paulic. Apparently there was some concern whether the alcohol could be safely consumed with whatever meds were being used to make it through the fading twilight of the days, but that was okay with me and I drank the whole bottle and thought how lucky I was to be still young enough to think this was all amusing.

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Here’s a definition for manners:  non-enforceable guides or rules of conduct that grease the cogs and wheels of human relationships.

That’s a mouthful but ‘non-enforceable’ is one point and ‘grease the cogs and wheels’ is the other.

‘Non-enforceable’: So far there is no law against passing wind (or wearing cheap perfume) in confined spaces… so far.

Probably the closest you’ll ever get to being forced to use or have manners is when a parent tells you to ‘mind’ them. That’s in an age when almost every aspect of human life is being legislated, from having ramps for wheelchair drivers to forbidding smoking. What’s interesting is that these endless laws do not improve the quality of human relationships and often worsen them. So why are they there? Probably someone’s power trip.

‘Grease the cogs and wheels of human relationships’: If you wanted to get even more basic you could say manners make people get along better by helping them to behave more considerately towards each other. Now we’re into the area of the Golden Rule, or what sociologists who get paid by the syllable call the law of ethical reciprocity.

Most religions and lots of philosophers have versions of this Rule. Here’s just a sampling:

Baha’i
And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou choosest for thyself.

Christianity
And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

Hinduism
One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self.

Jainism
He who desires his own good, should avoid causing any harm to a living being.

Islam
Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.

Judaism
That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.

Confucius
Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.

Buddha
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.

Socrates
Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you.

Plato
May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me.

Must be something in it, hey?

Some twits like George Bernard Shaw nit-picked that the rule meant: Do whatever you like to others so long as you don’t mind if they do it to you.

But even George would have objected if he’d been locked in an air-conditioned car during a heat wave in Bangkok when someone dropped their lunch. On the other hand, George had a point because there was one person in that car who wasn’t gagging and choking…

Manners also get trivialized into meaningless guff like:

“Have a nice day”, “Take care”, “You’re welcome” etc.

These would become meaningful – and useful –  if they went:

“Have a nice day, even though our species is doomed…”

“Take care, because people like me are going to be doing everything we can to screw you over 24/7…”

“You’re welcome, but I totally expect you to repay me in kind at my earliest convenience…”

List of Manners

We all love lists – here’s the start of a list of non-denominational, non-ethnic, multi-cultural manners:

Don’t pick at and eat parts of your anatomy in public.

Save your methane venting for toilet stalls or vast empty, preferably windswept, spaces.

Don’t talk on your cell-phone when you’re in front of an actual living human being who deserves your attention because they’re right there in front of you.

Don’t criticize others in front of their friends, relatives, or colleagues.

Don’t get so hung up on your own self-importance that you become a pain in the ass to everyone you know.

This list is way incomplete – don’t just be a spectator – contribute!

In the interests public safety we also provide a link to this short instructional video from Japan on how to avoid fallout from your own farts without anyone noticing.

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It’s good news that the runner up for the Miss USA contest gets to keep her crown, not that this is any kind of major step for mankind but at least it’s a backward step for petty, sniping little pricks like the ‘celebrity’(?) blogger who tried to manipulate public opinion in support of his nasty intentions.

Of course he wanted to take this young lady down – she’s a woman isn’t she? and a feminine one – but worst of all she has some integrity – a quality that prissy little bootlick lacks in stunning quantities.

And here’s the thing about all this gay pride crap: who cares really who porks whom?

The human body consists of a finite number of penetrable orifices and a finite number of protrusions with which to penetrate those orifices. If a man wants to have sex with a man or a woman with a woman, as technically bizarre as that may be, then they can and should attempt it if they so desire. So long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.

Just as an aside so we don’t go pissing off PETA let’s just leave domesticated animals out of the mix for the moment and perhaps address that in another post… or not.

The problem is this: the emotional catastrophes that produce these sexual perversions also result in sociopathic personality characteristics that are harmful to others.

With or without an active sex-life, these casualties of disturbed childhoods are notoriously unfaithful, compulsively dishonest, obsessively destructive to others, especially their ‘best friends’, and deal almost exclusively in criminally inclined character assassination of those not as emotionally disfigured as they.

On top of this they orchestrate the decline of any culture they can get their talons into by corrupting and alienating art and turning fashion into eyesores.

That is the real problem.

It could only be handled by a) defining it correctly as the problem it is and b) finding a humane treatment that did not involve mind-altering drugs or psycho surgery with ice picks or ECT.

I’m glad that mincing little reptile lost out this time – but I also hope that one day he will get the help he desperately needs.