Redneck Chinese

There aren’t really any Asian people where I live.  If you want to see an Asian person you have to go to a Chinese restaurant.  The people who own the restaurants and work there are Chinese, but, nobody has any idea where they live.  You never see them anyplace else but in the restaurant.  They are exotic creatures in the Great American Southland and do not appear to thrive in the cultural soil Dixie has to offer.  What Sky-Lab is to astronauts orbiting earth in the airless and hostile environment of space Chinese restaurants are to Chinese people in my little redneck corner of Dixie.   They dare not venture out unprotected.  Not from a lack of oxygen and gravity, but rather from a lack of the cultural nourishment and foundation they require to thrive.

The title of this little slice of the absurdity that is my life, like my life itself, makes absolutely no sense at all.  There are no Redneck Chinese.  It’s what they call one of them there Oxymorons… like Giant Shrimp, First-strike defense and Thank God, I’m an Atheist.  You scratch your head for a while.  Then, you move on.

The problem is I can’t let things like this go.  I’m suspicious by nature and my suspicion is that Chinese people, Asian people in general actually, can be seen and used as canaries in a coal mine were, at one time, used to gage the wholesomeness of the environment.  In short, the better an environment is at supporting Rednecks the worse it will be in supporting Chinese.  The opposite it appears is just as true.  For example, Ivy League universities and high tech research facilities are always crawling with Chinese and Asians of every variety, but, search as much as you like there ain’t a redneck to be found in such places.  Not a one!

My hypothesis, for starters, is that it’s all about education, in one way or another, and rednecks and Chinese people occupy the opposite ends of that spectrum.   Statistically bout 44% of all Asians have a Bachelors Degree or higher compared to 24% for the total US population.  In the county I live in the figure is 16.2% and a very large part of that figure is made up of people known locally as “come heres” as apposed to “born heres”.  The average median income of Asians in America is much higher than any other group.  In contrast, 37% of the people who live in the county in which I reside live off a “Government check”.

Chinese people tend not to join Fundamentalist Christian Churches.  My county has a little over 30,000 people and 87 Fundamentalist Southern Baptist Churches.  Rednecks are just crazy about Fundamentalist Christianity.

Asian people tend to not be Republicans.  In the entire history of the Tea Party not one Chinese person has ever joined.  Whenever there is an election for anything where I live the local newspaper always publishes the results the very next day.  It always reads something like this…

“Everybody voted Republican again yesterday except for Mrs. Neutron and we spect Y’all know where that hateful atheist Yankee Bitch lives by now.”

It is indeed comforting to be recognized by ones community and as P.T. Barnum once remarked… “Even bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.”

All that aside what this really comes down to is culture.  What are any of us really except for our culture?  Where would we be without the pack of lies and bundle of bullshit that “we” (those of us IN our cultural group) agree to pretend to each other ARE the absolute, undeniable, truth?  We wouldn’t be human… that’s for sure.  Culture, in all its kinds and permutations defines us as human and the real rub is that part of the “deal” with culture is to “believe” that your culture is the best culture and teach that belief to your children no matter what.  Rednecks do that.  Chinese do that.  All cultures do that and, usually, out of respect for people who are different from us we are supposed to just… let… it…go.  But, we never do because our culture is the best.  Thinking, believing and teaching that to your children is how a culture survives and if there is one thing a culture wants to do… it’s survive.

At this point you are probably asking yourselves… “So, where does that leave us Mrs. N. and what the fuck are you trying to say here anyway?”

What I’m saying is this.  When you go reading statistics like half the people in America don’t believe in evolution and such & such percentage of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim and that global warming is a Liberal plot to destroy American capitalism and force us all to become communists… you have to see it for what it is and what it isn’t.  The temptation is to think it’s CRAZY.  That would be a mistake.

Culture dictates it all and there are cultures that work to promote happiness and economic success and cultures that do the opposite.   Any attempt to understand a person without understanding the culture they come out of is condemned to failure.  Not to understand this is to entirely miss one of the basic facts of what it means to be human.

I read, just the other day, in John Schumaker’s “The Age of Insanity” that  …  psychology managed to get things backward as it came to see the individual as a separate entity that operated outside larger cultural contexts.  We ended up with an asocial and misdirected field that was thoroughly preoccupied by the mythical disturbed individual.  In the midst of this preoccupation, psychology largely forgot about wider contexts in which these individuals operate.

Now, all that may not sound like much.  You may be saying… “So what?..  Big shit.”  Who gives a crap Mrs. N. and what’s it to me?”

Well Mrs. N’s gunna tell you.  A house divided cannot stand.  The smaller the world gets the less room for multiculturalism there will be.  Only the strong will survive and culture will determine strength.  The time has come for the wise to “pick” their culture.  The survival of mankind will come to be less and less a matter of luck and more and more a matter of educated choosing.  Choose wisely.

I think it is always helpful to remember the story of the single Chinese man who owned a Chinese restaurant.

One day a beautiful Chinese woman walked in. He immediately walked over and asked her out on a date. She agreed. They went out for a while, and soon, the man proposes to her. She says “Yes, but before we do, there’s something you must know. I have never had the sex, but I’ve read about it.” He says that it’s not a problem, and they are married.
On their honeymoon, the man tells his wife that since she’s a virgin, she can choose what they do first. She says “Oh, most honorable husband. I am honored to be your wife, even though I have never had the sex, but I’ve read about it. So, I have chosen to have the 69.

The husband looks confused, and after thinking about it, he says “You want.. the beef and broccoli?”

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

 

The Great Wall

WARNING!  Mrs. N. is even more cheesed off than usual today, so, you may want to take that into consideration before you proceed.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful spring day here in Dixie and I feel physically superb.  My other half, who underwent a somewhat perilous surgical adventure a matter of days ago, …

… reports feeling just peachy.  For that I am grateful.  I’m not grateful to anyone, or, any thing in particular because I’m not religiously afflicted.  I figure it’s all pretty much chance, random events and happenstance in this lovely meat grinder, this one way ride through the Land of the Absurd.  No, I’m just feeling grateful in a generic sense.  In a sense that it’s spring and nobody has a brain tumor, or, a hideous skin rash and boils today… at least in my house.  But it doesn’t stop me from bitching.  I still have my work.  There is still all the crap that goes on around me, that nonsense that other people are up to… the stuff that does the one thing that irritates the shit out of me more than anything else.  That stupid crap that makes me embarrassed to be of my species…. and, in the spring when everything is looking alive and “shiny new greeny”… it just stands out, like something caught in my eye.  You know?

Here is this years picture.  I took it today.  It’s what Mrs. N. has to look at, on the way in, to shop at Wal-Mart.  Wal-Mart is a company owned by the richest family in America.  America is widely considered to be the richest country in the world.   Wal-Mart has more employees than some countries have citizens.  They pay their employees squat.  Peanuts!  I’m sure the family that owns Wall-Mart views all their employees as so many peasants, the way kings were accustomed to viewing people who were ridiculously poor and unfortunate compared to them.  I don’t really see how they can help it.  Human beings are stinkers that way and have been throughout recorded history.  It’s so embarrassing.

These Wal-Mart creeps pay their peasants so little that their spouses and children, who are peasants too, qualify for government provided health care.  Some deal.  The Wall-Mart Family makes a killing and sticks the taxpayers with the health care bill.  You know why?  Because they believe in Capitalism.  They hate Socialism.  The fuckers must laugh themselves to sleep every night of the week.

But, I digress…  Look at that picture above.  Every time I see that wall… that testament to half-assery… that red-neck salute to the meaning of “American Workmanship”… I get pissed off.  The GOD DAMNED Chinese can build a wall that lasts 2000 years…  And, looks like this today!

and THIS is the shit we build.

It’s a fucking miracle I can drag my ass out of bed in the morning when I have to put up with this kind of shit.  Who the hell in their right mind puts their name on a piece of shit, bit of construction, like this?  Who “signed off” on this disaster?  I have asked The Building Inspector.  I have enquired politely of the County Director of Safety and, oddly enough, they are hesitant to discuss the matter.  It appears Mrs. N. will be forced to resort to one of her specialties.  She doesn’t want to.  She is beginning to feel that it is being thrust upon her, so to speak.  Mrs. N. will have no choice but to become exceedingly rude, belligerent and obnoxious.  Sarcasm will be employed liberally.  Mrs. N. will make enemies.

There was a time when Mrs. N. used to care about things like that.  Making enemies that is.  That time is long past.  Now all Mrs. N. cares about is stopping the embarrassment, even if it is just a little.  Saying FUCK NO when that is the only thing it makes sense to say.  Not being shy about it.

I read in the paper that the new plan is to hire armed guards for all the schools in the county.  It should cost about $1,000,000 a year to do this.  As long as nobody tells the crazy people with guns that they can kill children in “other places”, just as easily, I’m sure that the increase in property taxes to pay for the guards will be more than worth it.  I’m just thankful I live in Tea-Party Republican Country.  Here we know that Government is the problem, not the solution.  Here most of us are positive that evolution is a stinking lie, and that Obama is a Muslim just itching to take away all our guns.

Mrs. N. worries about the road ahead.  Things seem to be shaker than they have ever been before.   If I didn’t know better I would think my teeth were moving around in my head at night.  In the morning, sometimes, they are in places I just don’t ever remember seeing them before.

Maybe I just need a vacation.  Perhaps someplace on the water……

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.