O A glass box of deep fried chicken heads starts my day, courtesy of one of the street-sellers in my small alley as the street-side barbers get their clippers going early. I don't get my hair cut on the street but many people do as referenced by the huge clumps of black hair on the sidewalk next to the barber chairs. These days
I'm working primarily at night and so my day begins with a cafe su nam (thick drip coffe with sweetened condensed milked, served hot) and work on the edit for Wild Wild East. Aside from that I've been doing a lot of geek work to this site and trying to optimize it for search engines (SEO). This consists of going through every single post, from the beginning, opening the html code and adding "alt" tags for all the imagery - this is essentially adding keywords that relate to the postso that search engines can find the subject matter of the post through image search. Have I bored you shitless yet? Let's move along. O Kenny is a Vietnam vet who runs diving tours throughout southeast Asia and he has just returned from America with a sobering review of the country's ills. "I came to the conclusion that the problem in the US is not one of the government but of the eroded moral fibre of the people as a whole", he told me. Nobody gives a shit about anybody anymore - they only care about themselves - it's all about some form of self-actualization and entitlement" he continues. "I'm convinced that if the socie
ty as a whole isn't redirected that we'll be steering into a second holocaust with the Arabs replacing the Jews as the persecuted and America replacing Germany as the perpetrators". "No shit", I respond. O And then I found the following post while searching for imagery for this story. "Sadly, I look at the old America and new America and though technological improvements have developed, I don't see how morally it has. America has become that which they ran away from. It has been fed the same propaganda the Nazis were fooled with and it has ignored that which the founding fathers wrote in the Amendments." Back on my own front I hear these similar sentiments echoed by very different people from very different backgrounds. Marines, real estate guys, software developers, writers and others from California, Georgia, Michigan and Oregon. Interesting. Probably I need to get back to the US next summer and do some visiting. Is it only by being far away that we can see things so differently? O "But I also believe we're witnessing the birth of a great leader", Kenny, the Marine, continues, in reference to Barack Obama. Here's a product of American hegemony in Vietnam who fought for his country but still didn't drink the kool-ade. Interesting, indeed. O I often caution people to not put the weight of the world on the shoulders of the next President. I weigh in as one who encourages all of us to look pretty deeply inside of ourselves and make sure our own moral fibres are correctly spun before expecting anyone to play saviour or blaming anyone for our national fall from grace. If anything, we did it to ourselves by just looking the other way. O I end this entry today with a link to the best post of the week by Simić in quoting Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues - "If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing." O Time for that crispy chicken head.For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:
My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective
