[Vung Tau, 8/9/24]
After 17 days of competition, Vietnam, with a population of 100 million people, has won no Olympic medal! Even Cape Verde (pop. 600,000) has bagged one. This is truly the sickest display of systemic racism. Future Olympics must be reformed. For the 100 meter dash, Vietnamese sprinters will start at 50 meters. Opponents of the heroic Vietnamese basketball team must shoot at hoops 15 feet high while wearing five-pound ankle weights. If equity can’t be achieved in every arena, all tests and contests must be abolished. Each of us deserves a gold medal or Nobel Prize for just thinking about doing anything. Everyone must be Commander in Chief.
These conclusions I reached after hearing a reactionary go on about beauty pageants. This morning, Tank Top was outraged that a beauty queen must answer questions intelligently or possess any skill. It’s enough she’s gorgeous to look at. Who cares if she can dance or play the flute? Most irrelevant are her opinions on climate change or world peace. As Tank Top ranted, I thought of the 350-pound Miss Alabama or the transgendered Miss Maryland. Keep your arousal to yourself. Progressive steps must continue.
Subjective beauty is chauvinistic and Fascistic. Everyone is a 10. Anyone who thinks like Tank Top must be castrated then sent to the USA to be reeducated. Measurements, too, are prejudicial, so inches, pounds and, of course, IQ points must be flushed thrice. Despite being perfect, there are men and women who can’t get any, so sex must be rotational. Everyone must sleep with everybody else, in turn. That’s the best definition of Utopia.
Soon, there won’t be any complaint like this, “I buy (or steal, depending upon the circumstances and what I can get away with) a lot of porno magazines. It’s the only opportunity I have to see an attractive (even if AI generated) woman looking me in the eye and smiling. I’m the sad, pathetic result of a society in precipitous decline. At least for those, like me, who make less than $100,000 per year.” At least Tom Herzog prefers print to digital. Tom reads many books. As for making less than a hundred grand a year, that applies to nearly everyone on earth, and yet, clueless dwarfs are churned out constantly.
You caught me! It’s a riff on Michaux, “La contrariété, pour nous, dans la nuit, c’est quand il faut travailler, et il le faut: il naît des nains continuellement.” The vexation, for us, is at night, when we must work, and we must: dwarfs are continuously born.
Sex as vexation and work? Let’s return to sports. The Soviet Union’s last Olympics was in Seoul in 1988. It finished first with 132 medals, including 55 gold. East Germany was second with 102 medals, then came the United States with 94. East and West Germany combined would have surpassed even the Soviet Union.
The USA should finish first at this Woke Olympics. Demoralized and pussified Germany would be lucky to be in the top ten. Russia is banned. With nothing else to be cheerful about, Uncle Sam will cherish this rigged victory. USA! USA!
With a Satanic Opening Ceremony, men beating up women, a gold medalist sleeping in a park, enviro friendly food everyone’s bitching about and swimmers hospitalized for daring to dive into the shitty Seine, this Olympics, the worst ever, is most emblematic of the doomed West. Billions are wasted to showcase its lunacy and degradation.
Staged spectacles aren’t just tiresome, but oppressive. You’re commanded to stare at something meaningless or even harmful for its duration. Of course, it’s worst televised. I’d rather half gaze at the ordinary. Non performers are most delightful. Look, there’s a young woman on a motorbike who’s grasping at fluttering pigeons seemingly touchable. Her giddy, childish smile should restore your innocence, if only for seconds. Going to baseball games decades ago, I’d watch the crowd more than the game.
It’s 9PM, so almost bedtime. In just seven hours, I will be treated to more insights from Tank Top. Also this morning, “I had nothing, not even a skill. A poor man can’t be smart, because he can’t think. How can you think when you have no options? A rich man has possibilities, so he explores, he thinks. One thought leads to another. A poor man’s thinking leads nowhere. There’s nothing he can do about anything, so of course he’s stupid!” With “crippled cunt” inserted here and there, it’s even funnier in Vietnamese.
Sometimes Tank Top brings his five-year-old son to the café. This fat kid would spend each second playing video games on his phone. Like most of his peers worldwide, his grasp on reality has never been adequately developed. Dull and always anxious, he’s lost in a tiny hell of beeps, pings and whooshes. Like too many others, he doesn’t have two parents at home. He sees his mom for just an hour each day.
For each Olympic winner, there are thousands of losers. It’s always good to be reminded of our inequality and limits. Even those who win can only gloat on the podium for mere seconds, before they’re booted off, head first, into the nearest ditch.
[Vung Tau, 8/9/24]
[Vung Tau, 8/9/24]
[Vung Tau, 8/9/24]
[Vung Tau, 8/9/24]
Vietnam has only itself to blame for its lack of Olympic medals, having not entered its fair share of men in the women's events.
Brilliant writing, Lin.