Joking Biden, God is Queer, Honest Cheeses and a Trapped Norwegian

[I Am Pizza in Siem Reap, Cambodia on 2/14/23]

In Siem Reap four months ago, I had an awful pizza with fake cheese, so wrote about it. Within hours, some “anonymous,” of course, left a comment at my blog, “What the fuck is that white stuff, asshole?” There has to be a better way to voice his disagreement or doubt, but such is the world we live in. Unhappy psychos jam the Jewjewed West.

Speaking of which, “Anyjewname Anyjewsurname” opines at my SubStack, “Hard to read about Jews as you write! Are you in the cause of a new round of crematory stoves? Are you in the counterinformation business? Doing a mixed salad about who are the n-a-z-y-es in Ua,... may i call you Adolf?

“Another mistake (?!), combating vaccines put you in the select squad of Apocalipse cavaliers, working hard for the death. (Only in my country, more than half a million, and no argument can change this.)” Staggering into gibberish, he goes on.

Biden to American Marines in Japan on 5/18/23, “My son was a major in the US Army. We lost him in Iraq.” Beau Biden died of brain cancer in Maryland.

Biden in DC on 6/14/23:

China has their Belt and Road Initiative. It turned out to be their debt and destruction initiative. No, I’m serious.  Not a joke.  Well, we’re going to win, and we’re going to help.

We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean. 

Biden supporters will claim his railroad line was a joke. They’re partly correct, because Biden is a running gag to the rest of the world and a howler on Americans. Moving from Trump to Biden, their contempt became even more naked, but they have nothing to fear. Americans are so easily herded or cowed.

With German boys in white shirts and indigo ties behind him, Quinton Caesar (she/her) thundered in Nuremberg on 6/11/23, “Now is the time to say, ‘We are the last generation!’ Now is the time to say, ‘Black lives always matter!’ Now is the time to say, ‘God is queer!’”

Like some near-death drag queen, the West has become very tiresome and obnoxious, when it makes any sense at all. That’s why countries are fleeing from its economic, military and cultural web.

In November of 2022, Russia’s Duma unanimously approved a complete ban on “LGBTQ, pedophilia and sex-change propaganda” in all advertising, books, movies and media. Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin argued this measure would “protect our children, the future of the country, from the darkness spread by the US and European states.”

This month, 400 of 450 deputies approved the banning of sex reassignment surgeries and gender changes on official documents, with the only exceptions procedures to remedy “congenital anomalies” in children.

It’s hard to believe the benighted West once produced Rabelais, Erasmus, Whitman, Bonnard, Beckman, Django Reinhardt and Duke Ellington, etc. Despite my bleak assessment, I’m still hoping it can be exorcised. If not, some of its best products must be found elsewhere, and not as curios or relics, but renewed traditions.

Already, many of the best performers of Western classical music are Orientals. As diners die in the USA, they spring up across the globe. I’ve visited fine ones in Kiev, Beirut, Belgrade, Pyeongtaek and Cape Town, and the Japanese chain Jonathan’s is the American diner improved.

[Pyeongtaek, South Korea on 6/10/20]

Real cheeses matter. Yesterday at Dok Mai Lao Trattoria Italiana in Pakse, I had brie, gorgonzola, bel paese, pecorino, salami, prosciutti, schiacciata and a large Beerlao for $10.15. Food is heritage and collective genius, but only if it’s not a corporate scam, like Wonder Bread or American cheese, so aptly named.

In southern Laos, I’ve met a German, an Italian and two Frenchmen whose restaurants show a deep love for their native cuisines, and yet, they have uprooted themselves, so what’s going on here? Two are married to Lao women, so love is a factor. One is gay, and one has a European girlfriend. Ultimately, what’s kept them here is a preference for this society over their own. Mistakenly or not, all immigrants think this way.

With chatty Ian gone, I no longer have so many sustained conversations each day. There is a new guest at Lankham who’s just as candid, however. A 37-year-old Norwegian, he has just divorced his Thai wife, with whom he has an eight-year-old son. It pains him deeply to be blocked from his boy. Working with Thai lawyers, he’s trying to remedy this situation.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“A year ago.”

Sighing, I shook my head. Then, “When you talk to him, what language do you use?”

“English mostly, and some Thai. Him also speak German.”

“German?!”

“Yes, him going to German school.”

“Why?”

“My wife like it.”

“So he speaks German, but no Norwegian?”

“No.”

Here I must make an awkward, if not painful, confession. I am Jewish. More specifically, I am a Jewish shrink, for everywhere I go, people of all ages and nationalities can’t help but lie on that couch to unburden to me the most appalling details of their unspeakably painful lives, but I don’t charge them for it. OK, I’m not Jewish.

Lief, let’s call him that, has an even more difficult quandary, for his father, you see, is also beyond his reach in Thailand.

“Him, his blood not go to his head.”

“You mean he had a stroke?”

“Yes, a stroke, so him in wheelchair.”

This happened in 2017, when Lief’s father was just 57 years old. Lief himself had a heart attack at 32-years-old.

“Can your dad talk?”

“No, only some word, but he understand.”

“Does he recognize you?”

“Yes. When he see me in Pattaya, he cry.”

“So where is he now?”

“In small village, in Isan, with his girlfriend.”

“They’re not married?”

“No.”

“So she can’t keep him?”

“No, but she has his passport and his bank card.”

With a pension of 2,000 euros a month, he’s sustaining ten Thais. They give him Hong Thong Whisky to keep him quiet. At least it’s not Lao Khao. Each night, they pop a sleeping pill into his mouth. They do keep him clean.

“They don’t give him water. I tell them, ‘Give him water!’ Him, ah….”

“Dehydrated.”

“Yes, him dehydrated. When him go to the toilet, the urine is brown.”

When Lief visited his dad, the girlfriend never left them alone. Whenever she heard “Norge,” meaning Norway, she got very angry, “No Norway! No Norway!”

She had to make sure her ATM wasn’t taken away. Not only that, she made it nearly impossible for Lief to leave. He, too, was trapped, until one morning, Lief just walked out the door, pulling his small suitcase.

After a few miles, a police car pulled alongside him. You’re going to get robbed, said the English speaking cop, then gave Lief a ride to the nearest bus station. When Lief tried to give him some money as a token of thanks, the cop refused.

“So what are you going to do?”

“First, I have to get my son.”

“Then you’ll go to that village?”

“Yes, but I must go with two people, maybe my brother and a strong man.”

“A Thai?”

“Yes, a Thai. I cannot go by myself.”

“Have your brothers been to Thailand?” Lief has two.

“No.”

“So they may not come.”

“I don’t know.”

“When you get there, the girlfriend won’t let him leave…”

“I will tell her. I take my father for a vacation, for four days, then I will ask him, ‘Do you want to go back to Norway?’”

“You may need to bring a weapon!”

“No, no, they cannot stop me. I will ask him, ‘Do you want to go back to Norway?’ If him want to stay in Thailand, he can live in Pattaya, near me, in a nice place with a swimming pool. There are people in wheelchair in this nice place. He can swim and get better. Maybe he can walk again. He can eat Norwegian food once a week.”

There are actually two Norwegian restaurants in Pattaya, plus one Swedish and one Finnish. I told Lief about Lassi’s Place, where I had a heart warming meal in a soothing environment. Lief looked up its address, “Yes, I will go there.”

Fleeing home, all these Finns must gather regularly in Lassi’s, their tiniest Finland, but that’s enough. Lief, too, has no plan to return to Norway, despite everything.

Halfway through this article, I saw Lief, but he didn’t stop for a chat. Having just bought a small can of Beerlao, he’d go to his room, drink it then sleep.

It’s 9:24AM. I’m temped to order my second large bottle of Beerlao. In a few days, I will have to leave Pakse to go to Ubon Ratchathani. After a month there, I will return to Pakse, I think, for another three-month stay.

Though it’s one of the ugliest cities I’ve ever visited, its people are gorgeous, and its pace of life still sane, so I am very grateful.

Three days ago, though, there was a stray dog that kept lying on a busy road, as if daring vehicles to run over it. I saw a large snake killed this way, and a monkey on a power line.

Here, now, it’s not easy for any creature to be alive.

[Pakse, 4/18/23]

[Pakse, 6/14/23]

[Pakse, 6/11/23]