Puissant Pussies Ready for War?
[Luang Prabang, Laos on 1/30/20]
It’s no surprise to find military terms in Vietnamese slang. Money is bullets and employers are soldiers. An unruly and cocky man is a hand grenade. Wild, casual sex is close quarter combat [xáp lá cà]. A dispiriting situation is a dejected soldier [nản lòng chiến sĩ]. Losing is to be defeated in battle [thất thủ]. Even the mini buses I take to Saigon are called All Victories [Toàn Thắng].
For a nation often at war, it should never be far from its mind. Nearly every generation everywhere have experienced war.
Though the US hasn’t seen war at home in forever, Americans are always prepped for war. Through movies, television, video games and music, they’re conditioned to enjoy extreme violence. This must be done so Americans can be sent to war after war for Jews and war profiteers. Of course, they overlap. Couch slugs even term others getting butchered as “fireworks” or “getting out the popcorn.” Imagine someone saying that about your screaming children being torn up, then bleeding to death.
As a thất thủ refugee in 1975, I was astounded by the violence on American television. The shoulder pads on football players made them appear machine or robot like. It was hard to comprehend how they could get up after being whacked so repeatedly. Their stomachs, arms and posterior thighs were not protected. Even more amazing were guys like Jimmy Snuka flying through the air to land on, say, Ricky Steamboat or Gorilla Monsoon! Those were sweet, innocent days.
Of the Vietnam war movies I saw later, only Green Eyes, about a black vet looking for his lost son in Saigon, depicted my native land with understanding and respect. There’s an excellent Canadian documentary, Sad Song of Yellow Skin (1970). Kudos to its Australian director, Michael Rubbo!
In South Vietnam, most songs about the war depicted a soldier missing home, girlfriend or mother. They’re still being heard today. There’s a 2023 clip of guitarist Thanh Điền sobbing after playing “This New Year I Can’t Come Home.” Born in 1967, the Cần Thơ native may not have seen any war. Still, he understood well its sorrows. Busking with him that day was a teenaged singer. She, too, was not into popcorn sadism. In this song, fireworks are literal and red flames are for cooking bánh chưng, a New Year cake. Its square shape symbolizes the solid earth.
The aggression or violence inherent in fornication is accentuated in American slang. I will fuck you up. Don’t fuck with me. I fuck up. Only men can fuck up.
In Philly’s McGlinchey’s three decades ago, I heard one Matthew shout at his girlfriend, “Go suck my dick!” With a twisted face, she nearly sobbed, “I do it all the time.”
There’s a Vietnamese verb, mếu, that means nearly sobbing with a twisted face. Each language has weapons outsiders can’t begin to fathom.
Is “suck my dick” kosher? Raghead terrorist Kevin Barrett just published “Israel Sweeps Anal Rape Competition at Paris Olympics.” Oh, my:
Israeli rape team coach Benjamin Netanyahu said he wasn’t surprised that only Israeli athletes showed up for the anal rape competition. “The other countries are afraid of us, and with good reason,” Netanyahu explained. “They know if they come anywhere near an Israeli, they’re in for an ass whuppin’.
No one can anal rape like Jews. They flood streets to defend this privilege.
Italians and French say go take it in the ass, vaffanculo and va te faire enculer. Macron must do something about this hate speech. When will rumors about his supposed queerness and wigged husband die? Garage à bites as dick garage or vagina is also not cool. Foreigners may think it means a mud packer, since no one receives more (moving) vehicles.
At my local dive, Friendly, Dominic would say fuck every minute, as in, “Would you fuckin’ look at that?!” When there’s a woman, he’s a gentleman. More overtly aggressive, men curse more, and you can’t expect those who must work dirty to never say shit. Two days ago in Vung Tau, I did walk by a woman in her 40’s who shouted at a child, “You go crazy, I’ll fuck your mother!” Mày lên cơn, tao đụ mẹ mày!
Those who never curse aren’t funny. Don’t say retard, they’ll correct you. Don’t snarl, “Go fuck yourself,” since humyns with frontal holes can’t achieve that. Since boys and girls are interchangeable, raise them the same. Don’t buy toy guns for “boys.” Race and gender are obsolete fictions.
We’re a long way from equality. Military Times on 3/8/24, “In the eight years since the Pentagon opened previously closed special operations jobs to women, just four have entered the training pipeline to become a Navy SEAL.” A female SEAL Team Six couldn’t have fucked up the Bin Laden “assassination” any worse. Even Taylor Swift understands no body, no crime.
Compared to caged fighting, pro wrestling is a queer carnival. With cellphones, anyone can shoot them up anytime, anywhere, including at work or in class. Despite sanctions against all male tendencies, the US appears more toxically masculine than ever. There’s no contradiction.
Enraged yet impotent, they’ll get out the popcorn to enjoy televised fireworks, as flames lick their windows, stairs then ankles. Please, daddy, don’t turn it off! All along, they’ve been trained to stare at mediated reality.
It’s civilization’s last stop. Rome’s train station is Termini. The first wild man, Enkidu, got such great pussy, he became one.
[Vung Tau, 3/17/24]
[Leipzig, 12/13/15]
[Kiev, 2/23/16]
[Kfar Tebnit in southern Lebanon on 11/19/20]
Believe it or not, the West also has heartfelt songs about war. Two of my favorites are "Flowers of the Forest" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TtgSbNaksg) and "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFCekeoSTwg). The latter sings about the "lucky" Australians who survived the train wreck of Gallipoli in WW I and managed to return home, but who were all broken up and whose lives would never really go back to normal again. I also once saw a film on this same subject, the name of which escapes me, and it also was quite powerful.
"So now every April,
I sit on my porch,
And I watch the parade pass before me.
I see my old comrades,
How proudly they march.
Renewing their dreams of past glories
I see the old men, all tired, stiff and sore
The weary old heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask,
What are they marching for?
And I ask myself the same question."
When I listen to that song again, I realize that it could just as easily be singing about many other "lucky" survivors of all the other wars we've had since. Just to grab an obvious example, consider those few "lucky" Ukrainians who survive to return home all broken up, missing limbs (reports are that a huge number of amputations have been done), shell-shocked, you name it. The ones who sent them don't even care if they survive, let alone win, as long as it wears down Russia a bit.
A lot of great literature and song came out of the years just after WW I, and much of it is so powerful that when listening to the songs, reading the books, or watching the films, you truly feel like they are saying they really learned something from all that industrial slaughter. But yet here we are over a century later, and it keeps getting worse and worse.
Hi all, just a note to draw attention to Linh's selection from his 7 books of poems, collected as Blue Threads to the Soul. I wrote a brief review at the book's Amazon page citing 2 poems and 1 interview, and a long one with a dozen extracts and photographs of the book at Viet Nam letters, my Substack. 116 of my 117 subscribers read it on pasting last Thursday, then another 45 since announcing the letter at the listserv of the Vietnamese Studies Group. I expect 1 reader at a time to walk in for a while, petering out approaching 200 total. Join in or, you know, just read the book.