Toxic Terroir

[Washington, 7/2/09]

It’s just after 9AM. I had my cappuccino and rice with grilled pork. I took then uploaded some photos. With a chilled can of Cambodia next to my mouse, I’m ready to write, I think, so wish me luck.

Within a long touchdown of me is the Central Market, with its magnificent dome cum ziggurat. Its many concrete grilled windows allow happiness to shine in. I understand there are guys like Brunelleschi and Wren with their own ballyhooed domes, but listen, if we disregard minor factors like available technology and chronology, Phnom Penh’s dome kicks ass!

To kick ass is to excel, an American expression. I am American enough.

I just paid for nine more days at Zing. At $22 a night, I get a clean, airy room with a fridge and TV I don’t even use. My large window looks down onto a van depot, with its touts and passengers. Carrying plastic bags of bread, sticky rice and bottled water, vendors amble among them. Thirty yards away is a bank of four-story houses nearly a century old. On their frayed balconies are laundry racks and the idle, gazing down. To see other humans and the most ordinary human activities doesn’t just reassure but delight. Only psychos enjoy explosions, killing fields, car crashes or asskicking chainsaw murders.

At this price in the States, I’d be stuck in some Indian-owned motel two time zones away from the nearest 7-11. To my right would be an unemployed plumber or roofer who enjoys repetitive motion to loud internet porn. To my left would dwell a fired bartender with missing fingers and open sores, thanks to tranq dope. Before becoming a zombie, she was finessing an autobiographical novel. The best chapter is of her days as roller derby queen, with some tricking on the side, just for fun. You only live once.

Not content with heroin and fentanyl, Americans are now killing themselves with xylazine, a sedative meant for larger mammals, like horses. Not enough Americans fit into this category, unfortunately, so most just have their flesh and bones eaten away, after an unworldly if too brief high. Although this new trend’s ground zero is my old haunt, Philadelphia, the rest of the country is quickly catching up. Fun must be spread.

An infectious source of asskicking good times, the US is also rocking from coast to coast with “sideshows” or street takeovers. Long mesmerized by cars going in circles, Americans are transfixed by them doing donuts at intersections, with onlookers filming away, when they’re not being sideswiped or run over. Some point laser beams at these careening masses of steel.

Man doesn’t just wed himself to machines to extend his capabilities, but to feel cleaner and crisper, thus more perfect. Possessing neater contours, cars, cellphones, airplanes and tanks also don’t fart. Transhumanism, then, is the natural end to this wish.

As with their endless sport seasons, Americans love frantic monotony. Glazed eyed, they slouch in the ink dark to stare at beamed kinetic events.

It’s what their masters call war, by the way, but just about every English word has been corrupted, including man, woman, democracy and freedom, but what do us canceled zeros know about language? Bound and bogged by reactionary books, we ain’t got no entry into the latest poetry!

Tyga lyrics as sung by Lil Wayne, “Today was a good day, I ain’t had to kill nobody.” If only Uncle Sam could say the same. Although Tyga is half-Vietnamese, his culture is all-American. A new national anthem should be commissioned from this lit freak.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, except Marines, Marines will definitely kill you! Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out! Kick ass then go home! In case you think other societies have similar sayings, they don’t.

War does introduce the alley bound to alien cuisines. During the Vietnam War, Võ Phiến pointed out that Hue beef soup had made it to Saigon, and of course, now you can get decent phở and bánh mì even in small town Idaho. In Saigon, there’s Beirut Mediterranean Kitchen and a Syrian joint, Al Sham. Soon enough, perhaps Chicago hot dogs will show up in Phnom Penh.

With a child-groping zombie as figurehead, the US is a sinking ship, but not according to Jill Biden, “Look at all that Joe has done, has accomplished. I mean, he brought us out of the chaos. He did that! He was elected because people wanted steady leadership. I think they saw that in Joe. They saw his character, they saw his integrity and he came into office.”

Let that sink in, and here’s irony-free Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “I think viscerally most Americans don’t like to see a big country bullying another, and they just feel it’s wrong and want to do something about it.”

Au contraire, Tony, most Americans have become addicted to endless bullying, so they cheer whenever their bombs rain on another country. It’s a visceral excitement they can’t go too long without. So sadistic, they think this Jewish composed line hilarious, “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.”

At least 11 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed by the US in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and those toxins still cause birth defects. Before being dumped on Southeast Asia, it was tested in Panama, without its government’s knowledge. Though depleted uranium was used in Serbia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, the US insists there are no adverse effects, just as there’s nothing to worry about in East Palestine, Ohio. Jewjabs, too, are perfectly safe and effective, so booster away!

Ioseb Jughashvili changed his last name to Stalin, meaning “man of steel.” After visiting Kiev, Biden declared that Ukrainian comic cum dick pianist cum TV prez cum real president cum Time person of the year Zelensky was a man “whose courage [is] forged with fire and steel,” so like Stalin, Zelensky is a man of steel.

Even more profoundly, Biden’s ventriloquist also stated, “Autocrats only understand one word, ‘No, no, no!”

In the realm of the most toxic terroir, to swerve from bullshit is to lose all your privileges, whether niggardly or phat, so Americans will continue to swoon, “Yes, yes, yes!”

From this vilest vintage they’ll drink.

[Philadelphia, 9/25/13]

[Philadelphia, 9/3/16]

[Washington, 11/30/11]

[Phnom Penh, 2/22/23]