Saturday, July 5, 2008

Locusts and fireworks

I'm having a very tough time sitting down and writing anything intelligent right now.  I just got two new video games--Civilization 4 for the Mac, and Mario Olympics for the Wii.  Both are fantastic.  The weather is superb, which doesn't encourage typing, the Cubs are in first place and playing the Cardinals this weekend, and oh yeah, I have a baby!  Where is she?

On the topic of the Olympics, as if an invasion of algae blooms wasn't enough, China is now battling a plague of locusts in Inner Mongolia which is heading east, and figures to be in Beijing, oh, right during the games.  Between earthquakes, riots, floods, now this, China just can't seem to catch a break.  If I were Chinese, I might be considering building myself an ark, because this shit doesn't seem to be letting up.

But of course, the Chinese government is drafting in volunteers ("Harvest that algae and swat those locusts, or you die") so everything, they claim, will be great for the games.  That may be the case, but doesn't it seem a little fucked up that the vast majority of Chinese live like medieval serfs--except their lords have machine guns--and they're trying to put on this modern international spectacle?  They're also shutting down thousands of factories around Beijing to try to make the air breathable.  God bless them for making lots of cheap manufactured goods, but what a shit hole.

Last night Americans everywhere used what may be my favorite Chinese export:  fireworks.  I didn't see any though, because at 9pm when it gets dark in Chicago in summer, we had just put my daughter to sleep.  Rather than watch the fireworks we cursed how loud they were, and hoped they wouldn't wake her, and prepared for bed ourselves.  They weren't joking when they said having kids changes everything.  We went from last year being drunk enough on the 4th that the fireworks looked extra cool, to being in bed for most of them this year.  

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