All Entries in the "Featured Peeks" Category

SOVIETS WITHHELD HANGOVER CURE FROM PEOPLE

(Moscow-on-Ice — January 3, 2017)

The KGB and factions of the former Soviet Union allegedly hid an effective cure for the common hangover from the Russian people for some 70 years. The cure, which reputedly involves a prescribed treatment of warm vodka, Tabasco sauce, Georgian peppercorns, vitamin B and liquid oxygen was discovered by Joseph Stalin while on vacation in Yalta in 1945. However, the paranoid leader did not make his findings known and, in fact, did not even share the cure with his best friends and family until he was on his deathbed in 1953.

The disclosure was released Monday as part of a further clean-up in the Kremlin. Current President, Yladimir Putin, has sought to distance himself from these goings-on.

“Mr Putin is too busy murdering his critics and annexing other countries to be bothered with this,” hacked a spokesman fo the Russian leader.

Stalin’s legacy lived on until last year when rumors of a miraculous cure graced the pages of Old Soviet Life, the former Communist Party mouthpiece. The paper did not print the exact recipe for the cure since it was reportedly “misplaced by Boris Yeltsin” in 1991.

“It’s amazing to us,” barked a Putin spokesman in a prepared speech, “that anyone could be so barbaric, so cruel as to withhold perishable data of this magnitude. All this time the Party was screaming about low production and absenteeism on the part of the work force and they may have had easy access to the saving catalyst.

The ancients had a cure for alcohol poisoning, as they called it, and researchers have been doggedly pursuing a cold trail in this regard since the Crusades. Factions of both good and evil have coveted the panacea since the Sumerians first brewed beer in 3000

-Grigori Rasputin Jr.

And you thought the holidays were over!

Cheap for something you may never use?

 

 

WARNING TO ALL CITIZENS

With the holidays upon us local residents and visitors alike are hereby warned that the artsy-craftsy types are out in force and could be working your neighborhood at this very moment. These annoying individuals can even be observed going through the winter garbage in order to satisfy their creative obsessions. Fresh from looting the alleys they will then return to their little hovels and attempt to turn stinky milk cartons into furry little bunnies and even fashion Yuletide headgear from pizza boxes or banana crates. Please watch your coffee grinds since these warped craftspersons will often attempt to reconstruct replicas of ski villages from soggy grinds and bits of aluminum. Bird houses are particularly popular, especially within circles of depraved artists who intend to spend the rest of the winter somewhere warm, with your money as a cushion. To further illustrate our point were you aware that the state of Colorado reported that over 400 traffic signs were stolen between December 1 and December 20 in 1999 alone? Many turned up as pirated lazy susans by New Year’s Eve. The best advice? Withhold all your garbage until after the new year. This way a concerned citizen deprives these parasites of the raw materials necessary to continue the age-old assault on all that is still right and decent within our borders. If this doesn’t work we suggest a small caliber pistol at close range. Sure, that’s radical but considering the circumstances…With the cops out patrolling the bars for revelers during the holidays we must take matters into our own hands or soon there will be no garbage left to hand down to our children. Lest we forget, we are all responsible for the trash that we generate until it hits the landfill and that’s the American way. -Editor

In Vietnam: Use your noodle!

Hoi An, Quang Nam, Vietnam  —  December 17, 2016

As a young Vietnamese boy, who was practicing his English, said to me last evening “Good morning!” He was so proud of himself that I responded in Vietnamese: “Good morning to you, young man” even though it was well past 8 pm.

I’m spending the winter on the coast in Central Vietnam at Hoi An, an ancient city of about 500,000 which, if it were in Dong (Vietnamese currency), would be about $22. It’s very nice here, even in rainy season, although the fields are flooded and getting to town for food requires irrigation boots and hungry perseverance.

This too will pass, or I’ll soon be swimming in the East Sea. I keep a fresh pair of swimming trunks near the door just in case, along with a bottle of French Champagne for some mystical voyage that may be in the wings.

This morning the river is over its banks. My pathway is flooded but I have beer, cheese, tomatoes, baguette, a can or two of unidentified fish and plenty of music. The silver lining is that my neighbor is bringing me chicken and rice because she is worried about me. I’ll have to fake complete helplessness so as to assure dinner as well.

The price of rowboats is up and business at the beach is down. The sun is expected to come out in January. Everyone here just smiles and goes along with the flow, but I hope not literally. Can we say sand bags?

I may look like an old fart but I’m a bona fide mountain old fart (alpinus crabiscus flatulentus) and capable of keen basic survival and remarkably clear thought when Mother Earth gets pissed off. Ja sure…You betcha.

In Colorado it is often too dry. Here in Quang Nam Province everything is too damn wet. Even the dust is wet. Even the dry goods are wet. If they had dry cleaning and static electricity they would be wet too.

My dentist, originally from the Bay Area, who served as a Special Forces medic in South East Asia, told me he was so wet for his tour that he swore he would move to the dry high desert. So, after the service, he moved to Cedaredge where the sun is high and the skin cream is in every cupboard.

Xin chao!

The Chinese took over Vietnam in 2000 BC, stopped to wash their dirty socks (see Chinese laundry) then had to wait until 900 AD for them to dry. In those 1000 years these new tenants had a major impact on the language. Then in the 1600s the new landlords, the French, Romanized the language which makes it easier to read and write for us Westerners.

Learning Vietnamese is like a shaky morning wino trying to work on a jigsaw puzzle from his cardboard bed on the street, only a little more unsettling.

I seem to be butchering Vietnamese quite nicely but learning some very useful Australian from my new mates here. Most of it isn’t appropriate for the parlor. Imagine that.

When I’m too tired to study I go for walks around town which are often delightful, although eyeballing the hens in my soy can result in a ferocious attack by a skinny junior rooster who fears no one.

 

 

My favorite pastime is watching people wrapped up in plastic bags, driving motorbikes in water up to their knees from an elevated porch downtown with cheroot and ice-cold LaRue beer in hand.

In the ancient town of Hoi An capitalism rages. It would put Madison Avenue to shame. “You buy something? yells the lady in the shop across the narrow street. Yesterday troupes of go-getters were trying to sell me anything from a plastic rain suit to a thorough ear cleaning (and eyebrow trim) to plump little piglets in a burlap sack. I’m a sucker for a good salesman and I bought everything they had.

Ba Le Market is even more stimulating than downtown (in a fruits and vegetables kind of way) although I did manage to buy two chartruese bath towels with little yellow puppies on them. Prices are more fixed here than in the center where one never pays the first three or four prices chanted or scribbled down.

That’s very pedestrian of you

Like most emerging places in the world if you are on foot it is clear that you must not be able to afford other modes of transport. If, as Bob Marley said, “Me feet be me only chariot” you could find yourself in limbo. The street crossings are marked for decoration only. Go ahead. Try it if you don’t believe me.

Yesterday I almost collided with a toothless grandma carrying a ten-foot piece of rebar, wearing a faded Giants cap, on a chopped Yamaha. That’s all I can remeber about the incident. I’m not sure she even took note of it. At least she didn’t try to sell me anything. In the real New World Order she would be delivering a piza and listening to Bach too.

Annoying horns, better than wrecks, blast at every intersection rounding out the chaotic scenario. Schools of pedalling fish pass pagodas by on bicycles It is something to behold but not at all over the top. Life is celebrated all around me. A smile and a tear.

Jimmy, the local pot dealer wears a hat with an American flag on it but like most Americans has never read Thomas Jefferson. He looks like someone who needs to direct his intellect in other more creative ways but I doubt he will. Jimmy is a big Dodger fan and my love of baseball creates opportunities in the herbal market place.

He wants to move to California.

Meanwhile the neighbors see me as a combination Damon Runyan/ Walter Cronkite. They think I’m writing an important story with international, even cosmic, implications when actually I am day dreaming or taking an afternoon nap.

I haven’t seen so much as one cop in three weeks. Probably some commie plot.

Excellent Eats

In Hoi An a baby’s first word is not always Mama or Papa but often Cao Lau (a pork- based noodle dish with crisp-fried onion, sliced pork and assorted greens.) It is traditionally eaten for breakfast.

Today I sit munching incredible chicken and noodles with chopsticks and tiny napkins perched on what looks to be plastic children’s furniture. Then there are spring rolls and grilled tofu along with ginger fish sauce  After just three weeks I have become pathetically addicted to the food.

Watch out for the little green peppers. They make jalapeños taste like tapioca pudding. The red ones are even hotter. The only known antidote is yellow snow that must be imported from the mountains in faraway China. The Central coast is known for spicy food which is often exported to the sets of Hanoi and Saigon (HCMC) dramas (soap operas) to induce tears.

Over 45% of Vietnamese words have origins in Chinese. 60% of these translate loosely as “Let’s stop and eat”

In the vegetarian restaurants on Li Thai Do when a tourist asks for
a fork they have to send one of the kids to the neighbors to borrow one.

Start with the Can Lau and you’ll discover what might be the healthiest cuisine on the planet. Just ask that strapping water buffalo in the rice paddy next door.

After a nice bowl of noodles I wander down my soy toward my house in Cam Chau neighborhood. Ah, here we are, at my steep, slippery wheel chair access ramp that whispers “please be careful in the rain or you may end up in a one.”

Here comes my Vietnamese teacher. I have to go in now.

– Kevin Haley

Next time:
“Crossing the International Date Line Single”

“Go upstairs.”  – response from Dung (pronounced Jzung), my Vietnamese neighbor when I asked what I should do if the flood water started coming into the house (meaning unplugging the appliances, securing the porch plants and turning off the electricity and protecting the furniture).

Antidote for mistletoe in the wings?

After more than 50 years in the laboratory scientists think they may have stumbled onto an effective antidote for mistletoe. Sure enough, it’s nothing more than a strand or two of Creole Garlic! The researchers suggest wrapping one’s Christmas tree with the stuff, like the popcorn stringing ritual, and hanging the remaining garlic all around the house. One scientists says he even hangs a clove or two from his car mirror. Besides repelling unwanted advances of the opposite sex over the holidays, the garlic adds another decorative dimension when carefully interspersed with Christmas lights, bulbs and icicles. In addition to all this, most researchers say that holiday visits, and vampire traffic in general, drop almost in half when the garlic is displayed. Have a happy Christmas.