Mine Eyes Have Seen the “Glory of Superlative-Inspiring Trophy Projects”!

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Can we stop calling each other names and making snide remarks all the time? School kids do it and the common yahoo does it ad infinitum on internet political forums around the world, but do journalists writing for the Wall Street Journal on-line and who’ve been to journalism school need to do it, too?

Drum-roll, please, and feel free to sing the first paragraph of the Wall Street Journal article to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic–the author must have been humming Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! while writing. Those of you who are “lyrically impaired” may want to skip this section:

1st line: “Saturday’s tragic train crash near Wenzhou, in the coastal province of Zhejiang” [you have to  run-up quick a little bit at the end of that first line, and omit “of Zhejiang” or you’ll lose the cadence]

2nd line: “raises important questions about the Chinese government’s ability” [pause]

3rd line: “to ensure basic safety standards as it pursues the glory of” [long pause]

4th line: [then simply recall ‘His truth goes marching on,’ and sing, quick-time:] “superlative-inspiring trophy projects.”

chorus:

Glory, glory Mao Ze Dong-yah,

Itty-Bitty* put it to-yah,

Economic plums are falling,

[sing, “Superlative-inspiring trophy,” as one word]           Superlative-inspiring trophy projects march on!

[*Itty-Bitty refers to Premier Deng Xiao Ping who, at 5′0″ in 1978 or ’79, effectively shelved communism and harnessed the great motivating power of greed inherent in capitalism to get China off the starting blocks.]

If you’re still with me and not hyperventilating after mucking through all those bracketed comments I made, here’s my beef: “Trophy.”

China is being told she’s a bad girl because she is using her new found wealth to build-up her infrastructure with “trophy” projects, like American men who now can come to China (in the past your American passport kept you standing outside the gate–I remember standing in Hong Kong’s New Territories within a few meters of the barbed-wire-topped 12-foot cyclone fence, and I took a picture of the fence and a sign in several languages that, in so many words, said, “Scram!” and wished I could get in) and pick up “trophy” wives? Is that the idea?

We all know what a trophy wife is, but what’s a trophy project–especially a “superlative-inspiring” one? Let me think, are there other examples? The Eiffel Tower? The Egyptian pyramids? The Empire State Building? The Super Dome? The (truly ‘superlative-inspiring’) American Interstate Highway System where tripple-trailer-tractor rigs roar down three-and-four-lane wide asphalt in freezing rain at 90 mph supplying the hog butchers and candlestick makers and grocers in every nook and cranny of America? How about Amtrack that derails on a regular basis?

  Image by Gemma Sydney http://www.alphabetagemma.wordpress.com

Accidents happen. And they happen a lot in China. But accidents in China have nothing to do with “China pursuring the glory of superlative-inspiring trophy projects”–just ask the hundreds, thousands of coal miners who get buried alive every year in mining accidents. Or the college students who burn to death in dormitories that keep all their doors barred and locked at night, including the fire exits–what fire exits?

I’m always thrilled when the Chinese send up a rocket and it makes it, or they win a gold medal! So they must be doing some things right. But even though China can cheer me, it can also horrify me, and I would never defend China’s ability to screw up, any more than I would defend America’s. A case in point is the lack of workmanship and attention to detail in home construction in China. The moldings and baseboards in my house look like rats have been chewing on them, and they get worse every time I move some furniture or swat a fly. New apartment houses six months after completion often look like they’re ten years old, and it used to be that after a month they looked completely dilapidated. That’s China. But McDonald’s has moved in, and service is getting better! And China’s trying to keep up.

So if you must cast snide remarks, let the first one come from somebody who has never tried to create English à la Shakespeare with a made-up hyphenated adjective-gerund adjective. Which makes me ask, what, exactly, do they teach in journalism school these days?

Terminal Velocity

                                          

Piddlin’ Pot Scam

                                Hudspeth County Courthouse                                The grass is dead, so’s the tree, there’s no flag, and the skies are not cloudy all day!

        [Image by Larry D. Moore, used under a Creative Commons Share Alike License.] 

I was born in Texas. Not that that means anything. We left before I could walk or talk or even open my eyes. My mother’s only request of our ramblin’ father was that she not give birth to a child in Arkansas, so we, with one-third in utero, moved to Abilene, and her other request was that we not stay in Texas, so as soon as I was breathing on my own we moved to Colorado where my brother was born. I don’t know if we passed through El Paso just 398 miles southwest of Abilene, but El Paso County is right next to Hudspeth County where Willie Nelson got busted for a piddlin’ amount of pot. 

El Paso & Hudspeth    

The Hudspeth County Attorney C.R. “Kit” Bramblett doesn’t believe that Willie is a criminal–in fact, he’s been a big fan of his for 50 years–and moreover, “Kit” also doesn’t believe that less than four ounces of marijuana in your vehicle should amount to anything more serious than “a traffic citation.” So he cut a deal for Willie, the same deal that he routinely gives to any average Joe Citizen–a $500 fine, and no need to make a court appearance, just “mail in the cashier’s check.”

“Kit,” along with the entire state of Texas, is running a scam, either unwillingly or unwittingly so, because although law enforcement is serving the “public interest” by issuing citations and collecting fines, those efforts have nothing to do with increasing public safety or reforming “criminal” behavior–such efforts serve no purpose other than to collect revenue. At least a speeding ticket, fine, license suspension or revocation allows for the possibility that in the future a reckless driver will use caution and drive more reasonably, thus improving highway safety.

But a fine to “enforce” prohibition and change “deviant” behavior? It didn’t work with alcohol in the past, and no one is expecting it to work with cannabis today in Hudspeth County–and the truth is in the telling of every “law-breaker” happily set free so long as the $500 fine is paid. Law enforcement certainly doesn’t want these people clogging up the jails, and it doesn’t want them off the highways either, because every time Willie or anybody else rolls down Interstate 10 there’s a chance to collect another $500. If Hudspeth County could regularly collect $500 from every smoker of the other weed–tobacco–then the county and probably the state of Texas could retire.

So power to Hudspeth County, I say, which is poorer than dirt and home to nothing more than cacti and rattlesnakes and 3,476 people, all of whom could use the extra cash. The county has little water and scant farmland, and the per capita income of $13,806 is half the national average, and 29.8% of the population lives below the poverty line, twice the national average. But what Hudspeth lacks in resources and jobs, it makes up for in highways–specifically “the intersection of Ranch Road 1111, Interstate Highway 10, and U.S. Highway 80, eighty miles southeast of El Paso” in Sierra Blanca (pop. 517) where the Hudspeth County Courthouse is located and Willie got busted at the lucrative check-point on Internstate 10. “Is that marijuana I smell?”

70,000 fines a year for 70,000 “pot citations” issued in Texas is a cool $35-million for counties across the state, rich or poor. And in case you don’t know, because impoverished people tend to get dumped on, after New York City was prohibited from dumping their garbage in the ocean, Hudspeth became the receiving station for 250 tons of their sewage sludge every week for more than a decade, and the stink could be smelled in Sierra Blanca three miles away. This deal was cut between a “mafia linked” Oklahoma company and Texas politicians, but that, of course, is a whole ‘nother kind of scam. So let’s all smile on Hudspeth County for opting for a less odiferous scam of their own choosing. 

Dream What You Write

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                           On this blog I have written about interrogators and torture, Vietnam, my cat, and my son, and then I dreamt about them.  A foreigner was being interrogated in Vietnam while my son and I observed the proceedings. Fortunately, the interrogation was painless, and the Vietnamese interrogator was soft-spoken, urbane, and an all-around nice guy. He uncrinkled a big blue plastic map (it looked and sounded like the poncho I wear when peddling my bike in the rain) and asked where he had landed. The man was immediately transformed into my cat–don’t we wish we could take sudden changes in our lives with the same aplomb as we do in dreams?–and pawed at the general area of Laos.

Then my cat traced its route along a river to a fork, and followed the fork heading south into Vietnam. I told the interrogator that the cat’s story was entirely plausable because I could teach a cat to distinguish left and right forks in a river. This dream didn’t have much emotional content, but the next one about a fellow blogger did: 

A beautiful red-head in a blue satin dress gushed that the night before and before her very eyes little notches suddenly appeared in the lid of an opened tin of tuna, and that it was a clear sign that I must certainly have written a story parrallel to her own on her blog–which I hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to say anything. Because she was so flattered by my effort, she was ready to desert her older middle-aged boyfriend (with thick wavy black hair standing off to the side) for me. I took her in my arms and said, “First blush is first blush, darling, but I’m older than your boyfriend.” She immediately turned into a piece of two-dimensional cardboard, and as her boyfriend carried her off the stage he gnashed his teeth at me and said, “I’m not a hundred years old.” Dork.

I haven’t dreamt about the Rapture yet, or making deals with the devil, or my death, or eating gallons of ice cream–but maybe I will. Wouldn’t it be nice to dream about everything you write? Then we could all write within a very limited range of topics, such as deserted isles with beautiful girls.

I sloshed my way through the surf, exhausted, and up on the beach, and caught a glimpse of them, hundreds of them, sloe-eyed and shy, hiding among the palm trees and in the grasses…

Review: The Best Lighter-Than-Air Reading on WordPress

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Two Priests And A Truck Driver Float Into The Sky

by vivaminutiae

 

“I have been too long gone, but long time readers know that following this blog is like watching a game of cricket. Nothing at all happens for a very long time, then all of a sudden when you least expect it, something very boring happens.

“I kid of course, cricket is fantastic – any game where you play for five days and still often end in a draw is one that this avid procrastinator can’t get enough of. To fall asleep for hours in front of the cricket and awake to find not much has changed – well isn’t that life itself?”

Soaringdragons: So begins a post on vivaminutiae, and it’s one of the best “irrelevant” openings for any article on WordPress that I’ve ever read. The post is about “ballooners,” but the intro is about cricket and the quirkiness of the author. Even avid ballooners would have a hard time figuring out what this post is about were it not for the mention of the “truck driver float” in the title. Then they would be asking, “Why is 6,000 years of human history, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness a metaphor for a cricket match?

And where are the balloons?” But if you’re not a ballooner you really won’t care if vivaminutiae first indulges in a bit of, well, minutiae before getting around to his subject. It’s not a big sin, we don’t think, but there is a chance that like some great authors he may find himself ultimately assigned to the 1st circle of Dante’s Inferno, but we hope not (unless he likes good conversation).

“This is my longest entry so far, and reflects the high (pun intended) esteem in which I hold those to whom it is dedicated: those magnificent men and their floating machines. Because this latest entry in The Horatio Files would like to pay tribute to the daring men who inhabit the rarified air (okay I’ll stop the lame wordplay – okay maybe a couple more, you’ll have to wait for them…) of the thrilling world of the cluster-ballooner.”

Soaringdragons: Cluster-what? Oh, ballooner. (What do you call a gathering of cluster-ballooners at 10,000 feet who are perilously close and in danger of becoming entangled?) This true introduction is short and to the point, but with enough asides and parenthetical comments (as was the entire faux-introduction) to let us all know that this article is going to be full of them–both amusing and bemusing–and rather than slow down the pace or irritate us, we’ll actually look forward to seeing them. Thus with many more delightful asides and general gabbing we are lead into the wonderful world of “cluster-ballooners”–how they go up and how they come down, sometimes very fast so that the actuarial tables for ballooners are a poorer bet than most horse races.

“This is not for the faint-hearted. You’d have to be some kind of ballunatic to even attempt it. Let me introduce Padre Adelir Antonio de Carli.”

Soaringdragons: Re-coining “ballooner” as ballooniere, balloonario, and ballunatic, the author goes into the history of ballooning, which all started with somebody’s “laundry drying in front of the fire,” and then the first public demonstration of a floating device on June 4, 1783, followed in September by the first “manned” test flight with a sheep, a duck and a rooster who looked at each other and said, “Are we going to market, or what?” 

“I’ll admit that ‘ballooner’ doesn’t sound very cool,” vivaminutiae writes, but his description of the adventurous world of ballooners–which is a very small club of your not so average citizens who often stand in need of extensive psychological rewiring–is very cool and a lot of fun.  So take your laptop out to your backyard and sit in a lawnchair, tie a few balloons to it just as Larry Walters below did in 1982, and vicariously enjoy the ride he accidentally took to 16,000 feet with vivaminutiae!

 

Unjustifiable Mayhem

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Medical Fact:  Optimum “levels of estrogen in men are essential for a healthy libido and improved brain function….”

Word Fact: “Malkin: An old diminutive of Matilda; formerly used as a generic term for a kitchen-wench or untidy slut.” Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, New York

American Cowboy Fact: “We watched four boozed-up cowboy types kick a faggot half to death between the pinball machines.” Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

vivacious estrogen

When Barry Bonds hit home-run number seventy in 2001 it was caught by a fan named Charles Murphy who was asked how he felt when he caught it. “The rush of estrogen was incredible,” he said. That’s one of the funniest, and truest, sports lines I’ve ever read, even though many people are confused by it and let it go by like a called third strike. Mr. Murphy’s interviewer didn’t get it either and suggested that he should have said “testosterone.” Wrong.

Well Hung Testosterone Molecule

Yes, we all know that “testosterone is for men” and “estrogen is for women,” but the fact of the matter is that all of us, male or female, actually have a mixed bag, so that even Mike Tyson has a little “girl” in him, albeit hard to find. That Charles said he experienced a spike in estrogen is completely believable because Barry Bonds is the closest thing to SuperMAN in human form, steroids or no steroids, and to have caught the shot off his two-pound, 31-inch-long cannon, the recipient, regardless of sex or sexual orientation, is bound to experience a “rush” of estrogen.

Which brings us to the boy in Florida who wore high heels to school. The principal told him to remove the shoes because even though Riverview High didn’t have pinball machines, he was still going to get his butt whupped if he didn’t get rid of the shoes. “As a principal of a high school…I have to make sure he’s going to be okay,” Principal Heilmann  said. “Anytime anyone goes out from, quote, ‘the norm,’ or anytime anyone wants to make a statement, you have to be willing to take what comes with it.” Apparently the principal wasn’t willing to take what comes with a male student wearing girlaphenalia, so off came the shoes. Is this not the reasoned response that has most of us nodding in agreement, for “boys will be boys,” teasing and beating each other, and, besides, they’re just high-schoolers? Well, I’m not nodding. High-schoolers turn into adults.

Heels, no heels, long hair, short hair, lip gloss, no lip gloss, it’s no big deal one way or the other–the world turns. What is a big deal is the principal telling children that if somebody doesn’t like what they wear or what they draw or how they play the harpsichord or sing the national anthem, they must “be willing to take what comes with it,” and not just criticism, but beatings, rape, or murder by goons, brown shirts, pimply-faced schoolmates or anybody else who has a majority view or official sanction as to what thoughts are proper, what life views are acceptable, or how music should be performed.

Years ago the gay community began voicing its disagreement with the prevailing view that homosexuals could be rightfully beaten or killed simply because their behavior did not conform to or sit well with the majority of society’s members, and before that, Malcolm X was saying much the same thing regarding another community of minority standing. My question is, “Who’s running the school? The principal? Principles of decency instilled by education? Or the student body’s goblins and their hounds?” If the principal says he’s in charge, then why isn’t he passing out tire irons? Malcolm X would have.

Which now brings us to the “slut walk.” Tire irons, effective in the short run, must give way to efforts at education, and that’s what I think the “sluts,” untidy or not, working in kitchens or not, frumpy or not, are trying to tell us. A policeman echoing Principal Heilmann’s “belief in justifiable mayhem” by stating that those women who dress provocatively are responsible for being raped makes as much sense as saying a rich man who wears a Rolex is provoking common citizens to snatch it off his wrist. “You’re under arrest! What’s that? The suit was wearing the Rolex on his wrist? I see. OK, give him back his Rolex and you scram. As for you, keep that Rolex buried in a deep pocket and out of sight. And if I ever see it on your wrist again, I won’t lift a finger to stop the person that steals it from you.”

If Principal Heilmann can’t instill values of decency and acceptance in our children, we should at least be able to expect our police and other public servants to uphold the rights and freedoms of anyone who isn’t committing a felony, regardless of how or where they wear their bras and Rolexes, and that would be a good start, don’t you think? And we do need to start somewhere, otherwise we’ll never stop reading stories about bullies lurking in stadium parking lots and in the stands amidst those fans who dare to catch a home run ball and run the risk of an estrogen spike that sets off the hounds.

I wonder if Charles Murphy was wearing high heels when he caught Barry Bonds’ home run.

Painted Fish (20 Snapshots of Kunming)

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New China and retro-China with a paint job.

Raise the red lantern, a touch of restaurant tradition.

A balloon with a body (L) and balloon-bells (R), in new housing.

Housing is new, old, or really old. This is new.

This is old.

Check out those bars–not on the sidewalk, on the windows all the way up!

This is really old housing getting ready for demolition.

Guarding the crosswalk from the scooters.

Kindergarten wall.

Zoroaster or Bureaucrats, Who Came First?

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Dear loyal reader(s),

I’m replacing the original post for this date, “Free K.M.J. Zoroaster,” because I’ve never liked it except for the last paragraph (see below). I wrote it almost two months ago, and had managed to keep from publishing it simply by writing new posts and queuing them up first. However, it finally made it to the top of the stack (of one) because for the last two weeks I have been embroiled in a paperwork-war with both the American and Chinese governments and so found myself unable to keep ahead of “Zoroaster.”

                                                               

The issues at stake are “time and money,” and if you think dealing with a “freely elected” government is any easier than dealing with a “communist” government, then I’ve got news for you–they are both bureaucracies and a pain in the neck, with a disproportionate number of vindictive little people exercising passive-aggressive tendencies with the methodical precision worthy of a Rommel or Patton and who are able to strain information and withhold vital facts in order to keep you running around in circles for months in a bureaucratic maze of their making, who, as they sit ensconced in their cubicles in front of their computers, remain completely untouchable and are impervious to your arguments, your pleadings, or your threats no matter how rational you are or incensed you become, and who continue drinking their coffee, eating their donuts, chuckling up their sleeves and keeping their supervisors in the dark as to the mayhem they are creating as they fragment and ruin the lives of ordinary citizens, and finally, the coup-de-gras, laughing out loud as they reroute, stifle, dead-end, and otherwise send into oblivion all your attempts to make an official complaint. 

You find yourself confused, exasperated and raging against a Kafkaesque wilderness unable to locate or communicate with any decent or rational human being in the “government.” Helpless and with blood boiling and bubbling with acrimony towards these gnome-like creatures, these bureaucratic minions, and fast succumbing to the numbing realization that they have you about the neck exactly like a pit-bull and that you have no chance against them, you begin to hear yourself silently praying that they really won’t be standing with their computers and donuts next to St. Peter telling him who gets in and who doesn’t as you one day stand in line at the Pearly Gates.

As soon as I have regained my composure I’ll be writing again on every second day of the month.

Home:                       FREE K.M.J. ZOROASTER

(Last paragraph:] Starting a church to make money can make you rich, but starting a religion to change the way the world thinks will get you killed. It should be just the other way around. All the prophets, like all the true poets and artists and philosophers, are iconoclasts. Why else do you think they killed Socrates? Iconoclasts don’t last very long if they gather a following. So do it for the money and run.

[I couldn’t find a picture of Zoroaster, so here’s Krishna with a scrofula of bureaucrats.] 

 

Apocalypse Later

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I almost thought I was reading an actual “news” item until I saw “religious nuts” in your The Hoffman Post report. The American press never says “religious nuts,” “gun nuts,” “Brazil nuts,” or any other kind of nuts, even if the tag fits. And the picture is priceless, except that “father” doesn’t seem to have enough starch in his collar, look how limp it is, so St. Peter might send him back to get it done right–after all, Heaven is not meant for slackers.

“Where are we, Daddy?” “We’re on our way to Heaven, darling.” “But I thought we were on the Tennessee Turnpike.” “Oh, we were, darling, right up to when that semi cut into our lane.” “What is that bright light?” “The Pearly Gates, darling, can’t you see St. Peter?” “Oh, yes, I see him! Why is he holding that big book?” “It has all our names in it.” “Even my little Puddy-Tat’s name?” “No, darling, I’m sorry, but Puddy-Tat’s name won’t be in the ledger.” “Then I’m not going, Daddy.”

The next time there’s a big rapture, I’d like to know about it. Nobody in China even knew it was coming. I found out about it after it happened, or, didn’t happen. Until this particular rapture I had prepared for every other previous rapture that never happened.

I only hope that the Lord is forgiving and knows that I have a near perfect record, rapturally speaking, and it was only because on this particular occassion I happened to be living outside of the American mainstream, the “river of nuts” so to speak, that the rapture snuck right by me. Perhaps if the government would make it a holiday (Holy Day) then maybe we could get our clocks synchronized and every American could get through those Pearly Gates.

What? Only 144,000? Really? Then why did He make so many of us? Oops, I didn’t mean that, Lord, what I meant to say was thank God for making the rapture happen in America and for not letting any Chinese in, otherwise it’s doubtful that even one American could get in. Americans cannot compete with the Chinese when it comes to standing in line, even the line to Heaven.

After all, have you ever seen Chinese stand in line for stamps, buses, trains, bank tellers or anything else? No, you haven’t. You know why not? Because they don’t stand in line and they don’t follow the rules. They just push and squirm until they’re suddenly in front of you and you’re left standing there holding your number, but the Doors have already closed. That’s how it works in China.

As reported in the above post, “According to Harold Camping, May 21 was an ‘invisible judgement day.'” Wait a big gosh darn minute here! If it already happened, no matter how invisible it was, it means that the 144,000 have already left the earth, but the rest of us got left behind, including Mr. Camping. And if Mr. Camping missed the boat, ark, whatever, that’s completely inconceivable because he was the first one to lay odds that May 21st was the day, even though historically nothing has ever happened on May 21st and it’s as though May 21st had never even existed until he brought it up–check your calendar.

And wait another gosh darn minute! If 144,000 souls disappeared over the weekend, they certainly weren’t Americans because we would have noticed it–and our churches are still full! The only place I know of that routinely has 144,000 people missing, and they’re never brought to mind, is China because there are too many people in this country as it is.  So, maybe God in His infinite wisdom and mercy decided to let the Chinese in, after all.

But my question is, really, who’s selling whom a bag of tits?

 

The above was written as a comment on the below blog’s post:    http://drudgeretort.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/new-date-for-apocalypse/

Seeing Red in China as Tyke Gets Mowed Down

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What foreign residents in China see as “unproductive” or “non-essential” work, the Chinese themselves might see as essential, even if only in terms of helping the aged or the unemployable find “work.” If this is the motivation, then it seems more benevolent than other practices that artificially swell the ranks of the employed, including feather bedding that has occured in many nations, including those of the West.

Unlike certain cities in east China, here in Kunming we don’t yet have such “make work jobs” as bus line “monitors” to maintain order and keep people from crushing each other as they get on city buses, but maybe we should! Occasionally gangs of pick-pockets will push people boarding the bus until they’re squeezed so tight that they can neither move nor feel their personal items being stolen. Maybe if the bus monitors would wield those long white truncheons in the same way train station guards do in order to bop unruly passengers on the head who are pushing and hopping barriers to board trains, the bus monitors would be earning their keep and doing everyone a service.

We do have supermarket receipt stampers who, as you say, are everywhere in China. I can only surmise as to why they stamp sales receipts all day: Someone buys fifty dollars worth of goods and goes out and dumps them in his car. Then he goes back into the store with the empty sacks and fills them up again with the exact same goods and walks out the door showing the unstamped receipt to anyone who asks. This might sound ridiculous at first blush, but thieves in China, as anywhere else, are extremely creative, though I would think that in terms of contributing to the GDP they rank near the bottom.

One of the more tiring jobs I used to wonder at was the long hours young women had to  (and still do) stand at the doors of restaurants and greet customers who come to dine. If it were a career extending beyond youth it would mean varicose veins and other leg problems, but since it isn’t long term it just means extreme boredom and fatigue. Whether or not this kind of job has an efficiency quotient, I’m not sure.

Of another sort of work, old women would sweep the streets and old couples in residential compounds would sell bicycle parking stubs in the day and sleep at night in barred enclosures with the bicycles. It was a way for the aged and unemployed with very limited prospects to gain a livelihood. But these jobs are disappearing rapidly as water trucks and mechanized street sweepers clean city streets and cadres of young men in pressed uniforms make the rounds to protect the homes and vehicles of city residents.

Reading news stories over the weekend I came across something that made me think that there might be many employed individuals in America who are simply “making work,” too. Two young people ostensibly “working” as reporters for the New York Post, Rebecca and C.J. (last names withheld to protect them from embarrassment) are able to misuse the English language–the primary tool of their trade–with the same wild abandon as Chinese students, but Chinese have the excuse that English is not their native language.

B’klyn tyke mowed down  By REBECCA HARSHBARGER and C.J. SULLIVAN (capital letters not mine)

“A 5-year-old boy…was mowed down…by a meat-delivery truck…”

Vain and feckless is the only way to describe Rebecca and C.J.’s use of the term “mowed down.” You can’t accidentally mow down a lone child on a Big Wheels tricycle. The object of the verb mow down is usually a large number of something, anything, like soldiers charging your position or blades of grass standing between you and a televised football game. Mowing down is intentional, and often indiscriminate, not accidental. The only way the “tyke” could have been mowed down was if he and a half-dozen of his buddies were blocking the road with fixed bayonets, then you could say the truck mowed them down.

In addition, such “reporting” is both brazen and reckless, because how do you think the parents of the child felt when they read that their baby was “mowed down” in the street? I think Rebecca and C.J. should be sent over to Wal-Mart to stamp shopping receipts for the rest of the day.

The above was written as a comment on the below blog’s post: http://seeingredinchina.com/2011/05/17/four-jobs-that-highlight-china%e2%80%99s-inefficiency/