Testing testing eee rrr san

China's back there behind me, testing me, throwing bombs into the queazy guts of what's left of who I was before I came. Ultrastitious explosions of irrationality and potential luck. Maybe the fishermen will haul in some tasty poison today. First they scare the crap out of them, then drop their nets in greedy anticipation. Or maybe the bambambamin's from those guys there fashioning a box conceived to house the ruins of a lost civilization, great square walls in which to hold nothing dear. Call it a school if you like. So long as it sounds really big and important, which is all that counts nowadays in the dust of the dreary dynasties. Make it pretty on the outside. Not compelling or provocative. Just comely enough to enclose the rot, keep inmates in, ideas out. Call it education if you like. Or marketing. Or the wave of the future. World be warned, a terrible tsunami is being generated here, conceived by the crumbling foundations of an ancient attempt at living. Nice try. Today it's BMWs and cellphones in every pot. Send your kids off to learn English. Hope they come back with straight black hair and the traditional willingness to knuckle under to the will of the ever-widening maw and paw who inflicted these wounds of culture and optimistic hopelessness upon their children's beautiful brand new hearts and souls. Call it a Development Zone if you like. Call it progress. Call it the end of the world.