ART OF EUROPE

Once from China - by nate

11.26.2001

nader's right, when you stop n think about it. if you lend me money, well, fuck yeah, if you lend my sicilian ass money, and i charge you yet more money to return to you that money which you've lent me, then that, brother, is extortion.

now then, you loan me money and someone makes my payment for me to keep my kneecaps in socket and swing ( between girls at the moment but that still doesn't rule out the possibility a missionary or atheistic samaritan could take an overly vested interest in preserving my ability to kneel on said knees ) do you then pay them the extra for the trouble gone to, or do they pay you.

it seems like a small thing, when it's your one single lonely one dollar service charge one time a day. but when it's their 70,000 one dollar service charges a day, each day, every day, well then these things too do add up.

so the construction bank of china's atm system was down this weekend. i'd been hoping, wearing that halfwry smile that belies the appreciation of an irony at one's own expense, that she and i would spend the evening trying to find an atm in working order. in the cold of the night and the wind.

there's another a them halfwry smiles on my face, now that i know failure to have been system wide.

instead me sans she in the cold and the night and the wind shivering and shaking and shirking security as everyone comes out and looks at or says something, the most telling a course being "you wait 那个妹妹." then "对对" and "对对" in the cold and the night and the wind., shivering and shaking and shirking security, counting to one hundred twice over twice over, then catching up just in time to catch up, then back into the cold and the night and the wind, head spinning so fast that, for one day, something other than the air pollution of a second world country comes between me and seeing the stars in interstellar space.

on friday neil and peter and me drank xingcheng out a chrysanthemum beer. saturday, before they'd managed to replace the chrysanthemum, steve and scott and me drank em out a corona.

heineken when we go again.

ﻃﻌﻧ