I have agreed in principle to spending USD $80.00 for a Thanksgiving turkey. What kind of sucker pays almost a C-note for a turkey? The kind that would come on his own blog and brag about it is what kind. Being the lone American bachelor in my school means I have acquired guilt over never preparing food when we have parties and shindigs. To remedy this, I am responding to my slacker guilt the proper American way--by buying myself out of it. But here in China with the same $80.00 I can buy:

1--Roundtrip Airline ticket to Hong Kong. I can go out to nice restaurants and hangouts where I can practice the word for pretentious in both Mandarin and Cantonese. Hey, Hong Kong! Anything you can do, Shenzhen can do better, and cheaper, all without creating ten new boy bands in the process.

330--Trips to the supermarket on Bus 39 (Authentic Chinese Bus smell is gratis).

330--Trips back from the supermarket on Bus 39 (Authentic Chinese Bus smell that is now permeating my groceries...gratis).

26--Massages by a blind guy with big forearms. He will give an amazing massage; he won't relinquish his cigarette. Watching the cherry burn on the end of his cigarette while he massages foreign guys draws large crowds of cheering, betting fans. Advantages of having a blind masseuse: he doesn't snicker at the large "Hansen Rules" tattoo covering my back. Hey we have all done things we are ashamed of.

94--DVD's. All of them pirated. Most are filmed from the rear of a theater filled with 128-Ounce Big Gulp slurping, middle-aged men with miniature bladders, huge prostrates, and tall hats by a nervous, asthmatic cameraman who chews popcorn with his mouth open and kills the boredom by playing with the zoom button. Half of them will have their real closing credits inexplicably replaced by the closing credits to that classic art house film Ski School.

2--Chinese Bio-Engineers/Rocket Scientists working round the clock for one month straight to clone the same turkey then send it into space for one complete orbit of the earth. That's right and for only eighty bucks. Is it that labor is so cheap in China or so expensive at NASA? Everybody knows NASA uses all those extra billions on fancy catering and new videogames for their geeks...er I mean employees. And what do we have to show for it? Velcro. I say you can have your turkey orbit the earth, and eat it too.

A few other things for those people that care (if your name isn’t Mom you don’t have to read any more):

I’m very new to this Blog thing (obviously), but I didn’t realize until yesterday half the pictures I post on here don’t work. I am learning though. PhotoShop will be my friend. Today, I spent two hours reading about HTML! (stupid proud grin) Coming soon is a text box to the side that will always contain something stupid and inane about me and by me (I’ll make sure it’s in a box so you can separate it from the rest of my posts). 

Also, as of yesterday I’m a subscriber to the website Questia. Questia allows you access to over 47, 000 entire books and 375,000 magazine and journal entries. I can feel myself getting smarter every time I say the word Questia. Why should you care? With all this research at my fingertips, it means fewer posts about my nose hair.

I got the entire menu of my favorite restaurant (which I talked about here) translated into Pinyin and English. Thanks, Xu Mingji! This restaurant is within walking distance where I live, and now I get to enjoy new dishes while practicing their Chinese names. I’m sure this will result in me gaining weight. But now it means that the other foreigners and I can stop ordering beef stew with eggs and tomatoes every…single… time we go there (which is every day for me). Variety is good.

My Asian acting career begins next weekend. I will not have a speaking part. Because I am playing the part of a knife-throwing scuba diver, this came as no surprise to me. In my vast knife-throwing scuba diving experience, I’ve found speaking underwater to be downright tricky.