Even boingboing has picked up the story of the vendetta against the Sex and Shanghai blogger. The story has now been covered in the Guardian – “Chinese internet vigilantes have launched a hunt for a self-professed British bounder who has sparked outrage by blogging about his seduction of women in Shanghai … traffic on the Sex and Shanghai blog has surged from 500 hits to more than 17,000, thanks to a swarm of castration threats, anti-British rants and attacks on women who sleep with foreigners” – and blogger Avant Game says it is an example of a term she has come up with – chinavenging.

And this quote from the same article in the Guardian:

Trial by virtual lynching has become the norm in China’s cyberspace,” Raymond Zhou wrote in a comment article in China Daily after previous mass campaigns. He added: “Online ‘flaming’ wars exist everywhere, facilitated by anonymity. But in China they may have a self-propelling force that sweeps thousands, sometimes millions, into a frenzy. It is nearly impossible, even for the most respected scholars, to give voice to dissension.”

So, tattoo or not to tattoo? I figured since I’ve already got two Chinese dragons (one spitting fireballs, one playing electric guitar, a Thai snake, a yin yang circle, and a couple of birds done by a Buddhist monk, I should go in a different direction. I thought about images that I have always loved. I settled on this deer skull from the painting Summer Days by Georgia O’Keefe.

I can’t say what she had in mind when she painted it. But it makes me think of the old American West, the wide open spaces, the myths and legends of that time, life and death. I have a poster of this painting in my flat and every time I look at it, it makes me dream of an era that resonates with me even though it was before my time. On my left breast. Here’s the result, I’m quite happy with it though maybe I will add the flowers at a later time:

Unfortunately Jimmy won’t have time to take me to Wat Bang Phra for another tattoo from the monk, so that will have to wait till my next visit.

Responding to a comment, the seafood market that I go to is on Sukhumvit Soi 7. It’s on the right hand side, abou 25 yards or so down the Soi, after the New Wave Bar and before the Park Hotel and across from the Biergarden. If you’re not staying in walking distance, it’s a very short stroll from the Nana BTS station.

I meant to get a picture of our dinner from last night before we dug into it, but things came out one at a time, so here it is after we had already started digging in, awkwardly cropped to omit faces. Tom yum soup, fish cakes, a prawn dish, fish with veggies, clams, some salad, fried rice and steamed rice, water – all really fresh, all delicious, dinner for four at 1,000 baht or about US$26.

There is a more famous, touristy seafood market on Soi 24. Located inside a former supermarket, it’s a single restaurant, not a collection of small stalls like the Soi 7 one. It also costs 3 or 4 times more!

A few years back, I had raw oysters at the Soi 7 market and got really violently ill, bad enough that I had to go to the emergency room at Bumrungrad. Talking to the doctor, I explained that I go to Soi 7 because it’s so much cheaper. “What about if you add in the cost of the doctor afterwards,” he asked. “Still cheaper!” Lesson learned, I don’t get any raw food there any more.

Re-educating Miss Dee pulls the plug. She will be missed.

The Sex and Shanghai witchhunt continues to intensify. Roland has updated his post with links to other blog and media coverage. Meanwhile Chinabounder has made Sex & Shanghai invitation only, hence no link here.

Bruce Springsteen says his marriage is okay. I feel much better now.

A procession of talentless and formerly talented HK stars march in protest against a magazine showing a picture of another talentless star in her brassiere. God forbid they might actually protest anything meaningful.

This cracks me up. Paris Hilton asked Ricky Gervais if she could guest on his series Extras. When he turned her down, she told a newspaper, “I guess he’s obviously scared of starring alongside an A-lister.” Guests lined up for the second series include B-listers Orlando Bloom, David Bowie, Daniel Radcliffe, Ian McKellen.

I love this. Matt Stone claims that U.S. marines guarding Saddam Hussein have made him repeatedly watch the South Park movie, in which Saddam dies, goes to hell, and becomes Satan’s bossy homosexual lover. Nice to know the Marines have good taste.

Speaking of taste and Paris, good to see that her much hyped album isn’t selling. Maybe we’ll be spared a second helping.

This could be excellent – Universal Music will make its entire music library available for free downloading on the web. You must watch a 90 second ad for each song you download (18 minutes for a 12 song album) and there’s heavy DRM. But still, could be worth it.

Variety (paid subscription required) reports that police in Beijing have closed over 3,000 shops selling pirate DVDs. Can you believe there were over 3,000 DVD shops in just one city? That must mean there are 100,000 shops still open around the rest of the country. And not a single disc replicator was shut down.

Rob Corddry pays tribute to himself on his last day on the Daily Show. He was the last the the three C’s to leave – Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert being the other two – and most of the new talent on the show is just not at their level. But for now, Daily Show still roolz.

I am seriously thinking about buying one of these.

Bosch makes an iPod dock that requires you to go out and buy an iPod dock to use. Yeah, doesn’t make sense to me either. But it looks fuckin’ sweet.

And I think I gotta buy one of these for my dogs:

Sean John changes his name from P. Diddy to Pee Did He?

And on that note …

Received a call today from buddy Justin of Shenzhen Zen and myriad other accomplishments and activities. He asked me to post the following news here – hopefully many of his friends and fans also read this blog.

Last Thursday, Justin suffered a mild heart attack. The good news is that it was mild. There was no permanent damage. They performed an angiogram but he didn’t need an angioplasty. He’s out of the hospital and will be resting in Shenzhen this weekend.

I could not spend a long time on the phone with him but I asked him to take this as a wake-up call and cut back on his smoking, which is definitely a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

At any rate, I’m sure that all of you join me in wishing our very good friend a speedy recovery back to his usual full-on gonzoness.

Last night hung out at Jimmy Wong’s for a bit. Flipped through some books, showed him an idea I had but wasn’t completely in love with. I was tired and it just seemed like I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted or where I wanted it. Jimmy told me to come back tonight and we could try to sketch out a few things.

One choice is a drawing someone did for me – a guitar with “Spike” overlayed. But the background as it stands is too gushy and I already have a Fender strat on my arm (being played by a dragon) and maybe one guitar is enough. I saw a drawing of a “G” clef that was kind of detailed like a snakeskin which was nice but was it nice enough? Then I have always loved Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings of cattle skulls in the sky over the prairie … a large one covering my back? A small one on my chest? That might do. One of Salvador Dali’s melting clocks over my shoulder?

This young English guy was there, already well covered with tattoos and getting yet more. He had a line of fire along the side of one foot and a line of water along the side of the other, interesting.

I do know I want another temple tattoo and and I know what I want and fairly sure where I want it. But Jimmy’s not sure he can take me there this week. He offered to write down the address so that I can show it to a taxi driver, but without someone there to translate for me at the temple, I’m not confident that I could get exactly what I’m looking for, so might have to take a raincheck on that.

Do I want to switch to the beta of the new blogger? No idea.

Anyway, two very good days in Bangkok so far. Sunday I went shopping at MBK. Sure I could go to Siam Paragon, the largest shopping mall in Southeast Asia, to have the privilege of buying the same items I can buy in every shopping mall in HK. But I prefer the thousands of tiny stalls holding untold unique goodness in MBK. And, as opposed to Chatuchak or Pratunam, I can do it all in air conditioned splendor.

After a couple of hours of shopping, clearly the obvious choice was massage. I go to this place on Sukhumvit Soi 11 called, I think, Baan Phua. A two hour Thai style massage there costs about US$10 and they do a very nice job.

Then back to the seafood market on Soi 7. Flipping through one of the picture menus, I decided on fried sea bass with mango sauce. When the woman brought the fish to me, it was fried sea bass all right, but no sauce, just some peanuts sprinkled on top. “Where’s my mango sauce?” “This better, you try.” Well, it was fresh and tasty to be sure, but with just a little bowl of fish sauce and a bowl of soy sauce heavily laced with Thai chilis, the fish was kind of dry. But I can’t complain about an entire fried fish, a bowl of vegetable fried rice and a bottle of water for US$9, can I?

Today, about half the country is wearing yellow polo shirts, emblazoned either with a royal insignia or “I heart the king” (in Thai). It’s the 61st anniversary of the king’s succession to the throne and this is one of the few places on earth where the people genuinely love their king.

Visiting a dental clinic, I noticed a very cute woman sitting in one of the offices and thought to myself, “I hope she’s a dentist and I hope she’s mine.” Yes and yes. We chatted for awhile. It seems that she is going to HK this weekend for some kind of dental convention. She asked me about the weather in HK and I told her hot, humid and polluted. I said it would be more uncomfortable walking around in HK this time of year than Bangkok. “I guess I will need to wear my bikini then!” Oh my. Later, noticing my Harley t-shirt, she asked if I like choppers and started telling me all about her dad’s chopper. She never said “bike” or “hog” or “motorcycle,” she kept saying “chopper.” Now I wanna go back to HK early and be her tour guide. Sigh.

Oh, sidenote – they had one of these x-ray machines that spins around your face, doing a full mouth x-ray in one shot. When the tech turned it on and it started spinning, it also started playing “It’s a Small World After All.” It was all I could do to keep myself from cracking up and ruining the photo.

Lunch at the Landmark Cafe. Passed it thousands of times, never stopped to eat there till today, but I was in the mood for western food and wanted to sit outside so I could smoke. Chicken ceasar focaccia – amazing bread baked with olives, herbs and cheese, what seemed like a half pound of white meat chicken and 8 or 10 slices of bacon. Didn’t suck.

After that, a visit to one of the hair/massage salons along Sukhumvit. I always choose the same one, because there’s a beautiful woman who seems to like me working in one of them and I hadn’t seen her in 5 months. As I walked in, she jumped out of her chair, ran over to me and jumped on me, legs wrapping around my waist, almost knocking me to the ground. She noticed that I was wearing a gold chain and asked if that meant I now had a Thai wife. Honesty sometimes being the best policy, I told her that I now have a Thai girlfriend in HK. She still wants me to take her to dinner and take her shopping.

At any rate, foot massage, shave, pedicure, manicure, facial. At these prices, why not spoil myself?

Back to the room to rest and now it’s 10 PM, time for a late dinner and then discuss tattoos with Jimmy.

I love this place.

I always thought Beyonce was relatively normal, at least compared to the Mariah Careys and Whitney Houstons of the world – until now. Here is the cover of her new album:

Note the title of said album – B’day. Every time I think of the title, I think “bidet”. A whole album about how clean her ass is? Surely she had to know.

Here’s the cover of the second single, to which all I can say is, WTF?

Ring the alarm boys, Beyonce is plunging over the deep end.

Hmmm …. I suppose most of you have noted that I have been getting back into blogging more personal stuff recently. Dipping a toe into the water, if you will. I woke up this morning with the idea that I would dip in yet another toe, but several things have caught my eye that give me reason for pause.

The first was a post by Mirebella, who wrote in part:

I have come to a decision that I will no longer be able to blog with the candid candor I have been able to – hiding behind a cloak of anonymity and all that. I might return under a different pseudonym but for now – I will be on the lie – low.

And this is not the only post along those lines that I have run across in recent weeks.

We like to think about the Internet as this vast expanse in which it is possible to bare our souls while at the same time remaining anonymous. But as I have come to realize, if you are writing a personal blog, it really takes a high level of talent to be able to do that successfully. Someone like Hemlock seems to be more the exception than the rule – I have often sat around with other HKers, bloggers and otherwise, and they’ll say “I think I know who he is” or “He has to be someone I know, but who?” No one I know has a clue who he is.

For me, while I have not used my real name or the real names of the people I associate with, I do use the names of real places and have given plenty of clues as to where I work. As there are precious few gweilos in my office, it would not take a great deal of mental power to identify me, if someone was so inclined.

While the blog had yet to create any problems for me in the “real” world, I came to realize that I have been lucky so far and that someday a problem could really occur. My lifestyle is not “normal” by most peoples’ definitions and what I write about could be highly offensive to some people whose moral code differs from mine. I had to think about what I receive in return for blogging and wonder if that was worth the risk.

What caught my eye this morning was two connected posts on two different blogs that illustrate the risks involved with opening up your life in such a public manner.

The first is this post on EastSouthWestNorth, in which Roland translates a Chinese article on a westerner blogging about his sexual experiences in Shanghai. The translated article starts out this way:

Today, with tremendous anger, I will tell you the story of an immoral foreigner and I call upon all Chinese compatriots to get together and kick this immoral foreigner out of China.

That’s powerful stuff. Further down within that article, the writer lists all the clues that the western blogger has used to possibly identify himself. Said writer may have used aliases for the women and the places he frequents but one fact remains – unless he is really thought this through, then he is clearly a teacher in Shanghai who has taught at several universities, so there is at least that one valid clue.

Chinabounder responds in this post. Most of the post is spent refuting individual points that the Chinese blogger has made and defending himself. He writes, “Listen to yourself, Zhang Jiehai, listen to yourself.”

He’s missing something critical. Now I don’t mean to be offensive but I realize what I’m about to write in this paragraph will offend people. So be it. In my experience, Chinese people, specifically people in the PRC who have lived their entire lives in China, do not think as we do. Their cultural backgrounds and the educational system in China have combined in a way that results in their drawing different conclusions to things than westerners, a different way of looking at things, different ways of rationalizing. Note that I am not saying that they are right or wrong, I am just saying this is how it is. And it is no different from some American growing up in some rural part of the U.S. ending up with some irrational fear or hatred of anything different from what he or she has experienced.

I can recall reading about more than a few instances of people in China rising up in mobs for what to outsiders may seem irrational reasons. Why are they bothered by this, we think, it’s so trivial – to us. By denying the validity of what to them is of critical importance we close the opportunity for any rational debate, building walls higher and stronger rather than knocking them down.

Don’t forget that China is so freaking huge that if just one tenth of one percent of the population gets pissed off over some perceived indignity (e.g. someone saying that Taiwan is independent, the Japanese PM visiting that shrine or a video someone has posted on YouTube of someone insulting someone on the street), well that’s still a million and a half pissed-off people. That’s not a number to sneeze at.

Roland notes that the Chinese blog post has been reproduced around the world. He further notes that he believes this backlash was inevitable because “the foreigner’s blog was obnoxious and clearly intended to arouse such a response.”

I’m not sure that Chinabounder did intend to get such a response but I do agree this was bound to happen. I think he thought that he was flying below the radar – in no small part because blogspot was blocked in China and local people had little interest in English blogs. But blogspot isn’t blocked in China anymore (at least temporarily) and I think it’s inevitable that at least some of the millions of Chinese studying English would take an interest in what the English language blogniverse is saying about them.

What neither Roland nor Chinabounder mention is the fact that Chinabounder’s “hobby” (if you will) probably does not differ from that of many other western teachers in China. So some who are innocent (at least in terms of publicizing what they do) may fall under suspicion as well.

If I was Chinabounder, I would think long and hard about what he receives in return for blogging and if that is indeed worth the risk. It would be one thing to endure such a risk if one was blogging about democracy, freedom of speech, human rights, activism and so on. But all he’s doing is blogging about how often he’s getting laid by how many women and how he’s so much better in bed than Chinese men. Is it really worth it?

Oh, the title of this post, which I think is clever, is a reference to Chinabounder once taking a woman to a restaurant called Le Garcon Chinois. The Chinese blogger refers to it as a Japanese restaurant when in fact it is a Spanish restaurant, despite the French name. And in some probably obscure and accidental way, it would seem to reference Chinabounder’s opinion of Chinese men – at least in their treatment of women.

Yes, it’s true. In China women can often seem undervalued. There are a million tales of female babies being abandoned because families wanted a son under the one child rule. Women are abused in many walks of life in China. But as a stereotype it’s only partially true as more and more Chinese women are becoming empowered. And it’s no different from other parts of the world, including the U.S., where some men treat some women horrifically.

So, back to me. I’d like to think I’m different from Chinabounder in at least some ways. After all, I’m in Hong Kong, not the PRC proper. I write about the women I’m with as human beings and when I write that some men behave badly towards them, I am writing about westerners as well as Asians. Of course, to some people that does not matter and no amount of rationalization from me would change their minds.

So while I am tempted to write about how I spent last evening (and this morning), I still cannot answer the question, “what do I receive in return for writing about this?” Or the question, “why am I writing about this?”

I’ll write about some other stuff later.

On the way home from work, my usual electronics habit got the better of me and I stopped off in Wanchai to look at cameras. I looked at some different models from Canon and also at the Sony Alpha DSLR. What stopped me from the DSLR was the size – I just know if I get something that big and heavy, it won’t be something that I always carry with me. A “prosumer” camera seemed like a potential alternative. I didn’t like the Canon S3 IS because a 2 inch screen is just too small for my old eyes. I know the Powershot A700 is going to be replaced soon so that was out. The guy was trying to steer me towards Panasonic but I’d read some questionable reviews. Finally I went for small size and got the Canon Ixus 800. It’s really fast and I’m mostly happy with the first couple of dozen shots.

Friday night, I was at a loss for dinner, T suggested Japanese. That made it a no-brainer – Sushi Hiro in Causeway Bay. Since they don’t speak much English there and T is fairly fluent in Japanese, I asked her to make the reservation. Since it was already Friday night, I didn’t really think we’d be able to get a table, but we were able to get a 9:30 booking, and they still had plenty of stuff left to choose from, including the best uni I’ve ever had outside of Japan. I was a bit disappointed with the oh-toro but the scallops were magnificent and the aji tataki was superb as always. Should have taken a photo of the food when it was first brought out but forgot, here it is more than halfway gone:

Overall, we ordered way too much, pushed ourselves to finish everything and, combined with the sake, it was all we could do after dinner to make it home, shove a movie into the DVD player and veg out.

There was a question that had been on my mind all day but I didn’t want to ask because I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to know the answer. She answered it in the taxi ride back home, volunteering the information without my ever bringing up the subject, telling me that since she’s returned to HK I’m the only one she’s been with. Not as a matter of conscious choice, just that’s the way the ball sometimes bounces.

It would seem we are in this odd place where each of us doesn’t really want the other to go with anyone else while knowing we are each likely to do that, albeit for different reasons. She kind of hinted that she prefers that while I’m in Thailand I go with someone different each time rather than staying with the same person.

On a different note, she told me that a certain Filipino waitress that we both know will be in Bangkok while I am here – for a nose job. She asked her if she had my number and told her she should call me while she’s here, but I’ll be surprised if she does.

Saturday was a good day all around. Even though my flight tickets were “bought” using miles, I received a free upgrade to business class. Music on the trip down was primarily the new Dylan album, which I might write more about after a few more listens but initial impressions are a mixed bag – some stuff as strong as anything he’s ever done, other stuff still lyrically strong but musically, well, odd. You may or may not know that he’s doing a weekly radio show on satellite radio in the US, giving little musical history lessons each week, and he seems to be trying to incorporate that tradition into this album and I think the results are mixed. There’s something that’s kind of country waltz, another thing that’s, for lack of a better term, good-timey vaudevillian, and he takes the old blues song “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” and completely re-writes the words (and gives himself sole songwriting credit).

The queues in the airport were shorter than usual, so immigration was not too painful. And there were dozens of taxis lined up so I could get a meter taxi right with no wait – sometimes I’ll get a car from one of the stands as you exit the airport and pay basically three times more than a regular taxi just to avoid the line that usually stretches back into the terminal.

The taxi I got had huge signs plastered on the rear window – “We heart farang! We speak English!” The driver was typically Thai, typically friendly. He needed to make a pit stop halfway through the ride. Anywhere else, I might have gotten upset over him pulling over and running into a toilet while the meter was running but when you gotta go you gotta go and I figured at most it was going to cost me US$1 more, plus it was a chance for me to get out and have a smoke.

As soon as I got to the hotel and unpacked, I practically ran over to the seafood market on Soi 7 for some barbecued river prawns and some Thai fried rice which I mixed with fish sauce for a really tasty dinner.

Next over to Gulliver, settled in for some drinks and to see if any of the people I know who usually hang out there would show up. None did but two young ladies insisted on introducing themselves to me. By 10, I was a little bit drunk and a lot tired and decided I couldn’t wait for Jimmy Wong to show up at his shop – he’s rarely there before 11, sometimes not till midnight. I went over to his daughter Joy’s shop to say hi, then back to Gulliver, and then decided to show my two new friends all the conveniences of my hotel, stopping at 7-11 to grab some drinks, snacks and other essential supplies first.

Today the skies are grey, which means some shopping and a massage followed by more seafood and …

From kottke.org:

From boingboing:

From D-Listed, rapper Ne-Yo getting some backstage relief from a backup dancer. Extremely NSFW.

Trumpet player Maynard Ferguson dead at 78, “identified with ear-piercing power and dizzying high notes.” Also dead, Bruce Gary, drummer for the Knack; Ed Thrasher, WB art director who designed album covers that defined multiple eras – Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Doobie Bros, Prince.

Weird Al is back. “Don’t Download This Song.” Animation by Bill Plympton.

What are the three web sites Stephen Colbert can’t live without? Here.

Mixed reviews for OutKast’s movie Idlewild. Trailer looks darned good, though so far I’m not that impressed with the album. Co-stars Terrence Howard, Cicely Tyson, Macy Gray, Ben Vereen, Patti LaBelle, Ving Rhames. Somehow I get the feeling this isn’t going to screen in Hongkie Town.