If I Get To The Gym, I Write About Exercise. If Not...Whatever

I had a bit of a strange St. Paddy’s day. It didn’t include any Jameson’s, which I’m pretty sure is a sin. I was too busy to work out, which is sad. I’m thinking about moving to Iowa so I can vote for Chuck Grassley. And I read about the last Chinese eunuch. I don’t know anything about whiskey, so I don’t know if Jameson’s Irish whiskey is good or rot gut or somewhere in between. I do know that it’s Catholic, and it’s the drink of choice for Jimmy McNulty and Jenna Jameson, so it’s good enough for me.

Chuck Grassley is a Republican congressman from Iowa who thinks the executives from AIG that used bailout money to pay themselves bonuses should do the Japanese thing and publicly apologize and either resign or commit ritual suicide. I think this is a brilliant idea. I’ve had this idea, myself. The reason none of these executives seem to understand why everyone is outraged at their behavior is because they have no blood in the game. It’s all numbers, hot tubs, and Norwegian hookers to them. Sometimes, as a last resort, an ass whoopin’ is the only option. In this case the carrot hasn’t worked; it’s time to try the stick.

A biography of the last Chinese eunuch has been translated into English. Dude(?) died in 1996 at the age of 91. He was castrated as a poor boy with no anesthetic by his father in the hope of gaining political power by serving the emperor, and only males of the royal family were allowed to have their genitals at court. Castration was seen as a quick, if agonizing, path up the social ladder. While he was unconscious, recovering from being maimed, the emperor abdicated the throne. At the time, China was a Japanese colony in all but name. Oh yeah, they stuck a goose quill in his urethra so it wouldn’t close up while he healed. So, all of this was done for nothing. Then during a political upheaval in the sixties his family threw away his pickled “treasure” because any relics from the old world were seen as subversive, so this guy could no longer be “made whole” in the afterlife. I can’t wait for the movie.