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The Great Fuel-Injected Leap Forward
Is China ready for the next stage of capitalism? How about a $400,000, 12-cylinder, 540-horsepower, Corinthian-leathered hunk of lust and envy known as the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti? Michael Paterniti drove one all the way from Beijing to the Gobi desert to find out
Our first morning in China, we got rushed to the hospital. We were whisked up elevators and hurried down hallways as if we were part of some massive emergency. Eventually, we came to rest at a nurses' station, where patients received a steady stream of bananas as good-bye gifts. That's when a nurse hijacked my arm and jerked me straight into gynecology. It said so in Chinese and English above the door. GYNECOLOGY.
Why were we in a hospital at all? That was but one of a dozen questions I had. And what was up with those bananas?
Another smiling nurse entered bearing a tuning fork. Not quite twelve hours in-country and I was going to become the poster boy for unspeakable Chinese human-rights malfeasance. Saying yes to this insane-sounding road trip had been my original sin; now came the punishment.
"My first gynecological exam," I said. "And I am not psyched about the tuning fork."
My bodyguard, who was fluent in Mandarin, asserted himself. The smiling nurse, wearing badge 0308, explained that yes, the office sign read GYNECOLOGY, but this would be a hearing test, and then there would be a vision test... and then: bananas.
So Number 0308 sat me down, struck the tuning fork on a rubber mat (which actually silenced the thing), and held it up to one of my ears from behind. Nothing. Sensing my panic, my bodyguard wriggled into my line of sight and grabbed his right earlobe. I lifted the forefinger of my right hand to indicate that I could hear the vibrations, clear as a bell.
The eye test went the same way, vanquished with solid American teamwork. Soon we had attained the perfect scores reserved for rare superior beings, ourselves.
Mr. Yang, our dour, overcaffeinated fir, herded us into a van and informed us that we were next being taken to a written test. Was it history, economics, literature? Would there be an essay section? I love geography—would there be a map?
No, no, Mr. Yang informed us, this was a driving test, for the Fast Car...the one that waited for us right now in front of the St. Regis Hotel in Beijing. "You may not drive in the People's Republic of China without official Chinese license," he said gravely.
Inside the DMV, we were each handed a pink study pamphlet. We had five minutes to prepare, Mr. Yang said, then the test would begin.
The pamphlet was an eight-panel double-sided foldout with one hundred sample questions, a thicket of arcana, and an answer key in the back. A third of the questions had to do with the meaning of certain traffic signs, some of them familiar, some of them not at all, with possible answers describing this or that odd sign as "Children's play world" or "Hump-shaped road."
One question read:
My personal choice, d.: Whatever "fines blow" traffic policemen wants. Or this one:
Now, with c. being blatantly ridiculous, I would have marked b. or a., as they were really both one and the same. A fully democratized, litigious, capitalist society would seize on b./a. as the only answer, and therefore the question would never be asked in the first place.
Too soon I was summoned to sit before a computer that displayed the questions, and suddenly I was 16 again, back at the Connecticut DMV, sweaty-palmed, throwing guesses. Back then if you failed, you couldn't take the test again for another month. Here...who knew what the consequences would be? Some time in the hoosegow? Next plane home? I tried to consider traffic rules in an openhearted, honest, and wholly un-American way. Miraculously, when I arrived at the eighteenth question, I had statistically locked it up. There was no big celebration, just the thing I like to do when I achieve victory in public: For the two blank-faced DMV bureaucrats, I gave a little tap to the heart and pointed up to heaven.
Here's how i got here : I was sitting at my desk five days ago, watching the bubbles rise in my Coke, when Headquarters called. The line was fuzzy, details were sketchy, but I picked up snatches: dream assignment...Ferrari...road trip...China...answer by tomorrow.
It sounded perfectly wrong. "Whatever it is you just said," said I, "count me in."
Like everyone, I'd been seduced and made paranoid by the onslaught of headlines on China: how they were planning to buy oil fields in Nigeria and market cars in the United States; how the military was on a relentless buildup and how the economy was soon to crack the top four, with no end in sight to its rise. Like most Americans, I, too, was convinced that the Red Dragon had its own sinister plot to take over the world. And that we needed to save ourselves by taking it to them, to convert them, on a mission just like this one.
Now here we were, in the restaurant at the St. Regis, pumping hands with a bunch of Italians, who, as a group, were so...so...good-smelling. Because details had been scant Stateside, I'd entertained visions of a real road trip, one that would begin with the simple exchange of a set of keys, maybe a phone number to call in case of mechanical problems, basically a rental-car kind of hello and good-bye. And then I would light out into the great unknown in search of the real face of China, some mysterious place behind the headlines that would reveal the evil plot that seeks to undo us—a vision, too, that would show us the future. It would require a bodyguard.
But oddly, there was this small herd of Italians, some who'd arrived from their Headquarters, in Italy, as well as others who were apparently here to join us on the road. Now, memory served that there'd been mention of a "Chinese minder" and a "support vehicle." But here I learned that this was going to be more like a military operation. Besides two Ferrari 612 Scagliettis (one driven by us Americanos, the other by two French operatives), there would be a camouflaged Chinese humvee and two vans, occupied by six Chinese operatives, while the Italians, five in all, would ride in two Fiat wagons...along with four photographers.
Jeez. Did you really need that many people along to order a Happy Meal?
I was introduced to the convoy leader and head mechanic, a man named Gigi, who reminded me of a younger, light-haired De Niro, with that same wincing smile. Dressed in a red shirt with a golden dragon on its back, he spoke in the most moving way about the cars. He referred to the 612 as a Magic Car, as if it were a Fabergé egg or a fresco by Fra Angelico.
Among the assembled Italians, though, one man emerged as supreme commander: Mr. Ghini (pronounced guinea). That was his name. He was a most tall, thin, and elegant man, the kind who pulls off bald big-time, wearing a dark sport coat and a disarming smile that beamed a surface joviality to all corners of the room.
Dinner was important to Mr. Ghini. He was Italian, after all. The previous evening, my bodyguard and I had waded into the twilight translations of the Chinese menu: "stinkbug king in mashed garlic," "stewed the halfy weever and weever rolls," "braised swim bladder with shrimp eggs." (The best translation, however, still belongs to a dish that was served during R. Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China, a dish that enthralled his wife, a piece of meat identified in one press report as "lady's quivering buttock.")
But Mr. Ghini didn't want a menu. He collared the waiter and ordered two different pastas: marinara and carbonara for the entire table. This caused great confusion. Lo mein? Yes. Pasta? No. When the waiter insisted it couldn't be done, Mr. Ghini rose in his chair. "Oh, no, no, no!" he said. "Impossible! Get me the chef. Or I'll go back there and make it myself if I have to." No one doubted that, in a moment, Mr. Ghini would be back in the kitchen, aproned, boiling water. The waiter retreated, fearing a massive loss of face, and soon returned with the good news: Yes, the chef would try pasta! "Not try," admonished Mr. Ghini. "Give us your very best!"
Mr. Ghini seemed agitated now. "Everyone thinks we're mad," he declared, paused for confirmation, and when he got none, continued. "This is mad. To dream of driving these cars across China. It's never been done. We've been brought to this point after months of negotiation with the Chinese. Tomorrow we open our dealership in Beijing, our eighth in China." His voice fell to a conspiratorial hush. "The wealth here is fantastic," he said. "But how do you get them to buy?"
The next day revealed the difficulties of the question. At the dealership opening, it was all pomp and circumstance: colorful flowers and balloons and a dragon puppet-thing manned by several Chinese men. A line of wasp-waisted young Chinese women decorated in golden dragon shirts and ripped designer jeans served as eye candy for the passing throngs, most of them male and apparently jobless in Beijing at 10:30 A.M. on a Monday.
Mr. Ghini drifted by, battle-hardened by these cursed openings, and gestured at the flowers. "I feel like I'm at a funeral," he muttered. Then he nodded at the dragon. "Everywhere it's the same: dragons, dragons, dragons!"
The owner of the Beijing dealership was one Mr. Cheng, a billionaire with dyed jet-black hair, made wealthy by his controlling interest in the country's largest jewelry company. One of his underlings stood up now and nervously intoned: "We'd like to welcome the consumers to support us!" But the consumers, at least the ones here on the street, seemed to be waiting silently for the big dragon finale before going back to their begging stations.
That evening Mr. Cheng threw a celebratory fashion show, peopled by an array of models and a crowd of the country's glitterati. Entering, you passed the red and silver 612 Scagliettis, each with a dragon emblazoned on its hood. On a huge pilated screen inside, there were words to capture the night's theme: PERFECT NEVER TOO FAR. The dry ice started up, trancey music floated on jasmined air. Mr. Cheng occupied the emperor's seat of honor as models oozed past, indefatigable apparitions wearing clothes that seemed straight out of a Long Island prom-dress store. One sweetheart wore a strange constellated necklace with a golden orb hovering just beyond her mouth, which she kept pretending to fellate. The crowd was mesmerized.
I didn't understand the complexity of the tie-in—the models, the jewelry, and the cars—or the fetishizing power that beautiful things inspired, especially here in China, where beautiful things were still making their introductions to the new elite and middle classes, until after the show. My bodyguard and I stood by the cars, watching the crowd watching the cars as they'd just watched the models, when Gigi, the head mechanic, approached.
"Tomorrow we begin, eh? The French will have the silver," he said, "and you Americanos will command the red."
"Very good," said I, trying to sound manly and gung ho. "We're ready!"
Something in the way I said it, he took as a threat. "You may be ready, but I'm in charge," he said. "Always. Anyone passes me on the road, it's over!" He made a throat-slashing motion.
"Sure," said I. "Whatever you say."
Gigi reached over and squeezed my shoulder tenderly. "You understand, driving this Magic Car is...is...very special. I have driven around the world. In the desert, at night, playing 'Hotel California." Fantastic! Very special. It's a relationship. It's something indescribable...sexual. Let's just say when you need a friend, the Ferrari is a very good friend."
I nodded—there was something overzealous and almost bipolar about this hombre. "This feeling," said Gigi, "is what we want to bring to China."
Looking on the faces looking hungrily upon the cars, it seemed like the feeling was already here.
I began by riding shotgun to gigi, who drove the red car, the one that bore two flags on its hindquarters, Italian and American, as well as Chinese lettering, or ideograms. In the silver car, with its Italian and French flags, rode the French themselves, their most likable inspector-writer, Stéphane, and their existentially inclined photographer, Dominique, both from their nation's premier Automotive Magazine. We were an MDU (mobile diplomatic unit), shot from the capital to spread peace and understanding, not to mention lust, envy, greed, and low self-esteem.
As we pulled out of the St. Regis parking lot, Gigi wanted to show me a few things about the vehicle. I gave him my most studious expression as he described this or that button—and then I promptly forgot everything. Meanwhile, the convoy made an impressive spectacle of horsepower. People froze on the sidewalk, cabbies bore expressions of wonder, bikers wobbled and fell in prostrated piles, and a mere mortal driving a sad wreck called a Santana gave a thumbs-up and a big smile, suddenly levitating. Gigi commanded all of this, barking orders on his walkie-talkie.
"To Tiananmen," he snapped briskly, referring to the vast, symbolic square-cum-massacre-site, the virtual heart of China, from which power (that of the emperors and, most recently, the Communist Party) has long radiated out over the country.
Soon we slowed to a crawl. In the early rush hour of Beijing, the air held a yellowish fog. Not fog at all, really, but smog. Noxious-smelling. A bath of nitrogen dioxide. A couple of million cars at a standstill and only the occasional merry peasant on a bike. An inverse portrait of ten years ago.
"Tiananmen Square!" Gigi ordered again. His voice was powerful. "For photograph of cars!"
There was a long silence over the walkie-talkie—and then a strange, flat, staticky voice came through: "No Tiananmen."
"Tiananmen," Gigi barked. "Now!"
Again, silence. Then the voice from the Chinese humvee: "No Tiananmen."
It went on like an old vaudevillian routine—Tiananmen, no Tiananmen...Tiananmen, no Tiananmen—until Gigi's face reddened; he laid down the walkie-talkie and, staring almost dreamily through the windshield, murmured, "Fungool!" Then he whimpered for a moment in Italian, picked up the walkie-talkie, and yelled, "Then drive forward!"
So this would be the Dance, the Italians trying to brand their Magic Cars, not just on the people here but by appropriating the country's most significant landmarks. And the Chinese, naives that they were, resisting, as if they didn't want to be branded at all. And once the old Communist censoring instinct kicked in, it was never clear what indeed could be photographed. As I understood it, there was grave worry about shooting factories and "the peasantry" and bridges, which was still an act punishable by twenty years in prison. When we later encountered the Great Wall just north of Beijing, at a place called Badaling—an awesome sight snaking up and down steep mountains, thousands of tourists teeming over it, scaling its steep stairs, amazed to be riding its back—our Red operatives at first wouldn't allow pictures to be taken at all, then relented, but only from our spot on the highway.
The photographers were incensed. They took as many pictures as were takeable from our little patch, then paced the shoulder, kicking dirt, cursing.
"Zees ees insane!" wailed Dominique. "Zee Wall ees up zare, and we are like little creatures down 'ere."
Front-mid-engine rear-wheel-drive four-passenger two-door sedan
PRICE $300,000 and up
DISPLACEMENT 5,748 cc
0-60 MPH 4.2 sec.
TOP SPEED 199 mph
LENGTH 193 in.
WIDTH 77 in.
HEIGHT 52.9 in.
WHEELBASE 116.1 in.
CURB WEIGHT 4,056 lb, 40% lighter than other vehicles of similar dimensions
FUEL CAPACITY 28.53 gal.
HORSEPOWER 540 bhp @ 7,250 rpm
TORQUE 434 ft-lb @ 5,250 rpm
TRANSMISSION Six-speed F1A paddle-shift manual
FRAME The first all-aluminum Ferrari V-12
TRUNK: 8.5 cf, big enough for two golf bags or a specially made six-piece Ferrari luggage set
My bodyguard is an insidious cuss. He's a buddy from home who happens to speak fluent Mandarin. With the shared acknowledgment that, left to my own devices on such a trip, I'd end up eating dog or getting killed or something, he signed on to act as my bodyguard/translator/photographer. And by the end of the first day, he was completely embedded. Yes, he was given to slight sartorial gaffes—beach shorts and open-toe footwear while the others wore safari vests and heavy boots—but at least he was smooth and believable, bandoliered by no less than five cameras. A swashbuckler. Like Frito Bandito. He forged relationships with Gabriela, an Italian photographer, who was on board to make "another coffee-table book," and Dominique, who just wanted his photos to look "beautiful," so that when Stéphane wrote beautiful words about the beautiful car, their "package" would be so overwhelmingly beautiful that it would all be un peu triste, like an Edith Piaf song, and snare the French consumer unawares, with tears in his eyes.
My bodyguard's ace in the hole was his flawless Mandarin, which meant that everyone—the Italians, the Chinese, the French, me—went to him for advice and guidance. Soon he held forth like a Confucian sage when asked to elucidate menu choices or ideograms on a highway map, or when summoned to broker misunderstandings between driving parties.
I, on the other hand, had done nothing to legitimize myself. I'd come here in the perceived role as driver or, if you will, automotive journalist, or perhaps, car tester. All things I knew nothing about. When the talk turned to high-end automobiles, as it often did with this crowd, I heard fancy names but nothing registered. I quickly figured out how to talk the talk, though, repeating the make and model of the car under discussion and adding an ambiguous question mark.
"What's the best car you've ever driven?" might say I, playing offense.
"The Bugatti Veyron 16.4," might say the French operative after much earnest thought.
"The Bugatti Veyron 16.4?" might say I, ambiguously.
"You don't like the Bugatti Veyron 16.4?"
"Well, isn't it a bit...," might say I, letting the sentence trail off.
"That or the Gallardo Spyder. Which I drove in the desert. Death Valley. Fantastique!"
"The Gallardo Spyder?"
"It's a very fine car," might say the French operative defensively.
"Oh yeah," might say I, "who doesn't love that car." And then to qualify: "In the desert."
Once away from Beijing, Gigi switched cars, leaving me in charge of the Red Rocket, with my bodyguard riding shotgun and one of the mechanics in the backseat. About the car. Let's just say that every transcendent thing civilization had dreamed up from the Renaissance on was in evidence. A device used to pick up invisible air signals and convert them to noise called a Radio? Check. Wondrous titanium blowers that tornadoed out hot and cold air on demand, in perfect opposition to the weather outside, called Heater/Air Conditioner? Oh yeah. Overhead light that miraculously illumined when the door opened? Uh-huh. But there was more: The buckskin of the Magic Car, its Corinthian leather, was so soft and yummy it made one want to disrobe and snuggle. The wheel between one's hands was the size of the perfect personal pizza, and there was something about it—that sturdy sense of magisterial power, that hunger sated—you never wanted to let go of.
And yes, it was true: This car just flew. It was like being in a spaceship. One that read your mind. When you asked it to go, it already was. Accelerating effortlessly, eating up road like greyhound on rabbit. The g's pushed you back in your Corinthian leather, like the big, soft hand of the Maker holding you, the pebble, in the velvet saddle of His slingshot, drawing you back, launching you forth. There were things you could imagine doing in this car that were impossible in other cars, and once you'd imagined them you suddenly found yourself doing them. Little wormholes between fast-moving trucks through which you could tunnel, stunts ecuted on the shoulders of the highway—or the High Speed Road, as it was known in China—that were unimaginable anywhere else in the world but, say, among highway suicides in Massachusetts.
One of my very first moves behind the wheel was meant as proof of my competency. A little Top Gun message sent to those in our convoy. On the other side of the guardrail, the lanes leading into Beijing were at a standstill for up to five miles. A logjam of trucks, each one piled like the Grinch's sled with every imaginable thing: hay and coal, goats and mattresses, jackfruit and tires, rusted metal tanks and toxic barrels. On our side of the guardrail, the traffic moved smoothly, and I was running a comfortable fifth in our convoy, fighting the Itchy Foot, remembering, repeating, chanting Gigi's throat-slashing admonition: Anyone passes and it's over! We needed to make time to our first night's stop—300 miles to a town called Hohhot—and someone ahead began to speed up. Before long we were weaving in and out of traffic at seventy, eighty, ninety miles per hour. And I was only in third gear.
This was fun! Like go-karts. Soon I would be crushing my own golden land-speed record, set in college, of 105 mph. But now I just tried to keep up as the line of our convoy lengthened, and suddenly, screened by big trucks out in the second lane, I lost sight of the Fiat in front, and my Foot, with a mind of its own, kept tapping on the accelerator, waiting for Brain to give an all-green. My Foot then prodded the Magic Car, which zoomed cleanly up to the bumper of a big truck and veered to the inside lane in order to pass. But there was another truck there, this time one tilting along much more slowly. We were probably doing eighty-something, heading for a rear-ender with only one option: a vanishing Scaglietti-sized hole, between the truck in the second lane and the one in the slow lane. My Foot said, "Go!" The car took off with an acceleration and velocity like nothing I've felt before, no plane, no steep ski grade, no roller coaster. And I'm going to tell you the truth: I saw the hole vanishing and closed my eyes, gripping the wheel with ghost knuckles, Foot punching the pedal.
That's when my bodyguard looked up, as we nearly slipped under the back end of the truck in front of us—its metal bumper at beheading level—then somehow, miraculously, popped out into the passing lane as the second truck closed the gap to nothing. I felt that chill of near-death, cold blood draining through fingers, arms, legs. The Foot twitched happily, maniacally.
My bodyguard showed nothing, looked down at one of his cameras, then at me, raising an eyebrow. "Dude," he said, "next time you try to kill us, at least let me get a picture of it."
6. Through a Windshield, Darkly
The Italians had advertised our drive as running through the famous grasslands of Inner Mongolia. According to my guidebook, this region held out the promise of a mythical "grass sea," brimming with endless wildflowers, huge Wonderland mushrooms, and a frightening abundance of black toads.
And yet we'd been at it for hours now, traversing an overbrowned, lifeless, power-lined high plain stretching northwest from Beijing that included secret military installations, coal and power plants, dirty villages full of ash heaps and smokestacks, and abandoned cement-worker quarters called danwei, the remnants of Mao's old economy, of the noble peasantry slaving for marbles.
In the days to come, we would pass grottoes and temples, tombs and museums, a host of important, probably magnificent sites bearing witness to China's rich history. We passed an actual in-progress Buddhist funeral, the impression of which was so fleeting and beautiful (the sound of mournful horns fading, colored flags fluttering in the rearview, a crowd bent around a body before cremation) that I nearly broke rank just to pay proper respect. Another time, at night, we passed a figure on a bridge piling, looking down into the river below. Was he aiming to jump? We never found out. We adiosed everyone at eighty miles an hour with no intention of ever stopping, except when someone thought it would look good in a coffee-table book. Gigi, the Generalissimo, showed no flicker of interest in any of it. "Andiamo," he kept yelling into the walkie-talkie. "Go!"
When we did pull over, usually at a gas station, our greeting parties followed the same routine: A dusty crowd would gather around the convoy, converging a bit tentatively at first. They would observe in awe as the Italians emerged in their red-dragon shirts, would notice the Chinese team members in theirs, and then witness the photographers and two mighty drivers, Stéphane the Frenchman and moi, the Americano, confidently striding across the parking lot to the man-potty. Slowly, the crowds would tighten around the Magic Cars. A few did indeed recognize the Prancing Horse—"Ah, Fah-la-lee," is how they said it—but most just gawked because that's what the others did. And then we were off again, vanished in our own cloud of inscrutable dust.
Whatever our outward appearance, relations in the convoy had become pre-Nixonian, the opposite of détente. Skirmishes were general. If this were an experiment in a bell jar or an MTV pilot—to see if four nationalities could coexist on a road trip across Inner Mongolia—the results were a mess. People were muttering under their breath, cussing. Gigi, whose personality shift to Great Dictator had left him isolated even from the Italians, became a favorite target.
In my case, when I'd signed on for fun and high jinks, I hadn't expected to be yelled at all day over a walkie-talkie: "Stay close, Americano! Go right! Attenzione, rocks! Go straight...straight!!" I also thought we might stop once in a while for lunch or sustenance of some kind, but food didn't matter to Gigi. When we did stop, the photographers swarmed to get their shots, in which I starred as driver. Thus, I often found myself alone in the car, starving, parked before some mound of ash, talking myself out of doing something stupid, like gunning the car and precipitating a little chase. At one point, after I tarried a second too long to buy a candy bar, Gigi said, "You Americanos are very strange."
At least I had it better than the French operative, Stéphane, who had been denied the wheel of the silver car, as no one had informed him about the need for a Chinese driver's license, and so he'd missed the gynecological odyssey necessary to procure one. Here he was, his country's preeminent automotive provocateur, and he sat glumly, riding shotgun, as a smiling Gigi, tumescent with pleasure, took over his lover with a gentle hand.
Meanwhile, the photographers were in a swivet about Gigi's authoritative streak, one blurting in a confusion of broken English and bulging veins that he was tired of "eating ass."
Part of the tension stemmed from the dangers of the High Speed Road that had put Gigi on edge. It was brand-new, baby-yak-bottom smooth, an asphalt carpet that when fully completed—in the next months, according to "plans"—would traverse China from the east to the west. On that day, it would surely be an amazing ride, a boon of badly needed infrastructure. It would allow for the transportation of missiles from silo to silo in preparation of subduing the Enemy, as well as the ferrying those $25 DVDs you buy at Target, half the world's laptops, and those glowing swizzle-stick things everyone loves on the Fourth of July.
As yet, however, the road remained an unfinished masterpiece. And beyond its badly translated traffic signs—NO REAR-END COLLUSION, DO NOT TRY FATIGUE DRIVING—it was full of unexpected surprises. Like, you might be driving along, gunning the Magic Car, and the highway would terminate in a huge pile of sand, suggesting another possible question for the honorable driver's test:
Sadly, the High Speed Road wasn't taken seriously by everyone. People, including nice families, sometimes lazily crossed the road as if it were a meadow, and truckers might pull half on the shoulder, park, and then eat lunch beneath their rig. We were constantly passing blue-jumpsuited highway sweepers, bent figures bearing the bamboo tool of their trade, usually stationed near the meridian, often with their posteriors dangerously jutting out in the passing lane, just daring you to take a whack.
Part of the problem also lay with the Communist team, whose apparatchik spokesperson was named Sheno (pronounced in its Anglicized form as shay-no), and who, as guide and translator, had the most contact with the Western contingent. His was the unenviable task of carrying all the bad news to Gigi. Soon my bodyguard and I had nicknamed him Say No. His proficiency at saying no always came in that flat radio monotone, though in person he was youthful and slightly stooped, with a hangdog expression, as if the weight of being the Party's mouthpiece had become a physical affliction.
At the end of the day, our convoy had run into darkness just east of Hohhot, that night's stopping point. The Chinese team had gone ahead, "scouting," but there'd been no radio contact for an hour or so, and now they couldn't be raised by walkie-talkie at all. (Perhaps they were "eating.") Gigi ordered the rest of our convoy to the side of the road, and after a time Gabriele, the most gentle of the Italian operatives, approached our car, cell phone in hand, apoplectic. The Chinese were giving him a good pile of yak crap for not knowing where he was in their damned country when all he knew was that we were sitting on the shoulder of the lightless High Speed Road, with its randomness akin to a game of Russian roulette, one in which 100,000 road fatalities had occurred last year alone.
My bodyguard took the phone. It was Sheno, in that slow, deliberate English, tinged this time with slight disdain. "Ahhhh, so where are yew?" he said. He was the sorority sister larding it on a pledge. Chinese English being an adaptation, notes change from word to word—and syllable to syllable—so that if the question starts fair enough with "where," it then suddenly lilts up, almost as if the question mark ends at "are," only to be followed by a flat, uninflected "yew," as if the speaker has given up.
"We are at marker five-six-six," said my bodyguard slowly, inadvertently mimicking Sheno's inflections to be better understood.
"Let us check map," said Sheno. "We call back in five minutes."
Five minutes later, the phone rang. Sheno again. "Yes, we see exactly where yew are."
"Very good," said my bodyguard, trying to move the conversation to a plan of action. "And where are...yew?"
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then some whispering and the sound of the map shu±ing. "Yes," said Sheno finally, "we do not know where we are."
7. The Most Beautiful Woman in China
Being in mutton territory brought with it certain privileges, like eating at Malaqin, this Hohhot mutton joint. My bodyguard and I had left the team behind, all lobotomized at the desultory hotel restaurant, dreaming of never seeing each other again. And here we were, sucking meat off the bone, a bit chewy but well spiced, washed down with good Chinese beer. The mutton people at the mutton place were friendly and let us stay even as they were trying to close.
"What was that all about?" said I.
"What?" said my bodyguard.
"Today," said I. "Everyone bossing everyone around. And all the photographs. Nine hundred pictures of a car. Car on highway. Car near ash heap. Car passing rickshaw. It's car porn. This isn't a road trip, it's an extended advertisement for the leisure class."
My bodyguard registered surprise, not so much at the idea but rather at my naïveté. "It's like Spinal Tap," he said. "And anyway, everything is an ad."
Yes, sitting there, I partially represented the Patagonia® company, Levi's® jeans, and Merrell® footwear. But what was happening on our most manly trip across China seemed more insidious. Oh, where was the purity? Where were the little black toads wriggling beneath our bare feet? Where were the vast open grasslands? Where were the welcoming yurts and the little human moments? We could not touch you, China, from inside our space-rocket cage! Nor glean your immense sinister plan!
The new Cultural Revolution, unsanctioned by the Communists, was this gimmick, stunt, operation, junket, coffee-table book, madness, whatever you wanted to call it, aimed at smashing the old paradigm. These Magic Cars—all of this extravagance—was meant to leave an indelible imprint, a permanent mark, the size of a giant's hand on one's forehead. It was meant to unleash desire, ratify desire, and then supply that desire. As in: You like the finger-lickin' way that KFC tastes, Chang? It's okay to like chicken; here's 300 more buckets. Or: You dig that sexy car, Lin? It's okay to be sexy, and it will only cost you, with import tas, $445K at our new Beijing dealership.
Yes, the Magic Cars moving across Inner Mongolia were a metaphor for this not-so-new Western capitalist invasion but also, and more potently, they were like an aspirational apparition, the beautiful but unreal woman on the runway who looks once at you hungrily, reflecting back your own image.
After mutton, my bodyguard and I went to a club called New York, New York, a sad disco with the ol' Tommy Hilfiger red-white-and-blue painted on the ceiling and immense, inexplicable pterodactyls hanging overhead. The DJ led the crowd, wearing an aerobic instructor's cordless head mike. He kept shrieking at them to do this or that, get their hands up or whatever, as if everyone needed instruction. Which apparently they did. Except the man who danced shirtless, stage right. He was a ferociously awkward boogie machine. And was everyone here secretly dancing beneath the American flag in New York, New York because they thought of this as Inner Mongolia's closest approximation to America?
When we went to bar number two, we had our first taste of just how hard Inner Mongolia really rocks. It was an open room broken into quadrants hung with silver beads. In the center was a DJ booth, but here the DJ just played a killer menu of trance, dance, and Western disco remis. Again the shirtless men were present, this time maybe twenty of them, over in one section, all dancing together, kind of shuffling and hoofing like wild horses, some with fearsome tiger tattoos traced over the lengths of their backs, all wearing black slacks. Pitchers of Chivas were being inhaled. The bartenders would empty an entire bottle into a pitcher and then do the same, again and again, every time it got returned. Other men soon took off their shirts and danced with each other. There were women here—and some of them danced, too. With guys. On tabletops. Really gyrating to the music. But it was curiously a man's show. Behind the bar, two young bartenders were flipping bottles à la Tom Cruise in Cocktail, while a bartendress, a pretty, slender woman with a mod haircut, shimmied between them.
After a few drinks, we began asking questions of the bar squad. Because the music was so loud, my bodyguard had to lean in close and yell in their ears, while I drifted at a remove.
First question: Was this not a gay bar?
Answer: Of course not. [Homosexuality is a Western vice.]
Next question: Then why are all those guys dancing together with their shirts off?
Answer: Because they're friends.
Q: Okay, so is this what "friends" do here in Inner Mongolia? Drink pitchers of Chivas and strip down?
A: [laughter]
Q: So what's with the tattoos?
A: What tattoos?
Q: You know, the huge tigers on their backs.
A: Oh, those. I hadn't noticed.
It went on like this. And soon more and more of our questions went to the dancing woman, who may have been all of 20, with exquisitely shaped eyes painted with liner. She really seemed to have no task other than to dance. And after the onslaught of our questions, she had one for us.
Q: Are you guys two gay-bar entrepreneurs from the States?
She revealed that she was studying design, that she wanted to get out of Hohhot, out of China, because frankly, it was kind of backward and boring. A bit too feudal despite all the hoopla about development. But here she was, stuck behind the bar, dancing in Hohhot. She admitted that the guys over there in the huddle were part of the local Black Society. And that they could be dangerous.
It was almost three in the morning, departure time. I was a bit intoxicated, but that wasn't it. The woman, who was real and not an apparition, pushed back from my bodyguard and started dancing, but amid the pulsing bass lines and fumbling male dancers, I realized that it was really just a halfhearted pantomime of dancing that she'd been doing all along. To make it seem as if she was full-heartedly dancing while she was killing time, waiting for something to happen. It was the dancing of thwarted desire, and I wondered if inevitable disappointment, instead of the inanimate objects of capitalism, would turn out to be her very special friend.
"Before we leave," shouted I to my bodyguard over the music, "tell her that based on empirical evidence, with research conducted in Shanghai and Beijing, we're giving her the crown for Most Beautiful Woman in China." I had this inspired notion, however misguided, to leave something, even if it was verbal—an invisible crown, for instance—that didn't demand anything in return.
My bodyguard, whose purpose it was to keep me from getting killed, took one look at me and then the members of the Black Society across the way, and said, "You're gonna get killed talking like that." I insisted; he declined. So on my behalf, the sentiment was never passed on.
When we returned to the hotel, the revolving door had been left on automatic, spinning maniacally. It was impossible to enter.
8. Wise Man Once Say:
Only Car Porn Can Save World!
The next day dawned with an urgent e-mail from Mr. Ghini. "Dear Friends," he began from his computer back at the bunker in Italy, "we all knew that the China Tour would have encountered many difficulties."
Obviously, a mole had reported yesterday's strife, especially as it related to the anarchist photographers and their not wanting to eat any more ass. "In order to obtain [Chinese] authorisation to the Tour, Ferrari had to agree that the image of the Country would not be represented in a distorted or negative way by this exceptional experience, which is...a raid with two Ferrari cars and therefore has to be read in a touristy and an automotive key."
He went on: "I know we had some misunderstandings in the last days, but I think they were useful....What we ask for now, is for you to be aware of the delicacy of the moment and to understand that a camera can highlight, some times in an exaggerated manner, difficult or negative situations that, please bear in mind, would not even save Italy, France or the States."
The e-mail was handed out at breakfast. What I wanted to know was what "raid" in history—from Genghis Khan's rampage through China itself to Sir Francis Drake's surprise attack on the Spanish Armada—had ever been "touristy" and "automotive"? And try as I might to escape the fog of my hangover, I still couldn't figure out the line about saving Italy, France, and the States. I read it, like, twenty times. Was it code? Was Mr. Ghini serious? Could unflattering photos of a Fast Car—whatever those might look like—really doom our world order? By the same token, could happy, incredibly sexy pictures of that same car really save us all?
It was pretty to think so.
The landscape this day was more desolate and barren than the day before: fields of burned, untasseled cornstalks giving way to bleak highlands of silt, the edge of the Gobi desert. We passed a crickety overnight bus coming from Mongolia on bald tires with live pigs stuck in sacks on the roof, saw mutton grazing on what must have been pebbles, and then a strange billboard in all of that oblivion advertising a golf course that was soon to be built.
My bodyguard and I were granted sole ownership of the Red Rocket. We had blue skies, reggae on the car stereo, bonhomie. The Frenchmen were behind us in the silver car, Stéphane having magically secured a license. Meanwhile, the Communist operatives had drifted ahead to scout the road for sand piles. Sheno's voice robotically called back on the radio, talking to Gigi: "I am waiting fer yew a-head. Up a-head yew will see me at a corner waiting fer yew."
The recurring leitmotif of our trip—besides coal and power plants—were the brick factories. Scarcely five miles passed along the entire route where we weren't confronted by another one, people working over the berm of the road, down in carved-out quarries and dugouts, handcrafting bricks. Without a doubt, they were experts at it here. Witness the 4,500 miles of the Great Wall.
But the scary thing—if you really wanted to get scary about it—was that someday all these brick factories of Inner Mongolia, full of these hungry people who were sick of being paid in marbles, would become microchip factories, and the chip factories would become R&D facilities, and then, instead of being factory floor to the world, China would begin to invent, create, and export the next generation of technology to the world. Devices we didn't know of yet but that would irrevocably change our lives: That was China's future.
Oddly, the Communist operatives allowed us to stop at one brick factory for a photo op. There were a dozen men dressed in rags, working on a pile of dirt, umbrellaed from the sun by black tattered tarps. A hundred yards away was a surreal, pyramidlike structure, the kiln. A motorized Mad Max trike carried the raw mud patties from the pile to the kiln, where they were fired and then removed to sit in the sun. Off to the side of a tar pit was a cement block danwei with primitive living quarters and laundry on a string. It appeared that this place was inhabited by a group of families with maybe a half dozen dusty, half-naked children between them.
Dominique emerged from one of the Fiats, firing his camera. He worked with the intensity of someone at war. Whenever he could—at tolls, in city traffic—he'd leap out and start shooting away at the Magic Cars like a trigger-happy legionnaire. And now he and the others were waving me, as driver of the Red Rocket, to a spot in front of the dirt mound with its ragged workers. A little right, a little left. No! Turn the wheel! (Grimaces of dissatisfaction.) Roll up the window! (Okay signs being flashed.) Parfait! I sat there dumbly while all the photographers—including my bodyguard—had a field day. The red of the car set off by the dark dirt and the besmudged workers.
This was before we ferried the car over to the kiln and took more pictures, before the little children with their naked bum-bums got so touchingly excited about having visitors, and Gigi, like a GI in Vietnam, committed the coup d'insensitivity: He pulled out some hard candy and squatted down and gave it to them while the press pool went berserk. As if Nixon were shaking Mao's hand or something. Only Dominique straddled the line between existential regret and elation. "Zees is perfect...and a pity, no?"
Suddenly, I didn't care about sinister Sino-plots, glaring trade deficits, and our precious Western standard of living. I didn't care about Mr. Ghini's Churchillian plea via e-mail, urging the team to rescue itself from its own excesses. I just wanted to save these people.
From Us.
9. Dreams and Nothingness
We drove deeper and deeper into nowhere, out on the vast, arid Loess Plateau, made of that same fine, brick-making silt. For a short time one afternoon, I rode with Gigi. He told me how he'd come to be the Generalissimo. He'd started by working on fighter jets, then found a company that shared his love of speed. He spoke about all the cars he'd driven, about trips taken in Ferraris through the desert and the tundra, from Moscow to Riga, Latvia, or through Africa. One trip had involved taking two Ferraris around the world. Always testing the cars: cold tests, heat tests. And making coffee-table books.
He lit up like a child remembering it all. It reminded me of something that one of the photographers had told me earlier about the Italians and their Magic Cars. "They're creating a myth that they believe in." It sounded like nation-building.
But then, when it came to myth-making, he took a dim view of his children's generation. They'd already been given everything; there was nothing left to sustain them. "What are your dreams?" he kept asking his college-age son, and his son had no answer. "Not one dream," said Gigi now. "Impossible!" He recalled his grandfather, leaving Italy for Germany during a time of economic hardship—and his grandfather working for five years in German factories until the end of World War II made the German mark worthless. "Five years," he said. "For nothing. My father worked hard so that I could dream—and now my children don't have dreams at all."
I hadn't thought of Gigi as more than a yelling voice on the radio, the reason for my headache, the Egregious Giver of Candy, but now I found us connecting. And here, in a few sentences, hadn't he captured the parallel dangers of both the highly evolved capitalist system and the developing one? People's dreams were either completely sacrificed or replaced by ones constructed for them. "We've forgotten that just a little while ago Italy was like China, too," he said, gesturing beyond our windshield.
Later in the day, I was gunning west, feeling that old American dominance again. What a driver I was! (Or this car made me.) So virile and powerful! So damn sexy! I do believe hair was suddenly growing back on the top of my head. I'd threaded impossible needles between lumbering trucks and braked harshly, in an almost skidding, Steve McQueen way, for sand piles. I'd dodged the posteriors of a dozen highway sweepers and, on one golden straightaway, crushed my land-speed record by jacking it to 125 miles per hour. Therefore, when we stopped by the fabled Yellow River for the most dramatic photo op yet, I was shocked when Gigi took my keys.
"Americano, you don't mind do you?" he said, with that De Niro wince-smile. They were setting up a photo shoot that would require some driving skill, and I was being relegated to spectator.
The idea was to drive the 612s down an unpaved track along the river, one that had been previously scouted by the Italians. The cars would drive in a line, kicking up a spray of dirt for the cameras. It would be, as Gigi triumphantly phrased it later, "sauvage," a moment that would live forever on the coffee tables of kings and sheiks and wannabes everywhere.
It wasn't enough that I'd posed in the car in front of ash heaps and brick factories teeming with peasantry, driven with quasi precision on the open road to the frenzied palsy of the shutterbug horde, or that I'd completely buckled under and pimped myself in whatever way I'd been directed, face frozen in a rictus of agreeable cool for the cameras, to achieve the Money Shot. So now, suddenly, I was no longer Car Porn material.
I accepted my indignity. In fact, I accepted it gratefully. Taoistically. As karmic punishment. For signing on to this junket with all of my various illusions, the primary one being that a supposedly unfettered road trip would bring me closer to some Truth, and that hurtling through the new China I would touch the future somehow, when in fact our extravagantly, over-orchestrated "raid" through this seemingly old, industrial China had brought me closer to Emptiness.
10. The Last Brick in the Wall
Our final day on the road took us from Yinchuan to Lanzhou, dubbed the "Invisible City" because of its world-record smog. And it was on this day that the Generalissimo made his single most inspired decision. The Chinese operatives had mentioned something about an ancient piece of the Great Wall to see but held it out with their usual noncommittal vagary. Gigi had yet to bend to whimsy—in fact, had become more and more incensed any time we deviated from the most direct road between destinations, yelling his patented "Go, go, go!" into the walkie-talkie—so this seemed particularly outlandish: that we would randomly go in search of a pile of old bricks somewhere, but who knew where?
Wherever we were, this was officially nowhere. And officially, no one knew where the hell we were. The convoy stopped repeatedly to confer, then pushed on. More than an hour off the beaten path and we still hadn't given up. An hour and a half and we pushed on. Two hours—and beyond the window it was all highland desert (still, not a blade of grass!) in which enormous windmills with slicing propellers eventually appeared. Finally, Gigi had had enough. The convoy came to a stop, and by happenstance another convoy—the deus ex machina in this tale—pulled up. It was Chinese television, in search of the same destination. But they at least had a marked map.
So we followed them.
Off-road, on a serpentine dirt track, stripped of all self-delusions now, I did all the driving without bottoming out or getting yelled at. I just wanted to get there.
The Wall came up in the distance, eroded and pocked, with a huge slice taken out of it, through which a road passed to a quarry somewhere. Unlike the Wall at Badaling, that perfectly intact spectacle with thousands of tourists swarming aboard, there was no one here at all. And the Wall itself showed every bit of its indeterminate age.
We came up through the gap, car by car, in a holy procession, then disengaged on the open plain. In all that sun and wind. Suddenly, people were beaming. Everyone appeared angelic in the silver light. Where were we?
The Wall had been whittled over time to a well-worn, magnificent snaking lump. It was said that millions upon millions had worked, and died, building it: common laborers, criminals, widows. "The wall is so tall because it is stuffed with the bones of soldiers," went one poem. "The wall is so deep because it is watered with the soldiers' blood." There was no paved walkway or watchtowers, no one selling sodas or postcards. In places the Mongolian wind had broken through or left soft pillows of fine, golden Gobi sand up against the Wall's base. Here we were looking on a time before Christ, the time of Confucius.
A few pictures were taken of the cars, but then more were taken of people, in slow-morphing, miscegenating groups, arm in arm, throwing high fives: the Chinese, the Italians, the Chinese and Italians, the Americans and the Chinese, the French and the Chinese, the Americans and the Italians with the French, etc. Sheno, the dog-boy, was levitating from happiness, something in him crying out Love me! Gigi kept stalking around, in mock modesty: How do you like me now, baby? People kept breathing in deeply and exhaling loudly. Wow!
There was no hurry. At some point, I walked away on my own and stood at a distance from everyone, in the Wall's shadow, in the shadow of all the dynasties that had built it. That's when R. Nixon spoke to me from the Other Side as he'd spoken to reporters on an excursion to Badaling thirty-four years ago. "This is a great wall," he'd said, "and only a great people with a great past could have a great wall and such a great people with such a great wall will surely have a great future."
The clunky old bastard never did quite master the concept of "spontaneity," but he was right. Now I held my hand up to it, pressing my palm into the packed dirt, then I closed my eyes. Here it was: the timeless Tao moment in all of its full-throated emptiness, the letting be. I stood silently, touching the ancient earth and could feel something inside the Wall beating back. Husbands and wives and children, parents and grandparents, peasants and kings all turned to dust. It was blood beating back, and the bones that held the Wall against the relentless wind. What I felt then, the momentary imprint of my Western hand on that wall, was the immensity of this place, China, the real China, and its cost, beating back. As I lifted my hand, the wind scoured any trace of us.
Would the future be great? It was destined to be, but then one day wouldn't it all come to look like this Wall again, as it would look like the rusted carapace of a designer sports car perhaps stranded here, found millennia from now by another traveler like me? That is, weren't we destined to become the dusty relics of our own imaginations? We would consume until everything—our fast cars, our dreams, ourselves—had been consumed.
When I looked up along the length of the Wall from where I stood, I was surprised to see my bodyguard off in the distance, maybe 300 yards away, up on top, waving me over. He'd found some ledges to climb in order to summit, so I joined him up there. My bodyguard was in his own glinty-eyed ecstasy. "This has always been my dream," he said. "To jump off the Wall." So we did, two nameless bodies hurtling down, landing in a cloud of sand, then resummiting. Gigi and a couple of the Italians soon joined us up there, too. What would it have been like to watch Genghis Khan's Mongol horde riding toward you here? What fear and wonder held the world in its orbit?
The Magic Cars were still parked down below, but we were all looking out the opposite way, out at the endless desert. No one knew what shade of light played over their hoods now or what the gas gauges read. In this one moment, with nothing but empty space before us, no one cared to look back on them at all.


text:
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
|The Front Nine: Maine to New Jersey
New Jersey
By Capt. Ken Kreisler — February 2002
• Pine Hill Golf Club Phone: (877) 450-8866, designed by Tom Fazio and built by Eric Bergstol, is the number-one public course in the state. From the back tees, this magnificent par-70 course measures 6,900 yards and is tough enough to give any player a challenging round. No two holes are alike, and each possesses dramatic changes in elevation, impressive views, and towering pine, oak, walnut, and maple trees lining the fairway. Once on the dance floor, you'll find outstanding Bentgrass possessing subtle breaks to test your putting abilities. Greens fees are $150 including range and cart.
• Near Atlantic City's Absecon Inlet is Blue Heron Pines East & West Phone: (609) 965-GOLF. The Steve Smyers-designed East Course opened for play last May to rave reviews. The 7,300-yard, links-style course offers wide fairways, generous greens, and formidable bunkers. Playing bump-and-run shots is guaranteed to be a challenge.
Stephen Kay designed the 6,810-yard West Course with Bentgrass tees and greens and rye-grass fairways. Your best chance for a birdie is on the first hole, a straightaway par four, while the 14th, a formidable 518-yard par five, and 17th, a 451-yard par four, are the toughest. Green fees are $125 including cart. A bucket of 50 range balls is $5.
Local marinas for Pine Hill include The Piers/Pier5 Phone: (215) 351-4101, Philadelphia Marine Center Phone: (215) 931-1000, and Wiggins Park Phone: (856) 541-7222. For Blue Heron, try Harrah's Harbor Phone: (609) 441-5315, Farley State Phone: (800) 876-4386, and Kammerman's Phone: (609) 348-8418.
This article originally appeared in the January 2003 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.


text:
No, that is not The Internationale burbling in the background. No, this is not a communist plot to take your guns. And no, no, no, a thousand times no (insert sigh) this is not a Trilateral Commission/United Nations/New World Order scheme to invade your precious bodily fluids.
It's just — oh dear — the census. Please, put down that pitchfork. Go ahead, put it down, now.
And yet there some elements of the paranoid Planet Zircon 9 wing of the Republican Party who have expressed distrust toward the census — as if efforts by the federal government to count how many people live in the United States are something akin to Red Dawn II.
Both Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who is quickly becoming the Mommie Dearest of the tea party handwringers, and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the Mr. Dithers of delusion, have decried the census as an egregious intrusion into the privacy of Americans, raising dark fears over how the information collected by government head-counters might be used for good or (cue The Phantom of the Opera theme) — pure EEEEEVIL.
This was probably inevitable. After all, we have devolved into a conspiratorial, fearful society that sees Che Guevara lurking behind every postage stamp. There are actually folks who suspected President Barack Obama's speech to schoolchildren to study hard was really a coded message to lure them into a Marxist/Trotskyite/Leninist re-education camp.
Bachmann and Paul, the Barbie and Ken of the Glenn Beck lemming crowd, accused the jackbooted census takers of overstepping their legal authority as they go about the nefarious business of trying to find out what your exact age is, which would seem to be a problem only in Charo's household.
Both the Steve and Eydie of the "You talkin' to me?" movement argue the census goes way beyond its constitutional mandate, representing a virtual police state intrusion into the sanctity of our private lives.
And when you stop to think, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, that since 2009 there has been a 244 percent jump in the number of so-called patriot (read: the sky-is-falling) and militia groups populated by more twitching conspiracists since Lyndon LaRouche last dined alone, it is not unreasonable to conclude Bachmann and Paul have no shortage of fellow travelers of Branch Davidian/Ruby Ridge wonks hanging on their every demagogic utterance.
Since 1790, the federal government has been taking the measure of the citizenry. It is probably the most banal of all civic responsibilities citizens are asked to participate in. And over the years, there have been far more detailed census forms, which asked households how many cars the resident possessed, or how many toilets were in the house, or how many phones.
Bachmann has taken the bold, profile-in-courage position that the only question she intends to respond to in the census is the number of people (heaven help them) who are residing in her bunker. Well, that's about all the census takers want to know anyway. Thanks for your cooperation, congresswoman.
The current census form, which literally takes less than five minutes to fill out, or about the same length of time that it takes for Michele Bachmann to make Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction look like Sandra Day O'Connor, only has 10 lousy, stinking questions to answer, most notably how many people live in the same household.
The form asks if the residence is owned or rented. The census also asks for your phone number, but since George W. Bush was probably tapping it during his administration, the government already has that bit of information. Just kidding, sort of.
And finally, the census Stasi asks for name, gender and age/date of birth, and the race of the residents. This is not exactly 1984 meets The Prisoner stuff.
For the sake of Bachmann and Paul and their spear-carriers of the lunatic fringe, the census does not ask how many camouflage-attired gun-toting survivalists living under your roof are more certifiably insane than Ezra Pound. It does not ask how many black helicopters are currently hovering over your residence. It does not inquire as to whether you are a member of the NRA, or a Michigan militia, or the Posse Comitatus.
It does not ask how many pythons you own, or if you have a tattoo of Sarah Palin cradling a Tech 9 on your …, well nobody wants to know that.
And when the census asks if someone living in your residence sometimes lives someplace else, it is not referring to the speaking-in-tongues-to-himself Uncle Billy Bob, who also believes Barack Obama is the Antichrist, and who occasionally sleeps in a cave, eating small rodents while awaiting the coming Armageddon. We'll just not count him, okay?
So go ahead and be brave, so very brave, and fill out the census form. After all, in a society that freely invades its own privacy every day via Facebook and Twitter and blogging, there isn't much the government doesn't already know about us.


text:
By Ivan Carter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 21, 2008
Gilbert Arenas continues to rehabilitate his surgically repaired left knee but remains limited to non-contact basketball activities, and neither the team nor the three-time all-star has established a firm timetable for a possible return to game action.
Arenas has watched the Wizards stumble to a 1-8 start from the bench and said the team's progress or lack thereof could impact his plans.
Yesterday after a practice at Verizon Center, Arenas said he and center Brendan Haywood, who is expected to miss four to six months following wrist surgery, are hoping the team can rebound from the poor start and remain in playoff contention.
"Me and Brendan, we talk about it," Arenas said. "If I come back in January -- that's about 20, 25 games we counted -- when do we say it's okay? If we're 15 games out, how hard is it to come back from that? It might depend on who is in the eighth spot at the time and what our record is."
Arenas said the knee is steadily gaining strength but is still not ready for the daily pounding it would take.
"It's like last season," Arenas said. "If it's the playoffs, I could play, but since it's not, I'm still taking it slow. I wouldn't be able to play back-to-backs and if we had four games in five nights, I'd only be able to play two of them. We don't want to go through that the whole season, so we're just going to wait until it's fully ready to go so we can go and just not even worry about it."
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text: Will the Ford 300 cubic inch inline 6 drop evenly into a '71 mav 2 door? if so, will i need a stronger front end than the one for a 200 cu.i.? Would there be any torque//horsepower advantage? also, does anyone here know where i can get the aussie fule system, the one that has the triple 2bbl carb set up?


text:
South Africa clash with Japan moved to Jo'burg
Japan's friendly against 2010 World Cup hosts South Africa next month has been moved from Durban to Johannesburg due to stadium construction delays.
The November 14 game was to be played at Durban's 70,000-seat Moses Mabhida Stadium but had been switched as building at the World Cup venue was behind schedule, the Japan Football Association said.
The game will now be played at Johannesburg's Orlando Stadium, which is not one of the city's two World Cup venues. Japan qualified for the World Cup finals by securing one of Asia's four automatic berths.
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text:
" Address: Rua Cândido Reis 92-94 | Arruda dos Vinhos, Arruda dos Vinhos 2630-216, Portugal "
~Oh Cod our help in ages past~
One of the biggest mysteries about Portugal is the national passion for bacalhau or dried salt cod. You could understand it if the country was a long way from the sea and the only way to get fish was to buy it from a long way away and preserve it with salt and drying, but Portugal is not a long way from the sea - it's surrounded by it. All year round the nation's fishermen are out on the water bringing back fresh fish for a country whose per capita fish consumption is the highest in Europe and in the top four worldwide. With so much good fresh fish, it's a bit of a mystery that Portuguese are so attached to dried fish. I did wonder if it was a throwback to the days when Portuguese sailors went off to discover the new world. Maybe dried cod was a way to ensure they had food on long journeys - but that's a daft idea. If you wanted fish in the middle of a long journey, you'd only need to throw a line over the side. Apparently, the secret is that cod is mostly fished in the north Atlantic and salting was the technique used in the days before boats had refrigeration.
On my recent visit to Portugal, I was taken round most of the supermarkets by our sales director. We were there to look at the bakery sections in the stores and I was baffled to find that even in quite small supermarkets, a much larger area of the store was given over to bacalhau than to the entire bakery section. I don't think I've ever seen a Portuguese menu that doesn't have bacalhau dishes and it's said that this is the type of fish that's most eaten in Portugal. The trouble is, unless you're Portuguese or Spanish, it's really quite hard to understand the fascination with this unpleasant, smelly ingredient.
~Salt of the Earth~
If it's cooked well, bacalhau shouldn't taste salty. You should barely be aware that the fish didn't hop out of the sea the day before. If it's cooked badly, you'd better order a lot of drinks and put the salt cellar to one side. If the salt's not well flushed out of the fish it can be mouth puckeringly salty - and I say that as someone who loves to put salt on their food.
We were travelling back to the office after running round a bunch of different supermarkets in the Lisbon area in the morning and our driver, Josep, decided to take us to a nice little restaurant he knows. My other colleagues all thought they knew where we were going and seemed almost relieved when it turned out that our intended restaurant was closed for the summer holidays. Both asked him immediately if we could go to 'O Fuso' instead, and with general agreement, they phoned ahead to book a table. It was clear to me that in the eyes of my Portuguese and Spanish colleagues, this restaurant was really something very special.
~The cult of the Cod~
We drove to the small town of Arruda dos Vinhos to the north of Lisbon and parked up in the square. O Fuso is a big restaurant and is located in an old olive oil mill, a building with a high ceiling and various oil mill artefacts. Near the entrance is a fridge containing enormous steaks and a scorching hot barbecue with a fridge of cod sitting next to it. We passed these and entered the enormous dining area, filled with small tables lined up and close to each other. I would estimate that when full it could seat several hundred diners. I didn't see a menu and I'm not sure if there is one. This is the type of place where everyone knows what to expect and what they want and most likely it's going to be bacalhau.
Some discussion with the waiter took place and plates of food started to arrive. The first plate was cheese in little plastic pots. Apparently this is fresh cheese that's not been dried or matured and still contains a lot of water. It tastes of very little and has a texture a bit like compressed cottage cheese or Indian paneer. Two plates of bread - one fresh, the other toasted and buttered appeared next followed by a plate of air dried ham. The final dishes to arrive were a small dish of not very nice green olives and a plate of pieces of spicy sausage. I don't eat meat so I skipped most of what was on offer.
We drank red wine from a jug and water from a bottle which seemed to be somehow the wrong way round. I tend to get very thirsty so I had to take care to not drink much wine and to ask for a second bottle of water.
Our main course was a giant slab of salt cod from the grill. It was about two feet long and about a foot wide. As the guest I was offered the first pick of the fish which was a bit intimidating. How much do you take and is there a best bit that a polite person should avoid taking? I have no idea. I took quite a small portion - about half or one third as much as the others. It was a good decision because I really struggled to get through even that piece. Even though the bacalhau is soaked for a long time in water or milk to remove the salt and to rehydrate the fish, it isn't always completely de-salted. I can manage bacalhau when it's an ingredient in a dish but a large slab of the stuff is a bit too much for me to deal with. The waiter brought a big dish of large boiled potatoes and a smaller dish of beans and I used my vegetables to try to disguise that I wasn't eating much of the fish. My colleagues all went back for more whilst I ate slowly and listened to them chatting about how wonderful it was. I can only conclude that you really do need to grow up with bacalhau in order to develop a proper passion for it.
I think they could tell that it wasn't really my kind of thing. I didn't lie when they asked if I liked it - I merely told them that I think it's very difficult for anyone who isn't Portuguese or Spanish - especially one brought up in the land of 'cod and chips' to really fully appreciate a good piece of bacalhau. You should definitely TRY bacalhau, but unless you develop a real taste for the stuff, I wouldn't recommend driving out to Arruda dos Vinhos just to try particularly fine bacalhau. If you're anything like me, it may well be wasted on you.
Rua Candido Reis 92-94
Arruda dos Vinhos
2630-216, Portugal


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2 Bedroom Apartment in Port Pollença, Mallorca
Ref : A60775 Small, cosy apartment block, built in 2000, renovated in 2010. 4 apartments in the residence. In the resort 100 m from the centre of Puerto Pollença, 100 m from the sea, located by a road. For shared use: grounds (fenced), swimming pool (4 x 5 m, 01.03.-31.12.). Outside shower. In the house: washing machine. Stepped path to the house. Public parking on the road. Shop, grocers, supermarket 100 m, restaurant 20 m, bus stop, sandy beach 100 m, shingle beach 1 km, rocky beach 1 km, outdoor swimming pool, indoor swimming pool 300 m, bathing bay 8 km. Golf course 8 km, tennis 300 m, riding stables 7 km, childrens play area 100 m. Please note: no elevator.
- Balcony
- Terrace
- Elevator
- Swimming Pool
- Swimming Pool (Private)
- Garden (Private)
- Satelite
- Tv
- Stereo
- Dvd
- Central Heating
- Internet
- Heating
- Air Conditioning
- Stove
- Oven
- Microwave
- Dishwasher
- Bed Linen
- Towels
- Baby cot available
- Wash Machine
- Iron
- Parking (Free)
- Disabled
- Phone
- Pets Allowed
Description de la Zona
- Town / City: Port Pollença
- Street :
Port Pollença: Lovely holiday spot situated in the north east of the island, approx 55 km from Palma. The bay between the Cabo Formentor to the north and the Cabo Pinar to the south is ideal for all types of watersports. The old fishing village has been conserved. There are numerous hotels and restaurants lining the lovely sea promenade which offer local specialities. There is also a sports harbour.


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High School Sports
Garner's Millhouse set to play at Appalachian State
Posted January 31, 2012
Garner offensive lineman Greg Millhouse will play his college ball at Appalachian State next fall.
The 6'2", 240 pound lineman has spent time at offensive tackle, guard and defensive tackle. Millhouse helped Garner to a 15-1 season last year, losing their only game in the State Championship.
Millhouse picked up the offer from the Western Carolina in June after recording 204 pancake blocks as an offensive lineman during the 2010-11 season.


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Busy at the beach, backyard, lake or park? Need a safe place to watch your baby? What a great way to spend time with a well-ventilated play tent for your child.
- Comes with 1-1/2 removable soft pad w/ washable cover and completely washable polyethylene floor makes this tent a perfect shelter to change baby out of the sun.
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Head Mexican in Charge
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Who said Mexicans aren't hero's.
Wrapidad was garbage
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****en man right there. hopefully his wife did the right thing later and blew him something awesome then made him a sandwich and not force him to tell her how she did on the blow job.
love reading ***** like this.
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no joke man, check out this boy saved a baby from drowning here in Dallas, Jerry Jones even called him up and gave him and his dad tickets to the cowboy game in his suite
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great stuff guys.......
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And the saddest part of your post is that it's gonna get buried along side the story.........
Mad props to this kat though no lie!!!
Father of 2 becomes hero in abducted girl's rescue
APBy SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN - Associated Press | AP Wed, Aug 17, 2011
Related Content
Antonio Diaz Chacon stands outside his home as reporters prepare to interview him about his efforts to save a 6-year-old girl who was abducted in Albuquerque, N.M., on Aug. 16, 2011. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)
Antonio Diaz Chacon stands outside his home as reporters prepare to interview him
Martha Diaz and her husband Antonio Diaz Chacon talk to reporters about Diaz Chacon's efforts to save a 6-year-old girl who was abducted in Albuquerque, N.M., on Aug. 16, 2011. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)
Martha Diaz and her husband Antonio Diaz Chacon talk to reporters about Diaz Chacon's
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) The timing was just right for saving the life of a 6-year-old girl and for turning a 24-year-old mechanic and father of two young daughters into a hero.
It was coincidence that Antonio Diaz Chacon had come home from work early to spend time with his family Monday afternoon. It was also a coincidence that the family's washing machine had just gone out, forcing them to do laundry a block down the road at a relative's home.
Had it not been for that, Diaz Chacon wouldn't have been there to see the girl thrown into a van as another neighbor yelled for the would-be kidnapper to let the child go.
Diaz Chacon is credited with saving the girl after chasing the van through a maze of neighborhoods to the edge of where Albuquerque's sprawling housing developments meet the desert. It was there where the van crashed into a pole, the suspect fled and Diaz Chacon was able to rescue the girl and take her home.
He didn't think twice about his actions.
"The way he grabbed her and threw her into the van, I knew it wasn't right," he said, as a swarm of media stood outside his home Tuesday night to hear his story. The events were interpreted and relayed from Spanish to English by his wife.
"I knew I had to catch him. I had to get the girl back from him and take her home, back where she belongs," he said.
It all happened so fast on a sidewalk in the normally quiet mobile home park, where even on the evening after the abduction kids played freely in the streets on their bikes and push scooters as food vendors sold roasted corn and other snacks.
A pair of 911 calls came in quick succession.
On one, a frantic 12-year-old says her little sister is missing. On the other is Diaz Chacon's wife, Martha.
"We are outside of my mom's house here," she told the dispatcher. "We heard a man going, 'Hey, hey let her go. Let her go.' So we turn around ...
"The man came running to us and said, 'They stole a little girl.'"
Phillip Garcia, 29, had snatched the girl moments earlier, taking her away in a blue van, police said.
Diaz Chacon jumped in his black pickup and gave chase.
It wasn't until the van crashed and the driver got out that any sense of fear set in for Diaz Chacon.
"When he got down I was thinking, what if he has a gun," he said.
Garcia fled on foot, and Diaz Chacon reached the girl and told her he would take her home. Garcia then returned to his wrecked van and took off but was later captured by police, authorities said.
Hidden under a rock just 25 feet from the van was packing tape and a tie-down strap, police said.
Inside the impounded van were tostadas, a glove, a Leatherman tool, a black satchel, orange strapping similar to the strap found hidden under the rock, police said.
"This little girl was very lucky," police Sgt. Tricia Hoffman said. "We can only guess what would have happened to this child."
"Throughout the county we see situations like this and they do not end typically well," she said.
Police were among those who called Diaz Chacon a hero.
One of his daughters even shared the news about her dad's heroic actions with friends at school on Tuesday.
Diaz Chacon said he was proud to help. While he was chasing the van, he said, he thought of his own two girls one 7 years old, the other 5 months and how he would want someone to do the same for him.
"I told him 'I don't know how you could do it, just go after him, not knowing where he's going, what he's going to do?" his wife said. "But he saved a life." Garcia was charged with kidnapping, child abuse and tampering with evidence. Hoffman said Garcia is from Albuquerque and had a revoked license but she was unsure if he had a criminal record.
Garcia immediately "lawyered up," declining to give any statement to authorities, Hoffman said. Garcia remained jailed and no lawyer had yet been listed as taking the case, according to court officials.
There have not been any other recent child abductions or attempted abductions in the city, Hoffman said.
The girl told police she had gone to a neighbor's to pick up some tostadas and was walking home when the van stopped and the man grabbed her.
"She went to go to the neighbor's and on her way back we don't know what happened to her. ... When she was coming back or on her way, she just like disappeared," her sister said in the 911 call.
The girl was grabbed with such force, police said, that bruising had already begun to appear on her chest and back Monday evening. The girl told police the man put his hand over her mouth and she bit him.
She said the man shoved her on the floorboard to keep her head under the window view, according to the police report. She told police there were no backseats in the van and described other details consistent with the impounded van, police said.
She also described rolling in the van when it crashed, and breaking a fingernail. Police said they found what appeared to be a piece of fingernail in the van.
During her interview, police said the girl was concerned that she was unable to bring the tostadas home because she had left them in the van.
The Diazes said the girl's family had thanked them on Monday, saying they would always be grateful for what the young father had done.
Martha Diaz said she was grateful what could have been a parent's worst nightmare was not realized that day.
"Everything just worked out," she said, referring to the perfect timing of that afternoon.
"Even now we say, 'What if, what if we hadn't seen him? What if he would have been two minutes earlier.'"
Associated Press writer Jeri Clausing in Albuquerque, N.M., contributed to this report.
Undisputed Champion
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Always A Step Ahead of You
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Undisputed Champion
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Always A Step Ahead of You
Posts: 2,826
Quoted: 84 Post(s)
Rep Power: 12
Undisputed Champion
Join Date: Oct 2010
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I've got to take a massive and very urgent shit in case anybody was wondering. I'm "prairie dogging"(think of a prairie dog sticking his head outa his hole in the dirt and then quickly sticking it back in) like a mofo.
Undisputed Champion
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I gotta fart real bad too but it's a "gambler"---might be just a fart but it might also come with some shit, foo. LOL!
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Day 1: Manyara. Depart Arusha in the morning for Lake Manyara, Afternoon game drive, Dinner and overnight at campsite.
Day 2: Ngorongoro. After breakfast a 4 wheel drive vehicle will take you 2000 ft down to the crater, enjoy picnic lunch at the crater, ascend back to campsite for dinner and overnight.
Day 3: Serengeti. After breakfast depart for Serengeti passing through Olduvai Gorge the site of the Leakey family discovery of fossils of human and animal ancestors dating back to almost two million years. Meals and overnight at campsite.
Day 4: Serengeti. Full day in Serengeti plains, Search for wild game you might have missed the previous game drive. Morning and after noon game drives. Meals and overnight at campsite.
Day 5: Arusha. After breakfast depart for Arusha arriving by lunch time.
The prices are matter to change.
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Africa Tanzania Outdoor: Land Rambler Camping Wildlife Viewing
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In his new book, Dr. Andrew Smiler works to shift our thinking beyond the stereotypical notion of boys and men as "emotional cripples" and "fly-by-night" Casanovas, and by doing so, he allows us to conceive of male sexuality as complicated and nuanced. In Challenging Casanova, Dr. Smiler reveals that most boys and men want to have meaningful relationships and suggests a variety of healthy new approaches to understanding one's identity, dating, and sexuality. In the following excerpt, Dr. Smiler takes us beyond the three "P's—" that is, Providing, Protecting, and Procreating, with a discussion of the changing landscape of male identity, and why many teenage boys, in particular, are struggling with this shift.
Masculinity, Peers, and Identity (excerpt from Challenging Casanova)


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Arrow River Bridges Ride
A relatively easy ride which zigzags across five bridges over the Arrow River and meanders through quaint country lanes.
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A relatively easy ride which zigzags across five bridges over the Arrow River through quaint country lanes, burrows under a major State Highway to the AJ Hackett's Bungy, then delivers you to the home of magnificent Central Otago wines – Gibbston Valley! Great for families with kids, beginners and wine enthusiasts.
Start your day with a fortifying breakfast or brunch at one of the many cafes in Historic Arrowtown – or stock up on picnic provisions and hit the trail! Your ride starts at the Arrowtown River carpark on the 'true right' of the lovely willow-lined Arrow river (home of the goldrush in the 1800s).
Crossing five bridges, you'll zig-zag the chortling Arrow, a river of many moods, sometimes tranquil, often rushing over rocks and bluffs, then widening to limpid pools. There's no shortage of photo opps and picnic spots along the river's edge, so take your time and enjoy the journey.
One of the most popular photo stops is midway across the awe-inspiring Southern Discoveries suspension bridge. A destination in itself and what a view!
Across the bridge, you'll ride past quaint cottages and grazing horses down Whitechapel country lane – a landscape painting straight out of a picture book! Stop at the Knights Family Underbridge and take in spectacular downstream view of where the Arrow River drops into the gorge.
Yet another impressive feat of engineering, the breathtakingly graceful 80-metre Edgar Suspension Bridge looms dramatically. From its midpoint, it is guaranteed to deliver gasps of appreciation at the view down the Arrow Gorge.
Be sure to stop at the Wall of Recognition and offer up a 'thanks' to the landowners and Queenstown community who had the vision to help make the Queenstown Trail a reality.
Getting across busy State Highway 6 is a piece of cake via the Barfoot Tunnel - and onto a part of the trail which follows the original goldminers' road into Queenstown. Breathe in the thyme-scented mountain air as you make your way over the historic Kawarau Bridge (yes, you'll cross the very bridge those brave souls throw themselves off). Also home of A J Hackett's Bungy site, the world's first bungy operation.
The AJ Hackett Centre is a stunning piece of architecture, well worth a visit - a fabulous café, toilets and of course tickets for that bungy jump you've been promising yourself.
We recommend intermediate cyclists follow the signs across the highway and cycle up the spectacular Chard Farm Road to sample some of the finest wines in Gibbston . The views are sensational.
What will it be? A ride back to Arrowtown…….. a ride from Gibbston to Queenstown or a spot of wine tasting and lunch, followed by a transport pick-up The choice is yours
¿Tienes una gran historia para contar? Agrega tu artículo


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(3) A Busy Schedule To Qualify For Party Poker Special Sunday
8th May 2014, 19:57 - When it comes to making the most of your opportunities to play in the big poker events, you need to look out for satellite events. The fact that there is a massive guaranteed game with a $500,000 prize pool on offer from Party Poker has to be seen as... More >
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(4) Play Poker Games However You Want
27th March 2014, 09:38 - There are many great things about poker but one of the game's strongest points is the fact that there is something for everyone. The mainstream media presents an image or identity about a poker player that indicates they are hardened gamblers with... More >
(5) Bet365 Poker Offers A Premium Poker Promotion
8th January 2014, 07:47 - While there are many different poker promotions to choose from, it is hard to argue with the excitement and drama that is provided by a poker promotion that sees you ranked against fellow players. Not only are you looking to defeat your peers when yo... More >
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Why do CFOs work so hard to meet quarterly earnings benchmarks, even those based on a consensus of outside analysts? The answer is self-interest, according to a new study by three university professors.
CFOs and CEOs at companies that miss quarterly earnings benchmarks suffer reduced bonuses, smaller equity grants, and a greater chance of forced dismissal, say the professors, who analyzed data on S&P 1,500 companies from 1993 to 2004. The career penalties increased after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and they were worse for companies that publicly disclose quarterly earnings guidance.
"Our evidence suggests that boards [of directors] appear to react directly to managers' ability to meet earnings targets," say report coauthors Shiva Rajgopal, of the University of Washington Business School; Rick Mergenthaler, at the University of Iowa; and Suraj Srinivasan, at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
When companies failed to meet two quarterly analyst-consensus forecasts within a year, boards cut CFO bonus pay by an average of $23,787 (based on a mean CFO salary of $297,340 during the study period). When the companies failed to meet all four forecasts in a year, CFO bonus pay dropped by $47,574. That's on top of deep cuts in equity grants, which boards slashed by up to 48 percent, and progressively higher odds of getting fired.
The results could mean that boards are implicitly motivating finance executives to make the numbers at all costs, even if it means committing fraud or forgoing needed investments. But at least one CFO says the harsh penalties are justified. "An important part of the CFO's role [is] to bring insight and realism to the forecasting process," says Ed Goldfinger, CFO of Zipcar. "It is equally likely that these dismissals and lower bonuses [would] result from [CFOs'] failure to properly understand their businesses and manage expectations."
One small consolation for CFOs: the study found that pay penalties were even steeper for CEOs. They lost an average $81,873 in bonus pay for two misses, and $163,745 for four, based on a mean annual salary of $584,810.


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Nintendo says no same-sex marriage for Mii
Real life sims are very easy to get wrong -- just look at The Sims, for instance -- and Nintendo's latest venture into this branch of gaming, Tomodachi Life, demonstrates this perfectly. Taking a collection of Miis (Nintendo's sickly sweet customizable avatars) and dumping them on an island, the game presents players with a "world full of possibilities". The game's website proclaims, "in Tomodachi Life, populate your very own island with the Mii characters of family, friends or anyone else you can think of!" As long as the Miis are not gay that is.
Yes, in the Disney-like world of Nintendo, same-sex relationships are not possible. You're free to do pretty much anything you like in the game, but when it comes to striking up a relationship and getting virtually married, it's boy-girl action only. Homosexuality simply does not exist in Nintendo's little bubble, and this is something that was noted by one gamer who then launched a campaign on Twitter to try to get the gaming giant to change its ways. Tye Marini 's Miiquality Twitter account was started to try to persuade Nintendo to rethink the game and allow for lesbian and gay relationships.
The Nintendo 3DS game has been available in Japan since December, and it has already proved popular. It was hoped that the Twitter campaign would force Nintendo to change its mind about LGBT relationships ahead of the game's European and North American launch in June. But the Mario factory has declined, saying that "the relationship options in the game represent a playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation. We hope that all of our fans will see that 'Tomodachi Life' was intended to be a whimsical and quirky game, and that we were absolutely not trying to provide social commentary".
But for campaigners, this simply doesn't cut it. Claims of being "whimsical and quirky" and not intending to "make any form of social commentary" cannot be used as get out of jail free cards. Could the same excuses be given for introducing casual racism into a game? The reasons given are not good enough, and the Miiquality campaign, thankfully, continues. All may not be completely lost, as Nintendo has at least states to the campaign: "We will continue to listen and think about the feedback. We're using this as an opportunity to better understand our consumers and their expectations of us at all levels of the organization".
The issue does highlight the problems associated with simply transplanting a game from one country and introducing it to another unchanged. In Tomodachi Life's homeland of Japan, gay marriage is not legal -- in the UK and US (for the most part) it is. But again, these cultural differences are no excuse.