A shady pastor will pray at the Trump inauguration, setting the tone for the next four years.

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Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country 

are decent, hardworking, honest Americans.

 It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. 

But then, we elected them. 

-- Lily Tomlin

Making music in a slum in Paraguay.

巴拉圭貧民窟的孩子撿垃圾做樂器~~

Маленькому Казаку 5 лет . Lokah balay laqi qani! 臺灣五歲小孩上捷運，大人趕快讓位，不然站了幾分鐘可能會累。哥薩克就不大一樣。A five year old Cossack boy showing his stuff.

It turns out that octopuses are extremely intelligent, but in ways quite different from us.

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A ferocious dogfight, a beagle attacking a great dane.

與大自然相處，尊敬、無畏。When dealing with nature, animate or inanimate, be respectful and unafraid, and all will be well.

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網路笑話

一位內蒙古人來臺灣鹿港旅遊，吃了一碗三十五元的麵線，要老闆開立發票報帳。

老闆問「抬頭要開什麽單位？」

內蒙人答：「中華人民共和國內蒙古自治區烏蘭察布市察哈爾右翼後旗烏蘭哈達蘇木那令格嘎查那令格村那令格二社村民委員會火山歷史文化遺址申報聯合國教育科學文化組織世界非物質文化遺產工作領導小組辦公室主任烏力圖.烏力吉吉爾格啦.巴彥爾太！」

老板說：「賽林涼，麵線錢不要了，林貝會寫那麽多字還賣個懶覺麵線。。。」

今天下午看了不丹電影「嘿瑪嘿瑪」。往戲院路上，我們多方面深入討論，看電影能不吃爆米花嗎？我們討論出來的結果，我們買了大桶爆米花，加一杯熱可可。

電影拙樸有力，跟一般大廠的電影不同。一念之差，一個小小的決定，影響深遠。故事、畫面裏很多細節。整個電影的畫面很美。沒想到的是，演員、拍片，很多華人。

推薦！也許需要看兩次。

This afternoon we went to see a movie from Bhutan, Hema Hema, Sing Me a Song While I Wait.

Before the movie, Chao and I had a long philosophical discussion on the possibility, ramifications, and morphological connotations of watching a movie without eating popcorn, but fortunately, were able to reach a decision, so we got a big bag of popcorn, plus a cup of hot chocolate.

The movie is powerful, and different from big studio, big budget films. The story line is not too complex, but there are a lot of details, and it is beautiful to watch. If you have a chance, this movie is worth watching, and maybe more than once. 

After all, how often do you get to watch a movie in Dzongkha?

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Despotism

Respect and power

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Bill Moyers, Farewell America

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In commemoration of a sturdy little vehicle, xe lam, the Lambro.

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Ah, the good old days! In the good old days, for an afternoon’s entertainment, you and your friends might nail a cat to a stake and take turns ramming it to death with your head. Someone might lose an eye in the process, but what fun! Or you could watch a neighbor flogging his slave,  admire the dead bodies strung up on the gallows (in case you missed the hanging), torment the people in stocks, or listen to the lady next door beating her servant. Then it’d be time for dinner; if you were effete and unafraid of ridicule, you might eat with a fork, but otherwise, eat with your fingers and knife, and wipe your fingers off on your shirt. When you have gnawed the meat off the bone, just drop the bone on the floor for the dogs to eat. When dinner was finished, the garbage was just flung into the open sewer in front of your house, and you abided with the stench. The pigs wandering the neighborhood would eat some of the garbage, and the rest might get washed away in a rain. You stayed in your hometown. You had no place to go, really, because travel was not only difficult but downright dangerous, with bandits eager to cut your throat for your purse, and trying to stay off the gallows. Of course you could go to the gallows yourself if you stole a handkerchief or got hungry and swiped some bread. If your child showed “strong evidence of malice” between the ages of seven and fourteen, they could be hanged, too. If the king didn’t like your religious practice, you might be burned to death, and friends and neighbors would come to watch and jostle for positions downwind so they could get a whiff of your burning body, to sanctify themselves.

Doesn’t that sound just great?

No. We have moved forward, fighting step by step. Before I go any further, I assume that my reader would not wish to be on the receiving side of such events: you would not like to be enslaved, do not think it’s nice to nail cats to stakes, think sanitation is a good thing, would not like to see your neighbor burned to death just because he is a Baptist, enjoy going off on vacation without worrying about getting your throat cut, and so forth.

Now normal people consider the events detailed in the first paragraph inhumane, but at the time (I am basing this description roughly on life in medieval London, although there were not African slaves yet), they were taken for granted.

Every step forward has been achieved only by the hard work of people who were not willing to accept those practices, striving in the face of fierce resistance of those who thought the old ways were just fine.

The people who have achieved these advances are called “liberals.” The people who oppose these advances are called “conservatives.” Issues liberals fight for are taken for granted fifty years later, and after another fifty years, when some issues may well be out of date, they are strongly defended by conservatives. 

I’m old enough to remember when Barry Goldwater was running against LBJ. One of Goldwater’s strongest attacks was that Johnson was promoting Medicare, which Republicans saw as a communist plot to overthrow capitalism. So it is with some bemusement that I see how sacred Republicans now hold Medicare. Things liberals fight for today are taken for granted fifty years later. 

Putin is happy Trump won. The KKK is happy Trump won. American national security advisors are worried to death that Trump won. Where does that put us? Up that creek without a paddle, maybe.

The only bright side is that Trump is backpedaling on his campaign promises like Lance Armstrong on steroids pedaling towards a finish line. But we do not need an unpredictable, vindictive president.

Kindly read the date here out loud.

天生我材，必有用

Another way of looking at autism.

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I don’t know what to make of this. Inuit elders say that the earth’s axis has changed. 

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天氣好，帶兩個小狗出去走走。想回頭，皮狗Yumin向前走，不見了。我叫，他不回來。天要黑，而我不想去拉他回來。Ksasan在我身邊，我自言自語跟她說，「要不要去找妳哥哥回來？」沒想到，她立即起步，飛快向前跑，不見了，沒多久看到她帶著哥哥回來。你說這個狗聰明不聰明？The weather was nice so I took the dogs out for a walk. When it was time to turn back, Yumin kept going on ahead. He was soon out of sight around a bend and wouldn’t come back when I called. Beagle. Ksasan stood next to me obediently. Sort of talking to myself, I asked her, You want to go get your brother to come back? To my surprise, she raced forward and was soon out of sight. Before long, she came back, herding Yumin. Is that a smart dog or what?

We just got back from a three day excursion to the east coast.

I was in a temple, talking with a nun, when somebody strolled by and asked, Aren’t you Americans having an election? What’s going on there? Yeah. I checked the news on my cell phone. The results shocked me. I told the nun, Trump won. She asked, How could anybody vote for a person like Trump? I said, He says he can restore America to the way it was sixty years ago. She was so agitated that she stood up and walked a circle around the room (Buddhist nuns do not get discombobulated easily). How could anybody possibly restore anything to the way it was sixty years ago!? I had no answer for her.

Countries that support America are in despair, and even Australia, the USA’s staunch ally, is considering distancing itself from us. ISIS, Putin, Khomenei, and Xi Jinping are celebrating Trump’s victory. Wonder why.