Iron Mind shares with Iron Body

South Korea was shaped
in America's Image

from:		Greg Hafer
to:		Mark Hafer
date:		Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 2:51 AM
subject:		China's not that old.
mailed-by:		gmail.com

Brother! If you were a state, you'd be Markansas!

North Korea was shaped in
the Soviet Union's Image

So, I got stuck on a Wikipedia binge, opening a bazillion tabs, one for every link that I knew nothing about, usually pertaining to preceding dynasties or governments or empires. The history of East Asian is crazy. After a few hours, my favorite tidbit is about Korea. Korea was a long standing Empire for a bazillion years until Japan invaded and took control for merely a few decades. Then, after WWII, we essentially did the same thing we did with Germany, broke it up into zones. The Soviets got the top half and the US got the bottom half. Forget reinstating the Empire that existed before the Japanese invasion, the empire that shaped the culture, customs, philosophy, and language that is still dominant in Korea today, let alone entertaining the idea of even keeping the country intact. No! We had to split it into two countries, a compromise between the US and the Soviet Union. So, today, the Koreas have turned into caricatures of their creators. The Soviets modeled North Korea's government after their own crazy-ass Leninist single-party socialist state, so now modern NK is seen as the least-free, most isolationist, dictatorial nation in the world. The US modeled South Korea's government after their own crazy-ass self-indulgent free-market I-am-entitled-to-a-plastic-bag-for-my-crap-at-any-store-I-go-to-along-with-a-thorough-taint-licking-from-an-underpaid-worker system, so now modern SK has the fastest Internet in the world, 24-hour video game channels, and some of the best shopping centers anywhere. Crazy! I feel kind of stupid that I didn't know why there are two Koreas and why they are so different. That was one of 28 tidbits that I enjoyed tonight. The other one is about China.

People keep saying "China is the oldest civilization in the world." I'd be pissed hearing this news if I were from Mongolia, which was established a decade before the Qin Dynasty, which later gobbled up Mongolia. And Mongolia is still around, even after breaking away from the Qin Dynasty in 1911. But none of that makes a difference anyway because guess what? There is no more Qin Dynasty. It's gone my friends. You know what isn't gone? Mongolia. Sure it's a bit different, a modern democracy, not like the preceding Mongol Empire. You know what else isn't an empire? The People's Republic of China, which is only 62 years old and encompass a different geographical region than any of the governments proceeding it. No one makes claims on the age of the civilization now called the US by factoring in the British Empire or the Iroquois tribes or even the Paleo-Indians. I'd love a presidential candidate to throw that one out on the campaign trail. "America has been hijacked by the radical left and is moving further and further away from what our founding fathers intended for this great nation. Take my favorite founding father, Zugzug. The late Pleistocene era was a trying time in US history, but brave men like Zugzug had vision. They knew that if they fashioned a stone spear tip just right, they could take down a heavily armored glyptodont quite easily. And as we all know, those glypyodonts had thicker skulls that most Democrats. Am I right? Am I right?" If the age of a civilization had to do with an organized group of people occupying a geographical area, the US would be as old as Zugzug. If it had to do with its ties to previous political systems, the US would be as old as the tribal system established by homo sapiens in the British Isles during the Bronze Age. China is 62 and the US is 235. Anyway, I wouldn't brag about how old my civilization is if most of my people don't have hot running water. China is a new country, and as such, the next generation has an amazing opportunity to shape New China into something great. But lest we forget, this supposed "oldest civilization" is still a developing nation. You know which country has a higher literacy rate than China? Mongolia. Oh snap!

Anyway. Asian history is fun. I'll save my other tidbits for later. This email is getting too long. We should just start a blog that consists of our emails to each other. People would read it. We could call if something like "TO: Hafer CC: Everyone Else."

(gh)

Google Chat that night:

4:55 PM me: Jimmy

  I've been doing some research of my own

 James: oh yeah

 me: on The Duck family geneology

  very peculiar

  lotta gaps

4:56 PM lots of parents neglecting their children

  no wonder Huey Dewey and Louie were trouble makers

  their family kept shirking them off onto other family members

4:57 PM Della gets pregnant with a mystery duck and can't raise her triplets so she ditches them off on Donald who gets enlisted in the Navy

4:58 PM so He dumps em on his Uncle, who is an old scottish codger that hordes money

 James: woot

Jorge Gets his Shit Together

An Email from Greg to Mark


Oi! Physically, I've been a lazy piece of shit, and now I'm not even a vegetarian. I just got back from Harbin and noticed how much my little tummy has grown. I pretty much lived on deer sausages and beer while I was there. The city is amazing! It's Russia with Chinese people instead of Russians. I went there with a 60-year-old Scottish woman, which wasn't as fun as I thought it would be. Why aren't you here? Anyway, I'm back in Shaoxing for two days before the second part of my vacation. This place is a ghost town. Creepy. I could run around the campus naked and no one would know. 

This is my first day of recovery, so I decided to eat only vegetarian today and do a jump-start workout. I worked every muscle group a little bit just to see what needs the most work. I certainly need to destroy my gut. Tomorrow I'm going to go running. Gunna run the track, gunna do intervals. Running up the back steps. Running down the front step. Got to make my mind up. Which steps should I take?

Anyway, I kept telling myself, "Iron mind iron body" because you used to say that all the time, so I googled the phrase to see where it came from, and the only thing that matched was your blog, which I completely forgot about. Then, after I opened it, I see that you started writing in it again for the first time since 2009. I had to check the dates a second time. Isn't that crazy? A few days after you started the blog again, I accidentally found it on the Internet, the first thing I found after not having the Internet since the 16th, which is also when you posted. It's like we are connected on a quantum level, like two biceps on the same body, possibly Deepak Chopra's body. Hot stuff, coming through.

I just thought I'd let you know that your iron mindwaves reached me all the way in China, clearly proving that there is no such thing as distance at the quantum level, and by quantum, I mean something that has to do with psychology but it's too complicated so I use a scientific term from physics to trick people into thinking I'm smarter than I am by describing what I see, but not really knowing why those observations occur, hence the contrived quantum bullshit explanation.

I'm going to get back to exercising, even though I can't eat those fancy foods that you listed on your blog because I'm not a privileged Westerner. Looks like rice and cabbage again...