Chinese Appliance Factory #8

Good afternoon students. My name is Mr. ON.

It rhymes with song gong, long gone.

         It is 17:10 p.m. If it was 18:01 p.m., I would say good evening, however it is still afternoon. It is late in life. Class meets twice a week for two hours. Show up on time, do your assignments and stay awake. Nothing more. Nothing less. Simple English is good.

         We are gathered here today in the glorious Chinese Communist Party Peoples’ Appliance Factory #8 to begin our simple English lessons. Your supervisor informs me you are here by choice and chance. You have the choice. This is your chance. Am I clear? Do you understand me? Choice and chance. 

         Now. I know. Most of you have been working in the factory since dawn. It is the end of another long mind numbing grueling tedious day down on the killing floor. English has brought us together. You face unique and amazing challenges to acquire a foreign language. To use said target language with meaning. To maybe baby become fluent. It will require your undivided attention, focus and electrical energy.

         You will practice speaking, reading, listening and writing. These are the four basic skills.

Output: Writing and speaking are active.

Input: Reading and listening are passive.

Learning is a never-ending process. Many of you will die before it’s complete.

        Learning occurs in the context of task-based activities. In other words you learn by doing. You do and you understand, as we say, said, did, done.

         We will cover, in exhaustive detail, four important appliances and their English A/C-D/C lets see connections. They are: washing machines, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens.

         These machines are now essential in everyone’s life. You know this because it is your job to put them together. It’s like English. Putting words together makes a phrase. A short, simple sentence. Some have meaning and some are gibberish. Many words are composites of useless idiomatic semantic syntax that is not the same as income tax however both are expensive.

         Write this down.

         English in. English out.

         Open your head, heart and mouth. Eat English.

         Please open your creative notebook. Using a simple writing tool like a pen or #2, get the lead out fast pencil I want you to consider the following questions. Answer them using basic English.

         How did I get here? ______ 

         Why am I here? _____

         Am I a machine? _______

         Am I a tool of the factory? _______

         What is my motivation to learn English? (Secret answer - MONEY)

         No money, no honey.

Here’s the equation. No English = no job. No job = no money. No money = no food = starvation.

         Your supervisor has instructed me to motivate you. She expects me to motivate you to arrive on time, complete the assigned tasks, and pass the exams. Her management style ordered me to use fear as a form of discipline with you.

We are all well aware how the power and threat of fear motivates humans in our society. If I fail to motivate and pass you I will be executed. Survival is my fear-based motivation. You WILL pass because my little short life depends on it.

         Fear is a funny word.

Fear of starvation. Fear of poverty. Fear of losing face. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation or shame. Fear of not meeting family expectations. Fear of speaking in public.

         Fear of  ______  (free choice).

         Thank you for your short attention span. Next lesson we will discuss parts and functions of a washing machine cycle with elocution about a Turkish woman using sharp word shears down on her killing floor.

old cherokee

An old Cherokee chief took his grandchildren into the forest and sat them down and said to them, “A fight is going on inside me. This is a terrible fight and it is a fight between two wolves. One wolf is the wolf of fear, anger, arrogance, and greed. The other wolf is the wolf of courage, kindness, humility, and love.”

The children were very quiet and listening to their grandfather with both their ears as he then said to them, “This same fight between the two wolves that is going on inside of me is also going on inside of you, and inside of every person.”

They thought about it for a minute, and then one child asked the chief, “Grandfather, which wolf will win the fight?”

He said quietly, “The one you feed.”

calligraphy Brooms

Down dream street in Turkish reality

an unprecedented wave of egalitarian support featuring millions of sad, serene women facing callously arranged marriages filled with empty hopes and vague promises of love and happiness enlisted to become engaged to strangers on transcendental borders. This wave of support resembled an open handed gesturing in the eternal present as a mother reluctantly gifted her daughter a long fare well wave watching her disappear into life’s teeming stream.

         “Be well my love,” she sang. “You will always be in our hearts.”

         Her daughter joined a world tribe of singing, sighing women. They lived their dream, making sacrifices with clear intention, motivation, determination and focus. The entourage of waving, singing women danced through valleys, climbed jagged Eastern Mountains named Regret and entered a no-name village where males pounded war drums and hammered plowshares into word swords.

         Marginalized poor angry males killed each other over pita bread, olives, fresh tomatoes, kebabs, women and geographical dust while studying imaginary maps.

         “The map is not the territory,” said Visualization, a cartographer.

         “Where is this place?” asked a woman leader in a strange village on a strange planet in a strange solar system in a strange universe.

         “It is far away,” said a gravedigger with vast earth moving experience. “It is a dysfunctional place where bronze statues of fallen soldiers, warriors, politicians and testosterone fueled fools rust and congratulate each other on their mutual stupidity.”

         Wind whispered to women, “Go home, return to your children, your families and friends. Live in peace.”

         Women listened with heart-mind.

         “It’s tough living in dystopia where women are beautiful and sad,” said Visualization. “Millions don’t know whether they are coming or going, going, long gone. They’ve fashioned well-defined living death masks from loss and hopelessness and confusion and uncertain doubts selling tears wrapped in silence. Millions of us wait for an arranged marriage.”

         Potential husbands gathered to draw lots. They drew with ink and pastels and charcoal. The charcoal came from a deep black shameless unconscious well of tears where women, tired of waiting, sang, “Give me a child, give me someone to love and protect and carry forever and cherish and spoil with benign neglect. Give me your future. We don’t really truly honestly care about adverbial love, it’s all arranged. Everything has already happened. We just need to experience it. Love is a blind whore. It’s an impossible love. It’s a matter of practicality. Marriage first love later.”

         “Here,” said a marriage broker, “accept this man, this stranger into your heart. Just give him a child. Get to the verb.”

         “We breed, work and get slaughtered,” said one woman. Daughters wrapped these constricting words around their hearts in love’s tangled jungle.

         You never see women taxi drivers in Turkey. It’s a male ego thing with bright speeding tire spinning toys on wheels. It’s a Toy’s For Tots live game show. In cafes idle retired or chronically employed guys sit around all day from opening to closing playing backgammon. They slide little wooden pieces carved from youth’s forgotten toys. Young macho guys spin shiny yellow taxi wheels playing arranged symphonies in the horn section. They are the next generation of backgammon players.

         Women know better. They express their feelings. They live longer.

         Courageous women stood up to parents. “I respect your traditional ideas about arranged marriages, however, to be really honest heavy deep and real with you, it’s old fashioned conservative thinking. This is 2013 not 1987. I am a member of a new freethinking generation. I am not willing to be a victim, a willing victim of your narrow-minded attitudes. I will choose my friends, lovers and companions, based on my needs. I know why the caged bird sings.”

         Before leaving Ankara I shared a Chinese calligraphy painting poem with students. It was an old Qing dynasty poem, a gift from primary students in a rural Sichuan village school. A visual simplicity symbolized the transient nature of life lessons.

         Bright beautiful children in their radiant universe wearing red Young Chinese Communist Pioneer scarves around well-scrubbed necks sitting upright at colorful plastic desks raised hands when I asked questions yelling, “Let me try! Let me try!”

         Only young brave students had the courage, the absence of fear to say this. Older students at middle schools and university were aged and silenced through tyranny and oppressive parental and educational brainwashed ideological practice. Shame. They’d lost their curiosity and enthusiasm. Only primary kids had the courage, the inherent inner freedom to say, “Let me try, let me try!”

         Their beautiful black pictographic calligraphy ink read, “One day a man climbed into the mountains and reached a hut. He met some children.”

         “Where is the teacher?” he asked them.

         “They pointed up the mountain covered by clouds. ‘He is not here, he’s gone into the mountains to look for herbs.’”

         Chinese characters were creased where latitudes and longitudes met linguistic horizons.

they went shopping

after 9/11 to satisfy their fear of poverty to overcome their fear, a small fear growing stronger day by day being fed by hysterical know-it-alls in 24/7 media ivory soap towers of higher intellectual reasoning based on empirical evidence.

“More channels!” someone screamed. “We need more channels!” There was a preponderance of rumors. Mucho evidence was charred beyond recognition. It would need DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating.

According to Ahmed with the gift of foresight, “Teams of social workers swarmed across Earth extolling virtues of well being, hope, trust, and bravery in the face of adversity, values, free choice, and impending sales at outlet stores.

"People seeking outlets and outlet stores found solace in their ignorance of how the world worked on molecular, political, religious, economic, philosophical, and cultural levels. Long festering animosity and cultural bias had come full circle. An invisible Orobus constricted their heart. Their myth was part idealism and realism standing on its head.

"Socially, culturally, geographically and emotionally deprived children listened, shaking their heads, learning a very hard life lesson. One that escaped their well meaning parents. Kids knew when adults were bullshitting them.

(Kids had a built-in shock proof shit detector.)

"Scholars educated at global universities started speaking Arabic, reciting Sufi poetry and 1,001 stories about the rise and fall of civilizations written before their time with hieroglyphics and cave paintings. Survivors filled caves. Candles sales were brisk.

“A tisket a tasket we need a casket,” sang multi-lingual children.

"Historians, political scientists, talk show experts, taxi drivers, fortune tellers, beauticians, and morticians took hotline calls. The number of callers increased exponentially. Suicide search and rescue teams were put on alert. Citizens packed hospital emergency rooms. Medical schools increased graduation classes to meet the growing need. Demand outstripped supply when it came down to fear and consumption."

Source: A Century is Nothing

Cold Turkey

Yes, it's true, said a free spirit in a free world. You have to break down before you break through.

The difference between the sense of hearing and the skill of listening is attention. Good lesson, said a listener. 

Tell us a story about Cold Turkey.

It may interest you to know Turkey has the highest number of journalists in JAIL or PRISONS than any country in the world. More than China or Iran.

Sounds like a great place to speak your mind free from fear.

Yeah, free speech is cold in Turkey. Colder than leftovers.

What happened to open your head, open your heart and open your mouth?

Speaking free has it's risks. You can say that again. Censorship is alive and well. Best served cold.

Who cares? We can always go shopping.

Amnesty International.