Slices of Life, #11

I can’t think of any country more disunited. So appropriately, it’s ruled or at least fronted by a master divider. The self-adoring psycho is enjoying every second.

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

MAGA Situation Report — Sep 08, 2025.

First off, I want to thank Ling Ding Dong for allowing me to come on here to counter, point by point, his endless bullshit. As a free subscriber to this asshole’s SubStack, I haven’t read most of his articles in full, but his name alone is enough of a clue. This motherfucker also lives in Communistic Vietnam, when he’s not panhandling in South Africa, India or Albania. He’s obviously too broke to travel to any First World or white country.

Rejected by America, he’s missing out on President Trump’s Golden Age. This explains his seething bitterness. This lost loser is too poor to fly back, not that we want him. Landing at Philadelphia International Airport, he’d be arrested within five seconds, then placed on the next flight to South Sudan, where he could mingle forever with other savages of color.

Just now, he’s gloating over the supposed collapse of Las Vegas. Foreign tourists are boycotting it, he claimed. Fact is, we don’t want Chinks, Japs, Gooks, Dotheads, Ragheads and Spics to ruin that beautiful city. Shit, man, we don’t need Frogs, Krauts and Puckheads either. Europeans are freeloaders and Canadians have stupidly refused to become our 51^st state. Shunning California, Florida, Arizona and Las Vegas, they’ll just freeze their nuts of.

More good news: Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, Lufthansa, Air France, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, British Airways, Air Canada, Emirates and Qantas have all cut back flights to our beautiful country, thus making it even more gorgeous. Nothing is more breathtaking than empty streets with boarded up stores, such as we’ve seen for decades in Normal Rockwell type burgs across America. Soon enough, Las Vegas will look like Welch, West Virginia.

Having never flown, I didn’t even know there were more than ten airlines, but why, you ask, should we celebrate fewer British Airway flights? Doesn’t MAGA Land need many more white people? Each flight from London is packed with child raping dotheads, who the Brits call Asian groomers. No, thanks.

Any second now, Ling Ding Dong will announce Vietnam Airlines has stopped direct flights from Ho Chi Minh City to San Francisco! Until a minute ago, I didn’t even know there were such outrages. Kenyan Obama must have greenlit that human trafficking pipeline!

Our country is already overrun by Viet Cong run nail salons and dogmeat pho joints. You can’t pay me to even sniff a fuckin’ bowl. What’s wrong with a $12 Bacon Quarter Pounder with Cheese Combo at some ghetto McDonald’s? Haven’t had one in a while, I must admit. We have a family of four. A hearty eater, my wife must have her $24 Classic Big Mac Pack. Two more bucks for a large Coke. Don’t even try to steal one of her fries. Can’t complain. More cushion for the pushin’, my daddy always said.

Having chased most of the yellow, brown and black tourists away, we must do a better job at keeping them out of our colleges. All the Chinese kids are spies anyway. With President Trump flipping off China for years, slitty eyed nerds are no longer so numerous at Ivy League schools, MIT or even Georgia Tech, so that’s a start. These schools have tried to replace them with Indians and even Nigerians, however. That’s seriously fucked up.

Since each Chinese student spent twice as much as an Indian, and thrice as a Nigerian, many more of these savages must be brought in to replace the Chinks!

Where are the white students?! There must be enough who can handle plasma physics, molecular biology, rapid prototyping, neuro science, ordinary differential equations, computational linear algebra, combinatorial analysis and advanced applied probability courses? I have no idea what any of those words means, not one! Gave me a fuckin’ headache just typing them. In 12^th grade, I did get a C- in geometry.

Under President Trump’s firm and erect leadership, this previously flaccid nation is finally ejaculating in the right direction. Don’t let pussies like Ling Ding Dong tell you otherwise. One last bit of good news: our corn, soybean and wheat farmers are all in deep shit. Thanks to ICE, their Spic laborers have disappeared, and those Chinks ain’t buying. This is fine, actually.

Like President Trump wisely pointed out, farm work is for black, brown and yellow peasants. Even fat face JD Vance knows this. Us whites have no business growing food or raising animals. With trillions flooding in from Trump’s tariffs, we can just cash our dividend checks.

Didn’t our greatest president ever say, “We’re going to become so rich, you’re not gonna know where to spend all that money. I’m telling you—just watch!”

Freezing my white ass off in a used RV after losing my fuckin’ farm founded by my great, great, great grandfather, a passenger on the Mayflower, I’m watching away, daddy!

Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (L): Coffee Seven on 8/25/25 ; (R): 9/4/25

Lovable Messes! — Sep 08, 2025.

Matthew Rossman is beyond nauseated by my Trump coverage. Having escaped North America, he doesn’t want to hear about that monster. A long time resident of Vietnam, Matthew worked for years in Saigon, and is now in Vung Tau. Typing at Cóc Cóc, I would see him ride by on his motorbike, sometimes with his teenaged daughter. I think she takes violin lessons, and is also in a badminton club.

Vietnamese kids in blue martial art uniforms are studying Vovinam. When still fighting in a boxing ring, MMA star Cung Le would use its signature scissor kick takedown.

Anyway, as a Canadian Matthew is especially disgusted by Trump. To spare him further pain, I will now talk about some Vung Tau characters. Since Matthew isn’t Vietnamese, his access to this culture must be limited. Though I’m not working in this economy, and can’t even ride a motorbike, I can dig out stories Matthew can’t. Plus, I’m a lurker. Even if I wasn’t a writer and photographer, I would still lurk.

For at least two weeks, Mrs. Seven has been obsessed with the K-pop singer Lisa. Since most YouTube videos on this Thai-born singer are in English, Mrs. Seven must sometimes ask me to translate a caption, such as, “Lisa’s sad and tearful moment back home.”

Seeing this 28-year-old chick crying on stage in Bangkok, I couldn’t help but blurt, “Look at her! She’s faking it!”

Wrong, wrong, wrong! Sixty-seven-year-old Mrs. Seven walked away, looking hurt. Her beloved Lisa can’t be a phony! Even her obviously fake nose must be real!

Other times, Mrs. Seven can be very tough. Yesterday, she decided one of her two dogs needed the hair around his asshole trimmed. Since Milk Cow had gone through this routine, he was cowering under a table. Holding her scissors, Mrs. Seven shouted for him to come out. As she clipped away, I observed, “You’re not even an inch from his balls! Click, click, click, click! He’s traumatized for life!” She thought it was hilarious.

I’ve already told you about Mrs. Seven cutting the tail off all her puppies and kittens, just after they’re born.

Just as important as hygiene is obedience. When her younger daughter was in the 12^th grade, she came home near midnight once, so was caned three times on her ass while lying face down in bed, sobbing. When her older daughter, already 21-years-old, came home in the morning after a night out, she was slapped, hard, three times at the door. When Mrs. Seven was told her husband was seen with some slut, she went looking for them with a barber’s razor. As an organist playing at restaurants and nightclubs where booze was served, he must have had many chances.

Telling me these stories, Mrs. Seven boasted, “I’ll knock you out, send you flying with a kick.” As a girl, she practiced her punches on her dad’s heavy bag. Even today, there’s a five-foot-long hard plastic pipe she keeps by the door, just in case there’s trouble.

This morning, Lisa was again mentioned. Mrs. Seven does concede K-pop stars are all sliced up and reconfigured, every single one of them but her Lisa. Like most people, she knows South Korea leads the world in plastic surgeries. To my surprise, she added, “But if you need to fix things down there, you must go to Thailand! They can cut if off and give you a hole. They can go the other way, too.”

“But it won’t work!” I retorted.

“Of course, it will work.”

I turned to Sơn the security guard, “How does Mrs. Seven know so much about this?”

He just grinned.

In five months, NaLi Beach’s lease will run out. Though Sơn could be assigned somewhere else, he will likely work for his son-in-law as a manager at a construction site. Sounds like a better gig. When Sơn showed up in Vung Tau in 1991, he didn’t even have a thousand đồng [three pennies]. His first job here was at a lumber mill. Though Sơn earned next to nothing, he somehow got married soon after to a woman not so destitute.

“How did you manage that, brother?”

“Technique,” he smiled.

“Did you hear that, Mrs. Seven?! Brother Sơn has technique!”

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t tried.”

In just six hours, I will see those two again, plus Nọng, of course. She’s always ecstatic to see me. Sometimes this bitch disappears into the kitchen, way in the back, to lie quietly in a dark hovel. Like everyone, she’s more complex than we can imagine, so preoccupied, each of us, with our laughable, or lovable, if you will, mess.

(L): Manila, 4/19/25 ; (R): Vung Tau, 9/4/25

Nation of United Races?! — Sep 09, 2025.

In late 2019, I showed up in Vung Tau to stay for a month, then disappeared for 2 1/2 years. From mid 2022 until now, I’ve spent two more years here, so I’ve had a chance to see Vung Tau change. There are many more itinerant sellers of lottery tickets and recent rural transplants wandering around peddling food or dirt cheap items. Most alarmingly, some beggars have reappeared. From 1975 to 2000, there were so many. During that span, I spent nearly three years in Vietnam, with trips to very remote areas of both north and south, so I saw these beggars. I’m not speaking from statistics.

Last night at Cóc Cóc, I gave money to a woman in her mid 40’s. There’s something off about her. The young barista sensed this too.

This is the seventh month of the lunar calendar. In Southeast Asia, it’s calculated from the year of Buddha’s death, so we’re in 2568. (Basically, I’m living 543 years ahead of you.) This is when dead souls are allowed by Yanluo Wang, the ruler of hell or just the afterlife, to return to their old haunts. Setting up altars with food offered to these spirits, many businesses also give food to the living. This attracts scammers. Mrs. Seven, for example, saw a woman who kept changing blouses and hats so she could return to the same charity line as a different person. Another woman she knew went all over Vung Tau to collect food, then bragged about how much she got. This goes against the spirit of neighbors helping neighbors or the truly destitute.

Last night’s beggar complained the bills I gave her were too old. Overhearing this, the young barista suggested I stop giving her money again.

“Have you seen her before?” I asked.

“Just once.”

“She’s weird, but who knows? Maybe she’s really hungry.”

At Cóc Cóc recently, some guy was caught on camera stealing its plastic plant pot. I can’t imagine it selling for more than 10,000 đồng, or 38 cents. This is enough, though, to buy sticky rice with mung beans, lotus seeds, peanuts, gấc or even pork floss. Six years ago in Dak Lak, I would get shit faced with three other guys on just 10,000 đồng’s worth of moonshine. No longer sipping socially, I can’t recommend any rice wine that may kill you for next to nothing, but you can certainly feel fine after work for five or six days on just two bucks, or just 10,000 đồng a day. Turn off your TV, then, and scour your neighborhood for plant or flower pots, even huge, ornate ones. What’s the worst that can happen? Running from bullets is great exercise. Ding dong ditching is for kids.

“You don’t know how bad it was 25 years ago. You weren’t even born!”

“I wasn’t, uncle.” She smiled.

“Look at these.” I then showed her five photos on my laptop. “Just look carefully at each.”

She stared at people, including children, sleeping on sidewalks. One image had a pantless boy standing next to a woman in a beatup wheelchair.

“Where do you think this is?” I asked.

“Africa?”

“Africa?! Look at them! They look like us.”

To many Vietnamese, a Cambodian is black enough, so he’s just black. Those images, though, were of Manila. Sleeping on sidewalks for months or even years would darken your skin, too, so the barista thought she was looking at Africa. Ignoring their hair, eyes and lips, she only saw skin color. For millennia, we were conditioned to detect the smallest differences, for life and death might depend on it. Even before he could open his mouth, we could tell he wasn’t from our tribe. Even today, many Vietnamese will insist they can differentiate, by sight alone, a Mekong Delta native from a Red River one. Genetics, climate, food, history and culture must leave clues, often obvious.

Working at least 360 days a year, the barista hasn’t traveled anywhere, so you can’t really blame her for confusing a Southeast Asian nation for Africa. Africans rarely show up in Vung Tau. If he’s tall and well dressed enough, most Vietnamese would just call him a Westerner, ông Tây.

As a child, I still heard the USA referred to as Hiệp Chủng Quốc. Derived from the Japanese 合衆国, it’s supposed to be a translation of United States, but 衆 is clearly mass or crowd. Hiệp Chủng Quốc or 合衆国, then, is literally United Crowd Nation.

Smart asses will point out that 衆 is really chúng, and not chủng, which means race and not mass. What we have then, is a Japanese mistranslation further mistranslated, at least colloquially, by the South Vietnamese, perhaps willfully. Dimwit South Vietnamese like me imagined the United States as the Nation of United Races.

Speaking of race and crowds, South Korea just beat the US in soccer by 2 to zero in metro New York. At MetLife Stadium, South Korean fans far outnumbered US fans. It was the visiting Orientals who had home field advantage. For decades, this has also been true of Mexico vs. US on American soil. Who cares, you say, but the world cares more about soccer than just about anything else!

Roger Bennett, “South Korea, Bong Junho, BTS, New Jeans just turned the US men’s national team into Bibimbap!” Just a decade ago, so many Korean references strung together would have been impossible. There is indeed a cultural shift.

This game came right after that ICE raid in Georgia where over 300 South Koreans were arrested. Even when foreigners bring jobs to Americans, they’re treated like enemies.

On the same day in the same city, Trump was loudly booed at the US Open tennis final, and this blustery clown is a New Yorker! This June, Trump was also booed at the Kennedy Center, the nation’s premier space for the performing arts. He’s also despised in LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and just about every other American city. His only remaining supporters are the farmers he’s bankrupting and depressed blue collar types who think wearing a red hat will transform their lives.

I can’t think of any country more disunited than this Nation of United Races. As its economy collapses further, this seething hatred between Americans so divided by race, national origin, class or favorite TV station can only get much worse. So appropriately, it’s ruled or at least fronted by a master divider. The self-adoring psycho is enjoying every second.

Such absolute self-love leaves no room for affection or just basic awareness of anything else. Nothing means anything unless it serves him immediately. Fortunately, madness so pure and public doesn’t plague every nation.

(L): Chuck Workman’s Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990) ; (R): Mickey Rourke as Charles Bukowski in Barbet Schroeder’s Barfly (1987)

Post Siesta Thoughts on Global Cultural Collapse — Sep 10, 2025.

In hot countries, taking a nap in the afternoon is most natural, as is getting much done early in the morning, even before dawn, when it’s coolest.

Finished with an article by 10AM, I walked around a bit, cooked, ate, washed dishes, gathered news, thought about this and that, then fell asleep. Getting up much later than usual, I didn’t leave my room again until past 5PM. Just getting dressed, I thought about Chuck Workman’s Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol and Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, a film based on Raymond Carver’s short stories. These flicks I saw in theaters more than three decades ago. For some reasons, they made me think of Barfly, a 1987 film about Charles Bukowski I never saw, and Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. I did catch that in 1985. Still in college, I had a classmate, a black girl, who was a Mishima freak. Another girl, a Canadian, turned me on to Andrei Tarkovsky.

Walking to Cóc Cóc, I thought about Nguyễn Huy Thiệp’s 1986 short story, “Tướng về hưu.” In my translation as “The Retired General,” it was published in the American Poetry Review, then Crossing The River. Twenty-three years after publication, this Curbstone book has but nine reviews on Amazon. A JD Vance sideway fart generates more critical attention, including PhD dissertations.

With increasing excitement, but also rage, I thought about the Tennessee Williams stories made into movies, and of his drunken interview with David Frost in 1974. Despite all its problems, hypocrisy and violence, that was America’s Golden Age. Those plopped into Biden’s wokedom then MAGA’s cesspool have no ideas.

As led by the USA, our global cultural collapse occurred over decades. Within 24 hours of arriving in Hanoi in 1995, I had a heated discussion with strangers about Nguyễn Huy Thiệp at a random café. Granted, most of them were only familiar with his fiction through film versions, just as Americans could watch Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Rose Tattoo (1955), Baby Doll (1956), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Summer and Smoke (1961), Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) The Night of the Iguana (1964), and two versions of The Glass Menagerie (1950 and 1987). Now, most people would prefer a lethal injection over being stuck on a comfortable chair in an air conditioned room next to a tub of popcorn to endure over two hours of any film made from a serious work of literature. That’s infinitely worse than death by a thousand cuts!

Ashland, Oregon was famous for a Shakespeare Festival where MAGA types would pay to get their perfunctory dose of high culture. Once a lifetime ain’t so bad. It spared them from driving five hours to Portland just to sidestep Antifa freaks, either panhandling, bent over from heroin or dead from Fentanyl, lying weirdly on the sidewalk. Maybe those plays in incomprehensible English are still being staged? At least the costumes are cool. Getting fucked up beforehand also helps.

Before Warhol, there was Salvador Dali, but the Spaniard did paint. Warhol mass produced his art in studios he called, most tellingly, The Factory. Having assistants do most of his work allowed the artist to spend nearly all his time just looking cool. Warhol’s main task was self-promotion. With his magazine, Interview, Warhol also made money by turning whoever into superstars, at least for 15 minutes. Before dropping dead, Warhol lent lotsa shine to Jean Michel Basquiat. With his black face often white with coke, Basquiat actually died from smack at age 27. His Whitney retrospective in 1992 was mostly financed by Madonna! Basquiat was the last American artist to receive any sort of general recognition.

In fiction, Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991) hit the big screen in 2000. By then, movie theaters were barely hanging on. Denis Johnson’s excellent 1992 collection of short stories, Jesus’ Son, hardly made a splash as a film in 1999.

I can’t claim to be a huge fan of Raymond Carver, but he’s heavily promoted when I was just learning to write, so I read pretty much all his stories. I even endured fiction by his pusher, Gordon Lish. When Short Cuts came out, I immediately went to the Theater of the Living Arts on South Street to see it. What struck me then was how all the female stars had to be frontally nude at some point, so porn was used to sell literature. Hollywood as a sexist whorehouse couldn’t have been more naked. Only in 2017, though, was serial rapist Harvey Weinstein arrested.

(L): Bùi Cường as Chí Phèo in Phạm Văn Khoa’s Làng Vũ Đại ngày ấy (1982) ; (R): Ken Ogata as Mishima in Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

Arriving at Cóc Cóc, I saw only one customer, a man in his 50’s I had talked to several times. Let’s call him Tuấn. After the army, Tuấn went to the Soviet Union to study, then work. This northerner has traveled a bit. Now he works at Vung Tau’s small airport. Helicopters to oil rigs and Côn Đảo take off from there.

Already frothed up, I started to rant about cultural collapse, including in Vietnam. I mentioned how in nearly three years in Vung Tau, I saw just one person with a serious book, a collection of Nam Cao short stories, how in Dak Lak, I quoted a Hồ Xuân Hương line, “Spread me to three points, there’s not enough skin,” only to have it not understood, much less recognized. It’s a vagina talking. I mentioned how a motorbike taxi guy had never heard of Nguyễn Du. He’s only Vietnam’s greatest poet, with schools and streets named after him all over. In Phnom Penh, there’s even a Nguyen Du Aesthetics Plastic Surgery Center.

Sitting outside the Walt Whitman house in Camden, NJ one July 4^th, I talked to a panhandler who claimed he did odd jobs for “Mr. Whitman.” His grave in the same city is nearly as forlorn as Ivana Trump’s.

Understanding me perfectly, Tuấn agreed something must be done. He mentioned how cultured Putin sounded when interviewed by Tucker Carlson. We laughed at Trump’s illiteracy.

We discussed the Philippines. “They have a slave mentality,” Tuấn actually said. Their English proficiency is actually a mark of this. Minalonan born Carlos Bulosan’s best known work is America is in the Heart, written in English. Manila native Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters is about Manila, but in English. Their national hero José Rizal’s Noli Me Tángere is in Spanish. F. Sionil José wrote in English but had a Manila bookstore with a Spanish name, Solidaridad.

Of course, there’s also a Saigon chump who wrote about his native city in English. Worse, he has four books with America in the title, but massa, I was airlifted to Guam as a chide. Growing up on your bountiful and beauteous plantation, I gorged on Shirley Temple, Leave it to Beaver, Donny and Mary, Happy Days and The Gong Show. I wrote a fan letter to Slick Watts. Please don’t whip me, massa, though I gone bad!

“You know, I used to sit at Ca Dao.” The name means folk poetry. “The music played is from Saigon before 1975, plus some songs from Hanoi before 1954. Over half of their songs, though, are American, so what’s being evoked here? Almost none of their customers can understand a word, so they’re in there only to relive American occupied Saigon! Most Saigonese at the time had no interest in American culture, however. Only bargirls listened to American music, because they had to. Yes, there were a few bands influenced by American music, but most people ignored it. Growing up in Saigon before 1975, I didn’t even know what a hot dog or a pizza was, I never ate fried chicken, and my dad wasn’t poor! No one wore a hoodie. That’s for a much cooler climate. It’s so hot here!”

As Tuấn’s eyes glazed over, I waved at the stores in front of us, “Look at the English!” Actually, it’s much worse further on Ba Cu. “Our kids make all these mistakes,” in Vietnamese, I meant, “and their vocabulary has shrunk! Whenever I’m in the library, I’m the only one in there!”

I did shut up long enough to hear Tuấn talk about the importance of national pride, with respect and love for one’s culture a key component.

“What Vung Tau needs,” I ranted on, “is for its writers, painters and musicians to be recognized by people living here, and for them to write, paint and sing about being here.”

Though Tuấn agreed, I suspect he doubted it could ever happen. We’re too far gone.

In days, my three Vietnamese books will arrive in the mail. Each has a print run of 200, more than I need, but 100 would have cost only slightly less.

Emailing Saigon poet Lý Đợi, I said, “I don’t see how I can give so many books away. Those boxes will go into my coffin then,” not that I’ll have a coffin.

We’re not too far gone. Since respect for one’s language, history and land, for one’s nation, in short, is essential for having a meaningful life, it must be cultivated continuously. If eroded over centuries or raped away overnight, it must be recovered.

The second half of this piece was written the morning after, at Coffee Seven. At 5:36AM, the sun is up. This morning, the sky has a pale pink tint. Across the street, Morning Star Kindergarten’s gate is open, but no kid has arrived. In an alley, someone is sweeping.

About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):

‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’

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