Slices ov da Trumpocalypse, #6

“God, Guns and Goldfinger: it’s gonna take a Felon and a Hillbilly to fix this.”

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

Universal Self Loving — Nov 15, 2025.

In 1965, Andy Warhol had his first museum show at Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art. For its opening, all paintings were removed to safeguard them from the anticipated mob. With nothing to look at, this frenzied crowd converged on the artist. Firemen had to cut a hole through the ceiling so Warhol could escape.

The symbolism of this night was too appropriate. The artist replaced his art. Warhol’s masterpiece was his image. With his fright wig, pallid complexion and expressionless, skull like face, Warhol made himself more iconic than his Campbell’s soup cans. Sixty-four years later, how many people still remember those?

Though self-worship is as old as mankind, it became more achievable and democratic through cheap image reproductions. Before photography, only the richest could commission oil painters to make flattering images of themselves, to be admired or worshipped. Now, every dork can reproduce his hideousness an infinity of times on FaceBook, Instagram, TikTok, X or Truth Social.

As a one-year-old in Saigon, I couldn’t quite catch that Warhol show at the ICA. In 1989, I did see a Francesca Woodman retrospective at the same venue. Every photograph was a self-portrait, with most of them nudes. One that had two other figures was also a self-portrait, since each nude woman held up a photo of Woodman’s face. I had to study their breasts and pubes very carefully to realize it wasn’t some trick photo, with just Woodman’s body reproduced thrice. I can’t think of any other photographer so obsessed with herself. Before the selfie even existed, Woodman was its goddess.

To be fair, she did make compelling photos, and artists have always painted or photographed themselves, with Van Gogh the most famous example. The Dutch master also stared at many other faces, as well as fields, houses, skies, plants and animals. He looked at everything with the same love and intensity. The best artists contain multitudes. Shakespeare is much more than his sonnets.

Self-admiration precludes love for anything else. It’s the dominant tone of our era. That’s why we have self-satisfied assholes like Johnny Somali, Ice Poseidon, Island Boys, Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Each oozes a psychotic smugness. Even the most repulsive Johnny Somali has followers. Lesser assholes envy his “clout.” Everyone’s main objective is to be seen.

After that last sentence, I forced myself to enter The Góc. Occupying the same block as my building, it’s Vũng Tàu’s hottest café. Suddenly, Củi Warehouse and Salt Water are passé. Each night during its opening week is like a festival, with chicks all dressed up to take selfies.

From the outside, I could see books, however. Just now, I inspected them to find plenty of garbage, with masters of self-love swooned over. There’s Trump’s Think Like A Billionaire and The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received, among others. With attention span shot, who can read the 520-page biography of Steve Jobs? To fill up shelf spaces, there were hardcover volumes in English, French or German, such as Stahl und Eisen and Revue générale des Caoutouche et Plastiques. To evoke the West is cool enough.

The Góc is a joke, but what isn’t these days? There are still many, though, who are sane enough to call out the bullshit. Stuttering nerd Elon Musk poses with a samurai sword. Trump imagines himself as the Pope, Bill Kilgore from Apocalypse Now, a fighter pilot and Rocky. After he’d planted his sour mug on Sylvester Stallone’s buff physique, someone juxtaposed the Donald’s real pudgy self with Obama’s, “GUESS WHICH ONE PAYS FOR SEX?” With enough self-love, you’re immune against shame or truth.

As millions of Americans are unable to pay for their mortgages, rents, insurances, car payments or just groceries, this self-loving psycho can still shriek, “In fact, costs under the TRUMP ADMINISTRATION are tumbling down, helped greatly by gasoline and ENERGY […] We are the Party of Affordability.”

When Francesca Woodman committed suicide in 1981, she was only 22. At age 79, Trump is openly planning for an unconstitutional third term. He’ll be 86, then, in 2032 when that’s over.

Since there’s no way Trump would ever want to leave his $300 million ballroom, mixed martial arts events on the South Lawn or, most importantly, proximity to Karoline Leavitt, with “those lips, the way they move,” MAGA Mike must introduce a bill to make Trump a permanent president, including after death.

Injected with glycerol, potassium acetate, formalin, acetic acid, ethyl alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, quinine and phenol, the Donald will sit behind the Resolute Desk even when there are no lackeys or foreign leaders present. In the dark, it will be just Trump and Leavitt, forever at last.

(L): Five Easy Pieces 1970 ; (R): Paris, Texas 1984

Almost Angels — Nov 17, 2025.

I belong to the last generation that watched great films on big screens in one sittings. In the 80’s and 90’s, I was introduced to Cassevetes, Herzog, Fassbinder, Wenders, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky and Fellini, etc. In 1994, I had to travel from Philly to NYC to catch Trần Anh Hùng’s The Scent of Green Papaya. There was no live streaming.

In the last 20 years, I’ve been inside a movie theater less than five times. Only two days ago did I even hear about Wenders’ much praised Perfect Days, released in 2023. Living in Vietnam, I can’t buy it from Amazon and MUBI isn’t showing it. On YouTube, there are versions with Arabic, Czech and Spanish subtitles, so I got to see it, yesterday, through the last.

Immediately, I thought of his Paris, Texas, but also Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces. Carole Eastman deserves much more praise for its astounding screenplay. It doesn’t help that she’s credited as “Adrien Joyce.”

All three films are about escape or reinventing yourself. In Paris, Texas, Travis nearly kills himself trekking through the Chihuahuan Desert. Sam Shepard and Wim Wender’s screenplay has him straying into Mexico, but these scenes were wisely deleted. With shot after shot even more astounding than William Eggleston’s photographs, this is an all-American movie, though directed by a German. Kudos to cinematographer Robby Müller, a Dutchman.

Only gradually do we know why Travis is wandering. His full explanation comes at the very end. This delayed confession allows us to insert our own philosophical musings or neuroses. I could have done without it. Horrible marriages are all too common.

Seeing a solitary man pushing himself stubbornly into the unknown made me think of 28-year-old Edna Pontellier swimming naked on and on, until she could no longer regain the shore.

The ocean is a womb. So is Paris, Texas, because that’s where Travis was conceived. Running from his wife, son and a burning trailer, Travis thought he could somehow reach Paris, Texas before death. It is death.

Five Easy Pieces features an impossible Jack Nicholson tormenting Karen Black. Born into wealth and too much culture, Bobby sort of achieves a grittier, more authentic existence by screwing Rayette and becoming best buddy with Elton. Changing his wardrobe and accent, Bobby even got work on an oil rig. He drinks shit beer and bowls pretty damn well.

Rayette’s addiction to Tammy Wynette drives him apeshit, however, for Bobby wasn’t just raised on Chopin, Bach and Mozart, but can perform them with ease. His siblings are professional musicians.

Released in 1970, Easy Pieces reflects the new sexual mores, so Bobby isn’t married to Rayette, nor is Elton wedded to Stoney. They do have a boy, however. Merely cosplaying, Bobby has no intention of becoming a daddy or de facto husband. That’s another reason why he hates Wynnette’s “Stand By Your Man” so much.

For Rayette, it’s an article of faith. You must still love him even when he’s an irrational asshole.

You’ll have bad times, and he’ll have good times
Doin’ things that you don’t understand
But if you love him, you’ll forgive him
Even though he’s hard to understand

Like Elton and Stoney, Rayette still clings to age old values.

Elton tells Bob he oughta get “one them things,” meaning a child. Then, “I can’t see nothing so bad in it.” Besides, Rayette is already pregnant.

Bob snaps, “It’s ridiculous! I’m sitting here, listening to some asshole cracker compare his life to mine!” The pretend red neck’s mask comes off.

The movie’s final scene where Bob sneaks away from her at a rural gas station is heart breaking.

Made in 1984, Paris, Texas is also about the collapse of the nuclear family, or, perhaps more accurately, the wounding and deformation of men, women and children in today’s society.

With much luck and effort, Travis is reunited with his son and, against all odds, is able to track down his lost wife. He has to travel from LA to Houston to find her. Still, they can’t be together again. Only via a phone and separated by a plastic screen can Travis talk to Jane. It’s as if they’re in prison.

He can’t even tell his son face-to-face he’s dumping him again. The seven-year-old is left with this recording:

Hunter, it’s me. I was afraid I’d never be able to say the right words to you, in person, so I’m trying to do it like this. When I first saw you this time, at Walt’s, I was hoping for all kinds of things. I was hoping to show you that I was your father. You showed me I was. But the biggest thing I hoped for can’t come true. I know that now. You belong together with your mother.

You belong together with your mother. It was me that tore you apart, and I owe it to you to bring you back together. But I can’t stay with you. I could never heal up what happened. That’s just the way it is. I can’t even hardly remember what happened. It’s like a gap. But it left me alone in a way that I haven’t gotten over. And right now, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of walking away again. I’m afraid of what I might find. But I’m even more afraid of not facing this fear. I love you, Hunter. I love you more than my life.

No, you don’t.

So where are we in 2025? As superbly played by Koji Yakusho, Hirayama is a toilet cleaner in his mid-60’s. Wearing “The Tokyo Toilet” on his uniform, he’s announced or defined as a toilet for millions.

Like Bob in Five Easy Pieces, he’s cursed with too much culture. Though burdened with everyone’s waste, he reads Faulkner, Highsmith and Koda, and has many books. Hirayama also listens to Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Otis Redding, The Velvet Underground, Janis Joplin and the Animals, etc. His musical taste is really Wenders’, of course, so like Paris, Texas, this is another tribute to America.

As fantasies, movies deemphasize work, but in Perfect Days, Hirayama is often shown meticulously cleaning toilets and urinals, with his face not a foot from where everything disgusting empties out. Most conscientuously, he’s always focused on what he must do. Seeing Hirayama cleaning toilet after toilet becomes tedious, of course, but these tasks don’t even make up a fifth of this two-hour movie. Imagine doing that eight hours a day for decades.

(In the 80’s, I cleaned toilets for a couple years. Angela Cherubino had M&M’s scattered behind hers. She clearly enjoyed sugar coated dragée chocolate while taking a dump. My poem about this time, “Clean, Clean, Clean,” was published in Harper’s in 2009.)

Unlike Bob and Travis, Hirayama has no female companion. It’s quite possible he’s a virgin. The only sexual tension in the film occurs when his runaway niece, Niko, shows up. Knowing the Japanese predilection for schoolgirls, viewers can’t be blamed for expecting the worst, but nothing happens. The scene of them by the river is the movie’s second best.

Niko, “Does this flow into the ocean?”

Hirayama, “Yeah, to the ocean.”

“Wanna go?”

“Next time.”

“When’s that?”

“Next time is next time.”

“When’s that exactly?”

“Next time is next time.”

“Now is now.” Niko smiles.

“Next time is next time!”

“Now is now!”

Repeating that over and over, they bicycle away joyfully.

With the exception of Niko, the young actors in Perfect Days are stupid or freakish looking. Tokio Emoto as Takashi even sounds retarded. With her blonde hair, accentuated eyebrows and overly red lips, Aoi Yamada as Aya has a masklike face. If Wenders is suggesting there’s an increase in idiocy and superficiality among us, I fully agree.

The final scene is the most sublime. It’s painful to watch. You, too, will sob. Wenders has always loved to have his actors say just about everything without words. These three minutes are his best.

Driving to work as the sun is coming up, Hirayama is listening to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good.” Though Simone died 20 years before this clip was filmed, she must be smiling, and sobbing, too. With Wenders and Yakusho, she has jammed so much joy and sorrow into this moment, how can anyone not be moved?

Drowning in shit, we’re still, somehow, almost angels.

Vung Tau, 11/19-20/25

Collapsing Swineland — Nov 20, 2025.

According to Gallup, an astounding 40% of American women between 15 and 44 want to leave the US permanently. Only 19% of American men in that age group wish to do so. This is far from normal.

Gallup, “Before the U.S. in 2025, no country had recorded a gap of 20 points or more between younger men and women.”

Women nurture and protect native culture. They’re much more likely than men to wear native dress. They have, or should, possess a vast knowledge of native recipes. They cook what you ate as a child, as cooked by your mom and grandmas. Cursed are those whose mothers were indifferent to native cooking. Women teach babies and toddlers the native language, word by word, most lovingly. Women don’t just represent the stability, comfort and beauty of home, but homeland. Cursed are those who even think such a statement is sexist. Insane are those who insist there are no differences between men and women.

When their men are defeated or simply weakened, many women don’t hesitate to latch onto foreign ones, however. Think French women with German Nazis during WWII, or Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War, or, most tragically, even now. In their eyes, white men are winners by comparison.

On his first full day in Vietnam, Jesse, a white six-footer from Minnesota, was offered two possible wives. The first from a sidewalk coffee seller, Mrs. Hạnh. The second from a motorbike taxi guy, Bình. Since they occupy the lowest rungs of Vietnamese society, Jesse, just 44, clean-cut and with minimal tatts, must come off as just about perfect. He’s a mature and stable Adonis with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in the bank, and his pecker still works.

Except me, no one can look perfect beyond 50, even in the worst light or hours of the day, but Mrs. Hạnh, let’s be charitable here, couldn’t have been a looker even when she was 18. At 60 or so, she’s scrawny and just miserable in appearance, and yet, Mrs. Hạnh was married for six years to an American. Luckily, they never had kids, for he was beyond impotent. Though he was apparently too broke or ashamed to take her to the USA, he did treat Mrs. Hạnh to an eight-day Singapore vacation. She will never see another foreign country.

Meeting Jesse, Mrs. Hạnh showed off her broken English, to the astonishment of her regulars. Her coffee and soft drink stand serves construction workers, mostly. They’ve been toiling for years on the mammoth Double Tree Hilton. It may never be finished.

American construction workers are generally tall and beefy. Vietnamese ones are among the most malnourished. Dark from constant exposure to an unforgiving sun, these gnarly men, and women, too, come from distant villages to labor in cities. They live in tiny cells. Girls from such families would consider a guy like Jesse a movie star from another planet, which the entire West basically is.

As for Bình, he get his news from TikTok. He’s never been to Đà Lạt or Cần Thơ. A while back, he insisted the Eiffel Tower was burning. Today, he said Trump was giving each American $2,000. Bình can live on that for nearly a year. Like millions of Americans still, Bình doesn’t really care that Trump fucked 13-year-old girls and sucked cocks. Maybe it’s fake news. As a billionaire president of the greatest country ever, Trump must be brilliant. All those white people who voted Trump in can’t be morons.

(L): Vung Tau, 11/20/25 ; (R): taken by Jesse in a suburb of Minneapolis, 2025

Just now at Ông Bầu, a woman in her 30’s said to a barista in his early 20’s, “You’re so white for a boy!” Giggling, she was delighted.

Singaporeans, too, are white, thus Western, enough. Two years ago, I still had a room by the pool at DC HomeStay. Hearing a lovely voice singing in a confident English, I opened my door to find some girl around 17, holding a microphone. Sitting at a table in our garden was a foreigner roughly 40-years-old. Only later did I find out he was Singaporean. After the teenager had finished her singing, her dad or uncle urged her in Vietnamese, “Ask him if he has a son! Ask him!”

Pushed by Jews and the US into a disastrous war against Russia, Ukrainians have fled for over a decade. In Thailand, Ukrainians whores pose as Russians. They’re all over Europe. White creeps, including many Americans, have invaded Ukraine to harvest desperate women in a society increasingly devoid of young, able bodied men. When India tried to block Ukrainian prostitutes from entering in 2012, women baring their breasts protested outside the Indian Ambassador’s residence in Kiev.

For a century, Uncle Sam has been the world’s leader in generating refugees. Less noticed is his role in creating whores. Going broke, women have always sold their bodies. When the US occupied Naples at the end of WWII, nearly a third of its nubile females became whores just to feed themselves and their families, especially their children. It became so banal.

Norman Lewis, “These women were dressed in their street clothes, and had the ordinary well-washed respectable shopping and gossiping faces of working-class housewives. By the side of each woman stood a small pile of tins, and it soon became clear that it was possible to make love to any one of them in this very public place by adding another tin to the pile. The women kept absolutely still, they said nothing, and their faces were as empty of expression as graven images. They might have been selling fish, except that this place lacked the excitement of a fish market.”

With life becoming impossible, Americans dream of escape. For US women, seeing their men idolizing a child raping cock sucker who routinely insults women can’t be a turn on. Just now, Trump sneered at a female reporter, “Quiet, quiet, piggy!” Even those enraged by Trump have no solution other than voting in another genocidal monster.

On the back of Bình’s motorbike today, I shouted into his ear, “That government is like a gang. To function in it, you must be initiated. If I fuck little girls, you must fuck little girls. That way, we have something on each other. If you’re not guilty, how can I trust you? They’re all monsters.”

Though Bình nodded, smiled and even laughed, he’s likely sad, if not resentful, why some guys, like me, could enjoy decades in the West, while he will never experience just one second in paradise.

Vung Tau, 11/21/25

Free Jazz, Free Love and Free Fire Zones — Nov 21, 2025.

There’s a handful of authentic Indian restaurants in Vung Tau. I’ve tried two. Since Jesse’s wife is Indian, I steered him to Taj Grill on Phan Chu Trinh. That street also has Belly’s Watering Hole, as much an Aussie clubhouse as a bar and restaurant, Helmut’s Schnitzel, Russia Donuts, a Vung Tau institution, and Moscow Donuts, a spinoff. There’s a lot to explore.

The odds of Taj Grill’s owner coming from Punjab, Jesse’s wife’s home state, was low enough, but there’s also a customer there who lived just a mile from his wife’s house in Delhi. It’s almost a family reunion. Happily, the chattered in Hindi mixed with English.

Jesse ain’t no typical American. For seven years, he even became a Sikh, complete with turban. His love for India has hit a snag, however, for his wife would rather be a Minnesotan. In the Twin Cities, she can be Indian enough. Hundreds of thousands of Hmongs, Somalis, Ethiopians and Tibetans are also comfortable enough in the North Star or Gopher State. Jesse lived in an apartment building that was almost entirely occupied by Tibetans, and he worked for three years in an Ethiopian grocery store.

At a recent wedding, Jesse met a cousin’s husband. In his late 20’s, this man couldn’t wait to move to the middle of nowhere. He just wanted to escape. Jesse related this with amusement. He has come to Vietnam to mingle. Already, he’s chattering away with strangers. At Caribou, his regular café back home, everyone keeps their distance. Even after going there for years, Jesse has made no real friends.

Eleven years ago, I visited St. Paul on July 4^th. Stumbling onto Langford Park, I witnessed one Norman Rockwell scene after another. If this was a Hollywood movie, people would laugh. It was too cheesy a time warp. Wholesome white kids ran around. Strike Up the Band and such were played by a competent orchestra at the bandstand. The few black or Oriental kids mixed well. Just six miles away in downtown Minneapolis was an entirely different world. Sagging jeans on ghetto males were common. Black Hebrew Isralites thundered and hectored. Whites and American Indians were more likely to be bloated or ragged from decades of crappy eating and too much shitty booze.

Leaving St. Paul, I saw an art installation at the train station. From it emanated a creepy, faraway voice, with ominous shit like this, “The moon will rise at 13:48 today, and because the moon is in the waxing gibbous phase at the moment, we’ll get to see 49% of its face. Right now, if you have an unobstructed view, you should be able to see for 10 miles. Here’s a tip of what to do while you are waiting in my waiting room. Go find the secret door. It will tell you secrets. Go look for it.” My waiting room, mind you.

Jesse also worked at a record store. There, he met Adam Linz, the bassist. A college dropout, Linz would make his name with Fat Kid Wednesdays and tour Europe.

“He studied with Wynton Marsalis. He thought Marsalis didn’t like him because he was white.”

“That’s interesting. I saw Marsalis at a DC bar with his brother. Brandford looked so young, I thought he was some high school kid! You know, jazz was finished by then. Marsalis is basically bebop, but cleaned up. He probably knows Obama! He plays, you know, at the Kennedy Center and in the Hamptons! You know Charlie Parker died at 34 from a heroin overdose? The coroner thought he was 60. That’s the hardcore jazz life. I don’t mean Marsalis should live like that, but he’s suave, man!”

Linz turned Jesse on to Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman. Jazz ain’t really his thing, though. He did laugh when I told him about pissing off a South Philly bartender by playing Sun Ra.

“In the past, every jukebox was specific to a bar, but now, you can play anything anywhere. She looked at me with pure hatred. I really pissed her off.”

Weirder than being from Saturn, Sun Ra maintained an orchestra. It’s insane to keep all those musicians fed and rehearsed. They lived together in Germantown. The one time I saw his Arkestra, it had three drummers.

So much has died. I told Jesse about hearing Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” at a bar in Westmont, NJ (pop. 14,000). As a Johnny born lately, Jesse had never heard of this groundbreaking song.

That time, I wasn’t responsible. Seeing the barmaid going berserk, I tried to be helpful, “That’s Arlo Guthrie.”

Chick just stared at me.

“He’s Woody Guthrie’s son.”

Still, no comprehension.

“Woody Guthrie inspired Bob Dylan.”

A bulb of the lowest wattage possible flickered on for half a second. This 18-minute number was stir frying her few remaining brain cells.

“It’s the end of an era,” I said to Jesse. “There’s also a movie made from it. One scene has Arlo Guthrie sitting next to some chick. Nudging against him, she wanted sex, you know, but he wasn’t interested. With no emotion, he merely said, ‘Let’s just pretend we did.’”

There’s a comedy skit that echoes this, Jesse replied, “There’s this show, Kids in the Hall. On a first date, this guy says to his girl, ‘Let’s just skip the romance and get to the sex.’ After he gropes her a bit, she says, “Why don’t we skip the sex and get straight to the guilt!’ They crack up.”

“That’s amazing! Even the worst sex is supposed to be great. Bad sex is better than no sex!”

“Some of these 90’s shows had amazing social commentaries.”

In “Alice’s Restaurant,” the narrator shows up at his draft board in NYC. In 1967, the horrific Tết Offensive hasn’t happened. Interviewed by a psychologist, he turns psychotic, “I mean, I wanna—I wanna kill. Kill. I wan—I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill. Kill. KILL! KILL! And I started jumpin’ up and down yelling, ‘KILL! KILL!’ and he started jumpin’ up and down with me and we was both jumpin’ up and down yelling, ‘KILL! KILL!’ And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall and said, ‘You’re our boy.’ Didn’t feel too good about it.‎”

So that went very well. Sadly, he’s rejected for the Vietnam War because he’s been convicted, once, of dumping garbage down a ravine, and fined $50. He’s just trying to help out Alice, who lived in a church tower. Its nave she used as a garbage dump.

“I mean—I mean—I mean—that just—I’m sittin’ here on the bench—I mean I’m sittin’ here, on the Group W bench, ‘cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages… after being a litterbug.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Kid, we don’t like your kind.’”

7/4/14 (L): St. Paul ; (R): Minneapolis

In WWII, Uncle Sam allied himself with the worst Communist ever, Stalin, then not long after the Vietnam War, he moved most of his factories to Communist China. This shift was greased by Kissinger. If you still think the USA is anti-Communist, go ahead, as the USA itself becomes more totalitarian by the second.

As for sending young, naïve soldiers overseas, they will go berserk, kill and rape. Nixon to Kissinger regarding William Calley, “Most people don’t give a shit whether he killed them or not.” Most Americans, Nixon meant. On 9/11/25, one “Charles Burgess” emailed me about Trump’s murder of Venezuelan fishermen, “I worked in counter-narcotics in Latin America for years. The boat that was destroyed was filled with cocaine and piloted by Venezuelan narco scumbags. Clear as day […] One thing about Americans, we don’t lose too much sleep over such things.” Jerking off somewhere, how does Burgess know what’s on any boat? Who cares?! Just kill them all. Its Satanism oozes from all spheres.

Since many more Vietnamese on both sides died than Americans, the Vietnam War was essentially a civil war. It’s not always about you, buddy! Uncle Sam is expert at exploiting local tensions for his own ends. In Ukraine, he’s milking bitterness over the Soviet years, most notably the Holodomor, to turn Slavs against Slavs or, to be most specific, basically Russians against Russians. Jews hate Russians, Arabs, whites in general and Americans. Genocidal hatred invigorates and defines Jews.

Back in his room, Jesse heard “Alice’s Restaurant” in full and thought it amazing. Liking Vũng Tàu so much, he will pay $250 for another month at DC HomeStay. For that price in the USA, you’d get maybe four nights at the worst Indian run motel filled with junkies and whores many miles from the nearest 7-11 or Wawa.

I finish this outside Coffee Seven. Though shuttered, its wifi still works. No one has seen Mrs. Seven for a week. Chased from her family home, she must be heartbroken. I also wonder how Nọng and Milk Cow are doing.

(L): William Taft ; (R): Elon Musk

After Filet-O-Fish and Bubba, Mamdani! — Nov 23, 2025.

William Taft was a one-term president who’s best remembered for an apocryphal story of being stuck in an oversized, custom-made bathtub. Tafts weighted 354 lbs. Since the first KFC was only opened the year of his death, and the first McDonald’s a decade later, Taft couldn’t try to kill himself with stacked burgers, mounds of french fries and tubs of fried chicken.

The first Filet-O-Fish appeared in 1962, when Donald Trump was 14. Though its “tartar sauce” has xanthan gum, potassium sorbate, calcium chloride, polysorbate 80 and sugar, it’s still rich and creamy enough, so an ideal gateway drug for any boy destined to bend over Bubba’s open fly. Just wipe the excess with the back of your hand.

As governor of the Philippines, Taft improved its infrastructure, legal framework and educational system, and he instituted land reform. Thanks to Taft, many more farmers could have their own land. Taft actually did more for Filipinos than Trump has ever done for Americans.

Despite being a symbol of empire, Taft is still honored with a major thoroughfare in Manila. What enlightened city or town will have even a back alley named after Trump a decade from now?

Even in DC, Taft has left his mark. The majestic neoclassical Supreme Court is his creation. As president in 1912, Taft suggested it, then won approval for it in 1929, just a year before his death. Taft was Chief Justice. Law was his passion. Unlike that blustery cocksucker with a Filet-O-Fish in each hand, Taft wasn’t after any monument to himself, but a dignified home for Supreme Court Justices. Though an equal branch of government, they had to meet inside the Capitol.

As for being grossly overweight, the most transparent liar ever claims he’s only 224 lbs. Trump wishes he was Caitlyn Jenner. This only matters because the Donald keeps posing as so tough, macho and solid, even muscled. Elon Musk does the same. Without AI or shirt, both are sickly and pasty. Like Uncle Sam, these icky freaks are all about projecting fake images.

With relish, MAGA morons lick their lips after swallowing. Lying next to their 350-pound common law wives, girlfriends or blown up dolls, they’re soothed by so many barbie dolls inside the Beltway. MAGA is taking over. Maybe Bubba is around for a quickie? You’re just doing a Trumper, my man, so suck it good, if you can find it beneath the Cheetos crumbs. Since that fake shit adds flavor, it’s all good.

With photography, television, the internet and, now, AI, we’re well into a universe dominated by titillating images. Nearly everyone wants porn all the time. It’s, after all, more convenient and, most importantly, ego boosting than reality. Gorging nonstop on virtual pussies, Trump’s mouth, Noem’s hair and Leavitt’s boobs, etc., you’ll feel more wholesomely American. False notes like Kash Patel or Usha Vance must be ditched.

Trump owned Miss Universe, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA and several casinos. In one man, then, you had a purveyor of blonde haired, blue eyed fuckfest fantasies and instant wealth, none of which will come your way. It’s too perfect this sleazy dream weaver became US President.

This morning, MAGA morons wake up to photos of Trump staring up dreamily at Zohran Mamdani. His habit of having foreign leaders standing by his side while he’s seated, I’ve always thought most awkward, even obscene. Only the boss is comfortable. With Mamdani there’s a different dynamics. This supposed Muslim Communist is towering over the shrinking white man. If Mamdani’s hands weren’t folded over his crotch, Trump might have been tempted to perform a spontaneous Bubba Bubba Filet-O-Fish number. Dementia erases inhibitions. Dark men can only be a nice change of diet after pale ditzes.

Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles were quintessential American cities, at least symbolically. To this list, you can probably add Houston, for that’s the location of Mission Control for the bullshitty Apollo missions. For the last half a century, Las Vegas became the dream American city. Plopped onto the middle of a desert, Vegas has nothing to offer but fantasies of wealth, opulence and sex, just like Trump.

With fake Egyptian pyramids and Nile River, NYC’s Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge, Paris’ Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, Rome’s Trevi Fountain and Colosseum, Venice’s Rialto Bridge, St. Mark’s Square and canals, it appears to contain the entire world, if only as travesties. That’s more than good enough. Saves Americans, especially, from experiencing anything alien or authentic.

On a Greyhound Bus 12 years ago, I sat next to a guy who survived for days on just Wonder Bread. What little money he had had to be saved for his big trip to Vegas. I don’t doubt he became a millionaire.

In 2005, Wynn Las Vegas appeared. With 45 stories, it was Nevada’s tallest. It had an astounding 2,716 rooms! To promote this monument to himself, Steve Wynn, real name Weinberg, stood on its roof for a spectacular Super Bowl commercial. His humorous last line, “Can I get down now?” Due to his sexual and financial misconducts, Wynn got down all right, and Vegas itself is going broke. The USA, too, thanks to another corrupt narcissist who just loves to grab what you can only dream about, in your cute red hat.

Weinberg’s original name for Wynn Las Vegas was Le Rêve, after a 1932 Picasso he had bought. A weirdly bent penis makes up a third of Marie-Thérèse Walter’s face. With her breast shown and eyes closed, she’s dreaming of sucking Pablo, obviously. Though hardly Picasso’s best, I imagine Trump loves this image even more than Weinberg. Nearing death, perhaps he can buy it while dreaming of Mamdani.

Vung Tau, 11/22/25

Insatiable — Nov 24, 2025.

Next to DC HomeStay is Ocean Sunrise, a 3-star hotel that goes for just under $40 a night, very cheap for the USA but pricey enough here. Fronting it is Munterra, a glassed in upscale restaurant that appears standoffish. Peasants in floral pyjamas and barefoot freaks better not stumble into there. I don’t even know what they serve.

Among foreigners who stay at Ocean Sunrise, there are oil rig workers and visiting businessmen. To experience more of Vietnam, they sometimes sit right outside at a sidewalk café, with its low plastic stools and tables. The only beer available is crappy Saigon. During his first week in Vũng Tàu, Jesse has made some friends there. Most helpfully, the guy who runs it, Nam, got Jesse packets of clove cigarettes. It’s nearly impossible to find.

Dealing with foreigners constantly, Nam can get them anything. I’ll give you one guess what’s their most frequent request. It ain’t gifts for their wife or mother.

Nam’s daughter, Mai, works as a hotel receptionist, so speaks decent English. Just yesterday, Mai told Jesse about this incident. At the beginning of her shift, a woman nearing 40 barged in to ask about her 13-year-old daughter.

“No, there’s no 13-year-old here.”

“But she’s here. She came in nearly an hour ago, with a foreigner.”

“That’s impossible. We don’t allow 13-year-olds to come in with foreigners.”

“But she’s here!” The woman was getting hysterical. “He’s old! Seventy- years-old! They’re in a room together.”

Knowing there’s a white man around that age in such a room, Mai went there with this panicking woman. When repeated knocks got no answer, she opened the door to find this old white creep with his Vietnamese girl. Both were naked.

Getting dressed, the sobbing girl went home with her mom. No cops were called. To have this in the news would hurt the hotel’s reputation. The previous receptionist had likely been paid off to allow it. After selling her girl’s virginity to this near corpse, the woman felt guilty, it appears. Gramps didn’t kidnap her off the street. He’s a retired doctor, in fact. It’s been a while since this degreed pervert could inspect anyone’s nether regions.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of white creeps come to Southeast Asia to buy cheap pussies. After fucking little girls in Cambodia, glam rock legend Gary Glitter landed in Vung Tau. Finally caught for fucking a 10-year-old and an 11-year-old girl, Glitter was jailed for just 2 ½ years. At the trial, the girls’ families pled on his behalf. They had sold their kids to Glitter, after all.

After being convicted of fucking 12 little boys in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, Christopher Paul Neil, better known as Mr. Swirl Face, was jailed for six years. This Canadian must have fucked many more.

The only way to stop this sick trade is to punish much more severely both fuckers and purveyors.

Surely, these are freakish losers on the fringe of society. Unable to achieve more normal sexual satisfaction back in British Columbia or Columbus, Ohio, they had to travel halfway around the world to indulge in the sickest fantasies. The rich and powerful in Midtown Manhattan or Northwest DC can just diddle beauty queens.

On 7/25/23, this was filed for a fee of $402 at the US District Court, Southern District of New York, “In 2002, at his Manhattan townhouse, 9 East 71st , Jeffrey Epstein executed a ‘hand off’ to his close friend Leon Black […] The human being, Jane Doe, is autistic, and she was 16 when Jeffrey Epstein introduced her to Black […] Even as Black grabbed her hand so hard that she thought he broke bones, Jeffrey Epstein knew Jane Doe would never disobey […] Black took her to the third floor of the townhouse, to a massage room where she had been before with Jeffrey Epstein. There, using adult sex toys in her anus and vagina, he raped her. His physical force such that when he left her on the floor sobbing, she was bleeding. As set forth below, Jeffrey Epstein refused to take her to a doctor, and instead said that Ghislaine Maxwell would take care of it.”

Not just autistic, this girl was retarded, with the mind of a 12-year-old. Leon Black, real name Blachowitz, is the co-founder of Apollo Global Management. It has $840 billion in assets. Black studied philosophy and history at Dartmouth, so a smart guy. In 2018, Black was elected chairman of MOMA, America’s leading modern art museum. Though he hasn’t been convicted of raping a retarded girl, the publicity forced him to step down at both Apollo Global and MOMA. His son, Ben, though, has just been appointed by Donald Trump to lead the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. After all, Trump has similar sexual taste as Leon Blachowitz. What’s the big deal, really?

Why shouldn’t trailer trash emulate billionaires? Two days ago, Gavin Weisenburg, 21-years-old, and Tanner Thomas, 20, were indicted of planning an invasion of Gonave, a Haitian island of 87,000 people. If Rambo alone could kill hundreds of Viet Congs, why shouldn’t these Texans give this a try? To gain military skills, Thomas enlisted in the US Air Force. With recruits among DC’s homeless, they will reach Gonave by sailboats. After killing off all the men, they can rape all the women each day, all day, forever. These incels have had no experience of adult females, obviously. These bitches will stir fry your limp dicks in no time.

Vung Tau, 11/22/25

Had Weisenburg or Thomas come to Vietnam, Thailand or the Philippines as a tourist, he’d be offered pussies cheap enough. Guessing correctly what most white men want, Oriental whores and pimps gravitate towards them. The image of each country, then, is grossly distorted. The vast majority of Vietnamese, Thais, Cambodians, Laos and Filipinos have had no interaction with foreigners, whether white, Japanese, Korean, Indian or Arab. Going about their business, they can’t sell heroin, coke, weed, meth or pussies to foreigners even if they want to, and most, believe it or not, are not at all interested.

The West’s appetite for small, fuckable bodies and drugs of all kinds are insatiable indeed. When Vũng Tàu was flooded with American, Aussie and Kiwi soldiers half a century ago, even children sold drugs to them. Even without the stresses of war, they can’t hardly go a day without getting fucked up.

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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