Merry f-ing Xmas

Everyone here celebrates Christmas as far as it’s a secular holiday for winter gift giving. No one seems totally sure what the date is and most golden we’ve talked to seem to have no religious context for it. I adore it.

Huda beer? Youda beer!

Merry Christmas from Brian and me at a random goat meat restaurant. We’re drinking homemade liquor while dudes play dominos or something next to us and eating random goat meat dishes. 🐐

Tis the season for overwritten greeting emails from institutions you used to attend.

The Anh Dinh Palace here in Hue this afternoon

That first post-back massage seated twist where everything in your back pops. 🥰

Know who else seemed to have a similar "maximalist" design aesthetic?

When I read the term "primate city" I still think of a city entirely inhabited by gorillas or something.

Nope; me neither

Lunchtime, baby!

Went to go get our heads lopped off by this bridge

In case you forgot where we were

Here’s the picture I just took for @brianlfrye.bsky.social. I asked if he wanted one where he’s jauntily leaning on a chair, but he said no, remarkably.

@brianlfrye.bsky.social is making me take Polaroids of him in suits so he can make sure they look good like Cher Horowitz does.

Cute kittens of Hue! The baby void crawled into Brian’s tote and wanted to come home with us. 🐈‍⬛

Uh, okay

Anyone else here in the 80s and 90s who used to say "you got moded"? Or "you got moded, corroded, and your butt just exploded"?

Saw a kid’s sweater here at a market in Hue that said "You’re Fucking One of a Kind," with a cute little puppy next to the sentence. 😂

All right people so literally I downloaded one of the government documents to Books on my iPad. I highlighted some text that was not redacted and it included some that was redacted and I copied it over to notes and I pasted it and you can see everything unredacted. www.justice.gov/multimedia/C...

The struggle of being with a man who doesn’t take off his outside shoes inside. 🤢

I need Tulane to build me this reading room. This is the old imperial reading room, also called the Reading Pavilion of Extreme Peace. It comes with a beautiful courtyard. I think having one of these would make me more productive.

Lol

Link: www.muellershewrote.com/p/watch-the-...

If you wanted to see the Inside CECOT segment from 60 Minutes, it aired in Canada 🇨🇦 Thank you, Canada, for sharing! 💚

We watched some subpar Viet karaoke, Brian almost got bit by a strange dog, and I had my first salt coffee. Good night from Hue, Vietnam! 🇻🇳

Y’all, this is a chè bắp cocktail! 😍 I’m at the beautiful new cocktail bar Ikigai here in Hue.

We’re in Hue, Vietnam. We just walked into a place with no name. The lady at the front asked us "you want seafood with noodle soup?" Yes ma’am, we do.

Well, happy last day of Hanukkah from us in Hue, Vietnam, where it just ended. Let your light shine!

I need it to be Christmas already so I can stop having to listen to all this shitty Christmas music.

We're in the Lotus Lounge in Ho Chi Minh City. It's a hellscape of unending Christmas music & shrieking children. What's the antidote to this? I'm listening to this album by Putrid Vomit Christ, a Hanoi-based death metal band, loudly on my headphones. Much better. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwIo...

What an asshole. "I thought he’d focus on *other* immigrants" is this guy’s angle.

In one week I met both Ilya Shapiro *and* Josh Blackman and a part of me wondered if I needed to take iodine tablets or something. Yes, I think I can joke about them being toxic when they both would love to see my ass get deported.

The paper became a Lennon Wall of sorts, and our Lennon Walls - or what's left of them by August 2020 when Apple Daily offices was raided and Jimmy Lai arrested - became decked with Apple Daily and the fight for press freedom Source: Telegram (Aug 2020)

Oooh I have some fun material here. One of the things HKers did to support the paper financially was to buy up classified ads, which became a whole new genre of soft-protest. A small thread -

Our room. The cat wants to hang out with us and has the most ancient meow. Hear him below! 1/2

Finally chilly enough for hot pot!

Last night in Taiwan. As you can see, this is the house cat’s chair.

Hot take: One Battle After Another wasn’t that good. A ton of white dudes were super effusive about it when it came out. I think it’s because they find the relatively dull story of an incompetent white guy bumbling into the lives of more interesting people relatable. 1/3

Not that my opinion matters, but FWIW, I wasn’t a fan of this movie. High hopes, and watched till the end since I had already committed myself, but that’s a one & done for me.

We climbed up the pagoda in the Wenchang Pavilion. Wenchang Pavilions are dedicated to Wenchang Dijun, the god of literature. Students comes to pray for success, and some of them leave copies of their student IDs and their course schedules inside here.

From yesterday; a visit to Tainan’s Confucius temple

A last taste of Tainan on the way back to Taipei

In progress; a truck caught under an awning

Corner Cat Cafe in Tainan

Fuckin baller, man

We found the cat cocktail bar in Tainan!

All this (beef sesame oil soup, beef offal soup, stir fried veg, stir fried lamb with cabbage, and free rice with pork, if you so choose) for less than $15!

Black and white Polaroids, in case we weren’t pretentious enough. Call it "Maybell and Brian Do Tainan."

We’ve found the perfect bar