the chinaman button

The world has turned completely upside down. I remember when I was a kid, my parents always telling me to finish my supper because there were starving kids in China. Nowadays, I imagine it’s the Chinese telling their kids the same thing, only the other way around.

While many people believe fear of the Chinese is all much ado about nothing, my friend Andy Fulmer would beg to differ. Fulmer thinks about the Chinese a lot. A LOT. In fact, for people in Fulmer’s line of work, fear of the Chinese is actually quite common. They even have a clinical term for it. It’s called, Sinophobia.

The Professor believes what Andy is experiencing is not actually fear of the Chinese, but abhorrence. When I asked him what the difference was, he paused, then said there really wasn’t any.

Fulmer works in the financial district. He’s a bagman for the Pillars of Hercules Financial—The Herc—but spends most of his time downtown at the Stock Exchange Building over on Spring Street. You know The Herc. It’s that life insurance company with the picture of Mt. Olympus on the logo.

You know what insurance companies do for a living, right? They take your money, then sit around figuring out ways how not to pay it out. In the case of The Herc, apparently they kept so much money they had to set up their own financial institution. What else you gonna do with it?

Fulmer lives next door. Seems we share a wall in the bathroom, and an air-ventilation grate. Although we’ve never actually met face to face, we often talk while we’re in the tub together. Wait, that didn’t sound right. Anyway, come to think of it, he is in the tub an awful lot. Like Trumbo.

Fulmer usually does most of the talking. He’s got a big, booming voice and I imagine he must be at least six and a half feet tall. Maybe he used to be a basketball player, or a professional wrestler.

A nice hot bath sounded like just the ticket about now. My head was just now starting to recover from that damn vise.

Of course, I told Fulmer about date night. Big mistake.

“The nurse?” he said.

Yes, I told him. How did everyone know she was a nurse except me?

“Is she Chinese?” he said.

Not sure what that had to do with it, but No, she wasn’t Chinese.

“You never know,” he said. “The Chinese are crafty. They’re on the thousand-year strategy.”

I thought that was the Third Reich?

“Same thing,” said Fulmer.

“Been to the movies, lately?” said Fulmer. Fulmer practically lives at the movies. It’s his little escape. Some people drink, some people drug; Fulmer goes to the movies.

I told him I had not. While I love going to the movies, it’s both a creative and financial challenge for me. Only about one in twenty movies are even watchable, no matter how good the trailers look. In fact, the better the trailer, the worse the movie. At least, that’s been my experience.

“Specifically, been to an AMC theater lately?” said Fulmer.

I explained to him that if I had not been to the movies, I had not been to AMC. Fulmer, like all my friends, never listens to a word I say.

“Well, next time you go, pay special attention to the little overture they put on there.”

Overture?

“You know, that short little production that comes between the previews and the movie.”

It’s called the Pre-Roll.

“The one telling you to shut the fuck up.”

Ah, yes. The one that says Silence is Golden.

“No. That’s the old one. They got a new one now.”

New one?

“Yeah. Pay close attention next time you’re at an AMC theater. Notice how much Red there is in their little pre-show production. The little helmet guys with devil’s horns: Red. Instead of Silence is Golden, now it says Report Suspicious Characters. All in Red. Want to know why?”

Here we go.

“That’s right, it’s because AMC is now owned by the Chinese. The Dalian Wanda Group bought AMC in 2012 and now it’s the largest theater chain in the world. Over 200 million Americans go to AMC theaters every year. 200 million. That’s a lot of empty heads to fill.”

Well, I thought, maybe AMC is owned by the Chinese now and maybe they are splashing commy propaganda all over the silver screen. But the joke’s on them. Americans are too dumb to be brainwashed anymore. Ha!

But movie theater infiltration is the least of Fulmer’s worries. Now, Fulmer says he’s uncovered yet another sinister plot by the Chinese to take over the America, and the world. He says the same thing at least once a week, but this time, he says, this time it’s for real. According to Fulmer, it’s the evil plot to end all evil plots. It goes like this.

Fulmer says the Chinese now have a new secret weapon: their minds. He says he has it on good authority that the Chinese have developed the power of mind control, like in the movie Village of the Damned. He says they’ve been working on it for thousands of years, in fact, and that they’re just now ready to unleash its awesome power on the rest of the world, especially the United States.

“Think about it,” says Fulmer. “Where do you think the Chinese got all that money from?  Certainly not from selling knockoff Rolexes and counterfeit Viagra.”

Makes sense.

“The truth is,” says Fulmer, “they don’t really have any money. They’re just using their minds to trick everyone into thinking that they do. I mean, who needs money when you’ve got the power of mind control. The Chinese are clever like that.”

Right, I thought. Like Confucius.

Fulmer went on to say that the Chinese have all kinds of sinister plots in the works. An old one, in fact, goes all the way back to the 1970’s when the world’s oil supply was running dangerously low. Back then, the Chinese had a secret miniaturization program in place. With it they could shrink themselves to microscopic size. While the original intent wasn’t anything sinister at all (the plan was to miniaturize the entire population in an effort to conserve natural resources), they later discovered that being no bigger than an amoeba made them great spies, that is until unsuspecting Americans started breathing them into their lungs. Anyway, the whole program went the way of the Irish Elk when that TV cowboy Ronald Reagan got into the White House and deregulated the oil business. That’s when the bottom dropped out of energy prices and there was no longer any need for conservation. Deregulation is just a nice word for describing oceans of dirty, gooey oil pouring out of the ground, and keeping the world drowning in it for the next thousand years.

Even after the Chinese perfected their miniaturization program, they continued working on the power of mind control. They had always been working on the power of mind control. It had been an ongoing comedy of errors ever since the days of Confucius and Sun Tzu, who by no coincidence lived at almost exactly the same time. No one knows exactly when the mind control program began exactly, but I’d bet you dollars to donuts it started somewhere between the 5^th and 6^th centuries BC.

“And now,” says Fulmer, “I’ve got it on good authority they’ve finally perfected it. At least enough so to move forward with their plot to take over the world.”

First America, then the whole world. That’s what Fulmer says. In the old days, all world conquest had to go through Rome. Now, it’s America. After conquering America, says Fulmer, the rest of the world will be a cakewalk.

According to Fulmer, the Chinese plot to take over the world has already begun. Stage One was tricking Islamic Fundamentalists into thinking they had a shot at defeating the United States at the one thing it does better than anything: killing people and blowing up things. The terrorists were feeble minded and brainwashing them was easy for the Chinese. The Chinese talked them into attacking America by providing them with an unlimited supply of satellite dishes and cheap phones, thus exposing them to episode after episode of the Kardashians, Real Housewives, American Idol, and Jersey Shore, turning their brains into mush until they were thoroughly convinced that pushing Americans around was going to be easy. All the terrorists had to do, the Chinese had them convinced, was to bomb the United States, hit them right where they lived, and the Americans would all go crying like those girlie men on those house-flipping and hairdresser shows. Once the Chinese had saturated the terrorists’ brains with enough bad American television, they could have pretty much convinced them of anything.

You see, the Chinese had cleverly used the terrorists as decoys to move American military assets over to the other side of the world, just as they had been using the North Koreans to test their new underground weaponry. Those explosions, the ones in North Korea that everyone thinks are nuclear bomb, they aren’t bombs at all. What are they? We’ll come back to that in a moment.

The Chinese are a crafty bunch and had been spying on America from the inside ever since the middle of the 19th century. Through their spies, initially under the guise of railroad workers, they learned that the one thing you first have to do if you are going to defeat the Americans is to separate them from their guns. Nobody loves their guns more than Americans, and by the last count the Chinese figured there were at least 300 million guns in all of America, with at least one trillion bullets. Do you have any idea how many one trillion bullets is? When you’re talking about one trillion dollars, that’s just some abstract concept in your brain; when you’re talking about one trillion bullets flying around, well, you’d better get the hell out of the way and fast.

No one had ever before beaten the Americans with guns. The Vietnamese actually beat the Americans by allowing them to use their guns on them for target practice. The Chinese were not going to go down that road. They had tried it with the Japanese, to no avail.

But now, finally, the time had come. The Chinese were poised to attack. Here’s how Fulmer says it will all go down.

The Chinese invasion of the United States will come suddenly one morning in the wake of a tidal wave. A huge tidal wave, like in the movie Deluge.

Thing is, the Chinese have been fooling around with ways of making earthquakes for some time now. All those underground explosions in North Korea, the ones the whole world thinks are nuclear bombs, they aren’t nukes at all. Through the power of mind control, the Chinese have discovered how to create their very own earthquakes and they’ve been running tests all over North Korea for years. Their first successful test on foreign soil came in 2011, in Japan, and that was a pivotal moment because Japan is where the attack on America is set to begin.

But if you think the Chinese are going to conquer America with earthquakes, you’ve got another thing coming. To get to America, first the Chinese will have to go through California, and earthquakes to Californians are more of a common nuisance than a going concern. No, the earthquake itself will merely be a catalyst for the real first wave of the attack: a tidal wave. Some people call them tidal waves, others call them Tsunamis. Here’s how the whole thing plays out.

The Chinese will initiate an earthquake one morning on the east coast of Japan in a fishing village called Choshi, right there at the mouth of Tone River. Chinese mind-control spies, also trained in the art of miniaturization, will hide themselves inside a crate of soy sauce, about 10 million of them with a combined size no bigger than the common flea. Then, by joining their 10 million microscopic heads together as one, they will create a massive earthquake right there on the east coast of Japan.

What’s even more clever about the plan is that there are earthquakes in Japan all the time, so no one is going to think twice about it. No one is ever going to imagine there are 10 million, germ-sized Chinese mind-control agents all gathered together in a crate of soy sauce, and they certainly aren’t going to suppose that the earthquake is the precursor for a tidal wave that will carry these 10 million miniature Chinese warriors surfing all the way across the Pacific Ocean to the shores of America. In fact, in the wake of the earthquake, while the whole world is watching the city of Tokyo burn (like in Godzilla), that tidal wave will begin moving slowly towards the United States and the California coast. No one will even notice it, save perhaps for a few fishermen off the coast of Midway Island. All the death and destruction in Japan will not only serve as a distraction, it will be also be payback for Nanking, because the Chinese never forget.

Even better, when that tidal wave hits the California coast it will surprise no one. Californians are used to big waves. In fact, if there is any response at all from the Americans in California it will be to go and grab their surfboards, like in the movie Beach Blanket Bingo.

But what the Americans will not be expecting is that when the water washes back, as the miniaturization process wears off, there will be 10 million Chinamen standing there on the beach with subjugation on their minds. And it is their minds they are going to use as weapons. The Chinese have never been very good with guns, anyway. Just ask the Japanese.

These 10 million Chinese psychic soldiers have also been trained in what is known as the Art of the Dragon. In short, it is the type of mind control that puts unimaginable fear into the minds of those with idle brains. Being that the people who live in California already have minds that are made out of mush, the whole thing is going to be a cakewalk for the Chinese.

The word cakewalk, by the way, comes from an old African-American dance competition where the winner would literally “take the cake” home with them. The Chinese spell cakewalk 走步竞赛, although if you were to ask any Chinaman what it means he’d simply direct you to the nearest bakery.

From the opening moments of the invasion, everything the Chinese have seen on TV will prove correct. All their reconnaissance will be spot-on. The people of America are docile, dumb, and they will run screaming for their lives as the Chinese round them up like so many ducks. The invasion will go off without a hitch, just as planned.

So where will the American military be during all of this, you might wonder? Well, they will of course respond; but remember, the real American soldiers will be on the other side of the world fighting the terrorists, As for American military hardware, their planes, their missiles, their satellites, all the things they rely on so heavily nowadays instead of good ole blood and guts, you have to remember all these things now run on parts that are made in, you guessed it, China. And all these things, by no mere coincidence, will begin malfunctioning at the same time.

The United States military, in all its glory, with all its pomp and circumstance, with all the songs playing behind it as it sets out for battle, will begin falling apart before it even gets halfway down the road.

All of a sudden planes will start falling out of the sky, missiles will veer way off course, and those oh-so important satellites they rely so heavily on will begin broadcasting pornography on every frequency. Not soft porn, mind you, but the hard stuff. Asian porn!

So it all starts falling apart. The pilots, who don’t remember how to fly the planes manually anymore, will all drop like dead birds out of the sky. No one will notice what’s going on anyway because now all able-body American men will be hypnotized by hardcore Asian porn. Every red-blooded male in America will be busy either wanking his willy or fetching his credit card to sign up for the limited-time porn discount the Chinese will be offering. The Chinese aren’t going to just take over America, they’re going to turn a tidy profit doing it as well.

With America now coming apart at the seams, it’s at this time that the laypeople of California realize they are all on their own, and that the Chinese have set to rounding them up in short order. The Chinese know exactly where they’re going; they’ve been tracking American reality television for years. First they’ll round up all the hairdressers, interior decorators, fashion consultants, and put them into reeducation camps. Next, they’ll go after all the Hollywood stars. They’ll go straight for all the Kendras and the Real Housewives of Orange County, but it’s the Kardashians they’re really after. The Chinese State Council loves beautiful women, especially ones with big round butts, and they’ve been dreaming of this day for a long time. With all those huge asses, there will be plenty to go around. As far as Bruce Jenner is concerned, they’ve already got a cage ready for him at the Beijing Zoo.

It looks like all is lost for America. But while Fulmer is a Sinophobe, he’s not a fatalist, and this story does after all have a happy ending.  Even as everything seems to be going along according to plan for the Chinese, what they do not notice is that there is a critical flaw in their plan. There is always a flaw, no matter how good the plan. In this case the flaw lies with Chinese Intel. Intel is always off, way off, no matter how good you are. For the Chinese, the problem with their Intel will stem mainly from weaknesses in their reconnaissance efforts.

You see, the Chinese have been planting spies in America for hundreds of years now, but it’s been very slow moving and with constant setbacks. The problem, quite simply, is that there is something extremely infectious about America. No matter how well trained the spy, he always seems to get corrupted by all things American. That’s why the Chinese finally made the fateful decision to rely on American television, not boots on the ground, and this of course is where everything starts falling apart. It’s been proven time and again: you cannot win a war without boots on the ground.

The Chinese, according to Fulmer, will inevitably wind up going down that same road the terrorists did, too much time watching American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, not enough time spent watching Walker, Texas Ranger. It’s understandable though, I guess. I suppose if I thought the whole of America really was like Sister Wives and Teen Mom, I’d try to take it over too.

In defense of the Chinese, I guess if I were them I wouldn’t believe there was really such a man as Chuck Norris, and that he actually lived in a place called Texas. But there is such a man, and there is such a place, and the Chinese will be taken completely by surprise when one day that same man, Chuck Norris, and what looks like a million dune buggies, come racing across the Mojave Desert straight towards them. Why dune buggies? Because dune buggies will by then be the last reliable form of transportation made in America. On top of that, they require no microchips, computer software, or satellite uplinks whatsoever. A dune buggy is just an engine and four wheels, all gears and guts, and has plenty of room in the back for mounting a carbine.

The Chinese will never know what hit them. Suddenly out of the blue will descend upon them a million Texans with this crazed look in their eyes, all of them having a barrel of laughs with the poor Chinese as they hunt them down like dogs. Back home, the Chinese State Council will be left scratching their heads, wondering what went wrong and why no one had bothered consulting the Japanese on the whole matter of attacking America.

And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, being lassooed and hog-tied by a bunch of crazy cowboys from Texas, in the wake of it all, behind all the dune buggies, will come a second wave, an armada of Mexicans coming down from the Devil’s Backbone armed with rakes and hoes and hedge clippers and all sorts of gardening tools. These Mexicans might be bringing up the rear with nothing more than landscaping gear, but I can assure you it won’t be yard work they have on their minds.

You see, according to Fulmer, the Texans will promise the Mexicans they can have California back when they‘re finished mopping up. And they’ll stand by their promise, too. The way Fulmer sees it, to any sane, flag-waving American, California is all but gone anyway.

The Mexicans will jump at the chance, and as for the Texans it will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to finally rid themselves of all those Mexicans. The Chinese invasion of America will be the best thing to ever happen to Texans. Mexicans, too. Even better, it will give them all a chance to go on a long overdue killing spree.

How did Texans get mixed up in all this craziness, you might ask? Well, if there’s one thing that scares Fulmer even more than the Chinese, it’s Texans. Texas has more than its share of violence. Serial killers, too. After watching movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Town That Dreaded Sundown, it’s no wonder Fulmer is scared of Texas. Terrified, is a better word. Fulmer says he has it on good authority that they even hang sheep down there.

Anyway, that’s how Fulmer says it’s all going to go down. Like I said, my friend Fulmer works in finance, spends most of his time at the Stock Exchange Building over on Spring Street, and way too much time thinking about the Chinese.

And what all this had to do with Fanny, I haven’t a clue. She isn’t Chinese. And so what if she was? All the people in the world I could share a bath with, I get this guy. What are the odds.