Hong Kong satire

"Rags was beginning to clear the table.  His cynical light eyes took in every detail of Finch's attire.  They said to the boy, as plainly as words: 'Ho, ho, my young feller!  You've decked yerself all up for the occasion, 'aven't yer?  You think you've made an impression on the lidy, don't yer?  But if you could only see yerself!  And just you wait till the fmaily catches you in your Sunday clothes.  There won't be nothink doing, ow naow!"--Jalna

Robbery scene: "Shit, you're just a boy!"

Blam! "That's just your knee!"

--The Wire

I've started reading A Concise History of Hong Kong.  But I also bought an Ebook by Larry Feign, who did the satirical Hong Kong comic strip The World of Lily Wong in the late '80s and early '90s for The South China Morning Post, until they dropped it because Beijing didn't like it. (Feign is a good name for a satirist...) In 1997 he revived the strip for the British press to cover the 100 days before the final handover to Chinese rule, and I've brought the reprint, titled Let's All Shut up and Make Money! which could be the Hong Kong motto.

But there's a catch.  It turns out that after I've read a few episodes, my Kobo software chokes and I get that spinning iris so the only thing I can do is turn the power off and restart!  I've solved the problem--I think--by only viewing one episode at a time, and quitting Kobo in between.  So now I have a system where I alternate between reading a section of the Concise history and an episode of the comic strip.

The neighbourhood was pretty noisy last night what with the Italy vs. England soccer game. (I had to close my windows and even pull down the shutter!) I heard a huge roar when Italy scored a goal.

I've finished the last episode of the last season of The Wire.  I think we'll try The Handmaid's Tale one of these days.