Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

Yesterday, I saw a fat man walking down fashionable Cuba Street, carrying a bag from one of its trendy little boutiques.

His T-shirt had a hammer and sickle on it.

I would be willing to bet you ten dollars (ten New Zealand dollars, they’re decorated with a kiwi bird and the Queen) that had someone run up to him and tried to explain why that was absurd, as I considered doing, he would not have understood. You could have brought in charts, graphs, statistical analysis, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Lech Walesa, whatever: he would have looked at you blankly until his concerned wife pulled him away. The wife would of course have on a Che Guevara T-shirt, ignorant of the likely fate of white, capitalist-society-embracing women who might have actually encountered Che Guevara’s forces. (Hint: it rhymes with “slang tape.”)

This is especially funny (in a “Look, there’s a German army on the lawn” kind of way) in light of Red China’s recent attempted encroachments on New Zealand’s sovereignty. China’s “development projects” in the Pacific have been nervously commented on before, considering the small likelihood that a brutal Communist dictatorship is genuinely worried about the people of Kiribati’s access to clean water, tuna without worms, and a well-rounded liberal arts-based education. Not content to try to seduce the small, poor nations of the Pacific into its web, the Red Menace has begun interfering in the internal politics of New Zealand. According to Radio New Zealand, the Red Chinese embassy has made phone calls to a number of mayors in the Auckland region “advising” them not to attend a cultural event sympathetic to the thorn in Mao’s side, the Falun Gong. The event has some Chinese-restaurant-menu name like “Celebration of Joyful Heaven” and is not wholly Falun Gong-related, but does contain one dance number dramatizing the persecution of the Falun Gong at the hands of the Communist authorities. (Yes, a dance number. I can’t wait until someone here does a musical version of the Maori Land Wars, complete with a tap sequence reminiscent of the Invasion of the Waikato.) Several of the mayors have, predictably, wet their panties and refused to go, throwing themselves on their canopy beds and squealing that they would never, never do anything to hurt Red China’s feelings, because then they might not get to be Princesses of the forbidden city. Most notable, and thus most cowardly, among these is George Wood, Mayor of North Shore City, New Zealand’s fourth largest and most densely populated city. Mr. Wood refused to defend his actions on New Zealand Radio, and has not published a statement on his website. Wikipedia quotes a barely coherent statement by Wood, claiming essentially “Oh, lawsey, Mistah Jintao! I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no consular pressure! I don’t know how come I tell such a lie!” This more or less jives with the terse refutation of responsibility he gave the presentrix to read on the air. Two area mayors who did intend to go appeared on the air, saying that, as mayors of smaller cities in the region, they had not received consular pressure not to attend, but did plan on going, Red Menace be damned. One guest speculated that the coward Wood’s refusal to go hinged largely on his fear that the Red Chinese government would refuse him a visa to visit the mainland of China. (Interestingly, North Shore City has a sister city, Taichung, in Taiwan.)

This all follows on the heels of another scandal: apparently, a couple of weeks prior to the Dance of Seafood Delights debacle, a Chinese diplomat had caused the expulsion from Parliament of a photographer - of Chinese descent but a New Zealand resident - known to be involved with - you guessed it - Falun Gong.

Now, my feelings about Falun Gong are mixed. I like that they frustrate and infuriate the Communists - boy, do I like that. Their founder has been quoted as saying that “The homosexual has a dark heart, turning demonic,” which sits rather less well with me. Yet, even if it’s grudgingly, I have to respect people who are willing to suffer punishment at the hands of the Communists for their beliefs, and who refuse to abandon them even under the greatest duress. They have often stood in front of the Red Chinese embassy here, and have informational sessions regularly on Cuba Street. I think they were behind the anti-Communist rally that cheered me so heartily a few weeks ago.

My feelings about Communist China are not mixed. That they would have the audacity to try to inflict their will on the citizens of a free country is unsurprising, given their conduct in Korea, Indochina, and the late, unlamented Tibet (nice job there, U.N., you really helped the cause of freedom on that one), but it is still infuriating. More infuriating is the willingness, even eagerness, of the leaders who willingly, even eagerly, bow to such pressure. George Wood has shamed New Zealand and the free world by his cowardice and his weak attempts to conceal it as incompetence or sound, considered judgment. In the classic novelWar and Peace, Tolstoy’s epic of the years and events surrounding Napoleon and the Grande Armee’s invasion of Russia and sack of Moscow. At one point, the Battle of Borodino has decimated both the French and Russian armies, making a long French occupation of Russian territory impossible, but also weakening the Russian army to the point that Moscow can not be defended, and the inhabitants flee the city. Tolstoy remarks that the old woman who realizes that she is not Napoleon’s to command, packs up her possessions, and takes her carriage eastward in order to escape the tyrant is no less a patriot than the soldier fighting in the army. By this reckoning, George Wood and those like him are no less of traitors than those who would throw open the gates of Moscow to Napoleon - or the harbors of Auckland to the Communists.

And if this doesn’t get us banned by the Great Firewall of China, nothing fucking will.

Sigh.

We are still the feeble husks of men, as we have still not attracted the ire of the Great Firewall of China.

Boxer Rebellion. For a good time, call Empress Cixi. Unequal treaties. The Spratly Islands do not belong to China, not that that has ever stopped them. Peking duck. Man-o-Manchuoko. Dynasty Warriors 5 is an accurate portrayal of contemporary Chinese society. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms sucks. I wish India had won the Sino-Indian War. I have a Puerto Rican friend who married a Bulgarian who works at a Chinese restaurant. It is gross and awful to eat dogs - look at their little faces! When Castro dies, Mikeleh (A JEW) and I (A ROMAN CATHOLIC) are going to have a party WHERE WE DRINK ALCOHOL and talk about how much we HATE COMMUNISM. I was in a play in high school wherein I portrayed an embittered Asian lesbian. The Falun Gong people all seem very nice. Restore the Dalai Lama to Lhasa and kick the Chinese out of Tibet, out of the Uighur lands, out of Inner Mongolia, and any other land that someone else wants. STOP RUNNING BULLDOZERS OVER YOUR OWN CITIZENS. Karl Marx had a pronounced lisp and liked to wear little lacey things while proclaiming that he is “the prettiest of all the princesses in the realm.” Flied lice.

Hysterical anti-Communist ranting will continue until the situation improves!

Black bunting is hung over the Kosher Eucharist offices.

Mikeleh is sitting in the corner, rocking back and forth chanting “I want to be a horseman, as my father was,” with a pillowslip over his head to create a private space.

I am curled up in bed - I haven’t left it in three days - drinking pot liquor out of a mason jar, watching Gone with the Wind and trying not to cry.

We have failed. We failed you, cherished readers, we have failed God, and, closest to our hearts, we have failed ourselves.

As of late yesterday morning, Kosher Eucharist was not banned in Red China.

How? How did we fail? Don’t we both belong to religions? Haven’t we admitted to various illicit actions, both chemical and otherwise? Haven’t I openly confessed to certain practices fashionable in a certain destroyed-by-God city?

And what about this? And this? Or this?

The other day, I actually typed “Death to the Chinese Communist Party!” What more can we give?

Not being banned in Red China makes me question who I am, and what this site is, on a deep and fundamental level. Have we lost our edge? Are we “toned down?” Has Kosher Eucharist, God forbid, become…sweet? A snuggly corner of the web, rife with affirmations and cuddly, inclusive grammar, a place where people of all races, nations, creeds and colors can come together in a loving embrace of sibling-hood? A haven for troubled members of the GLBTHIJKLMNOP community to discuss their feelings without fear of judgement? A place to share stories about your cat?

Well, fuck that, and fuck Mr. Nibbles - I don’t care if he did learn how to work the ice machine. Kosher Eucharist is based on a few firm and basic principles: The word “fuck,” sarcasm, gleeful offensiveness, and the verb “to snark.” We are not sweet, we are not cuddly (unless you know we’ve been drinking and no one’s around sometimes but YOU ARE NOT TO KNOW OR JUDGE THIS), and a fierce resistance to what we consider bullshit and communism, let me say here and now, is bullshit. We will be banned in China, by hook or by crook or by streaking Tiemnamen Square. And so:

Communism is a religion practiced only by fools or opportunists. Twee little college freshman buy twee little Che Guevara shirts in a feeble attempt to rebel, ignorant both of his genuine ambition to attack the United States with nuclear weapons and the fact that, had the revolution come, they would be the ones who had their Chuck Taylors and floppy hair against the wall first. For people so desperately, fatally image-conscious, they are somehow unable to recognize how very, very stupid they look. Mao Zedong was a butcher, nothing more. Hu Jintao is welcome to fellate me, if he can pry himself away from his busy schedule of masturbating to “Animal Planet” and killing political dissenters. The Republic of China, also known as Taiwan, is the legitimate government of all China and shalll not be governed by the monsters on the mainland. Richard Nixon was a traitor and a fool to recognize the Communist government. Tibet is not part of China, and will again be independent. I hope a tropical cyclone hits Shanghai. Better dead than red.

Let’s see you let THAT past the Great Firewall of China.