World Peace In Our Time?

 In a recent post I flirted with the suggestion that maybe some Wuhan Lab Rats with lab engineered non-human to human jumping Covid virus had gotten into the product offerings of the famous Wuhan Wet Market.

I had found that suggestion to be a way to prove two of the Covid Conspiracy Theory Camps to both be right.

And what better way to start a move toward world peace than to normalize relations across conspiracy theories?

I could even imagine the sign in the market next to the little naked rat corpses: "Mini Rabbits For Your Rabbit Stew".

Obviously, I translated that from the original Chinese.

Going through those thoughts reminded me of an early evening in Saigon a long time ago.

This is a cut/paste from Saigon 1967.

What I especially like about this little vignette is that it brings in the Covid Virus Genesis Theory.

So, that's three.

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It was one evening when I was waiting for a bus downtown to go to the Mayfair that I had two odd experiences.

It was getting dark.  I was standing at a bus stop.  There were lots of Vietnamese civilians milling around doing whatever Vietnamese civilians did at that time of the evening out on the street.  Since the bus stop was in front of some sort of public building there were also several white mice, as the Vietnamese police were called; they wore white shirts, hence the white part of their name. So there was an audience for the first experience.  A young, probably American, woman appeared out of the advancing gloom walking up the dirt roadside which served as a sidewalk, with a dog on a leash.  The dog was a Great Dane.  It was probably the biggest Great Dane I have ever seen.  The Vietnamese were amazed. Their eyes got very large, and everyone stopped and stared. I knew they were thinking about how many cutlets and steaks they could get off the beast.  It was a moment of intense cultural differentiation.

The other thing, that happened next, was of a similar cultural nature. The woman and Great Dane had receded into the other end of the gloom and I was still standing in the darkness, broken by a weak street lamp, waiting for the bus. An old Vietnamese man who was walking along the roadside stopped and said something to me.  He was carrying on his right shoulder a thing that looked like two wire circles each with a series of vertical spikes attached, with the circles attached to a central shaft.  On each of the spikes was a lump of a reddish blackish substance.  My impression was that it was probably some kind of meat.

He was trying to sell some of it to me.  I wouldn’t have bought whatever it was under any circumstances, but I was really curious about what it was.  I had never seen this sort of configuration of snack vending.  In some manner I asked him what the lumps might be, and he said something.  Of course I had no idea what he said.  Of course he knew I had no idea what he had said. He said something else, and this time made a gesture up to the sky.  He said something repetitively and pointed here and there above his head.  Since it had become dark the sky above us between the trees had become full of flitting bats. 

He apparently was a barbecued bat vendor.