MUTUAL BENEFITS

Yesterday evening my apartment mate, a complete heathen, wondered about the woman going into a church several blocks south of here with a dozen buckets of fried chicken from KFC. Could be heartsing and mindsing the competition, or maybe they had decided that the body of Christ for several hours was actual meat. Sacramental fried chicken.
In either case, sheer brilliance was involved!

Being myself a complete heathen, this gave me a totally fabulous idea for a completely new development in Christianity: Holy mass wine and cheese parties. Some nice melba toast and crackers, bottles of chablis and chardonnay, a charcuterie board and a sumptuous fromage platter. Obviously not for those poor schlubs in the Tenderloin (several blocks south of here), but for an upscale yuppie congregation in Marin. Those are the people whose tax-deductible contributions could make it happen, as well as make the church totally profitable.
Which is what religion is all about.

Of course, as the pastor for profit of this splendid new Christian denomination, I shall require frequent trips abroad. To find new sources of spiritual sustenance to nourish any faithful that flag. There's a fabulous restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui where I myself will be blessed with great inspiration. It's run by the third generation of Shanghainese exiles, mainting the faith in a foreign clime. Which is truly inspiring!

A breaded and fried pork chop or cutlet on a bed of thick noodles in broth made reddish with a dash of soy sauce: 上海豬扒粗麵 ('seung hoi chyu paa chou min'). It's the breakfast, lunch, or dinner of champions. Spiritual champions, of course, working twenty three floors up in that office building striving to sanctify the company coffers. It's a calling.



Later I was outside my building smoking a totally effete and extremely elegant slim cigarette from a stash I had been giften by a mainland friend from the North (徽商 'fai seung'), which are totally refined, very nice, when I realized why that woman had bought a dozen buckets of fried chicken. It was clearly a bribe to keep the great unwashed at arms distance. Who were evident in droves down at the intersection. And intoxicated, as is usual on Saturday night, because they have such shallow lives and nothing else to do.

They need spirituality. That way they will gain salvation, and I will be able to visit Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong several times a year.

That restaurant also does fabulous braised eel (紅燒鰻魚 'hung siu maan yü'). Well worth visiting. It's extremely inspirational.


I'm bucking for sainthood.



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