THERE'S NO WAY TO UNDERSTAND ASIANS

The biggest problem in understanding Asians is we have a different sense of humor.

Take my wife!!! We were standing on a platform of the Bangkok subway when I mooned the security camera. Now that there's funny! Everyone knows that there's funny. But did she think it was funny? No! She started acting like she wasn't with me. What could be wrong with someone like that?

I don't see how we could have anything in common with someone who doesn't think that there's funny.


I sent the above as an email to a few friends. This is a comment one sent me:

"Mooning in the subway is a high school or freshman college fraternity prank, not fitting for a senior citizen. Your wife was understandably embarrassed because your wrinkled hairy butt is for her eyes only these days, but now a photo of it is sure to be placed with the subway security's watch list."


I guess I have to explain the original story. It is fiction. Fiction means it never happened. I thought it might be funny to take the persona of an ignorant white guy who behaves like his wife is odd when every reader would know that she is the normal one and it’s the writer who’s weird. I guess the humor didn’t work. For sure if I have to explain it, it didn’t work.

AXIS AND ALLIES

I enjoy this game but it got too easy. Even when taking only one of the warring countries, any one, it became no challenge. So I made a radical change in the rules. Try this:

You control all three allies.

Object is for the British to collect territories totaling 87 IPC. (That means all available territories that have IPCs.)

Here are some handicaps:

The Russians can buy no units.

No rocket attacks against Germany throughout the game.

No strategic bombing of Germany throughout the game

No attack on Germany or German held territory while Russia is in the game.

No strategic bombing of Japan while Russia is in the game.

Britain or the US cannot recapture Russian territory while Russia is in the game.

The US must buy 6 chances on weapon development at the start. For every weapon they develop, they buy one less chance the next turn. e.g. If they have developed 4 weapons they must buy two chances (and only two), and so on until they have all six.

The US can purchase no units, except for self defense, until they have Industrial Technology.

The US can take no offensive action until they have Industrial Technology.

Here are the settings:

Victory Conditions: World Domination

Rules/Variations: Activate the following only:

E. W. Canada

Submerge

Aerial retreat

Axis Advantage

USSR Restricted

Two Hit battleship

Unit Edit: Change the following:

Fighter to 11

Transport to 7

Submarine to 2

And that’s it. When Russia falls it will look completely hopeless. The Axis will lead in IPC about 96 to 51 and will have masses of troops and planes. It’s a challenge to recover. But, in reality, the allies can’t lose.

If you want tips you can email me dowguest@yahoo.com. I will respond.

UPDATE: I should have mentioned that this variation is playing against the computer.

When this gets too easy, reverse the British and Americans with the Americans having to reach 93 IPC in value of territories to win. (Again, that will include all the Axis territories with value.)

THE IRAQI VOTE

I knew something big was happening when CNN International was giving positive reports first thing in the morning (Jan. 30). They are usually 90% anti-American. (Which, they probably don’t understand, makes them pro-assassin. There are only two sides there.) On this morning they were 70% positive. Something very big had to be going on.

On that morning they were giving positive reports at dawn. How could they have known so soon? They must have been monitoring other news channels that we don’t get here. They can’t depend on their own clueless reporters.

Anyway, what happened there was immense. A nation was born. To borrow from Churchill, the capture of Baghdad was the end of the beginning. The national vote was the beginning of the end.

HOW I MET THE JUNGLE PRINCESS

I just saw "Scent of a Woman." I totally identified with the Al Pacino character in that film. Even to the handicap. That's right, I'm handicapped. I'm old. Think about it, what would you rather be, blind or old?

The problem is, people see me as old but I feel young as hell. My sex drive is as great or greater than when I was a young man. Deprivation may have something to do with that.

Anyway, I finally decided to do something about it. This is an email I sent to a friend:


Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 3:30 PM

Subject: My Trip to Thailand.

"How many did you nail?"

That was the first question I was asked when I returned from thirty days in Bangkok. I guess it was a fair question considering the reputation Bangkok has, but I didn't answer. I will answer now if you're interested, but you'll have to wade through a long story to find out.

I went there with honorable intentions. I was looking for a lifemate. I had her profile all worked out: 50ish, slim but at least a trace of a butt, educated, English speaking, good natured, sexual. Just your ordinary Asian fifty year old. I even had it worked out where to look. Department stores, public transport, the Thai-American Association (there is none).

But as long as I was there it would be foolish not to look around. You know, gathering material. So my second night there I went to a sex club.

As soon as I entered, there, across the room, I saw one of those Thai Jungle Girls. I had forgotten all about them. Remember, in The Bridge Over the River Kwai, they had those little brown Thai Jungle Girls carrying the supplies of the strike team? That was one of the sexiest groups of girls ever. And there, across the room was one of them: a genuine Thai Jungle Girl!

I was still standing just inside the door when Mamasan came up. "You come in," she said. "You see girls."

My mind was made up. "I want that one," I said, pointing at my Thai Jungle Girl.

"You come in," she said again, pulling me after her. "You see girls." She dragged me around the corner of the entryway.

The ladies were on a grandstand against the wall. It was three rows high. The seats were sofas and stuffed chairs. The grandstand was packed with about forty girls and women ranging from pretty to breathtaking but they all looked civilized, not one brown skinned Thai Jungle Girl among them. You ever have your appetite set for one thing and it's all you can think about?

"You like?" Mamasan asked.

All the ladies were preening, pretending they were attracted to me.

"Very nice," I said, "but I want that one." I pointed to the Jungle Girl. She beamed a smile at me and blushed, knowing full well what I was saying.

"No, no," Mamasan said. "She no do that. She village girl. She waitress here. Waitress, no more. She no do that."

"Come on," I argued, "everyone does that. Is it a matter of price? How much?"

I got a shock. "No price!" Mamasan said. "She village girl. She never talk to foreigner. You scare her."

Foreigner! Who the hell is she calling a foreigner? I'm not a foreigner! I'm an American! And besides, the Jungle Girl looked anything but scared. She was flagrantly flirting with me.

Mamasan tugged at my sleeve. "You look over here," she said. "You pick one you like." There was a bar with no seats at the other end of the club. In between that and the grandstand were a couple of dozen tables, each with a love seat. It was early evening and I was the only customer in the place.

"Can I get a beer?" I asked.

"Sure. You sit down. You drink beer. You look at girls. Pick one you like."

The Jungle Girl brought me my beer and crouched alongside me, holding my hand, for the next half hour. She spoke no English and I no Thai, but one hell of a lot of bonding went on right then and there. She laughed and pushed my hand away when I tried to feel her butt.

She came to my hotel the next noon and we spent the rest of my time in Bangkok together.

So how many did I nail in thirty days in the sex capital of the world? One. And so much for my plans and profiles.

But on the plus side, I'm going back there next month to stay. After all, how often do you get a Thai Jungle Girl?

MY SEX LIFE

Sure I've had a lot of women in my life. But most of them were on the run. Now that I've slowed down, I've settled down.

There's no denying that a lot of the excitement is gone now that I'm with only one chick. She let's me wear my ski mask but that's as far as she'll go. It's hard for me to get it up without a face full of mace.

I'M A DOG LOVER

I hope that’s not going to alienate cat lovers, but it shouldn’t.

The strange thing is the breed doesn’t matter but the color does. I’m very partial to black dogs.

People have questioned me about that but I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am. They ask me, what’s the difference between a black dog and a brown or white dog? I tell them that the difference is obvious and I can tell them apart blindfolded.

So they put me to the challenge. I made them swear there would be no tricks. A trick wouldn’t be funny. They agreed and I believed them.

So they blindfolded me. Then they brought in two dogs the way I told them to. They were amazed when I picked out the black dog right away.

There’s really no trick to it. The black dogs taste kinda like chicken.


(I tease The Jungle Princess that I eat dogs. That amuses her. She tells all her friends.)

THE COFFEE KLATCH (1971)

(A short-short story)

"Have you seen that new guy? He moved in a week ago over on "A" Street. In a single wide." The last was said with a sneer.

"Alone?"

"No. He has a Jap kid with him. He says it's his son. If you can believe that. Doesn't look like him. I hear there are kids for sale over there. Perverts go and buy them."

This was the coffee klatch of the mobile home park. The six regulars were there. Others drifted in and out. On this morning the park's French lady had joined them. She was accepted because she contributed gossip and laughed at the right time.

"The kid's not Jap, he's Vietnamese. That guy just came from there. Said he'd been there seven years."

"He's a soldier?"

"No," one said dismissively, "he never did no fightin'. He was a construction worker."

"If the kid's his, where's the mother?"

"Mary asked him that. You know what he said?"

There was no reply during a dramatic pause.

"He said he killed her!"

There was a gasp all around.

"That's right. Looked her straight in the eye and said killed her."

The gasp turned into a general hubbub.

The woman continued. "Mary's husband tried to talk to him a little and asked him about it. He said he always told women that because they seldom ask a single mother 'where's the father'. Now isn't that just silly?"

"I heard he doesn't work."

"Wanda said he's rich."

"That's because Wanda's daughter babysat for him and found a bunch of Wall Street Journals."

"You know what else she found?"

"Yeah. A bunch of Playboys."

"And they were hidden away."

"Really hidden. She almost didn't find them."

"What a wierdo."

"You know what else he told Mary's husband?"

"About what?"

"About why he came here to live in a single wide?"

"No. What?"

"He said, get this, he said after living in tents and mud huts all those years, it was all he could cope with."

Now there was a round of indignation.

"Is he saying we live in mud huts?"

"How dare him!"

"I will have nothing to do with him and that Jap kid of his."

And so on.

The meeting soon dispersed leaving the French lady alone. She had taken no part in the conversation. She was deep in thought as she finished the rest of her coffee. She spent that night in bed with the new guy.

THE KERRY CASE

I was very discouraged by the recent election. How a man who was arguably a traitor could come within 3% of the vote to be president --- I don't know. I'll have to think some more on that. That was one reason I opened this blog.

Here are a couple of emails I sent out before I started this blog:


Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2004 7:03 PM

Subject: There's Something About Kerry

No one should question that Sen. Kerry served honorably and bravely during his four months in Viet Nam. That is a given. But many served honorably and bravely.

What is remarkable about Lt. Kerry's four months in Viet Nam is how much he learned in that time. He testified, under oath, about all the atrocities we were committing over there and how it was turning us into animals. That was a revelation to me.

I spent seven years as a civilian contract employee throughout Viet Nam. Among other things, I went on thirty combat patrols in the same "Market Time" swift boats on which Lt. Kerry served. I must confess to being stupid and unobservant because I had no idea that we were committing the atrocities to which Lt. Kerry testified under oath.

There can be absolutely no doubt that he was telling the truth. After all, he was an officer and a gentleman, a war hero, testifying under oath before the United States Congress. Just the hint, by anyone, that he may have been lying is unthinkable and absurd. That would have made him a traitor and a scoundrel, a man who betrayed his comrades and his country.

So forget about that. He was telling the truth and I am stupid and unobservant. He's got my vote.

Walter Guest

Bangkok


Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 9:30 PM

Subject: A Clarification of "Combat" Patrols

I wrote before that I had been on thirty combat patrols on "market Time" swift boats which is absolutely true. But that was intentionally misleading. In all those patrols I never heard a shot fired in anger. I went on "milk run" patrols from Cam Ranh Bay, across the South China Sea, to Nha Trang and back.

The boats intercepted anything afloat but never had a problem in my presence. The sailors, at the intercept, were always exceedingly cautious but courteous. They always left a gift of C-rations or cigarettes on departing.

I became friends with many of the sailors. Some had transferred here from the Mekong Delta for a sort of R and R. One personable lieutenant, I discovered, had a large price on his head, courtesy of Hanoi, for his exploits elsewhere. He had the option to leave, yet he stayed.

These were some of the men that John Kerry vilified in his testimony before a congressional committee based on his four months service in Viet Nam.

I am no fan of George Bush. I suspect anyone "born again" or reformed. They've had their fun and now then don't want you to have yours. It's a thin line between believing that you talk to God and to believing that God talks to you.

On the other hand, John Kerry is a genuine American traitor. He has given aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war. He has a plaque in the Hanoi Hall of Fame alongside those of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.

Tough choice.

Walter Guest

Bangkok

WHY I QUIT STAND-UP

For one thing I had this no talent partner. I used to tell him, "Can't you learn to juggle or spin plates or something?"

So he'd get all beligerent and say something like, "Why should I?"

So I'd tell him, "Well, so far we're just a couple of stiffs standing up there. Can't you see that's not working? You've gotta learn how to do something so they don't fire us again before our week is up."

So he says, "Why me? You're just as big a stiff as I am. Why don't you learn how to spin plates?"

See how dumb he was? So I tried to explain it to him real patient-like. "Cause I'm the good lookin' one. I'm supposed to stand up there and react to what you're doin'. But how can I react if you don't do nothin'?"

But he's too dumb to listen to me. Instead he starts a whole argument. "You're not the good lookin' one," he says. "I'm the good lookin' one."

"Are not," I says.

"Am too."

"Are not."

"Am too."

And that goes on for a while. See how childish he was?

So I started doing a single.

This one night I was working this club. The guy on ahead of me really sucked. The audience was giving him a lot of mercy laughs but he sucked big time.

So I get on and go into my routine and pretty soon the audience starts remembering how bad that guy was and they start booing him right in the middle of my act! And then they start throwing stuff! Get this, they're throwing stuff at him and they're hitting me! Can you believe it?

Anyway, I've got a great way to quiet down an audience. I've got this really big dick. I mean it's huge. All I gotta do is whip it out and wave it around a little and the audience shuts right up. Just my luck, this one night I forgot to bring it.

Anyway, that's why I quit stand-up.

A CON MAN'S HEAVEN

Here’s a hypothetical: At a very early age, (pre-college) you discover that you are a sociopath con man. You are a good public speaker and of pleasant appearance. What you want out of life is lots of wealth - cars, houses, women - and all that. You would like to be important and respected if possible.

In what line of work could all this be achieved the easiest?

The answer is obvious: Religion.

Lenny Bruce once said, “Any religious leader with two suits of clothes is a con man.”

Meaning, of course, that a true man of religious beliefs could not become rich while there are needy, starving people in the world. I think that is self-evident.

So it does follow that any religious leader who has accumulated personal wealth is a con man. And the beauty of the situation is that the wealth can be hidden by having it in the church’s name making it all tax free.

Therefore, my young sociopath con man, go thou and do likewise.

(When the con men of the world have their yearly banquet, the head table is reserved for preachers.)

A work in progress---

REALITY IN BANGKOK

I wake in the morning beside this Thai Jungle Girl.

I go to sleep at night beside this beautiful Thai Jungle Princess.

She serves me constantly during the day despite my protestations. Sometimes I can beat her to a beer or some ice but usually she anticipates. I have ordered her to hire a maid but she ignores me.

The salary of a Burmese maid is 3000 Baht or $75 a month plus room and board. We have maid quarters downstairs so there is no problem, but still she ignores me.

I keep asking myself what have I done to deserve this? A few months ago I was dog meat in America. Singles dances, internet singles, senior singles, I struck out everywhere. And now I have a beautiful Thai Jungle Princess.

So what happened?

The other side of the coin.

She introduces me to friends and relatives and they all treat me as if I were a celebrity. Her female friends are openly envious. Many have asked me to find someone like me for them! Like me!! Has the world turned upside down? These are some beautiful ladies! Thank goodness I am experienced enough (read old) to maintain my humility. A lesser human might go wild in Bangkok. It’s interesting that all her friends and relatives speak better English than my Jungle Princess. (She love it when I call her that.) In fact every cab driver I have encountered in Bangkok speaks better English than her. Neither of us is a linguist, cunning or otherwise. The drivers get perplexed when we ask them to interpret, not realizing that we cannot talk to each other.

I digress.

So what happened?

Bangkok happened. It is like another world and I have been welcomed as a friendly visitor from a foreign planet. Thank goodness my maturity and humility prevent me from proclaiming myself king.

CREATING A MONSTER

I understand now why The Jungle Princess didn't want us to hire a maid. You must know that a maid here costs about $75 US a month plus room and board. We have a maid's quarters downstairs not being used and food is a trivial item. The reason she didn't want a maid is she had been active all her life and needed something to do.

Well taking care of the house was a breeze for her and she soon was at loose ends. She wanted to get a Game Boy or something like that to hold her interest.

"Wait a minute," stupid me says, "that's not good enough for my wife. We'll get you a computer of your own. I've got all these computer games we can share. We'll put your desk alongside mine and I can teach you"

I taught her all right. Bad-a-bing bad-a-boom! Rockets and ray guns and killer lazers are flying all over the place. I can hardly follow what's going on. She beats my high scores by gillions. To make it worse, she doesn't even celebrate. She just stares at the screen with the hard eyes of an assassin, pissed that she got stopped anywhere, and starts over.

Once, she's looking over my shoulder while I'm playing one of the games. She has a quizzical look .

"What?" I asked sullenly, tired of getting my ass kicked.

"Why you play so slow?" she asked. She wasn't being sarcastic. She thought maybe I had a clever strategy to beat the game.

I swear, I didn't hit her with a full swing.

“KING RAT” and EDUCATION

I’ve always thought that “King Rat” was one of the best movies ever made. I got the book, by James Clavell and thought it was a masterpiece. I was surprised that the movie followed the book so closely, time allowing.

The two moved me so much that, years ago, I actually made a pilgrimage to Singapore to visit Changi Prison where I had difficulty hiding my tears.

I was reminded of all this when my new Thai wife (The Jungle Princess) and I visited Singapore recently and stayed at the Changi Meridian Hotel .

I wondered how the movie rated with critics. Very poorly. In a list of the thousand best films of all time it got no mention although “D. C. Cab” was there. So much for critics.

I wondered what Clavell thought about it. He had spent the war in that prison. In his biography it was described as the “notoriously barbaric Changi Prison” where “140,000 out of 150,000 inmates died.”

Wait a minute! Numbers have been my life and those numbers looked odd.

Look up “Changi Prison.” One encyclopedia gives the same numbers as in the biography, probably the source. But the Australian War Memorial website tells a completely different story. “out of the 87,000 POWs who passed through the camp only 850 died.” Most of them, it says, from wounds received previously. Some ex-prisoners described it as “POW heaven” when compared to other camps.

Why the discrepancy? Because tourists don’t want to visit “POW heaven.” They want to visit the “notoriously barbaric” prison. So much for my tears.

In the same vein, there was no bridge on the river Kwai. That was fiction. But now there is. The people in that area had a bridge that crossed a river so they renamed the river “Kwai” and built their hotels and souvenir booths. Good for them.

So what’s the point of all this? The point is that true education, in this age of the internet, is there for all.

CBS’S BANZAI ATTACK

(Banzai: A reckless, desperate attack.)

It’s only just begun.

The next chapter will be played out in the courts.

Prediction: Someone goes to jail.

Prediction: CBS is nailed for 100 million dollars plus.

I can sympathize with the Thornburgh-Boccardi investigators. I can picture them at the end of each days testimony, staring at each other, mouths agape, and saying the lawyerese equivalent for, “Holy shit!” Those poor Ivy League lawyers came in expecting to have a quick look resulting in a slap on the wrist to CBS for carelessness. What they found were crimes and misdemeanors that could spell the end of CBS.

What to do? CBS, after all, was their client. They decided to walk a tight rope. They investigated the memos only far enough that they could still say they might be real. One more step and they couldn’t have said that. (They probably took that step and more but left that out of their report.)

They left a lot out on the “political bias” charge also. Memos and emails were redacted. Many were not produced. Some interviews were ignored. They produced only enough so they could maintain their deniability. Even so, they produced enough evidence that only a fool or a lawyer would not be convinced there was political bias.

But all CBS gains from this is time. They will have to defend criminal and civil charges in court. Unless they can settle. I would advise them to settle

ASHCROFT AND THE TALIBAN

I would have fired Ashcroft.

Draping a nude statue!

No matter what he did before. No matter what he does after. That will be his legacy.

I suppose there have been dumber things done in Washington, but I can’t think of any. It put me in mind of the Taliban blowing up that centuries old statue of Buddha. Of course the scale was different but the stupidity was comparable. But those Taliban people, they were insane. Ashcroft isn’t insane. He’s just terminally anal retentive. And the motive they had in common was their religious beliefs.

I have witnessed some effects of censorship. In 1962 I was working with a tribe in the central highlands of Viet Nam. It was the custom in this tribe to go bare from the waist up, men and women. I pretended not to notice and became adjusted to it - after a while.

Then American soldiers started arriving. The G Is, of course, went bananas when they saw all the bare breasts. They would shout, scream and whistle from vehicles as they drove by.

The poor girls were embarrassed and bewildered. In a very short time they were all covered up. Ashcroft would have been pleased. I thought it a sad outcome of a meeting of cultures.

A few years before, I was camped outside a small town (Shahabad) in western Iran near the Iraqi border. They sent me a kid up from Teheran to work on a survey crew while his school was out. He was the son of someone in our embassy.

He was a good kid and good looking too. 16 years old, blonde, 6 feet. But he got kind of restless in camp. There wasn’t much to do. He asked me if he could visit the town.

I’d been there and it seemed pretty secure so I said okay. But I took two of my Iranians aside and told them, “You’re going with him. Keep an eye out.” So off they went.

A couple hours later, one of my Iranians came back and told us the kid was in jail and I had to go get him. And that’s all he’d tell us.

“He’s killed somebody,” was one of many things that went thru my mind on the way there. I took our bookkeeper with me and a bundle of money.

There was a crowd of men outside the jail when we arrived. “Aw shit,” I thought, “They’re gonna lynch him.”

Inside, to my surprise, the police chief was very polite and apologetic. It seems when the blonde, strapping, handsome young man walked thru town he started to draw a crowd of men. The crowd grew and when it threatened to become unruly, the police placed the kid in protective custody.

“Give him the money,“ I told the bookkeeper.

He looked at me in surprise. I knew he was thinking, “there’s no bail. There’s no fine.”

“Give it to him,” I said again. “And no receipt.” This guy had earned it many times over.

That was not an anti-American mob. That was a mob of men who were sexually attracted to a 16-year-old boy.

Picture the environment. A town with no whores, no bars, no liquor and women with everything covered except hands and eyes, and none of them available. (Ashcroft would love it.)
What can a single man do?

He does what comes unnaturally. I would wager that a majority of men there were bisexual.

The American G Is couldn’t control themselves when they saw female breasts. The Iranian men couldn’t control themselves when they saw a handsome young boy. Both were the result of repression and censorship differing only in degree.

POST TSUNAMI

Happy New year.

I was just eating a pizza (delivered from The Pizza Store) with crab, shrimp, broccoli and pineapple among other stuff. I found it delicious, perhaps because I was starved

I’m just recovering from eating some tainted fish. (Read my rant on pollution.) While I was suffering I was thinking, “I’ll bet I lose two inches off my waist.” How weird it that?

And that’s just what happened - two inches gone.

I don’t think it was tsunami related.

We took in two refugees - a mother and daughter. It’s been kind of odd, just the two of us living in this big house. That seemed to surprise our visitors. Now all the bedrooms are occupied and The Jungle Princess has someone to talk to. (She is quite a talker.)

This will be new to me. I have never lived with more than one woman at a time, ant there were always more males around. After camps I raised my son alone and then with my wife had three sons (hers, mine, and ours).

I hope they all don’t get their periods at the same time.

Happy new year.

Bangkok

WHERE IS THE MISSING BILLION DOLLARS?

On 30 Dec. 2004 UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan "Stingy" Egeland gave a press conference on the Asian tsunami disaster.

Mr. Annan had just returned from his ski vacation where he had been for the 72 hours following the disaster.

The most interesting question was asked by a French reporter:

"Question (interpretation from French): You have stressed the long-term aspect. You will recall that on 26 December 2003, in Bam, Iran, there was another major earthquake, which caused 40,000 deaths and nearly 100,000 homeless people. At the time, donors made pledges, but two days ago Iranian President Khatami said that of that $1 billion only about $17 million has actually been disbursed. How can you ensure that that kind of problem does not happen again?

"The Secretary-General (interpretation from French): Not all the money that was pledged for the Iran crisis has been disbursed. I hope that this time, as the international community is really aware - everyone is involved - we will fulfil our promises. This is why, right from the outset I have said that what we need to do is to work for the long term, because it is a long road to travel. I hope that this time the international community will accept this thinking."

So apparently a billion dollars is missing. Did countries pledge and not deliver? Which countries and how much? Is the Iranian lying about how much they received? Or is the money somewhere in the bowels of the UN or in the pockets of UN officials? I'm sure Mr. Annan will be forthcoming and explain all. Right.

The full interview is in Drudge. I would link you to it and link me to you but I am too dumb to do anything except read and write. I always thought a link was a cat-like creature that lived in the north woods.