Thursday 4 April 2002 was a busy day in Taiwan --- it was Children's Day, Tomb-Sweeping day, and the Death of President Chiang Kai Shek Day! (I kid you not, check it out for yourself!) And on that day, the Taiwanese people ate a lot of fish, some of it rotten. Why? No-one knew, and they still don't, as far as anyone knows.
And on that day, across the world in America, President George Dubya Bush issued a proclamation to the effect that from that day forward, all Taiwanese immigrants would have to eat fresh fish only: the eating of rotten fish by Taiwanese immigrants on Children's Day, Tomb-Sweeping day, and/or the Death of President Chiang Kai Shek Day was to be strictly verboten, on pain of being deported back to mainland China.
And the second part of President Dubya's proclamation was that on that day across America, tomb sweeping would be prohibited. And the third part of Dubya's proclamation declared Thursday 4th April National Tomb Messing Day: on that day everyone had to go to the nearest tomb, and mess it up --- throw garbage at it on it around it, or dead leaves, or other shit.
Question: how many times does April 4 fall on a Thursday in the lifetime of a person called George Dubya Bush? There are a lot of Taiwanese who want to know the answer.
Copyright © S R Schwarz 2007. All rights reserved.
