This isn't necessarily Chinese, but it seems to fit the upcoming Chinese New Year, Monday January 26, or even the regular new year that started January first.

May peace break into your house and may thieves come to steal your debts.

May the pockets of your jeans become a magnet for $100 bills.

May love stick to your face like Vaseline and may laughter assault your lips!

May your clothes smell of success like smoking tires and may happiness slap you across the face and may your tears be that of joy.

May the problems you had forget your home address!


For Chinese New Year we are supposed to clean our house and pay off all our debts so we start the year fresh. I used to have a friend at work from Hong Kong and she wouldn't use her credit cards for a time just before so she wouldn't have any money owed on them upon the new year. Seems like a good plan. I didn't clean the whole house today, but we emptied our storage unit and I sorted the books out of there that were mine.

One of the book boxes belonging to Mr. Troutbend came from one of our road trips to Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore in Minneapolis in the 1990s. It has a drawing of Bunnicula on it by the sales clerk who sat on a high stool and benevolently surveyed his domain.



"Bunnicula" is a childrens' story about a vampire rabbit who sucked the color out of vegetables. As you can see on the box, the guy interpreted the name as something that looks like a cat with buck teeth. At the time we didn't know there was a book, we just thought it was a funny drawing.

We consider this box with the art work to be a family treasure but I'm sure when we die nobody at the estate auction is going to notice it. I suppose I could cut off that piece of the box and frame it but that might be more importance than it deserves.