Loathly Wurm

That's right! Xanga!

2005-12-27T19:02:00.000Z

Mad Jack Babymaker! Parents, cover your ears! Children, stop it or you'll go blind!

Larry

2005-02-09T18:41:00.000Z

There were ten of us traveling together in Berlin. There was supposed to be an eleventh, Dacia (Pudding-Face), but we left her in the trunk on the bus ride to the airport.

So yes, there were ten of us. Not everyone knew each other, others disliked each other and others developed a friendship. Ten of us.

And Larry.

I pegged his age around the mid-40s but actually, he eventually told us his age was 39 (the first time we asked him, he told us his age was "fuck you"). Thickly built, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. Ruddy complexion and a toothbrush mustache that collected bits of food that never, for whatever godawful reason, found their way into his mouth. He has the sort of gray eyes dulled, I can only assume, by many, many years of personal disappointment. Larry wore a green jacket with a maple leaf pin and a black baseball cap that says I AM CANADIAN. He is, of course, Canadian.

And he is so Canadian that he is a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. "I handle the logistics of supply transportation." In other words, he drives a truck.

Our first night in Berlin, he attached himself to us ("us" being our group of ten) and it took us two days to get rid of his ass. And even then, he wasn’t truly gone—he’d just crept into recession.

After we checked into the hostel, as we headed for dinner, he asked Pat: "Mind if I hang with you guys?" Pat couldn’t refuse. Not diplomatically.

"Hey, listen," Pat walked out of the hostel with Larry trailing. "This is Lawrence. He’s uh…well, he’s eating with us."

Everyone: "Okay."

Pat: "Everyone say hi to Lawrence."

Everyone: "Hi to Lawrence."

We ended up eating at a Thai restaurant, of all places, with Pat gripping the map, directing the group and Larry looking on enviously.

When we got to the Thai restaurant, the proprietor and his wife saw ten paying customers (and Larry) through the window and their eyes lit up like the Hindenburg. The proprietor took us through the menu. He gestured: "Chicken, pork, fish…"

Moon-Face, a Filipino girl from Pasadena, clapped her hands and squealed: "Oh! He’s so cute! Tee hee hee!"

I wanted to smack her. Wouldn’t be so hard since she’s gained 30 pounds in two months. All she does is eat. Have you ever seen The Transformers Movie? The Transformer voiced by Orson Welles is a giant planet that consumes other, smaller planets. Essentially, that’s Moon-Face. I’ve entertained the notion that she might be with child. She’s done enough recently so we’re past the point of wild conjecture here.

After eating, we went to a bar where they were playing the accordian (always a good sign) and where Larry began hitting on the girls. He cornered Autumn and they spoke in hushed tones.

"You know," said Larry. "I like a girl with meat on her bones and I love a girl with long hair."

"I wish I had a mustache like yours so I could get beerfoam caught in it," said Autumn.

Larry covered his upper lip and made a noise like "Hrmph blarga blarga."

That night, we shook Larry’s hand, slapped him on the back and collectively said, Man it was great meeting you.

Later, he came into our room and sat down while we were trying to sleep. That’s when we knew we were going to see lots more Larry!

The next night, he was sitting on the stoop of the hostel waiting for us. We went on a pub crawl that night. I mentioned that Berlin was one visual drag in the day. The night life is actually sort of fun. The pubs—even the clubs (and I usually hate clubs) are distinct, the drinks cheaper than in London, and the people generally cooler. By that I mean that the London pubs are usually filled with drunks railing about Malcolm Glazer’s attempted acquisition of Manchester United, whereas the clubs are filled with greasy Eastern Europeans (and Brits) hoping to cop a feel of some fresh American booby.

In Berlin there’s still something raucous and surreal about the clubs and pubs—the Wohnzimmer bar looks like a David Lynch nightmare, another club had a stone dragon that spat flame into the air every fifteen minutes—just not invasively so.

Larry took it upon himself to hit on more women. We were on the pub crawl and, thankfully, most weren’t in our group. Though Larry would occasionally stumble up to us, his face a mess of burst blood vessels, and hiss something that inevitably began with, "Now I’m not a pervert or nothin but…" He also told us that he hated the nickname Larry and that we should, if we gave him a nickname, call him Spanky.

So. We left the pub crawl early because Moon-Face couldn’t hold her alcohol and her orbit was becoming increasingly erratic. Pat, Sam, Sticks, Luisa, Richard, and I (some of these names probably don’t mean much but bear with me) went downstairs into the hostel’s recreational area to play pool. Luisa actually just collapsed on a couch and fell asleep.

Incidentally, none of us can play pool. I spent much of the time trying to gun the 8 ball around the table while Richard, upon finding the key that unlocks the pool table (you have to pay 50 cents to access the balls), set about trying to rob it. Very unorganized.

Then Larry found us. Larry. This time, he was inebriated.

"We playing bar rules?" he asked. Demanded.

"What’re those?" asked Pat.

He told us. I can’t remember what they were.

"Nope. That’s not how we’re playing. Watch out." Pat hit and missed. Larry pshawed and waved his hand. "Weak, weak."

"Let’s see you do better, Fatman."

"I cn do better any ol day."

"Let’s see it, Larry."

"Dammit. How many goddamn times did I tell you not to call me Larry?"

"Look, Larry," said Richard. "You can’t choose your nickname."

"Gimme the goddamn cue." He seized the cue and tried to line up a shot. He missed.

"Larry, dammit," said Pat.

Sticks tried a shot and shanked it. "Hey Sticks," said Richard. "I’ll give you that shot back. If you sit on Larry’s lap while taking it."

"Hold on a minute," said Larry.

"Go ahead," said Pat. "Sit on his lap."

"You boys from San Francisco by any chance?"

"Close enough."

Sticks sat on Larry’s lap and made the shot, but he missed the next one.

"Hey Larry, I think Sticks is tired. Give him a back massage."

"You guys’re a buncha smart asses is what you are."

"Go ahead," said Pat. "Give him a back massage."

"Get the hell away from me." He looked at Luisa, asleep on the couch and sighed. "Man, she looks real purty there. Someone needs to carry her to bed and tuck her in."

That was when we decided to leave.

We saw Larry one more time afterwards—or I did. He actually stepped out of the bushes when I was coming back to the hostel alone one night and insisted on shaking my hand. I obliged him.

Luisa was fine. We kept her away from Larry and she was just fine. She was actually one of the people Richard and I got close to during our time in Berlin. We’d already been acquainted with her roommate, Jill. We both hated Jill. Luisa told us that a lot of people hated Jill and that it was sort of unfair. We told Luisa that it was sort of unfair for us to have to exist on the same planet as Jill.

Jill with one lazy eye and a mournful outlook on life. The Mad Ballad of Dead-Eye Jill. We sang it echoing in the halls to celebrate Larry.

Gray City

2005-02-07T13:31:00.000Z

In Berlin, my flatmate Richard set his camera for black and white. "I thought the city would look best that way," he said. Mostly because the city is, in fact, in shades of gray. Luisa said it’s a city best enjoyed if you have a keen imagination. She has a point. The most prominent building in Berlin—the construct that appears on city postcards and guidebooks, the answer to the Eiffel Tower or the Space Needle, is basically a television tower. It's sort of sad. Though the overriding image that probably best characterizes Berlin would be a crane and the German flag. And a lot of the historical buildings, sites, walls, bunkers, are no longer there, were never fully built, or are hidden.

Hitler’s bunker, for instance, is buried in an innocuous residential area with high-rise apartments and a gay sauna flanking. There are no signs indicating its presence although the Jewish memorial is nearby. A large part of the Berlin mindset seems to be whether or not they can or should reconcile with the past. Should they forget? Appoint national holidays? Shunt the responsibility to another generation? I would suppose that’s why you’ve got this strange juxtaposition wherein on one site, there’s a construction of a huge Holocaust memorial—coffin-sized slabs of graystone jutting across two sloping acres. On the other hand, just one hundred yards away, Hitler’s bunker, the site of his eventual suicide, remains relatively anonymous and buried—having not been exposed since 1987 when the construction of the surrounding buildings required it to be unearthed for a brief while.

Much of the Nazi architecture (large and geometrical, as if they used large cubes of granite in lieu of bricks) has been gutted and/or pretty much stamped into the ground in the years during and after the war. The Soviets were anxious to hammer out their own influence which is probably epitomized best by the construction of The Wall. Only a block-long stretch of it is still there. Pebbles of rubble currently sell for around eight Euro. I suppose this is, in the end, a triumph for capitalism.

Another triumph for capitalism would be Berlin's current architectural state. In one commercial block, I counted six H&M’s. The buildings are uniformly ugly—and those signs. Those signs! These tumorous red letters jutting from the faces of the buildings and spelling out SANYO or KFC or EROTIKA. Despite the blister and glare of the letters at night, there’s something sad and sagging about it, like the city’s reliving a collective hangover after a Westernized binge. And in the center of this area, the Zoologischer Garten, is the bombed-out husk of an old church.

The business center of the city had previously been in the Eastern block. The buildings there are basically sheets of glass wrapped around iron rods. In fact, much of the governmental institutions moved from the Reichstag to a newer building across the street modeled after a car engine of all things. You can tell, too, from the cylindrical structures embedded into the iron grid of the body proper. I get a similar impression when I look at other metropolises that tried to commercialize too quickly—that the city planners are attempting to imitate the buildings of, say, New York City. It doesn’t quite work that way though because the consequent constructs always seem sort of flayed. Architects generate those lavish interior adornments and snap together the skeleton frame, but completely forget the skin.

As a touring city then, Berlin is not exactly what I'd call fun. Though I do like the city tours in that they’re incredibly informative—basically aerobic classroom lectures. And, as mentioned earlier, the lack of tangible historical artifacts can frustrate one’s interest. Our tour guide: "Hitler wanted to build a huge arc commemorating his victories, one that would dwarf Paris’s Arc d’Triumph, on the space where we currently stand. Which is now a car park. Close your eyes and try to imagine what it would’ve been like. Please." One of the tours we took was about the Third Reich. It was supposed to last three hours but instead ended up lasting around four and a half. What can I say? The city might not be pretty but there’s a lot to talk about.

Names

2005-02-01T11:36:00.000Z

Everyone here has a nickname. There is Sticks (aka Donkey-Punch), Gap-Chest, Moon-Face and Shelf-Butt. Pictures of the rapidly expanding Moon-Face will soon follow. She's still eating and swelling, obtaining a gravitational pull thereby attracting gases and developing an atmosphere.

Anyway, my contract at work finally expired and I am gleefully unemployed. At the job, I was working with The Queen. The Queen is a flaming South African named Eric.

He puffs around and forges his immigration documents in lieu of picking up the ringing telephone. He's one of those indignant homosexuals--of the I'm SoOOoo gAy and PISSED OFF school of thought.

Well, you would be too if you had to take it up the ass every night.

On Thursday, we fly to Berlin.

Hopefully, Sticks will get donkey punched again. If he doesn't, we'll do it for him.

What is a donkey punch? I've Googled it for you.

Bad Things Happening

2005-01-18T17:34:00.000Z

Upon arriving in Glasgow, we first decided to leave. We toured the city as we walked to the nearest train station to hitch our way to Edinburgh.

Glasgow was a snakepit. As if the designers and architects were clinically depressed and decided to take acid instead of Prozac. This cacophony of black gothic buildings and Victorian trimmings laced with neon lights and Starbucks symbols. Who described architecture as frozen music? If you could freeze the sound of heaving, you’ve got Glasgow. It’s got the highest teen pregnancy rate in any European city and I’ve never seen a greater conglomeration of ten year olds with lit cigarettes pinched between their yellow fingers. Supposedly though, the city is much cleaner than it used to be.

So when we (me, Richard, and Sticks, whom we both detest) took the bus from the airport into the city, we got in at around 9 in the evening. We went to McDonald’s to grab something quick to eat. That’s when the first of three fights broke out.

A squat homeless guy with dreads, a stained orange coat, and a crooked cane to support his hobble wanted a milkshake, but the restaurant was out. The homeless guy claimed, by law, that McDonald’s had to compensate him by giving him something for free. Of course, the staff refused and the homeless guy spat in front of the cashier and demanded to speak to the manager.

“I’m the fuckin manager,” said the cashier.

This exchange went on for a while. A thick, stocky man with a buzz cut and a black leather jacket approached the homeless fellow and asked what the problem was. Homeless told Leather Jacket to “piss off” and Leather Jacket got into Homeless’s face.

A woman in line then started screaming at Homeless. When people speak with a Scottish accent, they sound as if they’re chewing compost. I wasn’t able to pick out everything she and Homeless argued about but audible fragments include “Leave now”, “He thinks he’s a big man” and “I’ll kill you.”

Leather Jacket stood up, grabbed Homeless by the collar, and kicked him out into the street.

I ordered six chicken nuggets and a soda.

Then, Homeless lumbered on back in. This time, Leather Jacket had already gone. The manager had already threatened to call the police, but they didn’t look to be arriving any time soon. There was more screaming again and then, somehow, Homeless got into a shoving match with a student who looked to be about eighteen.

That’s when Richard and I decided to go back to the hostel. Sticks had already left to take pictures of one of Glasgow’s many bridges on which muggers supposedly rob people and toss the unconscious bodies of their victims into the river.

And that’s sort of what happened to Sticks.

He was on the bridge alone, taking pictures when two men approached him. One lit a cigarette and leaned against the barrier. The other one got into Sticks’s face and said, “You best start running.” Sticks couldn’t understand the accent so he leaned closer and said, “Pardon?”

“You best start running.”

“Oh. Okay. Let me take this picture first.”

Sticks began to take the picture, which is when the man donkey-punched him in the back of the head. Sticks turned around and, I imagine, said something like “Dude. I just want to take this picture” before walking off.

Which is when the man smacked Sticks upside the head again. And tried to kick him.

But was interrupted when someone else riding on a bicycle hollered out. The assailants fled and the bicyclist asked Sticks if he was okay, to be careful next time and that sometimes, it’s necessary to fight back. To which Sticks supposedly said, “Yes”, “I will” and “Dude, it’s just not my way.” He shook the bicyclist’s hand and the bicyclist rode off.

And Sticks stayed on the bridge and took more pictures.

First thing next morning, Richard and I left for Edinburgh, which is a great city and I’d like to spend more time there. Sticks stayed in Glasgow.

Obviously, I had a better time in Edinburgh but it occurs to me now that if I regaled you about the castle in the middle of the city, the hostel in which we stayed, the friendly drunken people, you’d just get bored. It was a short weekend stay so befittingly, in brief: we hiked atop a high plateau that overlooked the city, whistled at dusk in graveyards and fell into the underground city in which a great many bad things happened.

Still as a basic travelogue Glasgow, despite its dirt and grit or maybe because of it, makes for a more interesting story.

We had to return there anyway in order to get back to the airport and fly back to London. As we were walking through the city again, Richard murmured, “never coming back never coming back never coming back.”

And our last site, upon leaving the city, was two twelve year olds leaning against a great glass window of a local Starbucks, the glass shivering as one boy punched the other one in the throat.

The Rat Race

2005-01-12T13:16:00.000Z

Art exhibitions at work and MFA applications at home. That's why I've not been updating.

Mostly, I've been locking entries due to that sudden tingle of paranoia I think everyone who creates an online diary must feel from time to time. It's probably not wise to discuss the lives of those outsiders who could potentially access this blog.

So here we are in the new year. My resolution is to not make a resolution and so far, I'm doing pretty well (or failing miserably depending on how you want to look at it).

I continue to work at Central St Martins and will be heading up to Glasgow for the coming weekend.

My contract expires on 31 January--mixed blessing because I won't have the stability or the February paycheck or the benefits or the paid vaca/holiday.

On the other hand, I won't have to work.

My work visa expires in February anyway and I might just take a vacation during that month. It's supposed to be a piss-awful time to be in Britain anyway, the days tumbling with clouds and the rain flushing down, the city lights on, by necessity, at three.

A good time for traveling, a good time for museums too, which I've been neglecting to visit despite there being some seriously good (or at least interesting) stuff to see. Or there was.

The Saatchi had Damien Hirst whose contribution to modern art, if you fail to recollect, is a shark in a tank.

Also, the Chapman brothers are producing family-oriented sculptures such as this one:

...which is one of their tamer pieces. Another one is titled Fuckface. I suppose it's more intersting than the ubiquitous Escher print you see in the American college dorm room.

All this information I'm getting from our current lodger, who is a lot better than our previous one. For instance, his hair is blonde so it's harder to see if he's actually sprinkling his crotch hairs around our toilet.

There has been, I have to admit, an uncomfortable hair motif running throughout the duration of my stay in London. Between finding a hard knot of pubes in a fresh bag of sugar or a tandoori chicken wing bristling with follicles, things have gotten sort of uncomfortable.

The Oriental Persuasion

2004-12-13T17:28:00.000Z

A blackbox comedy club. "It looks like a dominatrix room!" one of the patrons exclaimed. "All that's missing are the handcuffs!"

But the show, hidden in the back of the pub, in that blackbox theater, like that tiny bedroom closet where daddy stashes his porn and firearms, was sold out. £5 concessions.

The comedian was Robert Newman, a novelist by trade I think. He was incredibly well-informed, his jokes spiraling around an array of subjects, touching upon American politics and Lyrical Ballads and...well, other things. He was funny when he remembered his act and he remembered most of the first ten minutes. And then everything took a sharp turn South. But also, I was on drugs so I'm not the best judge as to what happened in the act and when. I mean, maybe he was really funny. People seemed to enjoy him.

To my left was my chief supplier, also slightly out of it. To my right was a short white male, blond hair closely-cropped, with large glasses that seemed to accentuate the pinpoint dots of his eyes. On hearing my accent, he told my friend and I that he'd been to the states, adding that he had a Japanese friend with a Hong Kong girlfriend who lives in Chinatown somewhere somewhere somewhere in Vancouver or...the tale was winding and convoluted and the point was nonexistant.

Later, he came up to me and said, with that sort of round-about verbosity that only the British possess: "I can't help but notice that you are of the oriental persuasion."

Oh crap, I though. I know where this is heading.

"I have a great many oriental friends," he said. "Might I inquire as to where your parents are from."

"Mom's from Hong Kong."

"Ah yes. Then that would make you Cantonese. And your father?"

"He's from Los Angeles, which would make me Mexican." At least I think I said that and if I didn't, I should've.

"I must say, I do have a great many oriental friends. I know a girl from..." (and here he went down the laundry list) "...and one from Hong Kong as well. We often eat at this Vietnamese place. Have you ever been to a Vietnamese restaurant?"

"In the States, yeah."

"Would you ever care for some British Vietnamese food?"

"No." I don't know if I was paranoid at that point or if the guy was actually hitting on me. If he was hitting on me, then that actually raises my self-esteem about ten points. To the extent that I'm found attractive, it is generally by short asian girls. So a white british bloke is at least a change in pace though, boy howdy am I not interested in being buggered.

"Hold on," I said and grabbed a friend of mine who was standing nearby. She had a bewildered expression on her face and I think she was simply trying to speak with the comedian. "Here is my filipino friend. Her name is Camille. And..." here, I seized the white sweatshirt of another friend of mine. "This is my white friend. We call him Pat. And..." I grabbed another girl--not really a friend as I'd just met her that evening, but still, at that point of the night, I wasn't choosey. "Here is my buddy Elsi. She too is white."

And then I hightailed it out of there and ambushed the comedian to talk about Coleridge's unfinished Christabel.

Charlie Brown Christmas

2004-12-10T18:03:00.000Z

The Cyrus Chestnut Charlie Brown Christmas CD is pretty wicked. I'm describing a Christmas carol album as "wicked." Uh oh.

But really, it's quite good.

~~~

Today was the staff Christmas luncheon. Very enjoyable all around with minced pies, turkey, stew, quiche, pastas, fruit, dry white wine, red wine, splashes of martinis and glasses of Cosmopolitans that we--the entire college faculty--swilled and swallowed with violent, red-faced passion.

Then we staggered up the steps, plastered across the banisters, to finish helping prospective students with their applications and their futures. We drooped like heroin addicts and dispensed invaluable advice like "a good portfolio must show us how you think!" And then we sat in the office all heavy-lidded and licked the glue off of envelopes we were supposed to be stuffing with information.

I mean, is there anything wrong with this picture?

~~~

In the lower parking garage is a giant storage room we call the cage. It's this drafty spit-and-bailing wire type of construct assembled in the south west corner of the garage, where the various college offices keep extra boxes of prospectuses and directories and whatnot.

I was walking down there with a coworker--very sweet English girl--to pick up a box of somesuch. As we're walking, she says, "Ooh, I'm going to lock you up in there for the rest of the week because you've been naughty."

Kinky.

The Lodger

2004-12-07T11:12:00.000Z

We have a lodger now.

He is of Indian descent. Actually, in Britain, he'd be considered Asian whereas I would be considered either East Asian or Oriental. But anyone, this motherfucker who is now living on our couch: he's Indian.

holy smokes i just had to file in our database a girl named Sophie Fox from Maidenhead and i feel so dirty. But anyway.

He is taller than me, probably around six feet, dark complexion with giant, tired eyes--very white in his deep-sunk sockets--that make me think of a dying racoon. Or, as someone else once described him, "He looks like a burnt match!"

He's supposed to be finding a job and a place to live. Before he came up, we said Sure, no problem--come stay with us until you find a place of your own!

We're eating our words right now because he's become a sort of permanent fixture and he's taking up space on our couch. And unlike most permanent fixtures, which look nice, which have some sort of functional purpose, and which don't leave pubes on your bathroom tiles and trackmarks along the inside wall of your toilet bowl (I mean, either his asshole is oriented very strangely or...), his presence is becoming an inconvenience.

I will tell you this: at nights, I fantasize about climbing out of bed and pouring boiling water over his head.

Here is some sample dialogue.

GIRL: ...and no one joined the anime club in high school so they had to disband it.
HIM: Oh you were a bitch in high school, weren't you? (breathy chuckling)

or

ANOTHER GIRL: I think The Simpsons is pure genius!
HIM: Simpsons suck! Family Guy is for smart people! (breathy chuckling)

or

ME: I'm going out now.
HIM: Oh? Gotta hot date? Hot date? Hot date? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? (nudging me, breathy chuckling)

or

ME: So what you do is you put down this card and, say you've got an ace high straight and--
HIM: This game sucks. Let me shower your bathroom with my bristling pubic hairs. (breathy chuckling)

and

ME: (pouring hot water on his exposed skull)
HIM: (breathy chuckling)

Okay, well he's actually a nice guy. I'm sure he wouldn't hurt a kitten. But living with him, all of his flaws are magnified to an extent that he's become borderline unbearable.

Would a jury convict me?

FAQ

2004-12-01T17:56:00.000Z

Most Repetitive Things That People Have Asked Me In The Past Year

What do you plan to do with your English major?

Any prospects?

Who is your favorite writer?

What do you write about?

Why are you going to England?

How is England?

Why did you come to England?

How is the food in England?

How are you getting on?

Where is my money?

Can I borrow some money?

How much money do you have on you?

Will we have enough for the rent money?

Why does this mobile service suck?

Will you take our picture?

Will you take it over?

Don't you know how to frame a picture?

Are you Vietnamese or Filipino?

Who just farted?

How big is your penis?

DNA of Literature

2004-11-29T11:57:00.000Z

The Paris Review is posting a series of author interviews, from the 50s to 2000. Anyway, the 1950s interviews are online for viewing when you're supposed to be working. Like what I'm doing now. Ha ha.

Paris

2004-11-20T17:32:00.000Z

Britons react to Paris Hilton the same way most people react to the news that they have cancer. There's a basic understanding of what it is, at least, in principle (ie Not Good); this, based solely on what you gleaned listening idly to some television anchor talking about it while you're up late folding your laundry. Until you realize you've got it. A sudden shock sparks--a what the hell's happening here? confusion. What's going on? How did we get this? What, exactly, is this?

Followed by the need to get rid of it, whatever it is, flush it out of the system, the country, back to America, where it came from in the first place, before it infests surrounding organs with disease and becomes terminal.

There're people who are famous for being famous. And there are people who are famous, or whose personalities are famous, because they were written about by Truman Capote.

Capote wrote a lot about the social elite, the women with teaspoon curves and long gowns and streaked tousles. And maybe they were just shallow, horrible people--all of them. But that's one reason why good writers are necessary. They can add interest where there wouldn't ordinarily be any.

Paris Hilton might've written a book, but she needs a writer.

Also, some penicillin.

Pandora

2004-11-12T10:48:00.000Z

You open up the Box and soon, nobody's happy.

Says Parents Television Council President L. Brent Bozell, "context is everything."

Except when it comes to sex.

~~~

Unrelated to the matter up top, but related, loosely, to the matter of decency:

If you're going to have a School for Girls, it is unwise to locate it in a town called Beaverwood.

Newsprint Hurricane

2004-11-04T13:53:00.000Z

On the cover of the print version of The Independent: the headline Four More Years printed in white against a black background on top of which are photographs of soldiers, Abu Ghraib, and a man holding a sign that reads Thank God we have a Christian who will fight against evil, or some such.

Just so you know.

~~~

Yesterday was the UCAS fair in which various art colleges organize themselves in Islington, all crammed into booths roughly the same size and temperature as a kiln.

How it works: high school students don't apply directly to the universities they wish to attend, but to an organization called UCAS which, acting in the capacity of the Middle Man, distributes these applications to the relevant schools. So at 1pm, UCAS opens the doors and the students flood in like locusts over cropfields.

I stocked and re-stocked prospectuses. I learned how Prometheus felt having his liver devoured every night.

I felt like a dick though, standing there answering these students' questions when I hadn't even attended Central St. Martins nor was I even a native of the country.

The students would ask: "Are you a student here? How do you find it?"

And I would say: "No, I studied in the states." I wouldn't tell them that my studies had diddly-shit to do with art.

They'd say, "What're the courses like?"

And I'd make something up about not knowing personally but, having spoken to sheer multitudes of students, that, well golly gee williams, Central St. Martins shore is a gosh-darned friendly place to get book-larned.

My roommate later mentioned that I should've just told them that the courses are fine, though very intensive and that, as part of my education, I am required to for one year sit on a little fold-up chair answering questions about the school.

Of course, I very nearly told them that there's no hope for the future. To just pack it all in and climb into a luke-warm bathtub to slit their wrists.

That might've gotten me in trouble, despite being reflective of my general attitude then, what with certain more external, events transpiring at that particular point in time.

~~~

That mean ol' ho upstairs told me to never use the kitchen copier machine. She was dressed in purple stripes and she was shaped like a fat little pear. My boss has declared war on her. I want a fight. I want to be part of a fight so bad, I taste iron in my spit.

~~~

The office next door is hosting a little lunch party. I'm waiting for all of the people to leave so I can swoop in like a bunch of teenagers at a UCAS fair.

2004-11-03T18:16:00.000Z

Here, then, is to the future. Where hope resides.

McSweeney's

2004-11-01T13:40:00.000Z

A small list I wrote got on the website.

Kilburn

2004-10-29T17:20:00.000+01:00

We moved to Kilburn, which is in Northwest London. Because my roommate heard the words "Mile End" and "pisshole" used in the same sentence too many times. So the place we now have is £140/week, which is fine with me because I told him I'll pay at most £65/week on my end. He agreed.

It's a nicer, cleaner place--in a nicer area. However, I can hear the girls upstairs walking around (and I know them and they're relatively nice) and occasionally I can hear them when the cuter of the two girls, named Whitney, has roiling sex with a South African she met a few weeks ago. It drives me bats because it makes it hard for me to concentrate and so I just put on my headphones and turn the volume way up. But batteries are expensive and finite and I prefer to use them up when I'm on the tube or working on the job.

I work now in an art school around Soho called Central St. Martins. They're known for their fashion school. Stella McCartney came from here. Also, drama. Paul "I'm a cheap Jude Law" Bettany, Pierce "Bond. James Bond." Brosnan, and Colin "Oh he's so charming!" Firth.

I also got my taxes back from the Temp agency I'd previously signed with. I know why this is. I filled out a form telling them I was exempt from taxes, which at the time I believed though now I realize I'm not (lots of legal and economic mumbo-jumbo here. Very boring too. You want to know about this as much as you want to know about archiving HP pension plans, seriously). So with this new job at the college, I've stopped defrauding the British government because I could potentially get in a bit of trouble next time I try to enter the country.

My roommate and I went to York with this trip organized by the company that provided me with my visa. Stayed in a castle in the Yorkshire Dales--rolling green countryland with stone walls and lots of sheep with orange markings on their butts--that had been built around 1500. I think.

Most of the castle's towers had been demolished during the English Civil War, but one remained standing. That's the one we were allowed to use.

Slept in Mary Queen of Scots's social room, which was really rather cold and drafty, but the experience was nice. Huge, gaping room of cold stone slabs--basically a pitch-dark cell since it was without any furniture or tapestries or peasant girl slaves feeding me roast mutton and grapes. It looks like a stage set in photos...which will be posted someday. I slept with four other people because we could see our breath in the room and it was cold.

The girls farted way more than the guys, which was surprising and really shattered a lot of nice illusions I'd previously harbored.

We got to York via two vans with, I'd say, 13 people per. The boys in our van consisted of me and my roommate Richard.

This would have been nice except all of the girls were PMSing in a major way and they all hated each other--viciously hated each other. The girls divided themselves up into two warring factions and battled over the seats in the vans, each group wanting to establish complete and total hegemony over the entire vehicle. There was no screaming. It was very passive-aggressive. I felt myself being caught up in the wave (that horrendous Red Wave of Suffering!) and had to force myself to remain detached. My roommate and I split a bottle of Jack with the driver of the van/tour guide (after we'd stopped for the evening) because our driver/guide had a vicious cold and was simply unable to function without his whiskey.

York, by the way, was pleasant. That's mostly it. It's pretty touristy and there aren't as many cool things in the city itself as there are in Bath, which is also pretty touristy. I think the things that Bath has going for it are that crescent of uber-expensive apartments, the historical Roman baths, and the fact that Jane Austen
hated the city and created her villains, to the extent that her novels had villains, based on people she knew during her tenure there.

York mostly has a wall and a cool barbican. You can walk along the wall and there aren't any railings on one side, which is neat because if you look down, you get vertigo. But it's unwise to do that too much because if you do get vertigo and fall off, you'll probably end up breaking something in your body that you need and that you don't have two of.

Also, York has cheaper food than London, but that's no big surprise.

By the by, if you were wondering why the sheep in the Yorkshire dales have painted asses, it's because the rams go crazy and procreate with as many ewes as possible and so, in order to keep track, the farmers have this device around the ram's unmentionables that essentially stamps the female every time he mounts her.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone out there decides to manufacture one for humans.

~~~

And next time, I will definitely get to ugly British girls with railroad-accident teeth. The many British youths who want to be black--and not just black, American Urban Ghetto Black--with their twisted conflation of Queen's English with Ebonics. The fact that the security of your higher education admissions is left to dipshits like me. A breast-fondling motif. Dealing with Eastern Europeans, possibly considered to be the guttertrash of the various caucasian nationalities. The Black Lion.

Also, the tale of a beautiful girl taking a massive shit in a small toilet.

Pretty Days in October

2004-10-02T18:14:00.001+01:00

Been sort of busy...

...watching TV. Where I've seen some pretty disturbing shit here,
watching the box, in Britain. Mostly children's commercials. I've
seen a device that recycles used flavorless chewing gum. You
basically spike the nubbin of gum on a plastic cone and shake the
receptacle and sprinkles alight on your nubbin. Then you can chew it
all over again (Only now, it's CRUNCHY!).

The other commercial features a cartoon frog wiping its ass. I don't
want to go into that, though.

Temp work has picked up for some reason. I know the reason, actually.
All of the college kids have gone back to college so there's no more
cheap labor, just us. Right now, I'm making £7.50/hour as a "file
clerk", I think my official title is. But I call myself The Archivist.

That means I move files to an archive. I record files with titles
like Projected Visacorp Earnings as at December 5 1998 and put them
into boxes. Next, I put the boxes on a little handcart. Then, I take
the boxes and move them up an elevator. Then I push Level 2 in the
elevator and take the whole caboodle up to Level 2. Then I wheel the
boxes into a filing cabinet. Then I stack the boxes. Then I go down
for more recording.

I record the content of the boxes in either blue, black, or red ink on
regular looseleaf paper. I change colors after every sheet of
looseleaf I fill up because it keeps me sane. This will last for the
rest of this week, until the end of the next.

I am making rent. I am eating.

In other news, I was at a pub and got schooled by a drunken cockney who
knew more state capitals than I. He knew the state capital of
Pennsylvania.

~~~

Here, Asians are actually Indians. Chinese, God's True Race, are classified as East Asians. The worst ethnic slur for a black person is still nigger, though it's usually preceded with the adjective(?) "blacky".

~~~

Also, I got a postcard from my aunt of New York sent from Oakland. That was nice. Next time I am in a foreign country, I will definitely take a stack of postcards depicting the Mann Chinese Theater and the Golden Gate Bridge and send them to all
of my relatives. If I can find one of the Modesto Arch, I will definitely do that too but I don't think Modesto has any postcards depicting the Modesto Arch, so maybe I'll just find a Modesto postcard depicting the wonderful Red Lion Hotel (Modesto Branch). I'm not joking. This is actually a really good idea.

Also, I want a SF Giants baseball cap. It's because everyone here wears a Yankees baseball cap and it's sort of beginning to piss me off.

~~~

Later, I will explain how British girls have cute accents but are ugly as a sinner's soul. With their ruddy and rotund Santa Claus faces, their round little bellies...

~~~

Also later: about how I came in from my lunch break very delicately smelling of alcohol, which caused the Human Resources people at the business management company in which I currently work, to railroad me in a major way.

Stabbed

2004-09-21T16:10:00.000+01:00

Here's another good one. This one girl we know recently rented a basement from a family for £100/week and is, after her first couple of days there, anxious to move out.

The breaking point came when she woke up to the family screaming upstairs. The daughter didn't want to go to school. The argument ended with the mother shrieking, "PUT DOWN THAT KNIFE."

Shots

2004-09-19T13:59:00.000+01:00

Last night, I learned that our two dogs cornered one of our cats, eventually killing it.

~~~

London is dirty, but in a good way. Alleys and brick stoops and cobblestones smeared with shit. I like this, for some reason.

~~~

A large Jamaican lady lives upstairs. I came home one night and the first thing I heard was her screaming, "...I eat, I get big!" And a male voice saying, "...I know...I know..."

~~~

There are Lithuanians too. Spelling is uncertain. They'll be called Lithos from here on out. Eastern Europeans are vaguely menacing even when they do not mean to be.

When I first moved into the room in which I'm staying, the Litho named Vaidas came up to me and asked: "You just move in, yes?"

Me: "Yes".

"Okay. Good, then. You second new guy. First new guy, we make him pay. He pay, then you pay. We all pay. You pay next."

It took me a while, but eventually, I realized he was just explaining the household gas & electricity policy to me.

To wit: gas & electricity is replenished via occasional installments of cash, rather than a single monthly bill. When the gauge goes down, one tenant tosses in £10 to replenish it. When it goes down again, another tenant tosses in another £10, and so the cycle continues.

And so we all pay.

~~~

Of all things, I think I didn't get the job at Borders, a position I remain certain that I am totally overqualified for. I downed a rum and coke before I went into the interview and that might have had an effect on the outcome.

Also, a rather extensive dissection on George Eliot's Adam Bede, why I hated it, why I think Eliot is a fraud, & etc., which certain interviewers might have found off-putting and digressive.

~~~

I am cold calling publishing companies. I have called Scholastic and Bloomsbury and Faber & Faber and some were more receptive than others. We will see.

~~~

How do I find the other American ex-pats here? They are nice people but no one worth writing home about, hence, I shan't unless something bad happens to one of them.

~~~

Chinese food is the most expensive ethnic food here. I've gone to Chinatown twice and both times have I come out of a restaurant feeling as if I'd been fucked up the ass and my wallet stolen.

Shot in the Sternum

2004-09-12T13:39:00.000+01:00

Everytime I told people at the Emerging Markets office that there's a chance I might work retail at Borders, they gave me this look of great betrayal, as if I'd just murdered their families.

It seems like a step back as a potential job at a bookstore is not what they call "Career Related" but at least I'm not selling steak knives for Cutco. I did find myself with the enviable title of "Research Editor", working on a paper that will appear daily at this year's annual World Bank/IMF meeting, with access to Connie Chung's professional e-mail address (It would've been fun to contact her and ask her the Interesting Questions We All Need Answered like why she married Maury Povich).

On the other hand, I was also researching stuff like forecasts for the Nikkei's 2004 GDP numbers and, for instance, the number of chapters closed by Romania so far this year considering the country's anticipation for EU accession in 2007. I don't know whether that information will ever come in handy outside of the press office. Maybe it just did.

The editor at the office said, Oy, Ryan...You want a job, just ask us and we'll put out feelers.

And I asked, What sort of job.

He said, Monitoring numbers for a company that maintains statistics.

I said, Oh. Thanks. I'll let you know.

But money's money and if I'm going to have a miserable job, at least let it be in London where the weather matches versus in Los Angeles, which is so blisteringly cheery and happy that, when you're mood doesn't match, the disparity makes you go stark raving mad.

I sound like I'm not enjoying myself, but I really am. London is a crazy place to live, despite the fact that, generally speaking, an office is an office is an office.

About Britons screaming in the workplace--this seems to happen a lot, but when I told a few natives, they were appalled.

But consider the following:

A) I walk into a real estate agent's office to inquire about an apartment for let. They are screaming.

B) I walk into the Aldwych branch of Natwest bank to inquire about opening my checking account. They are screaming.

C) I walk into the Emerging Markets office one morning. They are screaming.

That's three for three. And what are they screaming about?

A) Whether Individual X got into the office yesterday at 2pm or not.

B) Whether the copier works or not.

C) Whether there are any large corporate-type banks with any significant global influence based outside of the US. Or not.

So maybe more office work won't be too bad as, if anything, it gives me stuff to write about in these here missives.

Shot in the Balls

2004-09-08T18:30:00.000+01:00

So I've been working for this magazine called Emerging Markets which is owned by Euromoney. Emerging Markets is a daily newspaper distributed during the annual IMF/World Bank meeting.

I will not be continuing the job after week is up. Emerging Markets had hired someone before me, as well as a successor (the arrangements had been made months in advance). Basically, they hired me to pick up the slack during the weeklong layover after my predecessor left but before my successor was due to arrive.

I am not disappointed however.

The people in the office are delightful but the job is...

...okay, for the first day, they put me to work scouring the AP and Reuters imagebanks looking for portraits of past World Bank presidents for EIGHT GODDAMN HOURS. I also spend a lot of time waiting for people in New York to wake up so that I can call them and hassle them and tell them to Please Email Their Articles To Us As We've A Looming Deadline Please Now Dammit. And they inevitably say something like Well It Was Labor Day And I Was Sleeping And Spending Time With My Family And Was At Church.

It's boring me to write about it.

So I've submitted my CV at Borders books on Tottenham Court Road and have an interview this Tuesday. If I get that job, at least I will be able to move my legs and feel blood and gravity and hard earth beneath my feet. Also, I will be working the same hours and be making a total of £2 less per week, which is acceptable. It'd be £6.20/hour which roughly = $12/hr.

My roommate just informed me that another bookstore called Murder One had an opening for £9.50/hour which roughly = $17/hr but of course that job got filched before you could blink.

Later, I will tell you about how Britons tend to scream at each other in the workplace but for now, I am tired and want to rest.

Shot in the Head

2004-09-02T19:13:00.000+01:00

Here is a conflation of e-mails written to others.

Been busy. I've sent my resume to a few companies. It's actually called a CV here, which is what it's called in the States only if you want to puff about sounding formal and educated.

Most of these companies offer office work, etc. Same stuff you'd find in the US. One was even a sort of telemarketing deal. On the plane ride over, I sat next to a girl who had done BUNAC before. She said the bad thing about being limited to six months is that you don't get as interesting jobs. Mostly temp stuff. So today, after I sent
out all of my CVs, I thought, well why not?...so I walked into a Borders and gave them a hard copy. If I'm going to be saddled with a job that has pretty much an identical twin in the US, then I might as well be around people my age, I figure.

I think I'm about to put a deposit down on a place. Towards the Eastern border of zone 2. The room costs 120 pounds/week. That's 60 split two ways, as I'm rooming with a friend. I opted for the more expensive one because the cheaper room--a 100 pounder was within walking distance to the Dublin Line Railway, which isn't the tube but looks like one. I'd need to pay more for transportation, basically. The 120 pounder is by the Mile End tube.

It's not nearly as nice as anything we ever had in LA. But it's a roof and it has a garden or, if not a garden, then a lush field of overgrown weeds. We'd have to share two bathrooms and kitchen, however.

The flat building is clean but small and is located in Mile End. The Mile End area is nice--there's a college close by and there're two parks w/in easy walking distance. One a regular park with grass and pretty tweeting birds, the other a cemetary park with a lot of crumbling tombstones and dead people.

Regarding ethnic constitution, I've seen more black people and pakis in this area than in others but I won't say that Mile End is a particularly ethnic area of town.

Finally opened up my Natwest bank account via BUNAC and ordinarily a bank account is insanely hard to get so it's a real privilege to have this one. Plus there is no minimum balance and I can pretty much keep it open even after I leave the UK so this account will make a nice memento even if I don't bring anything else home, which I won't because my suitcases are already too full and plus I'm poor.

I can't extend my working visa, however. It just doesn't happen. How do you get a regular working visa for the UK? Glad you asked. You have to have a company sponsor you. This company must then front £500 for you to get your visa. Furthermore, this hypothetical company must also prove to British authorities that there is No One Else in the UK or the EU who can possibly fulfill this (ie your prospective) position.

Exceptions include jobs of which there is a current dearth (eg doctors, social workers, etc).

Just so you know.

The World's Favorite Writers, Masturbating

2004-08-26T19:06:00.000+01:00

Charlotte Bronte, The Last Third of Jane Eyre

George Eliot, Adam Bede

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

Amy Tan, Everytime She Italicizes a Word

William Wordsworth, Everything He Did Towards the Latter End of His Life

Nightmare in Purple

2004-08-26T06:04:00.000+01:00

And here's another good one:

Apparently, I was getting married. And the ceremony was this royal purple-themed fiasco. My bride was dressed like a bridesmaid. Actually, it was this deep purple prom dress--really a vivid purple, like some comic book supervillain's cape or something. I wore a purple vinyl tuxedo--sort of like a pimp.

We were at her house which, despite being inside and despite my complete unfamiliarity with the interior, I knew was located just down the street from where I grew up in Modesto. We were surrounded by relatives, both hers and mine. I looked at these strange people, everyone dressed in their finery as if they'd thrown it together at the last minute. Their eyes were droopy and their posture lethargic. Streamers and tinsel all around the room. Purple in color, of course. I asked: When did we start planning this?

She said: Two days ago.

I didn't recognize her at all. She was petite, asian, but I wasn't particularly attracted to her. In fact, I didn't even know what, exactly, was going on, except that a while back I had apparently agreed to marry her.

So I said: Let's go outside and take a walk, you and me. And I took her arm and we walked out into the high summer heat together. We walked down this street that borders hers--coincidentally, the same street on which Chandra Levy had lived. And after we got far from the house, I asked, So what's going on here exactly?

We're getting married, she said.

I asked: Why?

Because we love each other.

And I looked at her and tried to figure out a way to ask her what her name was without sounding too crude. So I asked her, Do you remember how we met?

And she told me and I don't remember now exactly what she said except that, then, I had no recollection of our meeting as she told it.

So I tried to figure out a way to squiggle out of this wedding, perhaps to say We're too young, We've got our whole lives ahead of us, Let's not consign ourselves to so heady a commitment, and etc.

Of course, I ended up saying Aren't I going to London in a week? Aren't I living there? Won't that put a crimp in our plans?

And she said: Silly! That was last year! And she giggled and touched my nose, which I fucking hated.

What do you mean last year? I asked. Isn't this August?

Yes, it's August.

Isn't this 2004?

No no. It's August, 2005. How can you forget your own wedding date?

And I thought, WTF. WTF is going on here? But aloud, because I was much more mature and poised, I said something different. I said: What the fuck are you talking about, woman? I don't remember going to no London! I never went!

Of course you did sweetie, she cooed. And now we're getting married.

And it was really hot, the sun this sort of fried egg in the sky, and I was sweating under my purple vinyl tuxedo and there were no shadows on the ground in which to take comfort. I was really wishing she'd just omit the words wedding and married, plus any variations thereof, from her vocabulary.

I said: Well, it's really hot. Let's go in now.

We went inside her house, and I looked at the name on her family mailbox where it said CHANDLER. I made a note to count how many anglo-saxons were in that damned house. I still had no idea what was going on nor did I have any idea as to who this person I was supposed to marry was or where in the hell she even came from.

Anyway, it was at that point when I sort of woke up, comfortably in my own bed with all of my plans still intact, but regrettably, without an ending. Though I do remember feeling, at the point when I entered the house, that I would do my best to extricate myself from my rather uncomfortable situation, to do whatever it took, even if it meant breaking both hearts and heads.

A Series of Squeaky Voice Similes

2004-08-24T08:15:00.000+01:00

I enjoy watching the Olympics because it's great to see the human body really pushed to its total limit. But what happened to the human voice? Paul and Morgan Hamm both sound like Carly Patterson. Carly Patterson sounds like a small mammal caught in a garbage disposal. I haven't heard anything like it, at least not from individuals whose voices are presumed to have dropped. Though I do remember Kerri Strug back during the Atlanta Olympics sounding much like how I imagine a dog whistle must sound to a dog.

Mary Whipple is a rower for the US team this year and she too tends to squeak out her sentences. And Justin Gatlin doesn't exactly boast a nice deep baritone either. But I guess if these people look good on the field, rather than sound good in a room with Bob Costas, then it's okay, ultimately.

~~~

I'm looking forward to our next family gathering about as much as a bastard looks forward to father's day. Currently, my mother, who just got through riding my ass over something relatively insignificant, either Strongly Dislikes or Hates two of the three families coming over.

These families are all on my father's side and my mother says that whenever her side of the family decides to hate a relative, they just ostracize him or her which, according to my mother, is significantly less stressful for all involved except, perhaps, the ostracized relative.

Anyway, the fun begins Saturday. I should've booked my plane ticket for Friday.

~~~

I used to have this English TA, and he was generally pretty good. Though, occasionally, when I'd have a problem with something in the text, or when I'd bring up a point that was tangentially though not directly related to the ongoing discussion, he'd giggle and say "Well but that's neither here nor there." And then he'd giggle again, as if to signify a period. An actual, grammatical period vocalized by a huh-huh-huh.

And I'd just turn around and sit down in my seat, saying nothing but resisting the urge to shout "Oh but yes it fucking is you lame asshole!" and then cave his head in with something blunt and see if he was still giggling then.

But of course, I never did that because it's really not in me. And generally, like I said, he was a pretty nice guy.

~~~

This morning, by the way, I dreamed that I was at my cousin's wedding and that all of my relatives were trying to kill me with sniper rifles. I don't know what, if anything, this foreshadows, but it can't be good.

Of Writs and Reads

2004-08-21T23:03:00.000+01:00

I'm supposed to be packing for England. I'm living there for six months, will be gone in a week, and haven't packed so much as a sock. This is not a good way to go about doing things.

I'm trying to get a lot of reading done, which is both my way of preparing and procrastinating. Currently, I'm re-reading Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai because it's in part about an American in London, though unlike the heroine of the novel, I am not female nor do I have any intentions of making and raising a baby whilst overseas. Also, A.M. Homes's The Safety of Objects because you can never get too much suburban despondency.

I need these two read in a week as I don't want to schelp them across the Atlantic.

Moreover, my biggest packing dilemma centers on which books to bring--a combination of ones I've read and would like to re-read and ones I haven't yet read but figure that England would be a good country in which to do so.

So I've got Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian because it's an Apocalyptic Western and there really aren't many of those around. Tobias Wolff's In the Garden of the North American Martyrs and Dan Chaon's Among the Missing because those are some of my favorite American short story collections.

I'm bringing a collection of Checkhov's stories because I haven't read anything by Chekhov and feel that this makes me irresponsible. Lolita by Nabokov because Nabokov was a killer stylist and also because I'm already feeling dirty trying to find the naked gymnastics video a handful of Romanian female gold medalists reportedly made for some Japanese financiers.

Rock Springs by Richard Ford because that is also supposed to be a solid collection and because the collection is described, on the back cover, as "literary gold from the wind-scrubbed landscape of the American west," which is good for nostalgia purposes, I guess. Also because Ford has been photographed by Marion Ettlinger, which means he's bona fide.

Johannes V. Jensen's The Fall of the King, which appears to be totally out of print but was loaned to me by a friend, so I need to read it. England seems to be a good place to read about crumbling monarchies anyway.

Also, the complete stories of Flannery O'Connor and some collected stories by Faulkner but they're both thick collections so I might just have to pour myself a bourbon and leave Faulkner at home. I might bring his Big Woods collection, actually, as it has considerably less mass.

David Foster Wallace's Girl with Curious Hair, as I will get bored reading or listening to sentences that adhere too stringently to the Queen's sodding English.

Honeymoon by Kevin Canty as it comes with a strong recommendation from a friend as do the stories of Breece D'J Pancake, which were really good the first time around and I hope to be better the second time around, with that sense of open desolation, of missed opportunities, of violent sacrifice, all going very well with the soft thrummmm and suck of vacuum in the cramped toilet of a Virgin Atlantic flight.

And Emperor of the Air by Ethan Canin as I've been trying very very hard to find it--even though it shouldn't be very very hard to find. It better be good.

I've also got, and am thinking of not bringing, M.R. James's Casting the Runes and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse but I think I need at least one collection of foppish old horror stories in which people say things like "thou" or "thee" or "Dearest heart."

Also, T.C. Boyle's After the Plague, which, odds are pretty good, ain't coming with me. Though it's a thin collection, so who knows.

And Jonathan Franzen's The Twenty-Seventh City. His first book and one that was published to acclaim. But need I read it within the next six months? Perhaps not.

And George Saunders's Pastoralia I will probably leave home as well. It's either Saunders or Foster Wallace and I've read Pastoralia but haven't read Girl with Curious Hair.

I'm also thinking of bringing and re-reading, for like the hundredth time, Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves because I like the author's portrayal of Los Angeles and, God save me, I'm actually beginning to miss that coked-up town with its sepia patina and parking lot freeways.

Also, I'm thinking of bringing along John Keats in case I feel like killing myself.

Why I Will Abort My Amy Tan Project

2004-08-16T22:03:00.000+01:00

Initially, as I went through Joy Luck Club, I was planning on pounding out an entry every fifty pages or so detailing why I do not like Amy Tan.

But I've read about 100 pages of her "magnum opus". I really don't need to read more of it. I get the point. I don't want 200 more pages of concubines and moon ladies and cross-generational conflicts. Awful awful awful writing.

I think most Asian people dislike Tan. My uncle watched her speak once in the Bay Area and he asked why asian women, like Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, write about asian culture and then turn tail and marry some white guy.

He's not without a point, even though I heard he was booed off the microphone. Tan's answer was some Dawson's Creek type response about love being colorblind and yadda yadda.

"Listen," my uncle said to me. "You think anyone would've listened to Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. if they married white women? You think that Spike Lee could make the movies he makes if he married some white meat? Think again."

~~~

I mentioned that one of our dogs that we previously believed was a German Shepherd is, in point of fact, a German Shepherd mix. Mixed with a sewer rat, by all appearances.

Anyway, when we found out the damned thing was a mutt, we re-named him from Rommel to Heinz, the latter name more befitting of his little wiener personality.

My brother calls the dog "Poobies" as a nickname, which disgusts me for some reason. I have a really negative physical reaction every time I hear that little pet name. "Poobies" is not something you should call your German Shepherd, even if it is part sewer rat. "Poobies" is something gay guys call their boyfriends.

~~~

And also.

My sixteen year old cousin is dating, or is in that nebulous area between Being Friends With and Dating, some fat white guy from Maine whom she met over the Internet.

That's reason to be wary, but apparently, my cousin's parents say it's OK, having checked up with her beau's folks. There's a certain legitimacy, it seems, settling into the public's perception of online relationships. This growing social acceptance, however, doesn't keep such relationships from being a bit Creepy--in my eyes, at least.

~~~

Whether he intended to or not, Nathaniel Hawthorne pretty acutely sums up the fundamental relationship between man and woman in Rappaccini's Daughter.

~~~

And Finally.

This is old news, but on the topic of writers, David Foster Wallace wrote an article (I have not linked to the article but to an article about the article as the original essay, I believe, is only available in print) about the Maine Lobster Festival for Gourmet Magazine. The article includes, but is not limited to, a summary of the Festival proper ("...people slap canal-zone mosquitoes as they eat deep-fried Twinkies and watch Professor Paddywhack, on six-foot stilts in a raincoat with plastic lobsters protruding from all directions on springs, terrify their children"). Wallace is really interested in the moral quandary inherent when it comes to boiling a sentient organism alive so that we can dig in with a dainty little fork and a pad of warm butter. Sample passage:

Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature's claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming).

Of course, some people got really pissed off over this article...

And, by the way, Wallace is using footnotes again.

Why I Do Not Like Amy Tan Part I.

2004-08-13T22:32:00.000+01:00

Here is part of a sentence from Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club:

"I'm drawn first to a large platter of chaswei, sweet barbecued pork cut into coin-sized slices and then to a whole assortment of what I've always called finger goodies..."

It's that italicizing of a Chinese word in a sentence written in English. The italicized word feels self-conscious and off, disrupting the flow of the prose by calling attention to its own ethnicity. You know what it's like? I have this relative who rolls her r's whenever she pronounces a word of Spanish origin. For instance, "Let's all go to Taco Bell to get some burrrrrrrrrrr-itos!" It's horrible and I'm not exaggerating at all.

Snapshot

2004-08-10T02:06:00.000+01:00

In the old yellow photo album--the one with the spiral binding and the film of sticky dust--my father is a hippy. He has these huge coke bottle glasses and hair longer than mine ever was.

There's also a photo of his old roommate with either a hand-rolled cigarette or a dooby dangling out of his lips.

Also, my mother. In the images in which she appears alone, I know that my father holds the camera. She looks up into the lens with an expression I've never seen before; one that, frankly, I'd feel uncomfortable if I did ever see. The perspective grants a slight bird's eye view and my mother gazes up at the camera and the expression on her face tells me that it is from this angle that she believes that she is most attractive. What's rearing up to confront me through these pictures, what I think is being shown to me, is my mother the way my father saw her when they were dating--and indeed, the way he still sees her today.

And so, between this and my video game experience of yesterday, I've come to the conclusion that I'm pretty screwed up.

Porn and Chicken

2004-08-08T08:15:00.000+01:00

I am staring at my brother playing Tekken on Playstation. Tekken is a 3-d fighter. He plays it over and over again, repeating button combinations and practicing his already impeccable timing as if he were an Olympian training for Athens. Sometimes, he plays Soul Caliber too.

Don't laugh. There's actually a level of physical conditioning necessary to maintain a rigorous playing schedule. I myself, like most asian boys, have gotten blisters on my thumbs and palms from excessive gaming.

The 2-d fighters, like Street Fighter, are the ones that really do your fingers in. In a 2-d fighter, I'm telling you just for a lark, two opponents wail on each other in what is essentially an xy coordinate plane; this, as opposed to a 3-d fighter (ie Tekken) in which two opponents wail on each other in what is essentially an xyz coordinate plane.

It's stupid to try to describe this. A 2-d fighter looks like this

Whereas a 3-d fighter looks like this

I'm boosting these images from different sites, which is why they are sized differently.

There're really quite a few sexual fetishes diffused, in highly variable degrees of subtlety, within these games. Particularly the 3-d fighters, which provide greater realism and anatomical accuracy in the movements of the avatars. Basically, what we're left with is interactive softcore porn.

At this moment, as I look at the television screen on which my brother is playing his game, I am seeing a prepubescent girl in a Catholic school uniform get her ass kicked by a grizzly bear. In some cultures--actually, in many cultures--this is considered a turn-on.

In fact, I had one friend who would play only the female characters, using only high, crotch-widening kicks to hopefully subdue the opponent. Either that, or he'd just let his sprite get seriously man-handled.

When I pointed this out, he smiled sheepishly and whispered: "It's what makes me happy."

That sort of weirded me out and after that, I pretty much exclusively played Pac-Man for the next few months.

Though even Ms. Pac-Man sort of made me upset. Isn't it uncomfortable when those ghosts eat her?

Western Apocalypse

2004-08-07T01:22:00.000+01:00

There are things to do after you’ve been so thoroughly rejected from post-graduate schooling. One friend hiked the Appalachian Trail for a good thousand miles. That's a lot of time to mull over any perceived personal failures, I guess.

Currently, he is writing an “apocalyptic western.”

I liked the way it sounded: Apocalyptic Western. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it should. Then I said: "But there's Blood Meridian..."

And my friend nodded sadly. "My book's awful now," he said. "But in two months, you know what? It'll still be awful."

So he's going to pack up and move to Louisiana with his girlfriend.

Other people are trying to get their teaching credentials. This makes me think of that old bit of midwives' wisdom: Those Who Can, Do. Those Who Can't, Teach.

And I get depressed all over again. But then? I shake it off. It's good to lend a helping hand to America's youth. No matter how hopeless they may be.

And the rest? Well, the rest of us, until it's time to apply again, are going to have to answer yet another year's worth of questions ranging from "What Are You Going To Do Now?" to "How Do You Feel About Technical Writing?"

Without fear of wind or vertigo

2004-08-05T21:01:00.000+01:00

I finally got my lazy ass to the top of Half Dome.

Now my lazy ass is just sore.

It's something I've wanted to do, have felt obligated to do in fact, since Yosemite is only about 100 miles away from where I lived in the Central Valley. And since I'm going to be leaving the States for about six months, now seemed as good a time as any.

In the final leg of the climb, you're basically supposed to grab onto an iron cable and shimmy your way up the slope of the dome. Wear gloves. If you don't wear gloves, your hands bloat with bags of pus. If you think you're Big and Strong and Impervious and still don't want to wear gloves, simply imagine how much blister juice from decades past has already leaked between the strands of the cable. Wear gloves.

Towards the top of the climb, there was a jam. A seven-year-old girl was beginning to seize up, in the throes of a small panic attack. Not a good place to have one. It turns out, her group basically ditched her, leaving her there at the top of the dome. She was trying to get back down.

But she got back okay. A couple helped her down, hiking with her all the way to the valley below.

I want to go to where Sonoma County meets the coast.

I want to go to see the Redwoods again.

I want to rappel down Moaning Caverns.

~~~

If you're into comics, The Avengers are hitting their 500th episode. Preview the first twenty-three pages here. The team includes Captain America, Hawkeye, Antman, Yellow Jacket, Vision, etc. If these names don't ring a bell and are of no interest to you, what are you doing here?

Additionally, Marvel Comics has recently implimented a "Dead is Dead" policy (official title). That means that no heroes killed in action will be resurrected (like Jean Grey, Cyclop's wife, who has more lives than a cat and Jesus Christ combined. She's dead again, just for the record).

This is a good thing. I won't say that a constant flow of resurrections cheapens life since, well, we're dealing with cartoon people in spandex here. But it is frustrating.

So.

The 500th episode of The Avengers, written by Brian Michael Bendis, illustrated by David Finch, shakes up the roster. Bendis kills two major characters in the preview issue, linked above (wanna see the deaths? They're in the preview pages! What great fun!). In the following issue, it's been announced that he's either going to kill Hawkeye or Scarlet Witch.

I've given this a lot of ink, a lot of thought. More than is healthy. But these were the characters that more or less got me through puberty, psyche intact. Sad, I know.

Still, it's dizzying for me when it's open season and all of the heroes are about to be knocked off like ninepins. It makes me want to sob in a corner of a dark room.

ex Libra

2004-08-04T02:18:00.000+01:00

At the entrance of the Modesto City Library, there is a neon OPEN sign--the sort of cathode-tubed, red-lettered, blue-rimmed sign normally found blinking outside of some red light district pub.

The sign was the only color on the library itself, which is shaped and colored sort of like a sugar cube. There is a rather half-assed attempt at architectural diversification, with columns jutting out the sides of the building like a giant rib cage. Perhaps this is a nod to classical aesthetics. Or the columns could simply buttress the ceiling. Maybe both.

I hadn't been inside the library since I was around ten or eleven. I went in to read and stepped into a mausoleum. Or maybe it was indeed a whorehouse watering hole. It was dark. Everything was brown. People were bustling around, reading--there certainly wasn't a dearth of human activity. But the curtains were drawn tight and there was literally no light. I didn't remember the library ever being like this. Or maybe it always was and I just forgot. It was depressing, nonetheless.

It felt like they weren't even trying...

But I suppose not every place can be, well, a Wonder.

A Cabinet of Wonder

2004-08-02T04:09:00.000+01:00

On Thursday, at the recommendation of a friend, I went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I was supposed to go Friday with them but wasn't sure if I'd be in town or whether I'd be able to find the time between the frenzied packing.

Before going, I read this

which is sort of like your guidebook to the place.

Featured exhibits include a horn that grew on a woman's head, a Goofy sculpture carved from a human hair, and Ricky Jay's dying dice.

Butt-fucked in Brixton

2004-07-28T22:02:00.000+01:00

I'm hunting for flats in London. I might be living with a friend so that eases the financial bite a bit. Still, I'm looking in the £100-£150 range.

My aunt is very enthused about my going and sent me a notice for a £110/week place--a "very nice looking Victorian in Brixton."

Ah, but therein lies the catch. It's in Brixton. Brixton:London::Hunter's Point:San Francisco.

What happens in Brixton? Have you seen the movie I'll Sleep When I'm Dead? An incident takes place in Brixton in which he

gets raped by

Really harrowing fucking scene. You should see the victim's expression at the point of penetration. And then, as he stumbles out of the alley in the early morning, shuffling and hunched, trying to buckle the belt of his pants. In the end, he cries in a bathtub and opens up his own throat.

So I'm staying out of Brixton. I don't care about stately Victorian manses. I just want my rectum in one piece.

Glass

2004-07-27T21:18:00.000+01:00

There would seem to be a paradox here.

My landlady likes the appearance of neatness. All things in their rightful place. Plants green and watered. White tile countertops polished to induce some serious optical damage.

But I have to be wary sometimes because she doesn't always wash the dishes she uses. She sometimes just rinses them (maybe) and then stashes them back in the cabinets. Usually, it's easy to pinpoint when, exactly, she pulls this sort of crap because there are bits of fried egg or a slick skin of oil glazing the cast iron pans.

She usually uses her own dishes, which is a plus. But recently, I noticed my favorite glass had gone missing. I think sometimes, she takes our dishes (which are technically just hers, since I only rent out a space in her house) and uses them. Actually, that glass was really mine. It belonged to UCLA first, but I had to take it from their dining halls because all of the glasses in my landlady's house are old and flake like bits of shale.

After she finished using the glass, she put it back in the cabinet and I used it myself. But after I'd finished off my drink, I started wondering whether she washed it after she was done using it. What did she use my glass for anyway? To water her plants? To drink her cranberry juice? To soak her dentures?

I should've been more careful, but I guess it's a good thing I'm moving out in a couple of days.

Novel Ideas

2004-07-25T23:24:00.000+01:00

The question was, Can an online crowd create a poem, a novel, or a painting? This was posted on Maud Newton's blog.

A while ago, we began trying to do an online novel.

It's sort of a narrative mess right now, totally schizophrenic, with some people going down postmodern threads and other people writing grittier, more urban fiction. Unfortunately, the work is supposed to be one self-contained storyline.

The problem, when it comes to an online collaborative effort in which ostensibly everyone has carte blanche, is pretty much just that. Everyone feels obligated to leave their own unique imprint on the narrative, myself included. Usually, this imprinting comes in the form of reliable old standards, like the inclusion of rampant drug use and reckless prostitution. I think that's why the above-linked novel, while not really wanting to be ghetto-booty fiction, has more or less turned out that way.

So while the story might begin quietly, by page two, someone has introduced cocaine. By page three, someone else has introduced whoring to support this cocaine habit. And by page four, some complete and utter moron has introduced a totally bizarre Sherlock Holmes arc that is masturbatory and self-referential and attempts, though fails, to parallel ideas established in the greater narrative. Let's hope this Sherlock Holmes stuff ends soon.

What happens is that everyone uses up their ideas within five minutes, wears themselves out, and the novel ends unfinished.

As far as novels are concerned, I'm sort of pessimistic that a community can create one. Too many people insist on having their ideas, their own ideas irregardless of narrative continuity, on the page and at the forefront. When that happens you end up with, well, a Hollywood screenplay.

Dislike and Hatred

2004-07-23T05:05:00.000+01:00

I'm helping Mona organize her UCLA office and lately, she seems like she's on speed. Our conversations are sort of like: "Here's that. And that. And that. And this. Goodbye."

I'm not helping her for any philanthropic reasons. She's paying me. $10/hr. I suppose that elevates me from being her bitch to being her cheap whore.

I was clearing out the doubles she had on her bookshelf and asked her if she wanted to keep both copies of Carolyn See's memoirs. Mona said, "Let's get rid of them." I asked her if she wanted to keep them around for sentimental reasons, little trinkets, keepsakes of good times past, seeing as to how See is retiring from the college, and etc.

And Mona just gave me this look that'd freeze your nutsack right off. She said no and proceeded to clear out all of Carolyn See's work from her shelves.

I sort of like to think that they hate each other.

Basically, if a given author has one book on the shelf, then Mona respects him. If there are two books, then Mona starts groveling. The only author that has two books, however, is Nabakov. She said, "Leave them both up there as they are quite good."

Afterwards, she told me to tear down all of the Richard Powers novels. "I really can't stand them. Someone keeps sending me his stuff for some reason."

~~~

During the last of her Our Favorite Writers series, she had Christopher Hitchens interview Martin Amis. I wasn't at this one, but supposedly, during the after-party, Hitchens got drunk and tried to deck somebody. I missed this like I miss all of the good ones.

I didn't attend the first interview of the series, however, which featured Jeffrey Eugenides. From what I've been told, they ("They" being Eugenides, Mona, and a cluster of students I'm guessing) all tried to go out for cocktails but Eugenides supposedly just looked pissed off, tired, and wanting to leave.

Over the course of the evening, the restaurant where reservations had been made (albeit made for about three hours prior) closed and somebody pulled a "Do You Know Who These People Are?!" sort of thing.

I missed going to the Eugenides series but afterward made sure to attend all of the other interview sessions; nothing happened in any of them. Oh, like I really should've expected Alice McDermott to get drunk and start heaving on the stage during her q&a with Mona.

One must exhibit some foresight when picking battles, and I never have. Though I think my presence may just be enough to keep people tired and listless. I'm like a talking Xanax pill.

~~~

A war on pornography begins.

Mulch

2004-07-18T23:00:00.000+01:00

I am eating a sandwich. There was mold on the bread but I cut it off and when I bite into the bread, it tastes of mulch.

Not the ugly chickenshit mulch that emanates from barnyards, but the pleasant, cedar-smelling stuff that you get after a light rain in a coniferous forest.

But still, this is not what a sandwich should, by any means, taste of.

~~~

We just found out today that our dog is a mutt. We had earlier thought he was just a runt, but he doesn't really look like a German Shepherd--not a purebred at least, and my mother would often joke, or half-joke: "That dog is a mutt!"

Turns out she was right.

We paid $900 for a mutt. Why $900? Because this particular litter stems from a lineage that includes national champions in schutzhund training. But, as it turns out, our puppy isn't actually related to any of those great national champions. He's probably related to one of those dumpster-diving strays that crap on your lawn and maul small children and fluffy white kittens. Actually, we really don't know who the father is.

Apparently, our dog's mother--a bona fide German Shepherd, managed to get out of her kennel and whore herself out.

But we love our dog anyway, though my parents insist on changing his name from Rommel to Heinz, which I think is sort of degrading. Heinz is the name of a ketchup manufacturer.

The silverlining is that when my mother called the kennel, they apologized profusely and offered us the pick of the litter--a true purebred next time--when more dogs are bred come Christmas. So we might get a new puppy yet again.

Processing That Which Surrounds Us

2004-07-15T09:26:00.000+01:00

I posted about my professor who won that contest...

Besides paying me to organize her office bookshelves, she also had me pick up her mail. I'm essentially her little bitch.

Her novel was in her box. Or at least 100 pp. of it. I know I shouldn't have, but I read some of it. The first ten pages, at least. Of course it's good.

But I wasn't in the mood to read more of it. That's the thing with summer. There are just some books that are really hard to read, regardless of their literary merit. So an epic about a filipino nanny--an epic that examines the extent to which love can be purchased is, if ambitious, not something I can really process at this point in my life.

Here, by contrast, is an example of something I can:

Besides X-Box, this is something my roommate, who is pictured above, and I do during our time off.

~~~

I picked up a CD called As Smart As We Are by a band called One Ring Zero. I heard about them on Fresh Air.   They sounded pretty good and they use an accordian-like instrument. Any band that sounds pretty good while using an accordian-like instrument is OK in my book.


But what interested me was that they had authors write lyrics. A.M. Homes, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Denis Johnson, Dave Eggers, and Jonathan Lethem to name a few. Here's a sample lyric by novelist Jonathan Ames, who frustrated the band by writing in straight prose:

When I was a little boy, I was very troubled.
I had a bad back and an elevated testicle.
I was eight years old.
I wasn't exactly off to a great start in life.
For my back I had to wear a corset.
For my testicle there was nothing to do but wait.
I think this CD confounded the staff at Borders, where I purchased it. It's actually a CD, but it looks like a book so the staff shelved it with the books, in the Classical Reference section. But, so OK--As Smart As We Are isn't exactly a reference book per se, and it sure as hell isn't classical.

I think the staff just needed to find the little volume a home and probably selected it, randomly, by drawing category names out of a baseball cap.

Encyclopedia Brown

2004-07-12T19:18:00.000+01:00

When I was a kid (not that I'm not one right now), I wanted to be Encyclopedia Brown. I really loved those books, cleverly written by Donald J. Sobol.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you're a hopeless case.

I thought, when I was ten-ish, to set up my own 25 cent detective agency, but that plan fell through. Besides the fact that my family moved out into the country (I'd basically be working dreck like The Case of the Diseased Rootstocks), I also sort of realized that the real world of crime is a bit more dangerous than the world depicted in Encyclopedia's universe.

So I tried writing pastiches of Encyclopedia Brown, but of course I wasn't nearly as good as Sobol. My rendition of Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Missing Spider-Man Comic Books was a sort of new low.

But pastiches can still be fun and recently, I thought of writing yet another Encyclopedia Brown story--this time, updating the character for the new millenium. For instance, he'd access the Internet, have to hack his way into databases, and ward off Bugs Meany's viscious trojans and viruses. Instead of a cardboard box desk, he'd use Microsoft Office and, to adjust for inflation, he'd charge $5 per case instead of 25 cents.

So I started writing and basically came up with a couple of outlines--very basic ideas for cases that Encyclopedia Brown could solve.

Encyclopedia Brown and the Missing Bag of Heroin
Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Vindictive Hooker
Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Dumpster Fetus
Encyclopedia Brown would solve these cases with great aplomb, until eventually meeting his demise in

Encyclopedia Brown Meets the Mob
I only came up with the titles of the story, actually, before realizing that perhaps I was a bit too old for Encyclopedia Brown. They're still fun to read--in the same sense that wordgames or jigsaws are fun. But as something I'd actually want to try to write, I couldn't do it without being somewhat jaded and cynical and that, unfortunately, would destroy what makes the memory of the books so special to me.

Asexual Asian Men

2004-07-11T19:20:00.000+01:00

Ryu raises his sword and brings it down with all his might on the Dark Dragon Blade. The Blade shatters, shards falling like obsidian shrapnel, and it's over.

He turns to leave. Behind him, Rachel raises her hand, as if to grip his shoulder--but he's no longer there. He stands overlooking a dark precipice. "Ryu..." Rachel says.

"No. It's over."

And in a gesture, a mist of light swirls around him, he grows smaller, and rises again, a falcon riding a multicolored beam off and away for good.

Anyway, that's the stupid ending of Ninja Gaiden. I looked at the ending credits that followed and noted that pretty much everybody who worked on the game was Japanese.

It's amazing, isn't it? Even asian men think that asian men are asexual.

Here's Ryu: Master Ninja. Just defeated the Greater Fiends and saved the world from whatever the Greater Fiends had in store. Badass.

And here's Rachel: Big titted, wearing leather and heels, moaning Ryu's name in a tone that says take me and fuck me. And what does Ryu do?

He turns into a bird and flies away.

Seriously. What the fuck.

Images

2004-07-10T11:41:00.000+01:00

I don't want to write so I'll post pretty pictures.

The San Fernando Valley during the day...

...dusk...

...and night.

Ninja! Ninja! Ninja!

2004-07-08T19:08:00.000+01:00

I should be planning for my future. Instead, I've been playing lots of X-Box.

It's really a bad habit to get into because, like most hard drugs (or so I hear), you tend to lose track of the time. You start at noon and suddenly it's dark outside. You play for a while longer and it's light again.

My brother had his X-Box ripped off in San Diego, so I've inherited all of his games until he gets a new one.

Lately, I've been playing Metal Gear Solid 2. Let's talk about the thematic motifs of Metal Gear Solid 2, because I've been thinking about that a lot--usually when I'm in the shower or sitting on the toilet.

Note that the subtitle is Substance, and the underlying theme of the game's narrative is the reliable old "image v. reality". It's pretty ambitious for a video game to have a theme like that, however, and I give Metal Gear's writers a lot of credit, even though they don't do it particularly well. The narrative really unravels at the end when you've got these conspiracies overlapping other conspiracies and, at that point, you want everyone to just shut the fuck up so you can go over and hack the final boss, Solidus Snake, to death with a kitana.

Also, I'm sort of disappointed that you don't get a rematch with Revolver Ocelot, who was a boss in the previous Metal Gear Solid game made for the first Playstation.

From a narrative standpoint, the writers of the game seemed to set up an inevitable pistol duel between your avatar and Ocelot and so while there's a set up, there's truly no payoff.

Also, all of the rest of the bosses kind of sucked. I really wanted to take on Ocelot.

The other game I've been playing is Ninja Gaiden, which is really tough. I'd like to explore one of the underlying themes of Ninja Gaiden, which is half-assed tentacle porn.

About four or five levels into the game, the gamemakers introduce the character Rachel.

You can't see them in the above image, but she's got tremendous breasts and is dressed in a black leather dominatrix bikini with one large, spikey shoulder pad. In one cut scene of the game, this giant blob with tentacles wraps her up and tucks her into its mouth which, opened, looks like a vagina and closed, looks like an uncircumsized penis.

I was sort of turned on by this, I'm ashamed to admit, which made it difficult for me to actually defeat the giant blob. A real detriment, it turned out, because the giant blob was actually the boss of the level.

After you defeat the blob, it regurgitates Rachel--and I'm sure this is a fetish for some people as well--and she kneels on the pavement, gasping for breath while we, the viewers, are treated to another spectacular view of her impressive melons.

Only this time, she's all slimy and glistening with organic juices.

Anyway, after that, you go into these underground catacombs and fight the undead, but I sort of just sleepwalked through all that nonsense.

I'm hoping for another cutscene of Rachel. I hear that later, she's shackled by thick chains while some demon is about to transform her into some animal-human hybrid.

Sounds like a good one.

4th

2004-07-06T23:01:00.000+01:00

The Fourth of July is sort of an interesting holiday in that it's supposed to ignite spasms of patriotic furor but lately, it just seems to be an excuse for Americans to take the day off and blow shit up. Themselves included, at times.

Blind Date

2004-07-01T18:26:00.000+01:00

Today, I return to Los Angeles with slightly more job prospects than I had when I left, despite being pretty much cut off from the civilized world for two weeks, tromping around the Canadian backwood and pretending that I was Wolverine.

Amongst these prospects (though this one doesn't deal so much with employment, however, there is some money to be made), one was from a former classmate who, as it turns out, is a casting director for the TV show Blind Date.

Here's the e-mail she sent:

I wanted to send an email out to you guys in a very shameless manner. I am a casting director at Blind Date (Roger Lodge) and just wanted to see if any of you fine people would be interested in coming on the show. You need to be single, obviously, and over 21... and live in LA. but they pay you 100 bucks for the date adn they pay for the date. and if you are a super hot girl, they are flying them to Greece, Jamaica and Alaska for dates.

I watch the show. I like it. I like it for the same reason I liked the movie version of Starship Troopers. A party of attractive twenty-somethings, ripped out of some FOX soap opera, ready for a good time. And then they have their brains sucked out by giant bugs.

So I wouldn't actually want to be on the show. Besides, I'm really scrawny and, I don't think I'm ugly (well, I don't vomit every time I catch my reflection at least) but I'd look way out of place on a show like Blind Date. Plus, I don't want some moron following me around with a camera. I'm self-conscious enough as it is.

But I'll certainly try to watch the show more regularly now, hoping, though probably in vain, to catch someone I know quaffing electric drinks, swirling through neon dance clubs, and tonguing desperately in a roiling hottub for all the world to see.

It will be nice because then, I will be able to write this classmate and ask him, if the date went well, if there was any off-camera sex. And if the date didn't go well, if he at least copped a feel.

Toilet Tongue

2004-06-16T08:32:00.000+01:00

Do you think Oprah actually reads the novels she recommends? And if so, do you think she reads them more than once?

Her most recent recommendation was Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Previous books include, I think, East of Eden and either Love in a Time of Cholera or One Hundred Years of Solitude. I'm thinking it's the latter since I have a hard time imagining Oprah picking a novel with "cholera" in the title.

Of course, Oprah's now recommending "classics" because, unlike Jonathan Franzen, dead people probably won't rise up and label her as a pedantic oreo.

Unfortunately, Oprah's list thus far is about as surprising and entertaining as a gray cinderblock. It's like she's scanning the syllabi of some freshman comp class. Steinbeck? Tolstoy? Marquez? How's that for predictability? I'd like to see her recommend Ooronoko or something similar, but she won't. Probably because Ooronoko is a drag, but at least it'd be different.

You can argue that at least she's getting middle-class white women back to reading the classics again but a justification like that sounds apologetic and half-assed. But you know there's a tinny little voice droning mosquito-like in the back of your head saying something like There's something totally pretentious and self-aggrandizing about branding a classic novel with your logo that's basically just a stylized version of your first name (not even a last name! Chist almighty!) simply to cultivate a literary persona.

Bottom line is that if you need a chubby negress from the boobtube to draft you a reading list, you might as well just give up now and go back to reading Mary Higgins Clark and the occasional issue of US Weekly.

~~~

I used to play violin using the Suzuki method. I won't get into what that entails here. One thing nice about Suzuki, though, is that it made me look and sound like a child prodigy even though I wasn't anything of the like.

One of the perks (if you can call it that) of Suzuki was Solo Day. About a month before Solo Day, every participant would select a song to play. Depending on this participant's level of accomplishment, this song could be as basic as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or as complex as Vivaldi's Concerto in A Minor.

As I progressed through the Suzuki School of Musical Indoctrination, my ability to make pretty sounds increased exponentially. So came the day when I selected the Vivaldi piece for my solo.

I practiced. Not very hard, but enough to be able to bang out the tricky parts, the quick movements of the bow, the shifting and the slurs, without seriously fucking up.

Except that I fucked up. On the day of, in front of a murder of ultra-competitive asian mothers in floral-print dresses, I hit a quick patch of notes and for some reason, my bow didn't obey my commands or my fingers stiffened and, regardless, I didn't produce the sounds I wanted to produce.

"Oh shit," I whispered softly but evidently, not softly enough as the next thing I knew, my mother was leading me out by the ear.

I can't say that I learned any particular life lesson that day. Don't curse in front of polite company? That seems like a given. Don't embarrass your parents? As you get older, the sad truth seems to be that they begin to embarrass you more than you them.

Though, when I think about it, this is the first time that my mouth, independent of my brain, charged straight into the gutter. It happens from time to time. It's really one of my weaknesses.

But that shit above about Oprah? That, I stand by.

The Fall of Troy

2004-06-13T02:25:00.000+01:00

And there, a dread sight even for Gods to see,
Was Cerberus, whom the Loathly Worm had borne

QUINTUS SMYRNAEUS
(Trans: A.S. Way; Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1913)

This blog formerly of xanga.com/madjackbabymaker