Friday, September 18, 2009

Today I am...

Today I am using Google Maps to explore cities I have never been to, in an effort to expand the horizons of my visual imagination for what civilization looks like. It's a writing exercise, sort of. I mean mainly I was just curious, but it occurred to me that curiosity, far from having assassinated anyone's household pets, is one part of the elixir which transmutes into the rocket fuel of creativity.


View Larger Map

...a small, blue thing.
Like a marble. Or an eye.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Sequel II: The Return

Fortunately we usually have an empty 2-litre bottle around, because Vanilla Coke tastes so fucking good. I wonder if Vanilla Coke would make an alright wasp bait. Fucking RAID... It's not even strong enough to kill the shit here in one blast. Even these smallish spiders who got caught in the crossfire were writhing around in pain. I tried to end their misery with an additonal spritz of the Deadly Neurotoxin, but they still didn't die immediately. Okay two spiders were incidental bystanders. One died because I was in a bad mood. I'm just fucking sick of sharing my space with a bunch of creepy crawly shit that gets everywhere. Mostly I hate anything small with a pain delivery mechanism which is in competition with me for my resources. For christ sake they have the whole fucking jungle outside! Why can'tI just have a little tin shack on a concrete block? I get my food from the store, not the trees and shit outside! Maybe if we both ate the same thing it would be a little more fair game. I'm not even sure if they do want anything we have. They seem more like they've become somehow trapped inside, to which I say then QUIT FUCKING COMING IN HERE. But they are really fuckin' stupid, so...ugh.

Anyway enough about the bugs (for now). I've been thinking, I don't know, actually wait. I haven't 'been thinking', I mean I have since yesterday but... Okay what I'm talking about is there was this awful ad for some online game- I'll finish talking about this later (if I remember), Sylvia's hungry. I'll bring the typewriter down and type while I cook (maybe - probably not).

Oh yeah. The computer's still broken, but since blogs are sort of a delayed reaction thing anyway, I realized I can blog from my typewriter and then just transcribe them at the WoW bar.
Of course this is getting a bit long for transscription. but whatever, maybe it'll go quickly. [Nope!]
The ground floor/basement/kitchen is a cooler temperature, but it's grungy as hell down here. And there is a B-12 Bomber of a fly down here frantically panicking in circles, as flies are known to do. Loud. Time to take the chicken goodness M___ made last night and hopefully cook the death out of it.
...
Well I feel silly. Not only did I not type while cooking, but now I have to go up the stairs twice, since I
[and then I ran out of page, got bored and wandered off. The rest is me in the WoW bar.]
I was going to say, since I brought the typewriter down, but I just put the plate on the typewriter and carried everything up.

The thought I abandoned before that was that there was an ad for something here and it was really ugly but something in it appealed to me, and I was trying to figure out what it was. I realized it was the sort of feral-looking central character. And then I realized I don't think I've ever put a character like that in anything, and now I want to.
Like a wildish...sort of guy. I don't know, like he lives in the wilderness and knows all kinds of animal things, like a shaman but with no village. He wears furs and has a knife made of some large animal's claw or something. I don't really know what he would go in, but it'd be cool I think.

And that made me realize that all my characters are different from each other, and then I was proud of myself. Yay. Anyway I'm done.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Snap! Snap-snap! Chika snap-snap-snap!

Taipei certainly has its charms. At present they are difficult to identify. I smell RAID strongly, because I just strongly RAIDed the area. I awoke at 7:00 AM feeling like writing anything and brought my typewriter out to the livingroom (a pathetic lie, our livingroom is merely the spartan interior of a tin shack or shed on top of a concrete rectangular building quite literally in the jungle. Even "interior" is a misnomer, as there is little barrier, effectively no barrier quite frequently, between ourselves and the wilderness which is ostensibly "outside.") to find not the two or three skinny black wasps [which I actually now believe to be Queen Ant potentials, searching for a suitable place to foster a new colony] which have become standard, but rather something like seven of them.

So here I sit, RAID burning my throat slightly, typing here on the couch occasionally harried by one single wasp who evidently escaped my chemical wrath. It doesn't seem especially bothered by the residual RAID floating in the humid air, but I'm starting to get a soar throat.
What a joke.

Among things I will enjoy about living back in the North American Northwest are less fucking bugs up in my biznass. It's kind of retarded that this is my experience of Taiwan, considering that before I knew anything factual about this place, this is sort of how I assumed everyone here lived. In truth, it's just me. Most other people seem to live in places where doors close all the way, windws seal out both element and competing life forms, electricity and water function reliably, and temperature of living space is adjustable to preference of comfort. We have none of those luxuries, but then we're kind of living for free here. Mssr. M isn't, he's been paying rent for some time, and I can't imagine living here at the expense of money.

Now there are two wasps [large flying ant queens?]. This is seriously fucking stupid. I think I will reattempt a homemade trap. This failed previously, but was targeting a different breed. I am thankful that these creatures harry us one species at a time, I guess? This trap idea would probably work better if I knew what the little assholes liked, or were searching for.
Last time, as bait, I tried honey. This time I'll try fruit sugar syrup. I think meat or something savory might work better, but since this was easier (and less stinky) I thought I'd give it a shot first.
Also I maye be cutting the funnel part of the trap too short...

[To be continued. My hour's up at the WoW bar. I'll transcribe the other side of the page at a later date.]

Friday, May 15, 2009

The damn computer broke.

Mssr. M's laptop broke so now we can only get to the internet from the WoW bar which is thankfully not that far from our house (which is to say that it is not far from the nearest entry point into town once we actually reach the town after descending the mountain. So it is a bit far but at least no extra bus rides are required.

In other words I'll be scarce for awhile. It sucks, but oh well. It's not like I was all that available beforehand anyway.

Uh. That's all for now I guess. Got a substitute gig, and I'm hoping it's not going to be the same week as my friend T's visit, but I think it is, so...laaaaaaame.
Buh. No more for now. Okay bye.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Just woke up.

From a dream.
I was in the basement of Our House, which was a large sort of cabin raised off the ground by strong wooden pillars. It was sort of in the woods up in the foothills of somewhere. You had to drive a ways to get there, and then it was down a winding dirt road, but it was a comfy sort of place if a bit run-down. I lived there with a bunch of my friends and my dad. I think it was semi-temporary. Like we were just staying there for awhile, but it felt pretty settled in.

I was alone in the bottom of the house fiddling with some plumbing or something, trying to get something to work better.
It was sometime in February (month of my birthday) because a car drove up, and S.U.V. actually, and in it were my father and several of my friends. They were all drunk and stoned on absinthe. It was the kind of energetic good time which makes me feel awkward and alone.
They wanted to to take me to the art museum. Some very famous paintings which I happened to like were on display there. So because this excited me, and because my friends were there, and it was for my birthday, I went with them.

In the car on the way to the museum, everyone was in very high spirits. They were all continuing a conversation I hadn't been a part of starting, and were very erratic due to the drug, so it was difficult to know what they were talking about. It seemed to be a play. I kept to myself, and only drank a little of the absinthe when offered. I tried to enjoy their company, and I did somewhat. My dad was driving, and it was easy not to interact with him, because he was so engaged in the conversation.

We arrived at the art museum, and my dad led the party on into the wing where they displayed a "TV Art History" collection, which was a bunch of awful, tacky shit that reminded me of watching Nick at Night and all the stupid '50s and '60s television culture bullshit. It reminded me of trying to understand him by watching the brainless TV shows he watched as a child. It reminded me of trying to be like him. It upset me.

Disappointed that none of my friends were interested in something with more depth of character, I departed and sought the temporary exhibit on my own. I tried to leave inconspicuously, so as not to rain on their high, but a few noticed me leave. I tried not to care and went to try and find The Scream.

When I finally found the room Edvard Munch was in, I saw my dad already in there, discussing something with a curator. The curator looked annoyed, and I didn't want to get sucked into anything stupid, so I left without getting a good look at The Scream. Disappointed, I no longer had much interest in the rest of the exhibit, to I went and waited in the car.

They whole party had soon returned, and I noted that rather than discussing anything they'd seen inside, they were still having the same conversation about a play.
The car was off again, and I wondered why no one seemed disappointed that my birthday party at the art museum had been cut short. They barely seemed to notice.

We stopped at a Plaid Pantry for snacks. Finally I learned that the play was some hippie bullcrap version of The Jungle Book, and that my father and some of my friends knew several of the people involved. It was opening tonight, and they had all decided to get wasted and go.

"So, none of this has even been about me at all," I said, knowing that everyone was too fucked up on the absinthe to really understand what my problem was. I myself was feeling just off enough to have absolutely no tolerance for this shit. While my dad was in the store, I grabbed my other pair of shoes(?), got out of the car and started to walk home, which was not far off.

It had begun to rain. When I got home it was raining for hard, and loudly. My footsteps on the tin plank which bridged a small ditch between the driveway and the area beneath the house alarmed the already spooked pony(?) which lived in a pen below the house. I tried to comfort the pony, but it didn't like the noise of the rain. I gave it a carrot, which seemed to calm it down, and started to head inside the house when I saw the S.U.V. again. It was parked in the driveway. It was difficult to see inside because of the rain (though I was dry under the house).

I approached the vehicle tentatively. It didn't look as lively as before. I got close enough to make out that the driver was not my dad, and went closer. The driver, a friend of mine, told me that my father had been trying to acquire a reproduction of a painting from the exhibit of classics from the museum for me. She said that when he noticed my disappointment he had tried to make up for it by getting something by...she didn't know the name. Ed, Edward...Munsch (she pronounced "Munch" like "munchies"). I asked if it was Edvard Munch and she got excited and said, "Yeah!"

I was in the car and it was driving, presumably to the play. My dad was in the passenger's seat, as it turned out, and I began to cry, the drug impeding my ability to manage my emotions. I cried and began to yell at him, ignoring the awkwardness of the others in the vehicle.
I yelled explaining why I hated the TV history exhibit.

Explained that it reminded me of all the boring shit I used to try to entertain myself with when he would drag me around to people's houses or wherever. How as long as there was a TV I could at least do that, but how often there was little more than the grains in wood to entertain me. How I used to watch Nick at Night at my mother's house and wonder if it were possible to understand how he thought and why he behaved the way he did, if I understood the background culture he grew up in.

As I continued I became more upset and louder. I was aware that my friends did not want to be around this, but the driver wasn't stopping. Maybe it was my dad now, I'm not sure. I screamed about why I had wanted to see the paintings. Wanting to see someone else's loneliness distilled to solid form.
I asked how he even knew which painting to get. I asked if he knew why I liked The Scream so much.

I told him because it looked like how I felt, that each brushstroke shines like a gem, and all together they become mottled and hideous, that it is at once repellant and engaging, and both of them because I understood how the painter felt, exactly.

That's all I remember from the dream.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

HA HA HA HA HA HA




And now he will transform, ha aahahaha oh god I am so cool.














Aww the last one came out blurry.
His name is Lockdown, he's a new character created for the recent cartoon, Transformers Animated. He was my birthday present to myself.

Here's another picture of some crap I have:

Meh, it's not a good picture. Oh well. Most of this stuff I got from 50元 vending machines, which are apparently called something like gatchapon machines in Japanese. Man they're all over the place and they're awesome. 50 NTD is a little less than a buck fifty, but that value doesn't exactly translate perfectly, since the cost of everything isn't a perfect scale representation of the cost values in the States. 50 NT here is more like...75 cents in the States, as far as product pricing actual value, as judged by the cost of living. At least for me, since native English speaking teachers get paid a pretty high wage.
I'm rambling.

UHHHHHH

Oh, this will seem exciting. I fell off the bike several weeks ago and skinned my knees and left palm. They've mostly healed, but they're still tender. Uhhhm. Oh and then, last night, well, afternoon, while we were heading down, all three of us on the bike at once (as we often do), the bike like...exploded.
It felt like we'd run over something, as the bike jolted, and we all heard "tink, tink, tink" as something metal bounced away from us across the road. We stopped and I investigated the component which turned out to be a large spring, from the right side of the rear shocks.
So the bike's in the shop 'til Monday. Which is tomorrow! Yay. Hopefully the blasted thing will have less handling problems now. It was getting finicky.
The repairs cost something like 3500元 (which is just about 100$) so thankfully not an issue.

I'm currently looking for work again, although I think I've found something. With luck by the next post I'll be employed again.
I emailed a place and then had like, a problem when they emailed me back. I get so bleak when I think about interviewing. I get so...nervous is not quite accurate, paralyzed with despair is more like. It's totally retarded and it bugs the hell out of me; I just have so much difficulty imagining anything...working...right. Like the way it's supposed to. But no matter, it always works out in the end, once I get over the jitters. Of course I hate hearing that at the time. I hate the word "jitters," actually.

The above paragraph isn't really... it's me trying to describe a fleeting feeling, something very much like creative block, only it manifests in the productive realm of my life. It's not...it's people, really. It's not universal, like how some people are afraid of success or whatever, any time they take a forward step or try to do anything...I wanna say "good," but then I remember all I'm talking about is interviewing for a job.
Interviewing for a job, getting a job isn't "good" isn't "progress," it's not inherently a forward step. It's a means to an end, and as such means very little to me (in terms of stress). It's the god damned people. Dealing with people when I know from experience that they are going to be small-minded, petty, uncreative and/or jealous drives me a little crazy in anticipation of the experience. Beating one's head against a brick wall is not fun, and gets increasingly difficult to convince myself to continue with each repeated occurrence.

But it's all fine if I have enough time to steel myself beforehand.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

An abundance of frogs.

There is an abundance of frogs (toads I think, actually) in the jungle surrounding the dojo where I live. A small bronze toad statue which we found in our room brings us fortune in return for coins. He likes to chew on them. I upgraded him to a 50 dollar piece the other day to thank him for a recent sudden accumulation of funds.

In the pond outside the kitchen, there are many goldfish (also good for money-luck) which I feed occasionally, they're quite big and very pretty. I think they mostly eat bugs and junk that's out there. But there are also many tadpoles, only a few of which are beginning to grow legs and lose their dark black coloration.

At night the croaking is sonorous. And loud.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Autobobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of...the Decepticons!

In Taiwan there's two kinds of pirated merchandise. The kind the fell off the back of a truck, but at least it's got the right paint scheme. And the kind made of grade G plastic on a factory mold made by shamelessly reverse-engineering an official product. The kind of crap that catches your eye for a second with a recognizable shape, until you realize you're looking at a yellow and green Optimus Prime, called a "Transformable."

When I saw this I sang, "Transformables! ...Not what you'd expeeect!"
Which I still find funny.
Also I've been watching the Transformers - Animated series on Veoh. It's an American children's cartoon, so, awful, but I've been enjoying it. The pilot was three episodes long and Starscream ran around starscreaming it up, so that was fun for a nostalgic kick. A few episodes later the Dinobots got a chace to poke their heads out of retirement, and that was fun too. Grimlock makes me laugh. I'm looking forward to seeing what the show does with Megatron.

I worked the first day of a month of subbing for Mr. M today, and I feel less confident now than I did before I went. My wife says I did well, but I didn't feel like I did. I taught four classes today, and almost every time I said anything at all, they stared at me blankly. I kept running up against the end of the reading material with nothing planned to do when they were done, because I hadn't expected them to finish so quickly, and I would have been pleased and impressed if the problem had been that the work was beneath them. Unfortunately it was very clear that the students had little to no concept of what they were reading.

There was a thing about a narrator sharing a toad with his friend, and I had to explain what a toad was, and then what sharing was, and it is very difficult to explain abstract concepts like sharing and Circque du Soleil, and why the Beatles-themed circus show is called "LOVE" in allcaps.

So we read this thing and it says, "The Cirque du Soleil is a different kind of circus!" And I'm like, "Okay so do you know what a circus is?" and they're like, "No."
And I just sort of go...uh...fuck. But actually no, I think that might have been my best class today.

Anyway, I feel like I just blundered, badly, through a day of teaching and they're going to notice that I only have one work outfit, and when I ask the boss if she has anything permanent for me, she's going to want me to go away.
I don't think this is very realistic, but that's how I was feeing until this morning when I decided, "I can totally do this," and then I did it, and I'm thinking about doing it for a week, and then I think about doing that all over again three more time, and I think "I can't do this." But I'll probably be fine again tomorrow.

I feel like I'm actually getting worse at driving the scooter. I think I'm the only one who gets worse at doing things with practice. That reminds me of a Metalocalypse quote.
"I am slowly learnink hows to unplays the guitars."

I keep falling asleep and I really should go to bed because I have work tomorrow and I didn't get enough sleep last night. Two in a row sounds like a bad plan.

This house is near the top of a mountain. That means that no matter how pleasant it is in town, after a half-hour drive, we arrive at our chilly mountain home. Our house, as has been mentioned, has no insulgoddamnlation, and NO heating whatsoever! We have one surly cheap plastic space heater. It's basically a toaster someone pumped up on steroids and then cut in half. It's two heating coils mounted into a chintzy plastic frame with faulty wiring. It's a peach.
But it does manage to keep hypothermia at bay.
Okay I don't think we'd get hypothermia.
Oh, also, one of the two staircases which lead between the 1st floor (kitchen, shower) and the 3rd (bedrooms) likes to have condensation on the walls and cieling, which drips down and makes the stairs kind of slippery. Sometimes also, the kitchen floor is slimey, as is the upstairs bathroom. The shower room is perpetually nasty, and one of two refrigerators does not work at all, nor has it for some time, as I understand it, yet it is FULL of ROTTING food. Sometimes while we're cooking, we'll be washed over with the unmistakable aroma of Dumpster.

But enough bitching, I feel confident that we'll be able to move soon to a reasonable apartment. This will be a happy thing. Life will also be more livable when we get someone to show us where we can buy high-quality organic meat and produce. I miss cheese. The only decent pizza places we've found wouldn't last a day in Portland, let alone New York, and they were overpriced. We found a Mexican place which was delicious, but underfilling and also overpriced.
A burrito, as in...a burrito. What you, as a Portlander (if you are one) must surely think of as..."a burrito" was roughly equivalent to $9 US. The burritos at this place were very tasty, but also very small. The 300 元 burrito was almost the size of anything you'd get from virtually any taqueria on America's western coast. But that is far too much to pay.

Ahem. But enough bitching, I said....

Here's something that happened to me:
I gave myself food poisoning like a moron by eating some fried rice that had sat out all night. I tried to cook the death out of it first. "But I failed. Miserably!" (Police Chief Brian Irons, RE2)
First I felt fine. Then some hours later I felt like Satan had made a summer-home in my bowels. Some more hours later I was weeping and vomiting into the toilet, cutting an exceptionally pathetic figure of pantslessness...it probably would have been funny if it weren't also horrifying.
Puking my guts out and screaming my abdominal pain into that Lovecraftian abyss of a toilet, I suddenly found myself making words!
Having hit the absolute bottom of self-esteem and comfort, while at the same time feeling unconditionally beloved by my wife, who held me while my organs staged their violent coup, I found myself screaming things like, "I hate you Dad!" and "You're evil!" and "I have emotions!"

So...that was interesting. I mean I've known for a very long time that I'm angry at my father. But I realized then that I hadn't allowed myself to actually experience the full ferocity of my anger. I could talk about why, but something that became a reoccurring theme that night was that the more I rationalize, the less I feel. It's a way I've been using to cut myself off from my emotions, and that coldness makes me feel dead.
All the slime and spite and evil selfish hatred for the world that my dad pretends he doesn't feel he poured into me and in my guts it became a virulent toxin, poisoning me for most of my life. If not all of it. It took an ocean of distance and some time, and someone that makes me feel safe, loved, and known, but finally my body rejected the darkness and shoved it out.
The combination of totally unchained, top-of-my-lungs screaming and pure bile may have scarred my throat a little, and my voice sounds deeper, or at least drier to me now.

It was my wife who asked me the question which caused me to realize that the reason I'm so upset is that I loved my father, and still do. That's exactly why I hate him so god damn much. He and others are why I have a baseline fear of men in general. I realized that I thought of all men as sleazy misogynist pricks (television in the '90s did not help), and I was terrified that people might see me that way, or worse, that I might be one and delude myself into being unaware of it (like my father). My father is why I'm afraid that people will hate me if I'm attracted to a woman. Because I always hated it when he displayed his attraction, because he's fucking skeez.
I'm constantly nervous that (most) men are going to start competing with me over whatever. I don't want to fucking compete with you, you troglodyte, leave me alone! I don't want to have to be better than you or worse than you or whatever. I just want to mind my own fucking business.
My dad couldn't observe anything I did without judging it against his own tastes. If I was watching a cartoon it was stupid, if I was listening to some music it was derivative, if I was playing a video-game, the music was stupid, the voice acting was stupid, and the characters probably looked stupid, or moved wrong. If I was playing a racing game, he was unimpressed if anywhere was off-limits, like the bay, or inside buildings or whatever. If I was playing a game based on New York or San Fransisco, his two favorite cities, and I showed it to him, that street isn't next to that street, what's that supposed to be, and wow it sure is small.
If I ever did anything exciting, it was usually met with a story about how he had done something similar but far more impressive in his youth. I honestly believe that he does not think he ever intended to put me down. But he's a vile evil subtle fucker and I don't care.
It may sound like I'm overreacting, because I'm not actually talking about the really insidious shit, because it's so subtle and manipulative, that it would take a fucking book just to set up the contexts and situations in which he oozed his hatred into my subconscious. Fuck! And my conscious mind, while I'm at it! Sometimes he wasn't subtle at all, like whenever he was in a bad mood for WHATEVER reason I usually didn't get to know (because to talk about his emotions would be to admit that he was less than 100% super cool chill-out dude all the time)(though in retrospect I think it was around the time he was having marital difficulties with his...third? Wife.) he would just endlessly push all my buttons until I ran out of patience and screamed at him, which gave him what he wanted, which is to act like he's so rational because he's not screaming, and I must have some kind of bizarre problem to just randomly flip out like that.

Looking back, I think he must have been aggravating me in order to create someone who was acting the way he felt so that he could project his rage onto me, making an externalized sort of mascot for his own anger, which he could then easily dismiss as a force outside himself, all the more easily dismissed because I was like, seven. Or eight. Or five, or thirteen or fifteen or twelve or seventeen or twenty-two. Younger than him, anyway. He's always had a big thing about years equaling experience, and therefore wisdom. What an asshole. Anyway, that's just what I think were his motivations. It doesn't really matter, because the result is that I was miserable and rarely had the freedom to feel emotions which were genuinely mine. I mean my anger at him for being a prick to me for the sole purpose of being a prick to me, that was mine, but as soon as I expressed it he would dismiss it and shut me down, because that's what he was trying to do with his own anger.

God, where was I? Oh yeah, so I got food poisoning and puked, and puked, and when there wasn't anything left in my stomache, all this childhood shit flew out of my throat instead. When it was all out I felt amazing. Weaker'n shit, but really blissfully happy. It took me about a day to recover enough to move around the house, but when I did I discovered that I was no longer afraid of the dark. I wasn't like, phobic before or anything, but walking into a totally dark or very dim room would often start a slow panic which could only be alleviated by light. I find this is no longer the case (unless I have reason to believe that I may walk through spider-webs, which isn't all that common). I'm not certain why, but the sensation is that there is no longer anything in the shadows not to see. A day after, I began rationalizing my cathartic experience, and I started to feel the sense of freedom I'd attained labor as the cold, greasy chains snaked their way back into place. At the time, I felt something come in the door (I was alone downstairs in the kitchen, which is near the door we use as our primary entrance) and near the kitchen. I realized instantly that it was the thing in the dark, it was my fear, returning, and I made a decision feel instead of rationalizing. I faced the fear thing, the shadow, and forced it back out the door.

We've heard that this place is mildly haunted, but this was absolutely an internal thing, a part of me manifesting itself in my imagination. The anthropomorphization of my fear. It was handy to have something to tell to fuck off. Except that wasn't really what made it leave again, it was that I admitted it was there, allowed myself to feel it without being ashamed of myself for being afraid of the dark (not calling myself immature), it was like shining a light into a dark corner.

I've also been able to write more freely since the catharsis, and I feel the love I already felt for my friends more...I'm not sure how to describe it. More definitely? Intricately, purely?
"That was quite the cocktail." (Solid Snake, MGS)

I don't know, but it's something, and I want to hang on to it for as long as I can. Forever being the goal.

Uhhhhh...that's all. I guess? Yeah. For now, anyway.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Road Trip Morality

"Nobody gets mad at a dog for eating a rabbit."
"Rabbits don't build civilizations," said Scott, "Keep your hands on the wheel when you talk, man, you make me nervous."
"Seriously," added Natalie from behind them.
"No, but termites do," Jack answered.
"Termites don't build civilizations, they make colonies," said Scott.
"Well to a termite it's the same thing."
"You're anthropomorphizing the termites."
"You're anthropomorphizing the anteater," said Jack with his hands on the wheel.
"What?" asked Scott, "How?"
"Well you're saying it's okay for the anteater to eat termites because the termites don't build civilizations. But neither do anteaters, so why is it on higher moral ground?"
"It's not on higher moral ground, it just...anteaters just eat termites, it's instinct."
"It's instinct for termites to build colonies," Jack said. He waited.
"Right," prompted Scott, "And that's not anthropomorphizing the anteater, by the way."
"Well, whatever," Jack waved the point aside, "How can you say it's not instinct for humans to build civilizations?"
Scott paused, "...Okay."
Jack went on, "So if civilization is instinct, then termite colonies are just a small version of that."
"You're saying insect colonies are a scaled down version of human civilization because it's arguably instinctual on both counts."
"Yeah."
"Okay."
"And if you validify one animal's-"
"Validate."
"Thank you, if you validate one animal's way of living, then you have to validate the other one's."
"Which means the same set of moral standards applies to humans, if we accept that humans are animals, as defined by functioning on instinct, yes?"
"Uh. Yeah."
"So, again; You say that by legitimizing one animal's perspective, you necessarily legitimize the other's, due to their mutual dissimilarity to the human species."
"Right. Termites don't want to be eaten."
"And anteaters don't want to starve."
"Right."
"However," said Scott, "if your logic works one way, it also works the other. If you've proven that it's okay for anteaters to eat termites, you've also stated that anteaters destroy civilizations."
"Well, but you just unmade your own point, because if it works backwards, then it already works forwards."
"Ooh!" Scott convulsed with the impact of his defeat, "Fuck. That's true."
"So I still say it's fine," Jack concluded, and his hands came to triumphant rest on the steering wheel.
"You guys are arguing about the morality of killing people," said Natalie, breaking her silence.
"Yeah." Scott and Jack agreed.
"But...he kills people," said Natalie, gesturing to Scott. Jack and Scott looked puzzled at each other for a moment, then back at Natalie. Scott twisting round in his seat to look over his shoulder, Jack in the rear-view mirror above.
"Well," Natalie went on, "It's just kind of moot."
Scott tilted his head.
"Like. You kill people. He has to, that's not going to stop. You're arguing the morality of something that's not going to change, whatever you decide is right or not."
Scott made a mock-serious face. "We're not arguing. We're conversing."
"The debate is fun, irregardless," Jack added.
Scott turned to Jack, "Irregardless isn't a word."
"It actually is," said Natalie, "It's in the dictionary."
"What?" Scott demanded.
Natalie explained, "It's defined as a variation of 'regardless' that arose from frequent mispronunciation."
Jack frowned contemplatively. "So it's only a word because a bunch of people were wrong? That's stupid, I don't want to use it."
"That's the evolution of language," said Natalie, "That's pretty much how it's worked for every other word in history."
"Normally I'd agree with you," said Scott, sinking lower into the passenger seat to get a better view of the night sky, "But 'irregardless' just sounds dumb. It's an ugly word."
Natalie looked out at the trees whipping past.
"Yeah."
The following silence was only long for Natalie.
"It's creepy when you guys talk about...what Scott...does."
Scott turned in his seat to look Natalie sincerely in the eye. Jack spoke without looking in the mirror. "I don't think it should be creepy. I mean it's not creepy when a dog eats a rabbit--"
"Don't--" Scott tried to interrupt Jack, his eyes closed in frustration.
"It is if you're a rabbit!"
Scott looked at the seat next to Natalie. Natalie looked out her window. Jack drove.
"Right," said Scott. He faced forward and sank again in the passenger seat. After another pause, Jack and Natalie both apologized at once.
"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable," said Jack.
"No," said Natalie, "I shouldn't lie to myself. I have to come to terms with the fact that he..."
"I don't know," said Scott, "Maybe you're right. It's obviously not natural. And it's pretty fucked up! Maybe you guys should be afraid of me."
Jack dismissed the thought with a gesture, "Well I'm not."
Natalie kept looking out the window.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Bee.


This was in our livingroom. I RAIDed it so hard we had to leave the window open with a fan on for three days for it to air out.

Click the image to view the full-size photograph for detail.

I placed the lighter there for scale, it's a normal disposable lighter like you'd get at any convenience store checkout. If you have a lighter handy, I'd like you to look at it for a moment, and look back at this picture.

THAT WAS FLYING AROUND OUR HOUSE. I came upstairs, walked through the doorway and dodged something huge and black flying at my face. After getting clear to the other side of the room, I got my back to a wall, and looked back into the room. For a moment I saw nothing, and it sounded like there was a helicopter flying by the mountain. Then I saw it flying around. It flew heavily, sluggishly. It didn't seem able to change directions quickly, and elevation appeared laborious. Still, it could fly forward with some speed, and I was wary of its position until we decided what to do about it, which was, of course, to murder it quickly. While we were deliberating, it sounded as though someone were mowing their lawn nearby. It was this thing.

At first it was recuperating on the ceiling, which is pretty high in this room, so I couldn't really reach it with the RAID until Mark knocked it down with a broom, at which point I pressed the button at point blank range and just held it down until the creature stopped moving. Which took awhile. Like ten seconds or something. Slow, mississippi-counting seconds.
I actually stopped before it did, because it was drenched in deadly neurotoxin and wallowing in a puddle of it. I had a facemask on, by the way, 'cause fuck that.
It struggled for a few more long seconds, then finally slowed down, settled, and then STOOD UP, STRETCHED ITS WINGS, and then fell over and curled into the dead-insect position seen in the photo.

Chinese New Year is coming up, which means the next two weeks will be partytime for Taipei apparently. So we went shopping to prepare for a few days of everything being closed.

我的 太太 recently rediscovered our Lonely Planet: Taiwan book, and she and I have decided we need to go to a hotspring. Like soon. Like now.

I'll be subbing or M when he leaves for Europe for February, and after that I hope to implore the boss there for a permanent position if she has one available. Failing that, M may find someplace else to work, sticking the boss at Hart with me whether she likes it or not, but that's all about money and that's boring.

The gift collection for our homies is quite nice by now. I'm looking forward to sending it all. I hope everyone likes their weird crap we got them.

The other day I brought the puppies some food because I want them to grow up all adorable and genki like the adult dogs who bounce around us in circles whenever we leave the house, instead of all scared and skittish like the other ones who flee when we so much as look at them.

OKAY. THIS COUNTRY REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE VINEGAR. We cannot find a fucking pickle in any grocery store we've been to. We find things that claim to be pickles, oh yes! But pickles THEY ARE NOT. They may, perhaps, be "pickled" in the technical definition. But they are SWEET to the taste! Sweet! A pickle is not a candy bar, it is not something children clamor for on All Hallow's Eve. It is a fucking vinegar-and-garlic flavor party and I want a goddamn invitation. I AM ON THE GUEST LIST. Also no pizza.

We got some olives though. They're not like...Mediteranean gourmet blow-your-face-off stuffed with feta and garlic, but they are vingary and they taste good.