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.


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

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.

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.]

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.

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.

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.