one episode after another of conspicuous nonsense

dissent and discord

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:49:48 GMT

I work with a woman whose name I don't know.

Her voice sounds like Joan Rivers would sound if she spent each morning gargling on a ground-glass slushie. She whines constantly about student behavior in the most banal and grating way possible, her voice booming off the walls of this tiny, tiny breakroom. It is like being in an echo chamber built entirely of fingernails and chalkboards.

So, I have a job now. Some of you (those of you who know me less well, probably) might expect this space to be less filled with hyperbolic bitching, but your expectations will be dashed. People who live in Dantown hate things in a very loud and public manner. Love it! Besides, Morrissey has my back concerning jobs, the having thereof, and their effect on miserability (not a real word).

I teach convicted felons, although not exclusively. No, really. I have this student who missed much of last week and will miss all of this week because he's in jail. He had me call his probation officer to try to get him out of it, which was a first. Turns out I don't have any more influence in the hallowed halls of justice than I do in the less hallowed halls of essentially everywhere else. My bitterness gland swells with its foul vitriol, not least because I happen to know instructors at other (by which I mean real) colleges get paid what I do for teaching less than half the credit hours per quarter that I'm saddled with. On the other hand, money appeals to my mercenary (by which I mean intellectually whorish) sensibilities.

Something presidential happened yesterday? I heard about that. I didn't actually see it because I was occupied. Specifically, I was occupied holding a paperclip into the coaxial port on the back of the television in my classroom in order to get reception, so everyone but me saw it. These are the sacrifices I make in the name of education.

Barring unforeseen and unforeseeable developments, I am closing the chapter of my life that I will provisionally title "hateful bitches from the internet." (It is now your solemn duty to start a band and name it that). For details, see my previous entries. I will say this much for match.com: it is distracting.

In its place, I have decided to start dating the book I am trying to write. It does not put out nearly enough and is less tolerant of money shots than is strictly ideal, but I hope that it will respond well to the extra attention.

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:45:40 GMT

Robby and Layne (his lady) made a baby, and I am an uncle. She is not named yet, nor do we even know how big she is. My dad named her "Rainbow Sunshine" (she was born in Portland amidst a low-hanging cloud of patchouli and stale marijuana) but that's probably not what's going on the birth certificate. Details will be forthcoming.

the luck of the Irish

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 20:50:42 GMT

The man sitting next to me is apparently very successful. He's about my age. He does music, or art, or skateboarding, or some fucking thing. Maybe it's all of the above; I'm only casually eavesdropping on the conversation. He's been invited to this coffee shop by the woman sitting next to him to speak with the three teenage hipsters seated raptly around him. (I realize how tragically hip it is to update your internet web-log from the coffee shop. I'm here because this is where Neal works, and he doesn't get off until six. Also there is internet and coffee here. Also I have a hangover). They, the teenagers, are impossibly fresh and new. They speak words like "Truth" and "Society" with Capital Letters. I wonder if I was ever that dewy.

He's giving them career advice . . . mostly it consists of dropping out of college, jettisoning most of your friends, and learning how to bang the drums (or paint, or whatever) really well until someone pays you to do it. I mean, I think so? His presentation is far more hopeful and positive than my synopsis is, and I haven't been hearing everything that he's saying. Maybe that advice is the good advice, though. I did the opposite. You know, got my degree, got another one, went to parties, was too timid to make any big noises. All that ended up amounting to a damp mound of smoldering failure. I really want to interrupt him, scratching my balding, psoriatic scalp, and point to myself, illustrating an alternative future that is possibly more likely, or at the very least not less likely. I won't do that because, appearances notwithstanding, I don't actually enjoy crushing people's dreams, and I don't find schadenfreude to be an entirely pleasurable sensation.
--
Today is my grandfather's birthday. By the time I'm finished writing this, it won't be his birthday anymore. He's eighty-five, and a couple of weeks ago he moved into a nursing home. That wasn't supposed to happen. The original deal, struck shortly after my grandmother's death from a shattered pelvis, was that he'd sell his house to my chronically debt-ridden aunt for a very attractive price. In return, she'd take care of him so that he didn't have to go to a nursing home. To that end, they redid the downstairs bathroom with handicapped-accessible rails, a space-age future toilet, and one of those Sealy posturepedic(tm) beds that look like they could eat you if they were given the proper persuasion. Then someone got around to diagnosing my grandfather with senile dementia, and all of the above stopped mattering very much.

So there are a bunch of different causes of dementia, and the diagnosis is more of a syndrome rather than A Thing That Happens. I mean, I guess so. That's what Dr. Wikipedia told me, and there's just something I trust about that mad old bastard, especially when I'm too lazy to do real research. I'm told that my grandfather had a series of mini-strokes all over his brain, his capillaries bursting like bubble wrap. Sometimes he thinks I'm my dad. That's not so upsetting, since I sound and look a lot like him, and even my mother has consistently called me "Rob" since I was a baby. More worrying is when he wakes up believing that he's spent the last night in the backseat of his car during a business trip to Kalamazoo, Michigan.

For his birthday, my mother suggested that I write him a letter telling him about my memories of him when I was younger, so I did. It was kind of difficult, because a lot of the things I remember about him are not the sort of things that you bring up in a birthday letter, which is I suppose why I'm writing this. Things like his car accident that left him with one leg shorter than the other, or his stories about his unit in WWII liberating the death camp at Nordhausen, or his frank admission that armies on both sides shot prisoners. Mostly I wrote about the bedtime stories he told me when I was little; delightful, exciting, and violent Westerns involving characters with names like Maloney and Graybeard.

I mentioned some of this to a friend of mine at her birthday party (I can be sort of a buzzkill sometimes). She asked me whether it was my mom's dad, and I started laughing, because this is my mom's dad's story: He died of renal failure when my mom was three. Her older brother, my uncle, had just turned six. He died on my uncle's birthday. His birthday was the day after Christmas. None of that really affects me very much; it's someone else's absurd, impossible tragedy. It seems almost imaginary to me. It just struck me as funny because that's so very much worse than what I'm obsessing over now, or really anything that's ever happened to me.

It's bad form to eulogize someone who's still living, and that's what this feels like. It feels like a repeat from when I was twelve and spent every Tuesday in the Alzheimer's wing of the group home my great uncle stayed in, watching him deteriorate and learning to hate the smell of disinfectant. No one ever claimed that I'm a paragon of good form, so this is just another thing I do that's in questionable taste. It's just been on my mind.

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:01:57 GMT

check this shit out.

old and busted:

new hotness:

the best defense is a good beard

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:45:35 GMT

I found out this great way to scare cats.

Stay with me here.

First you have to flatten the rear tire of your bike, only you have to not know how you did it. After you've accomplished that part (it's very Zen), you should buy a new inner tube for your back tire. Ideally, you should possess a caveman-like ignorance of bike maintenance, but throw around fancy bikish terminology that you learned from your roommate to impress the bored hipsters at the bike shop. If you do it correctly, you'll end up having bought an inner tube that's a (very important) 1/8" too big for your tire. Mount the inner tube and tire, and then inflate the shit out of it. Once you get to 90 psi or so, the tube will rupture with a sound like an exploding transformer, and every cat in your house will scamper, cowering in the basement until you've gone upstairs. Try it.

I also learned this amazing way to puncture a beer can in your bag by flipping over your bike's handlebars and landing on your back, but that's a pretty advanced technique. I don't know if you're ready.
--
People from the internet are terrible. Listen to me, internet.

So I met this girl? I guess that happens sometimes. I didn't ask her where she was from, because she was from Internet. We went on four dates, one of which was a birthday dinner (which made me a little uncomfortable, because I asked her not to do anything for my birthday since we hadn't known each other that long yet and because the dinner wasn't actually on my birthday, which hasn't happened yet). Ultimately I decided that we were not compatible for a litany of reasons, the most important of which were her clingy nature, her low lip-to-mouth ratio, and her unfortunate habit of prefacing sentences with the phrase "I don't want to sound racist, but." I revealed none of these details in our conversation earlier this evening, choosing instead to focus on reasons that were also true but less uncomfortable. Naturally, I believed that a level of decorum would persist, regardless of the awkwardness of the discussion. Naturally, I was wrong.

In the last several hours, I have received a lot* of text messages, phone calls and emails on the subject of my personal inadequacies and her consummate desirability. While I'm willing to concede the point on both counts, I'm fucking annoyed. Bear in mind that this is a woman I have never seen without pants. I am steadily more confident in my decision (although I do feel a twinge of fear for the safety of my liver, but no doubt that's just a residual tic from my last disaster).
--
I guess the first entry in my short story filter is coming next week. It would have been this week, but I'm so very, very lazy.

*six or seven

a love note from omega town

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:05:28 GMT

I don't think of myself as a person that cuts people off, but I've become more willing to do so in recent months. No doubt it's the result of my self-defensive selfishness . . . the informal cost/benefit analysis that I run internally when an interpersonal experience sours. I gauge whether a given association is worth its attendant bullshit. Sometimes it isn't.

Case in point: the Omega Affair.

Yet another voicemail from this human wasteland sleazed its way into my phone on Monday night, except this time there was a difference: it came from L's phone. She had previously been unwilling to address my concerns or return requests for information via the usual channels (phone calls, telegrams, the pony express). This time, however, I aimed a cyber-kick to her virtual nuts. You see, after the second round of obnoxiousness, I filed a (no doubt ignored) report with Columbus's finest. I emailed L to inform her of this particular info-nugget, as well as to mention that I planned to update the report with her name and phone number. She returned that email quickly. Clearly I need to start meeting a better class of people.
--
I'm making an lj filter for some short stories that I'll try to publish in the next few weeks. If you want in on it, leave a note. Comments will be screened.

i looked kind of cute when you were drunk

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:45:50 GMT

Obviously your lives have been empty in the absence of horrible details about mine. Believe me, this is a thing that I know. I know this. Be assured that I have been busily generating more horrible details for you to consume. Feast upon them. Rub them like butter on your exposed brains.

Know that the story I originally had prepared for you involved a facet of my endlessly hemorrhaging love live centered around an individual I will call "crazy porn girl." I use this term with affection. Close your eyes. Roll them around in your warm sockets and imagine what I might have told you about a person I'd seen fit to gift with such a title. Now open them and pay attention to me. Pay attention! That is not the story you will be getting, because, like a cable golf tournament, it has been pre-empted by breaking news.

Essential details are as follows: Last week I went to Dayton for a birthday party and three-dollar Long Island iced teas; drinks that, while formidable, were no match for my powerful liver. During the festivities, a woman--we'll call her "L" for the sake of anonymity and politeness--introduced herself by demanding a kiss from me and everyone else in my immediate vicinity. Apparently it was a contest that I won (those of you who have kissed me will be unsurprised), and we seemed to hit it off rather well. Gentle readers, know that I was careful to ascertain her relationship status, and, by her own admission, that status was "single."

Fast forward to last night. I attempted to call her (at her request) before I went to bed, but instead some dude answered. I didn't think much of it, as I could hear a party in the background, and a later text message said that someone had stolen her phone. I made a futile attempt to sleep.

Around 5 a.m., a man claiming to be her boyfriend called me and threatened, and I quote, to "eat my liver" if I did not stay away from L, the girl in question, never mind that she unequivocally told me that she did not have a boyfriend, and, I feel compelled to point out, started the whole thing. This dude called three times, only leaving off when I told him I'd call the police if he called again.

Seriously. My fucking liver.

No mention was made of fava beans or Chianti. Clearly he is not a mental giant, as he made his calls without blocking his number, which I now have. I have also deduced his first name using the magic of the internets. During his threats, he called himself "Omega." What the shit is that? I can't help but picture the skin-tight leotard that axiomatically must go with that name.

Happily, this incident gives me an easy and plausible out if this girl appears to be more trouble than she's worth, as now seems likely. To wit: She is in Dayton and has a crazy boyfriend/ex-boyfriend who tells strangers on the phone that his name is Omega because he "ends things," and I am "close to the end." Based on my cursory research, the data suggest that his name is Dave (Dave Omega?), and he is a ballsack. The most intolerable thing about all this is that, if one accepts the superficial truth of karma, it follows that I somehow deserve this bullshit. Probably I do.
--
A coda outlining the rest of the day:

7:00 a.m.- An employment rejection email arrives, assuring me that my educational background and qualifications are "completely satisfactory," but politely requesting that I fuck off.

8:30 a.m.- I rush out to a job interview, snazzy in my blue business suit, forgetting that I'm still wearing the sneakers I put on and neglecting to bring business shoes.

11:00 a.m.- Miguel and I are viciously mocked by a policeman who happened to be a pace behind us as we strolled past a sign informing us that "sidewalk closed." He probably wouldn't have, but I read the sign aloud in a singsong voice at high volume.

12:00 p.m. on- Beer and kung fu movies. On days that your life is anonymously threatened, however clumsily, you don't have to do anything else. It's in the Constitution. Look it up.

also

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:53:07 GMT

Sometimes I spend my time reading things that are better expressions of my own deeply personal rage than anything I've ever written myself. Things work out like that sometimes. People on the internet are better at being me than I am.

Anyway. There's this guy; he does a comic. He also writes cover letters to jobs. I don't know if he sends them. He says he does. Here is one. There are more. Read some of them. (I'm looking at you, Kate-san).

a brief list

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:16:08 GMT

things that are not clever:

*bumper stickers
*t-shirts that, at first glance, appear to advertise a well-known product, but upon closer inspection actually profess an adherence to a fringe subculture/social group/political movement
*carlos mencia
*babies (you know who's easy to fool? babies, that's who)
*nostalgia summer blockbusters
*any expression ending in "-izzle"

a reading from the book of proverbs

Tue, 06 May 2008 04:01:46 GMT

Someone said once that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Well, writing about writing is like masturbating about porn.

can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:56:47 GMT

None of the outrageous and reprehensible bullshit that happens to me had been worth writing about for a while, but it's about to spill out of my brain and vomit forth into this tiny corner of the blogosphere. Here is a bullet-point presentation, in no particular order:

-I'm not moving to Philadelphia or New York. Philadelphia wanted me to come out for an interview, and then didn't, and then called me back to come out, and so I drove out there, and I lost my passport on the way, and then they wanted to hire me, and then they didn't want to hire anyone, and then I told them to piss off. New York apparently loved me so much that they felt bad for asking me to move out there for three months and hired somebody else. My consolation prize was to be described in an email as "likable, professional and prompt." Prompt, ha.

-There is a new O'Donnell in the offing, because what is absolutely necessary is more people who share my genes. Robby learned the hard way that "my girlfriend's slanted uterus" isn't actually a medically approved method of birth control. I guess this particular mutant is slated to make landfall in mid-December. In honor and recognition of this auspicious occasion, I've decided to start describing everything that I do as "avuncular" as much as possible.

-I am once again wriggling helplessly in the twilight realm of semi-employment. These days, I lurk deep in the bowels of a building that looks abandoned from the outside, but has long rows of computers and fluorescents on the inside, all peopled by degree-zombies like me. There, I ruthlessly (and avuncularly) wield the failhammer to shatter the fragile ambitions of third graders. Few escape.

-My car smells alarmingly of gasoline.

if it wasn't for disappointment, i wouldn't have any appointment

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:44:49 GMT

clearly you have missed me in the long months of my absence from the internet. my life from then and now has been a sideshow of grotesque hilarity. i have two stories for you. check this shit out:

two weeks ago, my car was violated by an extremely impolite miscreant or miscreants unknown. since he (it, whatever) didn’t stick around long enough for me to see what he looked like, i'm going to imagine him for you: a crackheaded stooge, his stiff slacks caked with with vomit and semen, frantically jerking a slim jim between the window and the door. i may or may not have surprised this vile saprophyte in the midst of his assholery, since he left both passenger doors gaping wide, and i did notice someone walking hurriedly away from the general vicinity of my car. he was sloppy and thorough. all the things that had been in the back seat were scattered to the front and vice versa. the contents of my glove box were strewn all over both seats. the entire interior of my car was dusted with spilled kitty litter (different story), whereas before it had been confined to the back seat. he tried to get into the trunk as well, but since he lacked the necessary acumen to figure out how to pop the fucking trunk, he only succeeded in unlatching the hood. i didn't discover that he had done so until i drove to work the next day and my hood began to rattle alarmingly. in his haste to flee the scene, he also apparently left one of the various anti-theft devices that you use to lock your steering wheel in my car. i don't know exactly what it is, and i don't remember ever having seen it before.

net losses: all my cds, my car manual (wtf?)

net gains: unbridled rage, the club(tm)(also wtf?)

--

around the same time that troglodyte deviants were breaking into my car, i, by fortune or mischance, secured a blind date with an uncommonly attractive woman: tall, blond, clear skin, slender limbs. she was nice enough. however, she was (and likely still is) acutely conscious of her physical beauty and was consequently deeply and casually inconsiderate. i don't mean to imply that this was deliberate; rather, i just don't think that it occurred to her to give a shit. so, anyway. after several cancelled dates and abortive attempts to reschedule such, we finally made plans to go to a karaoke night at a local bar. (i acquired a taste for karaoke last year, along with a taste for whiskey and gin and tonic. shut the fuck up and stop interrupting). anyway, she'd said she'd be there between eleven thirty and midnight. cynic that i am, i decided that even these late times were optimistic, and so i showed up at midnight thirty. as i entered the venue, i realized two things: one, she wasn't there. two, this was a gay bar. normally this isn't an issue, but consider that i was alone, dressed in "first date" attire, and slowly beginning to understand that i'd been stood up. i ordered a whiskey and a beer and shuffled shamefacedly over to the pool table with the notion of killing a few minutes until i could reasonably leave. in the meantime, many of the barflies, misinterpreting my attire and demeanor, introduced themselves to me by means of running inquisitive fingers down the crack of my ass or (after i had finished the game and seated myself to finish my drinks) up the legs of my pants. i explained to them that i was straight and not interested as gently as i could. they typically responded by informing me that they weren't attracted to straight men and then set about proving it by pawing at my chest and trying to kiss me. after a suitable interval, i'd decided i'd had enough and gave myself permission to leave. in fairness, i did get a text message about twenty minutes after my departure asking where i was. dear readers, i had gone the fuck home.

net losses: self respect, a perfectly good half an hour

net gains: the knowledge that gay men apparently think i'm scorchingly hot

days you could have

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 01:53:56 GMT

sometimes, you have a day where you go out and eat pizza. and you have beer. and then you go see a movie with your friend you don't talk to very much. and he snores in the theater. and then you come home, and you drive down your narrow, narrow street, and the mirror from your car hits the mirror on the silver beetle (the one with the decepticon sticker in the back window) that's parked way out from the curb, and then your mirror flies into your open passenger side window and hits you in the face.

beijing

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:38:27 GMT

i hate my guts. by which i mean my actual guts. viscera. and they hate me.

i'm living in columbus now.

this doesn't mean that i'm going to start posting again. it's more of a cameo. frankly i'm not comfortable posting anything relevant about myself anymore, and irrelevant stuff is . . . well . . . irrelevant. so i've struck upon the compromise of semi-relevant. the following is a page from the journal i kept while i was traveling around china. i cleaned it up a little bit, but not a whole lot, so there might be parts that don't make sense to you. i'd also capitalized in the handwritten journal, so i've preserved that. for . . . you know. verisimilitude. i guess.
the "we" is brendan and i. brendan is one of my friends from japan. for reference, at the time $100 USD was about 750 RMB, which is also apparently a pretty decent month's salary.
--
April 1, 2007. Jade International Youth Hostel. 3 RMB for a beer.

We woke up early and walked through grey, industrial back streets to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The neighborhoods between here and there squatted mazelike with grey walls, doors with rusty handles and peeling paint. People crowded thickly into the alleys, riding bikes and hanging laundry. Many of the buildings were crumbling, and graffiti had been gouged into the walls. We saw a lot of people wearing combat fatigues and walking in formation, but somehow they didn’t seem exactly military.
Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City are connected. We walked into the Forbidden City and took a self-guided audio tour using a shitty blue Walkman/LED map combination device that spontaneously began jabbering at us whenever we stepped close to a place of interest. The Walkmen apparently found some places more interesting than others and talked to us about places we’d already been, even when we thought we were far enough away from the trigger. We met a Chinese girl, an “art student” who made friends with us and then insidiously tried to sell us paintings. Our cultural imperative impelled us to visit the Forbidden Starbucks in the middle of the Forbidden City. It’s just a corner tucked into a seedy souvenir shop installed in one of the less grand ancient buildings in the city. Prices there are comparable to domestic Starbucks. Much of the Forbidden City was peeling paint and crumbling, especially the paving stones. The main building at the center of the city was obscured by scaffolding and draped in canvas, so we didn’t see anything of it beyond its general shape.
An eight-lane road blocked access to the Square, so we had to go via an underpass. In the tunnels, we saw an asshole selling Chinese flags scare the hell out of a little kid. The kid’s dad, who was in some vaguely military sort of uniform, didn’t seem to care very much at all. Our first experience negotiating with street vendors humbled us. Some vendors hawking Little Red Books accosted us as soon as we walked up from the underpass and offered us books for 280 RMB. We knew that price was too much, but we didn’t know by how much. We countered with 50 and he dropped the price to 260. It went back and forth for a while until we'd nearly agreed to 100 RMB. At that moment, a woman approached us from behind and offered us one for 50. We immediately agreed, although we knew that we were still getting ripped off, since I don't think she heard our negotiations. The first guy was seriously pissed off, and we left the two vendors shouting at each other after we'd bought the books. In the meantime we'd attracted a crowd of about eight other vendors who were trying to sell us various sorts of cheap, useless shit: "Rolexes," watches that featured a spastically waving Mao, postcards, etc. Immediate after we'd bought the books for 50, another vendor offered us another for 20, but he tried to go back up to 30 when he saw we had more money. Another woman tried to pull the same scam as the first vendor, but she started out at 180. She pretended to be scandalized by our counter-offer of 20 (her: "but it's in English!" us: "so what?"), but she sold them to us at 20 when she saw we already had some of the books.
Later we went to the Heavenly Palace and found the Echo Wall, a round wall that transmits sound amazingly faithfully around its circumference. We stood at the center of the universe and took a picture. The cab ride home was bizarrely interesting. I saw dinosaur statues in front of a high school. I think they were supposed to be a tyrannosaurus and a triceratops. Many of the apartment buildings here have what seems to me to be very Communist-style architecture. There are often strange not-balcony cages around apartment windows people seem to use for flowers and laundry. Vacant buildings and ruined lots litter the city, as well as very modern-seeming, whimsical architecture. We're going out now for food and bars.

do the ishikawa shake

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:19:10 GMT

this earthquake didn't kill me. i'm earthquake proof.

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 09:26:01 GMT

so . . . my last day in japan is going to be the thirtieth or so. after that i will be in china, probably vietnam, and maybe other places for about a month. after that i will possibly be in seattle or houston or both for a couple of weeks. after that i will again become findable in the usual spots and locations sometime between may 1 and 15, depending on how the funds hold out.

also, the hard drive on my laptop is failing so it'll be difficult to contact me between now and then.

i know i owe you a more interesting entry. whoops.

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 18:08:22 GMT

i finished gravity's rainbow today. that might not seem like an accomplishment, but it feels like one.

teeth

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 11:21:30 GMT

all i wanted for christmas was one and a half of my front teeth and half of my left canine, and god-fucking-damn, i have them now. the dentist tapped the temporary crowns from the filed-down stumps using a blunt chisel. then he concealed the ruin of my gums and teeth with steel-reinforced resin bridgework. it was all very frankenstein.

three months ago, i went to a restaurant for yakitori (which is among the softest of foods). i had the temerity to bite into a rather soft piece of beef and was rewarded with a very memorable crack that i both heard and felt, after which my left incisor was a bit . . . um . . . wobbly. there was no pain, as this particular tooth had already been embalmed for ten years from earlier trauma. still, it was clearly broken, as the x-ray confirmed.

so i had to get the root pulled from where it had broken below the gumline. they used pliers. i honestly don't know what i expected instead of pliers. all the equipment looked like it had been manufactured circa 1980. so there was that. on the same day i got what was to be the first of a series of increasingly less temporary replacements. the dentist mounted a screw into the stump and then mounted a false tooth on the other end of that. he instructed me (via my bilingual friend) to get it fixed whenever i returned home. what didn't get through is that he had also fastened the new tooth to the tooth next to it with some arcane dental adhesive. all i did know is that it felt like there was something wedged extremely well between my teeth.

so i tried to floss it.

the cement between my teeth shattered and the floss pulled the tooth about halfway out along with an alarming amount of blood and tissue. i panicked and tried to push the tooth back in and pretend that it hadn't happened. the tooth did in fact sort of go back to the place it'd been, but it didn't stay there very well. teaching class the next day was difficult, especially because i had to constantly push my tooth back into the hole. it was four or five days before i was able to get to the dentist (for various reasons, including a national holiday and my company's refusal to give me a day off to go get my fucking tooth fixed). over the course of these days, the condition of the tooth deteriorated to the point that i spat my tooth out of my mouth each morning when i woke up. when i finally got it back in, it hung a full quarter inch lower than the neighboring teeth.

i got it fixed. it broke again.

this time i took matters into my own hands and superglued the fucker into my head. this fix worked much better than you might expect, but it did have what you could call drawbacks, and i was obliged to carry a tube of superglue in my pocket to effect any emergency repairs that might become necessary. also, i sometimes had to scrape off the superglue buildup in order to apply new glue more effectively. i used a screwdriver.

this new solution did not have a consistent level of effectiveness, so i returned to the dentist (alone this time) and used my laughably inadequate language skills to convey that i didn't fucking care how much it cost; i just wanted a tooth i could use to, you know, bite things. soft things. things like noodles. so they relieved me of one hundred thousand yen or so and shoved me off on a three-month dental odyssey. seriously, i had something like nine appointments. only the ones that caused major topographical changes inside my head actually cost more than two or three dollars. no one has been able to explain to me why there were so many.

while i didn't quite get my new front teeth for christmas, i did get them for boxing day. they are plastic reinforced with steel. it feels like steel, at least. and now there are no spaces between my teeth to feel when i move my tongue behind them, which feels kind of strange.
--
in other news, hi everyone. i'm not sure when i'm coming home yet. sometime between april and august. it's looking to be closer to april. not sure how long i'm staying or where i'm going after that, but it's not looking to be terribly long (but i've been wrong before). see you later.

existential void where prohibited

Thu, 04 May 2006 22:26:05 GMT

you know what isn't just like riding a bike?

riding a bike. i dropped a cool ten thousand yen on the gaijin bullet a few weeks ago. it comes with no gears, a thumb bell and handlebar basket standard. it is a thing in the main. it has served me reasonably well as my primary (read: only) mode of transportation. i spent my first day of ownership desperately clutching the handlebars, trying to remember how to do something i hadn't done since i was fourteen. i bike to work every day, wearing sneakers under my suit pants, tie flapping in the wind, with a bright blue backpack stuffed to bulging with my peacoat and an umbrella sticking out of the pocket. word is that i look strange. so far the only mishap of note happened about a week ago, when i had to ride home during a thunderstorm after i'd left my umbrella at home. apparently there is a proverb in kanazawa to the effect of "it's okay if you forget your lunch, but never forget your umbrella." it rains here with depressing frequency. i was wet enough that my roommate's girlfriend had assumed that i'd just taken a shower.

i do live in mortal terror of my first serious bike accident. without exception, everyone i know who owns a bike here has at least one story where they have hit or been hit by a motor vehicle. not two weeks ago, chiara (one of my coworkers) was hit by a car hard enough that her back wheel and left pedal were permanently warped. this sense of imminent disaster is exacerbated both by the local cyclists' tendencies to hurl themselves into traffic with heedless abandon and by the local drivers' tendencies to drive on the sidewalk like it's an extra fucking lane just for them. drivers in japan will kill you and the cyclists will help them do it.
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japanese style public lavatories are, for me at least, an experience of profound awkwardness and discomfort. for those of you who are unwilling to click the link, picture a western-style bathroom stall. the tile, toilet paper rolls, and toilet tank will no doubt be familiar to you. now, instead of the comforting, familiar toilet, picture a two-foot by six-inch porcelain trench positioned in the middle of the floor. a trench that exists, mind you, without instructions.

i had originally decided that i would cope with this oddity by ignoring it. however, soon after i arrived i was faced (thanks to my radical change in diet) with the unavoidable fact that i needed to shit, and that my options for a receptacle were the trench and my pants. i chose to brave the trench. never had i imagined that a person could feel so awkward and yet remain in complete privacy. certain logistical problems overran my attention. for instance: which way am i supposed to face? is there a protocol? does it even matter? would a real fucking toilet have cost so very much more to install?
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kenrokuen garden is very beautiful. my timing was right to see it during cherry blossom season, which started right after i arrived in japan. i was fortunate, as the season lasts only about ten days or so. i was only able to visit at night, but the entire garden was illuminated with lamps, giving the whole thing a surreal aspect. (kenrokuen is consistently misspelled in my photoset. i will fix it later. i would say that my shame knows no bounds, but clearly it knows the boundary of laziness).
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the drinking culture here is serious and not for people with weak stomachs. people here drink hard. for example, my boss (he's the one on the floor), who became so drunk on the first night that i met him that he passed out for a few minutes in the tatami room of a yakitori place we were visiting). for some reason japanese beer, which is often not actually technically "beer" but in fact a beer-flavored malt beverage, gives me a hangover that is roughly two to three times what i'd expect from how drunk it gets me. it's also expensive. one glass of draft beer in a bar or izakaya tends to run about five bucks. i can get a small bottle of sake for the same money, and it gives me twice the effects of a beer with gentler repercussions, so i've taken to drinking only sake for reasons of frugality and self-preservation.
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fuck you cup.
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through the magic of skype, i have arranged it so that people can call me from regular phones in the united states and talk to me in japan without (necessarily) paying long distance charges. my inexpensive number here is 513.277.0461. i have used it to talk to several people already, and typically it works as well as a regular phone, with the added bonus of not breaking my ass every time i need to make an overseas call. of course, i will need to be sitting at my computer in order to answer a call, but there is voicemail and whatnot, so i can call back. if it's an emergency, you might want to use that other number i gave you.

also. my old cell phone collapsed and died without warning or ceremony immediately after i got here. if you believe that i have your phone number, you are almost certainly wrong. if you would like me to have your phone number, email it to me and i will archive it.

harder, better, faster, stronger

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 12:55:38 GMT

okay, i'm back. i don't really have the stamina or inclination to put a coherent narrative together, so instead i will provide you with a tastefully assorted soundbite bouquet about my first week or so. enjoy:
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the flight over!
typical international flights, at least in my limited experience: snotty, balding flight attendants manufacturing opportunities to spout the three or four words they know of the language of wherever they're going; a dim and grainy selection of last years semi-blockbusters for in-flight entertainment; and eleven non-stop hours of nervous flatulence on my part. no doubt my neighbor wondered what the hell was wrong with the stinky gaijin to her immediate right. my company might have exaggerated a bit when they said that someone would be waiting for the airport for me. while i waited for this person to arrive, i became very, very nervous and consequently very sweaty. sweaty, stinky gaijin was to become a theme for the first five days.
--
the hotel!
unlike anything i was used to. the facade had odd industrial-plastic sculptures that looked like teddy roosevelt's head would look if you stuck it on midget legs. after i'd been let into my room, i immediately used that opportunity to lock my keys inside it and myself outside it when i left for a minute to get beer out of a vending machine. many of the cigarette and beer vending machines (they're separate) have a sticker that features the number twenty with circle and a line through it, presumably to discourage minors from sweet-talking these friendly machines into giving them illicit booze and smokes. i imagine these stickers work about as well as they worked on the cigarette machines of yore back home. japan has kind of a creepy relationship with smoking, a topic which leads me to
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the train!
you can smoke on the train. you can buy beer on the train. you can buy snacks on the train. you can watch bratty kids that are just as bratty as kids anywhere on the train. originally i thought that all the cars on the train were smoking, rather than only a few, so i unnecessarily suffered through a three hour train ride between kanazawa and osaka in the smoking car. i consoled myself with beer.

the trains here are very punctual.
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the job!
my company paid roughly $150, not including what i was being paid to be there, to ferry me to osaka and back so i could watch a powerpoint presentation. i was on the train for longer than i was at orientation. training is over at last, and i start my job at my permanent or semi-permanent office tomorrow. it's a half-hour walk away. the teaching is not difficult. the only piece of awkwardness so far is the class that consisted of a banker in his early forties and junior high school girl. the lesson was for them to ask each other about their pasts. hmm.

also, i don't get to take any unscheduled days off for two months, and i don't get to take any vacation days for six months. sadness.
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the food!
japanese flavor roulette. i've eaten barbecued chicken hearts. it was actually pretty good. i went to an izakaya (as far as i can tell, an izakaya is a sort of mom-and-pop bar. i don't really know what the difference between an izakaya and a bar is) and watched some recent acquaintances eat horse sashimi.

i'll let that sink in.

mostly i've been eating bento boxes and grocery store sushi. there are some things that i've learned to avoid already, like the prepackaged white bread sandwiches, which i'm certain are there to punish westerners. also, they put corn in goddamn anything. spaghetti with marinara sauce and corn. noodle sandwich with corn. pizza with assorted fish toppings, sausage, basil and corn.

the nice thing about being in japan, and in kanazawa in particular, is that the grocery store sushi is hell of cheap and tastes like better than average sushi from back home. i've been told that kanazawa has a reputation in japan for having really good sushi, which means that i'm in a place with the best sushi in the world.
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miscellany!
i need a goddamn bike. bikes are registered like cars here, which is bizarre. also, they have bike parking garages, which i've taken a picture of but not yet uploaded, so you'll just have to wait to see that.

it's cherry blossom season here. the trees are very pretty. alas, i have no pictures.

on my first day in kanazawa a minivan ran up onto the sidewalk, flattening a planter filled with flowers and tearing off its bumper all in a desperate bid to kill me. i ran the hell away.

the cherry blossoms may well have triggered latent allergies. or the cedar trees (such is the speculation of many people that i've met so far). or i might have the japanese plague. regardless, i have hideous sinus pain and the attendant nose-related (i'm sure there's a word that means nose-related, but the internets have failed me)(edit: nasal! g'damn i feel stupid) filth. as soon as my family returns from ireland, i'm going to force them to send me medicine, among other things.

everything is just slightly more expensive here for no apparent reason. dvds, games, theater movies, and cell phone calling plans are hell of expensive. i won't be making many calls.
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that's about it. i'll post my phone number and address in a subsequent locked post. i also have skype, with which i've had mixed success.

crossposted to myspace.

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 16:37:18 GMT

man, i'm totally, totally in japan.

it's pretty japanese.

sometime this week i'll write more about it, but i'm drunk as hell at the moment and i have to work in the morning. on that future date, i will also give you my (japanese! so exotic!) phone number and address and whatnot. i will also post pictures and maybe tell you about the time i was nearly minivanned to death (not my fault, i swear) on my first day in town.

for no compelling reason, i also set up a new email address: mannikin dot zero at gmail dot com. send me love.

i miss everyone, even those of you i've never met.

more later.

miss me. do it!

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 22:02:14 GMT

there has been a catastrophic leak in the main plumbing of my house. the tea towel that's been wrapped around the pipe isn't so much staunching the flow as causing it to drip about six inches to the left, so the main valve has been shut off. i've been brushing my teeth using beer instead of water. the result is extremely frothy.

last night i also bought a vibrating flosser. i used it after the beer. it is like a party between my teeth. an awkward, intoxicated party that focuses on dental hygiene.
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ladies and gentlemen, sluts and slutettes, pay attention.

tomorrow night watch opens at the esquire. (as a caveat, this is a russian movie and might be subtitled. as in, it had fucking better be subtitled). to judge from the trailer, it looks like some guys read a bunch of neil gaiman and clive barker and then went and made a movie about it. (the movie is based on a series of russian novels, in fact, but my opinion stands). angie and i have plans to go see the latest show, which just so happens to be 9:45. if you want to go see it, you should meet us there sometime before then. we might have pre-show snacks. maybe at uno's. this is base and wild speculation at this point and will be as surprising to angie as the rest of you. regardless, if you want to meet up before the show call me or something.

also!

i am leaving for japan on april 5, and i will probably become very hard to reach several days before that, what with planned trips to the wilderness and san francisco and everything. i hope to have a deporting party at al, diana, and meghan's place on, say, march 25. that's a saturday. the party will be in the evening. if you don't know where the place is, and yet you still want to come, do not fret. i will post directions some day that is closer to the party day. i am not posting them today because i don't actually know their address and i don't want to give directions that include instructions like "make a sort of half-turn left at the old johnston place."

you have your orders.

it breaks my heart to see you stand so crooked

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 11:53:38 GMT

teaandbitchery sent me an lj nudge so i would post. i didn't even know you could do that. in fairness, it has been about two months. no doubt my absence has pained you. with pain. you, my ever-faithful reader, have been craving news of my life's trivial details.

baby, i'm here for you.
--
it's all but certain that i will move to japan in two months or so. i hadn't made mention of that here because of my superstitious (and entirely justified) fear of "jinxes" or "whammies." (and "grumkins" to a lesser extent, but i am assured they don't really live under the bed). however, i seem to have reached a relatively whammy-proof stage in my plot to flee the country. nova group, whose site is as obnoxiously flash heavy as they can make it without including the hamster dance, has made me a formal offer of employment. the only obstacle left is my visa application.
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the inestimable hi_amity_an_elk accompanied me to chicago for my interview the weekend before christmas. on the way, i somehow managed to lose all of my photo id without also losing my wallet. since then i have been buying beers with my passport.

the same truck stop exists five or six times between toledo and chicago. in the men's restroom, there is a machine with a handle and ragged, furry rotors that will polish your shoes (black or neutral) for only a dollar. a dollar! i felt smothered with value.

an orange light comes on when it applies the polish.
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on the same chicago trip, i furthered my criminal career by stealing from a place of business for the first time i can recall.

katie and i had been running without suitable insulation. i had a hoodie. katie had a jacket that might generously be described as meant for late autumn.

chicago is cold. as balls.

i was reflecting on that fact while shivering near the door of the deli where katie was buying some unknown but severely tasty baked goods. i noticed an airpot filled with hot coffee near the door and helped myself to the half-cup that was left inside it. then i saw a sign that instructed me to pay (the unmitigated gall of it!) seventy three cents for the coffee. chicago owed me five ounces of coffee for being so fucking cold, i reasoned, and i consumed the rest of the cup with extreme belligerence.
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i accidentally tore part of the molding off my antique desk some days ago when my lower half spasmed while sitting cross-legged at my computer. fortunately, none of the parts i destroyed were load bearing, so there is just an unsightly hole on the lower right part of my desk.

unfortunately, these same parts also had nails in them. i discovered them early yesterday using the keen observational organ that is my left foot. as it turns out, driving it a half inch into the ball of your foot is an extremely effective way to find a nail. the foot bled with enthusiasm, discovery, and the possibility of tetanus.

true things that happened

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:15:51 GMT

i'm reading the satanic verses.

as items of interest go, that's pretty thin. nevertheless, it is a true thing that is happening to me.

are you not captivated by this completely factual account of something i do? i suggest you stop reading right now before your mind is crippled by my life's rockstar intensity.
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i spent much of this weekend driving g33kgrrl around ohio at criminal speeds. five over the limit. my rebel nature is irrepressible. besides, i am confident that kairsten's giant boot and the sheer terror of the implicit ass-kicking contained therein would have given any johnny lawman pause. i sure wouldn't mess with a boot that looked like that.

she brought markers with her for nefarious purposes. those purposes mainly involved rolling dice and using the results as a guideline for drawing things on people. i won't say what was drawn on me, but we had cause to use the phrases "disco dildo" and "bukkake godzilla" more than once. angie archived the evidence.
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i'm out of socks and i can't feel my feet. this sort of detail is known as gritty realism.

no foolin'

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:53:49 GMT

last monday a worker was crushed to death by a crane as he labored to build . . . well, something, anyway . . . in the until-recently vacant lot up the street from my house. the lot was home to an abandoned fast-food restaurant, weeds, and a structure that on paper was a storm drain but in reality was a mosquito nursery the locals sometimes called "lake hardee's."

the construction and its attendant deaths and maimings seem to be necessary to the gentrification of what was once a gently decaying suburb. suburban sprawl consumes my neighborhood, an anachronism whose only reason for existence was a stagecoach way station that had the arbitrary distinction of being twenty miles outside of cincinnati on the way to somewhere, anywhere else. somewhere presumably more civilized.

the building is still there. it's housed any number of failed restaurants over the last twenty years, but its most recent tenant shows no immediate signs of going under. maybe it's that they've changed the name, or that they've attached a scrolling sign made of red lights to the bastardized brickwork facade. maybe it's the bar they have seen fit to incorporate.

it stands at the corner of montgomery and columbia, at two stories still looming over the desiccated viscera of old landen (or what remains of it). the original morand building (it has since been replaced) burned down a few years ago after a local slack-faced deviant and his friends encouraged it to do so by lighting a fire in the dumpster that served it. i rode the same school bus he did.

o'bryan's state liquor agency has moved its business perhaps a hundred yards into a much wealthier-looking stretch of road and has adopted the style of "obryan's wine," although those leering hooligans, jim beam, johnny walker, and jack daniels, loiter on the shelves as conspicuously as they ever did. the first international church, or some congregation with a similar name, has taken residence in the old building. they share it with a chiropractor. their sign often advertises guest appearances by luminaries like prophet yount, whose name they spelled (on one side of the sign, at least) with a backwards "n." they have a cardboard menora.

the twenty-mile farm, an agricultural ruin that was nonetheless beloved as a pumpkin patch and hayride, has been replaced by a fungal growth of resort-style condos with the unfortunate name of "nantucket," and which is undoubtedly now home to any number of men who spend time composing clever limericks about themselves, where they can now say they are from, and what effect this freak of geography might have had on their anatomy.

there is a gutted gold-star chili, only identifiable as such by the stains left by its absent marquee. peter d's is an empty field of weeds with a developer's advertisement staked out front instead of the mound of restaurantish debris that had been left when they bothered to tear it down but not to clean it away.

these old places have been replaced by strip malls, parking lots and other malignant generica. they overrun the area with cancerous enthusiasm. my home is unrecognizable to itself.
--
several weeks ago i had the opportunity to do a flesh hook suspension. most commonly, this involves inserting a series of deep-sea fishing hooks that have been fitted with piercing needles between the flesh and the muscles of the back. these hooks are then strung with light rope, which is attached to a small frame designed to distribute weight and which is turn attached to a heavier rope and pulley apparatus. the rope and pulley are used to lift the participant from the ground. the skin pulls away from the musculature underneath, and the body is kept from falling by the resistance between the skin and the hooks. this position is called the "suicide," presumably due to its resemblance to a hanged person. there are other positions, suspensions from the knees, chest, and the like, but i am reliably informed that they are far more painful.

it was a cathartic experience. the pain was not significantly more than that of a normal piercing, and it provided me with an unusual consciousness of my body . . . not as a gestalt or a vehicle for the mind or the soul or any of that shit, but rather as nothing more than the total of its components: skin wrapped around muscle wrapped around bones. it was comforting to think that way.