FAQ: WTF?

In case you're going through this entire day without witnessing something that reshapes your vision of humanity, consider this:

http://whitepowermilk.com/

Aside from the obvious question of 'why?', this product challenges me on deeper levels.

For one, I'm a whatever-floats-your-boat sort of guy providing that you're not sinking the boats of others. In this sense, I can detect no moral grounding for objection to this product. It represents a hygienic question-mark and an aesthetic disaster but not, according to my own principles, a moral offense. For challenging my principles just by existing, I must tip my hat to  this processed milk and whatever sort of mind invoked it. 

Second, I'm astounded by the unlikely configuration of elements in play. Here is something as primitive as gland secretions from the bovine mammary, processed by gargling, created to supply an extremely niche demand (I hope) and made available to all everywhere via the bells and whistles of refrigeration, e-commerce, satellite and internet technology.  Did Adam Smith ever see this coming?  Doubt it. Economic evolution, congratulations on your new mutation.

Considering factors like e-commerce, robotics, artificial intelligence, multi-cultural globalism, genetics, nanotechnology and human weirdness, it is obvious that the most frequently asked question of the 21st century is going to be WTF? 


A N Y W A Y . . .

Without wanting to impose labels such as "good" or "bad", I'll say that had a day.  During said day, I marched throughout Bancroft with a long, confident stride, resume in hand, head held high, seeking work at such esteemed places of commerce as Tim Hortons, Subway and Canadian Tire.  It appears that my 6 years of post-secondary education and varied experience both domestic and abroad will be excellently applied by the highest only bidder: No Frills. Alas, the job isn't certain (fingers crossed for this interview tomorrow) and I'd just hate to jinx this part-time shlopportunity by speaking over-confidently.  Stay tuned for news from your friendly neighborhood, over-educated grocery-bagger.

(Dear No Frills manager, if you're reading this blog by some miraculously awful coincidence, please note that I do recognize the importance of food stuffs and the distribution thereof, as well as the valuable piece No Frills plays in the commercial food-chain puzzle. Accordingly, if hired I will stock your shelves with due diligence, bag groceries in exaggerated earnest, and salute my minimum-wage check appropriately. PS. I have a cutting-edge milk product in mind for your retail considerations). 

Wish upon the Internet.

8 hours in the car, nothing to show for it but an chair-shaped ass. 

The trip was to go view rooms in Kitchener, where I plan to go to school come September.  What I didn't know is that most of the areas I chose to look at were student ghettos.  Crumbling dry-walled slums.

Apartment 1: I woke the people up despite it having an appointment, despite it being around noon.  There was a motorcycle in the living room.

Apartment 2:  Large kitchen counter couldn't be seen for the beer cans. Heaps of stuff were everywhere. The only available room was in the basement, with no ties to the heating.

Numbers 3 & 4 weren't too bad.  And if I had any confidence of getting even a McJob for the summer (hard in Canada, despite having a BA, tons of experience and an MA), I'd probably have stayed.

So I'm back in Paudash, in need of work and wanting for a miracle.  As in a million dollars please.  Is that too much to ask from the internet?  I mean damn internet....you rich. 

Taboos

I'm about to put all I own on my back and move on for the 4th time this year.  It'll be the 6th or 7th city that 2011 has seen me live in. Inexplicably, I look to this move, more than the others, in the grip of the fear. 

You know, the fear.

The Fear

Unlike recent travels, this move won't even take me out of the province, let alone the country.  Why the fear creeps over me I don't know; but I have my suspicions.

Fear is a physiological signal from the body indicating that it perceives danger.  Yet I scan my environment finding no sharks, no tsunamis and no falling pianos from above. No danger. 

OK heart and brain...what's up with the fear?

2 possibilities emerge:


1) Gas prices and unreasonable taxes from a forever interfering gooberment have me on edge. Live long enough in Canada and, this chronic anxiety eventually becomes unpleasant background noise. Maybe being new here, I haven't yet grown callous & uneasily apathetic to being systematically ripped off. Is the Canadian way causing the fear?

2) Maybe the fear is caused by some transgression of taboo.  People are more unsettled of taboos then they usually realize (myself included).  Find out your friend is incestuous, or the person you're having a conversation with is schizophrenic, or somebody in the neighborhood has HIV/AIDS... and you get he-be-jee-bees. If gays turn you running away, then homosexuality is a taboo for you.  

What personal taboo could I possibly be transgressing by my current move?   
The success/failure taboo. Tied into the move is a step towards a goal of mine--a step with the risks of failure. When merely traveling, 'failures' end up being adventures, which end up being awesome stories. In pursuing goals, failures end up being sucky. They become opportunities to let old wounds fester or to reinforce ideas like 'incompetent', 'unworthy', etc.  Notice that not only failure, but success too can be a personal taboo. Succeeding at something might not be congruent with one's foundational and below-conscious self-conception.  People like this literally (and usually subconsciously) believe themselves to be incapable, incompetent, unworthy and either explain away or ignore contrary evidence. Success ushers fear into a self-contemptuous psychological environment. 

So, what's causing the unease?  Is it financial burden, fear of failure, or fear of success?

The Humming Bird and the Tortoise

An open question.

What is your preferred life-style choice?

Is it the sugar high? A life-style that ends with you skidding across the finish line beaten up, on your last legs, screaming wooo hoooo!!!

 Or a slow, calculated and enduring life, evenly measured in afternoon coffee spoons, where you come to an end on a lazy-boy?

Garden Hobbies and Hair Loss.

No Gym Membership, No Worries:

Almost daily marinated pork before bed in Korea.
Daily starch in India; wine and gyros in Turkey. 
Burgers in Canada.  No exercise.

Result: happy memories and a pot-belly w/ love-handles.

And now, living in a forest, I want to get in shape. 

One of the busier intersections where I'm living.

What to do, what to do?

I think I've come upon a solution.

Here is my new gym:

My Gym

It doesn't look like much, but it manages to kick my ass twice a week.

My Routine:

Warm up: (approx. 15 minutes)
1) 50 body weight squats
2) 50 jumping jacks.
3) stretching.

Body-Training: (approx. 35 minutes)
1) Use the triangular rock to do as many clean & presses as possible in 20 minutes.  (i.e. lift the rock over my head, and put it down again)
65 repetitions is my current max.
2) Use the cinder blocks to do 4 sets of deep push ups, all max.
3) Use the rafters of the deck to do 4 sets of pull ups. 

Warm Down:(approx. 10 minutes)
1) light movement (swing body & arms around) until breath stabalizes
2) light stretching.


My diet is loosely based on Tim Ferris's idea of 'slow carbs', which you can read about if you want to.

From me, expect before and after shots, as well as more detail of my experiment with this, if the results are worthy of bragging about.

Forehead:

I saw my aunt the other day for the first time in 6 years. She gave me the look over, saying that I'm "pretty much the same, except a little thinner on top". My ego wanted to take "thinner" to mean, "less fat".  Alas, I knew what she meant. I cannot be accused of having an excess of hair...

I gave myself the look over in the mirror.  And it is true. My hair is going away. This fact was one that I'd been deliberately ignoring for weeks! (years).  So habitual was my denial that it almost surprised me to hear the news of my own baldness.

The sunburn on my expanding forehead, which I got the same day, seemed to highlight the inevitable recede. 

I'm lucky, I admit, to have made it into my thirties before it came to this, given my genetic lineage.  Less grooming, less money spent on hair-care products: I guess these are the advantages of my new life as a bald guy.

Eulogy:

I hated to part with you even at a young age, at the barber shops. How much more do I hate it now. To you I owe my first attempt at creating a social persona. I had picked up a rock-guitar and let you grow and, surprising us all, you came down in spiral locks. Charming spiral locks they were.
I apologize for my trespasses, for dying you purple and flirting with the idea of perming you so that I could look a little more like Slash.
It's the changing of the season. You're gone and I grow older. I shall miss tucking your behind my ear, and each empty follicle shall now be a tombstone. Good-bye.

Three times have I loved

1 (where one man's loss is another's treasure)

Two friends and I, our hearts full of high school angst and rock-star ambitions, were touring Oshawa (the "Shwa") in search of a ruckus. Finding none, we settled for loitering at a public playground. That awful thing known as boredom seemed to track us down in every place we went where alcohol wasn't. But hark!  An incoherent wailing erupted from the suburban labyrinth,now blanketed in twilight and punctuated with streetlights. We approached the source without hesitation.  It was our call to action, it was....something to do!  Even better, the noise was coming out of girls!  One melodramatic girl was crying, "no there won't! No there won't!" in response to her friends' assurances that there will be other guys, and so hey, don't take it so hard.  "What's up?" we asked the grief-struck girl. She dried her tears with her sleeve, said "oh hi" with a wide, almost too-friendly-grin. I guess this is when Cupid shot an arrow.

Through the turbulence of drugs, raging hormonal flux, school, part-time jobs and high school politics, we managed to stay together for almost 4 years, only to have things come apart when I went to university. I was having a nervous breakdown at the time any way, and I think she might have been too. It sort of came with the lifestyle. In the last months, our love fizzled off and on before totally collapsing. She remained a black hole of wonder until Facebook put us in contact again, years and years later. And then just weeks ago, I finally met her again, and her 6 year-old daughter.

2 (some become more grounded as individuals like this:  CRASH!!!)

Fast for-ward 3.5 years ahead.

I was in my final year of university, the home-stretch. My smooth and pristine dreams of becoming the next Socrates were starting to get damaged by increasing contact with reality. Worse, when I looked back at my university career,what I saw startled me: I saw a frightened, celibate bookworm who'd wasted a lot of opportunity by doing what he thought was "everything right". 

I started to rearrange my life. Frequenting a gym and pursuing a life became goals. Meeting girls, I discovered, was next to impossible for me because not only did I lack both basic social skills and any knowledge of things other than contemporary Western philosophy, but I was also insanely nervous around people generally and women in particular. The one thing I had going for me was a delusion of being cool, despite all evidence to the contrary.


My status was "regular customer" at a coffee shop on the wrong side of the street, literally.  Princess Street in Kingston marks a divide between the university bubble of happy-rainbow-campus-of-money-and-education on the one side and the street-hardened locals on the other. This was risky business for a shy boy like myself. One afternoon the shop's manager came and sat down beside me, which freaked me out. She was a woman and my nervousness was made worse by drinking my body weight in coffee. By some grace of god, my visible astonishment (fear) endeared her. I talked philosophy and she... listened to me. Game over: She had me.  

Weeks later, she kissed me and my leg shook uncontrollably; Appliances rattled with the violence of it.  This too, somehow, endeared her. The kiss was the first domino in a sequence of life-altering events:
Joy-->pregnancy-->drop out of university-->baby-->marriage-->in-law troubles-->financial troubles-->separation-->divorce.

Next.

3 (Third time is a charm dagger to the heart turned clockwise)

Recovering from a devastating marriage, I was living and working in Korea. I was there to run away from it all. I was hunched over report cards, trying to give a shit. Enter stage left: a professional-looking Korean woman who just landed a job in the same office. She was well-dressed, sophisticated, work-oriented and being polite ranked high among her priorities. What I'm trying to say is that to all outward appearances, we had very little in common. But there was some sort of familiarity in her face, a certain something that I can't put into words.  Yes, she was pretty but that wasn't the whole story.  There was just something there. That's all I can say. I fearlessly pursued her.  Not my usual way of things.  When I tried to kiss her one day, she backed in obvious horror with a weak "no". Oops.  After she regained some composure, sat down and smoothed her skirt out on her lap, she told me I was very nice. Then she went home.  For some reason, I knew it wasn't over. I was just puzzled by this obstacle.

Later, doubt crept in and I decided that this gut-feeling was just a stupid impulse, so I tried to let it go. Then she let it be known that she was, after all, interested.  And we did naughty things in the office after hours.

She later began teaching at another school and by some weird coincidence, I got hired at the same place only a couple months later. Divine providence or just lucky.  Either way, everyday day it just made my day to see her.

We stayed together for 3 years, during which I sang her songs and made nicknames for her. I never did tell her that I love her. Our relationship ended when I left Korea to start my life in Canada.

Too depressed now to continue.

The End.

Secrets in the Dump, and the Universe.

Damned Mundane Reality....BE MORE MIRACULOUS! 

1) We live in the boondocks of the Milky Way, far from the busy center.  We're cosmic hicks.
2) Neither scientist nor philosopher have been able to solve the so-called 'mind-body' problem.  That is, no satisfying description has been given regarding how you can have an idea (mind) that you'll raise your arm, and then actually do it (body). How does mind influence the physical?  
3) Because the light arriving on Earth has been traveling through space for years, to look up at night is to see backwards in time.
4) We awake every morning with memories of events that didn't seem to have happened, brushing it off as mere 'dreams'. 
5) No matter which way you plant a seed under the soil, it will always sprout "upward".
6) Our lives are colorful and noisy tunnels of experience sandwiched between the nothingness before birth and the nothing of death.
7)  Men and women walk the Earth talking of Gods, other worlds, UFOs, gnomes, enlightenment, magic, and even stranger things. Lots of men and women. Mathematicians claim there are 10 dimensions. Quantum physics describes a world too weird for natural language.
8) We are born on Earth with no scroll of instructions, no mission objectives, no game-plan. We're a brain carried around by our bodies and our instincts, making the whole thing up as we go.
9) We don't know if human nature is good. By our own standards & measurements, we're the evilest, cleverest, and most caring species on this planet. 
10) Life is brief, and in spite of the first 9 things on this list, we have the capacity for boredom. 

Things at the Dump:

A rotting zombie-deer head on a plaque. 

Like a dog who jolts to life at the word "walk", I'm all about trips to the dump. Partly, this is because I'm out in the sticks and a trip out is a trip out. Discrimination is for those with options.  But I'm also eager to go because it is a place of fine-dining for bears. Bears: fascinating honey and people eating creatures that are to dogs what lions are to cats. As a child I kept a plush toy (code name: 'brown bear') and loved it sincerely. My great grandfather, around the same time, told me tales of a bear that stayed under his bed. The memories bring back the sense of terror only a 5 year old can feel. And I'm still fascinated by bears.  But I've yet to see one at the dump.  Just this thing:

Notice the eyes? The nose appears to be made of wood. Man-made?

 And this thing.

I don't know if I'd call this art, or even 'sprucing the place up'. It's no longer just a pile of garbage though; mere rearrangement has transformed it into something else. Something without a name. Magic.    

The Proper Sequence of Clicks.

Had I but one, just one, measly million dollars:

For the fifth time, I'm making my way through Tim Ferris's '4 Hour Workweek'. Apparently it takes me five times to notice just how much of the book is dedicated to properly spending the money as opposed to properly making it.

For a reader not initiated into entrepreneurship, falling under the illusion that effortless money is but a few clicks away wouldn't be difficult. After my first reading I created a tarot-reading website.  I charged $50 per reading, had zero customers, and made exactly nothing, minus the costs of setting up and hosting the site. Net: -$400.  Not awful for a failed business venture as a fortune-teller. It fleshes out my resume. 
 

Click on the image and win either a million dollars, or a larger image of a water bug!!!!!!!

One of his exercises in the 'four hour work week' is to 'dreamline'. This means creating a list of things you want to have, to do, and to be within the next 6 months to a year. Write as if money were no object (this is the 'dream' part). Then, calculate how much money would actually be required to do this.
So I lay here, before you all, my hopes and aspirations:

Want to have: Gibson Les Paul ($1500), Nikon wide angle lens ($2000), Nikon telephoto lens ($1000).
Want to do: Spend a couple months training in Muay Thai in Thailand ($2000), shark diving in S. Africa ($1500).
Want to be: Conversational in Korean (free, requires effort), a writer (free, requires effort), self-employed ($2500/month).

I calculate this to be $40,000 dollars spent for the year--and it would be the best year ever. $3500 a month would do it; it's my "target monthly income". 

And now the looking-in-the-mirror part:

Honestly Answer This: Is this a real goal, or is it a reason to throw in the towel and accept wage-working for the better portion of my waking life, taking joy & excitement in small doses if and when it comes?  That's the real existential question. Do you notice that with the better path, there are risks? Not only financial ones, but for me, there is risk in disappointing myself. Since I often live under the delusion that I'm special, not subject to defeat, impossibly intelligent, etc., opting for high ambitions is the sort of thing that will either pop my bubble or line it with titanium and diamonds.

From Nowhere, Spring Cometh:

It's true.

I arrived in Canada mid-April and bore witness to the stoic silence, the lake still iced over, trees naked of leaves and random, quiet eruptions from the fireplace, obedient to the clicks of the thermostat. Rack up on my list of wants, "spring". It goes a few slots under "just one million dollars".

Small buds on the trees surprised me weeks later, as if I had honestly thought that winter were not going to let go. Eying the tiny shoots, I kept thinking, "you know, I ought to take time lapsed photos of the budding branches". I wasn't done procrastinating on this project before spring abruptly summoned not only leaves in full bloom, but the birds, flowers and heat. The frogs croak their laughter in the night, as if they'd known all along about the inevitability of seasons and about the snakes that would abandon hibernation to eat them.

And then I have to deal with it: the sweat beading on my brow, the bugs crawling out from under the rocks. My allergies are in full bloom; beery weekend warriors cannon-ball into the lake screaming, mosquitoes and similar pests eat me as I tote my camera wheezily to the pollen-spewing wild flowers for a picture. This is what I wanted, I say. Dodging the wasps and spitting out spiderwebs I think, "ah. If I only had a million dollars, then I'd be happy".

Class, Sass and Breakfast in Turkey.

I like this sign for many reasons, one of which is that it has the same rhyme & rhythm as a 'roses are red' poem. My favorite of such poems, by the way, goes as follows:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

You think this will rhyme,

But it ain't gonna.

Other likable traits of the sign: 1) it's sassy, 2) the language wanders outside the lines of conventional English grammar, 3) and it hangs on the wall of an otherwise classy establishment. Said establishment served me one of the finest cappuccinos this side of the Bosporus and, like every other place in Turkey, was exceedingly friendly.  I opted for cappuccinos because Turkish coffee is a bowel-liquefying, neural shock-wave of caffeinated sludge that aggravates my latent schizophrenia. I do like that it comes in a mug no bigger than a shot glass though, complete with a tiny handle.

My friend and I, BM, hit up every restaurant & cafe on the block, returning most often to a place that was as cl/s/assy as any other place. The only difference was that it served warm wine and the waiter told lewd stories about how he went to Kazakhstan, flagged down a job as a masseuse, and ended up a successful and over-sexed man-whore. Apparently the men of the country  were too drunk to perform their duties.

Another friendly, grease-haired waiter with a bow-tie, who we called Brooklyn because he claimed to have learned his English there (which he backed up with an accent), began telling us weird stories once the formality of small-talk was done with. He worked for a secret service as a sergeant and killed a terrorist. He ran amok until his mom told him to come back home. So naturally, he works at a pizza shop now, but has a special passport (that he couldn't produce) putting him above the law.   

Our hotel staff were fun too. The receptionist was a thick brick-wall of baby fat and smiles. He claimed to be a professional footballer. The maid kept trying to talk to us in Turkish and made breakfast for us each morning, which we shiveringly ate on the roof.  And by "made", I mean she put olives, cucumbers slices and single-sized packets of jam on our plate, with pieces of bread on the table. Olives for breakfast, how I miss thee.

What people put in their mouths first thing in the morning defines them as much as anything else.  Fish, steamed rice and miso soup = disciplined people = Japanese.  Olives & cucumbers = class.  And I don't mean to harp on "my own", but seriously, 'Cheerios', 'Special K', & 'Fruit Loops' etc. seem to say "I refuse to be an adult".   Speaking of Special K, did you know the 'K' refers to potassium? It does. Special K used to have lots of it.  "K" is the symbol for potassium on the periodic chart of chemicals. 

Potassium, by the way, has nothing to do with the mustache I had in Turkey. I photographed it as a proud mustache-bearer should, and then lost the pictures. Since I'm instinctively anal about where my pictures are, I wasn't surprised to find that I had simply uploaded it to my external a day or two ahead of schedule. Along with my mustache pictures, I found these as well: night shots of the fountain in front of the Blue Mosque, a place classy enough for Allah:

For the photography buffs out there, I learned something new with these shots.  See the way the light star-bursts off the streetlamps (click on the image to enlarge, btw)? That effect can be replicated with your camera on aperture priority and cranked rather high (these were F/22).  Plant the camera on a tripod, and shoot. The tripod is necessary since the increased aperture will require a slower shutter speed (8 seconds, in the picture above). 

crunked in the shwa

I didn't want to use this blog as a ranting tool. 
Please forgive just this once.

[rant/]
The songs of an age give voice to the collective. John Lennon's "Imagine" was popular not just because hippies happened to like the 3 or so chords it's comprised of, but because the attitude resonated. Peace, love and happiness almost became real goals for people.

Fast-forward 40 years to the so-called 'Generation-X'.  Our John Lennon was Curt Cobain, famous for hymns like, "rape me", album titles like "nevermind", and courageous acts like blowing his brains out with a shotgun.  Would it be a stretch to say that this generation was, at best, in some way wounded? Is it a coincidence that in 1999, the inventors of Prozac were inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame?  Is it a coincidence that self-mutilation has become fashionable?  No.  We're the future, and we're doomed.

You balk?  Well, America is borrowing from China.

China. 

America's most recent financial collapse happens at a time when any TV show or movie with zombies or vampires promises to rank among the top. Real-life zombies like Anna Nicole Smith and the auspicious 'people' showcased on Jerry Springer also capture our imaginations. This human-wreckage called "the American way" isn't just the fringe, either.  The middle-class are eating themselves into early graves, divorcing each other at an alarming rate, and yawning under the banner of "excess luxury" while trading their liberties for the illusion of security.

We're born free into a universe we cannot understand, and live for a very short time. Is this how we want to conduct ourselves?

[end rant/]

I'm a, currently having a bit of reverse culture shock. In Korea, the country is moving forward, and in Canada (the 51st state of America, culture-wise), the situation is reversed in many ways.  Hence the angst and exasperation.

Which I tried this weekend to fix with booze.

Friday, shortly after arriving in the shwa, KG took me out to a pub for "a drink" and a "quiet night".  I wasn't much surprised when, $150 later, we were cut off, but I was surprised that he took issue with some of my life decisions. He hashed things out, cleared the air, and I think we're better friends for it. I know I respect him madly for having the balls to confront me for living a life he couldn't agree with or understand. I've made mistakes, and whereas everybody around me seems willing to ignore them, he seems willing to acknowledge them and accept me, flaws included.


Saturday, another bff and old-flame, both from high school, appear and along with KG, so we dig into the fridge-booze (malt liquor), then bar-booze (jagger shots), and then arrive at a house party. We later drag one of our friends home after he passed out and barfed on a dog.  It was exactly like high school except that now we're over 30 and 'should' know better. KG, who is always way ahead of me in terms of life-style and lingo, says "aww man we were so crunked".  From context, I assume that means drunk.  Yes?

How to Write Professionally

Top 10 Writing Rules to be A awesomne Writter!!!11


1) Find your Voice:
For a long time I couldn't find my voice. I tried the usual (drugs, alcohol, reading, trance,) but the words weren't coming from the honest part of me. I wanted to be prophetic like Leary, logical like Kant, profound like Nietzsche, and funny like mimi smartypants. Of course, none of these people are me. Then I realized that I couldn't find my voice because I was looking with my eyes. I needed to be listening instead.  My voice, all the meanwhile, was talking, yelling even. Screaming at times. It was like, "You need Thorazine! You need Thorazine!" 

2) Some similes are real hard like a real hard jigsaw puzzle
See, I was going to write about how I don't often follow the past of least resistance, and how this is often to my disadvantage. It was going to be like, "like a blah-blah-blah, I don't follow the path of least resistance"....but now I realize that all things in nature follow the path of least resistance.  It's not just for water!  But any way, being the only thing in the universe that doesn't do this means I'm really unique; I'm so unique that similes can't be made about me because I'm just so special, like a snowflake.

3) Avoid cliches like the plague. Nuff said.

4) Beware: Metaphors are Jerks!
A metaphor is saying that something is what it actually isn't. In that sense, it's a socially acceptable lie. Well, not always socially acceptable (ex. "your wife is a troll").  In any event, if you've got one of those sensitive nervous systems, I would just stay away from these metaphors things.  I once read a description of a sunset that was like, "the neon, golden quarter dropped into the slot machine horizon" or something, and I spent a month in a spun-out reality where the cosmic casino that is our universe had a dealer (God) who was playing the odds, which is why there are a lot of losers around.  So be careful with your metaphors.


5) Experiment:
I'm a fan of experimentation. Here's one: Pick a sentence and find another way to say it. Or, choose and reword an already existing sentence. Another option: Reassemble verbal elements so that the meaning of a chosen sentence is replicated in a new one. The options are limitless.
Try writing verb-y (try to increase the number verbs per page up to 50%. Would that be a great advertisement?  Imagine:  Harry Potter, now 50% more verbs!!!!). Write while standing on your head.

6) Think about stuff, yo. 
Thinking, as opposed to just having thoughts about random crap, is hard and most people are too sleepy for it and prefer the TV to do their thinking for them.

7) Be more Interesting!!!!
No I'm serious, you're dull.  Pick something your interested in, or were interested in, or wonder if you might be interested in, and push it as far as it will go for an entire year.  It could be magic tricks, quilting, boxing, tantra, or trying to make the world's most perfect sandwich EVAR!!!! (ps. nobody can judge that but me.)

8) Write 
Most important advice for a writer.  Here's something to get the ball rolling:
Imagine you woke up hungover at a friend's and he's gone to work and also, you're friggin way hungry. No car.  You scour the place and find a pizza pocket in the freezer, but the microwave is broken, so you warm it in your crotch while you're writing a blog about writing.  Then his father comes down and asks you, "Do you want some lunch?"  OK, problem.  You do technically want lunch, but if you answer in the affirmative, you have to go upstairs, which means taking the lap top off your lap and exposing the frozen pizza pockets nestled in your crotch.  Saying "no" is the easy way out, but it's a lie. What do you do?  Use the comment function to let me know.

9) Finish what you star

10)

Spicy Eyeball Soup

This nice Korean family had invited me to their house for dinner in a friendly gesture that obviously intended to say, "we know you embarrassed yourself horribly, and here are some noodles to show you that we don't hate you for it".  Noodles make stuff better sometimes.  All I had to do, I thought, was politely sit through it and then everything would be right in the world again.

The nerve-torturing noodles were floating in a broth of what may have been liquid electricity. Everything the noodles touched on my body ignited into an invisible fire that water wouldn't put out, but I ate it like a stoic soldier, ignoring how profusely I was sweating. Even my knees were sweating.  They complimented me on my use of chopsticks and I tried to explain that I practiced in Canada  but couldn't get it out. My spice-swollen tongue only slurred incomprehensibly in a way that they nodded in apparent agreement with.

Things were going fine until I noticed the silence. It was sudden and made me hyper aware of the slurping noise that had been going on just seconds ago. It was like slurpysllllllrrrpslurpslurpyslurrrrp...slurrpslrrpslurrrrrrrrrp  and then * s i l e n c e *

What had happened was this: they were all slurping their noodles in their Asian-y way and I was "politely" not doing anything like that. If anything, I was being extremely quiet (my dad's version of polite, which doesn't apply in Korea, at all). My silence had made them self conscious and they were eating quietly now.

I felt imperialistic, in a bad way. I'm didn't come to Korea to make people eat noodles quietly. So naturally, I start slurping the noodles.  My face was already incredibly red from the spicy food; embarrassment wouldn't make it any worse.  Slurp slurp slurp!  They were all looking at me and I was eating away like, 'what? I'm just slurping my noodles like I always do. wtf's up?'

Then one stray noodle lashed back and forth as I sucked it in my mouth and it nailed me like a whip in my unblinking eye.  Like a whip that is covered with the angry seeds of enraged chili peppers.

Now, your eyeball is a part of your brain, and you generally don't want food to touch your brain, and this is especially true for aggressive son-of-a-bitch food.

*sigh* I tried to pretend it didn't happen, probably because I didn't want to seem so unbelievably accident prone.  I politely excused myself and washed my eyeball under the bathroom facet for about five minutes before returning.  Red and retracted with a mesh of exposed and stressed out red veins, my eye twitched involuntarily as I tried to continue dinner and make idle small talk about how delicious the food was and how it certainly hadn't burned my tongue and eyeball like a chemical weapon.  It was spilling tears so profusely that I'd drenched a napkin, and I smiled and politely talked, wondering if I didn't actually need medical attention to save my eye.

The End (of this blog post).

An Incident Involving Tissues

Getting caught would mean a $4000 fine, deportation, and an abrupt end to my career in Korea. It would be a near fatal blow to my career as an ESL teacher generally.  I didn't even know it was illegal. 

"What was he doing?" you might be wondering. 

Sit down and brace yourself because it did involve children.  Ready? OK. You've been warned: I was reading  to two children in their living room, stopping occasionally to ask them their thoughts about Hanzel & Gretel's insufficiently incautious adventure. 

It's not the kind of crime that earns you scars or bragging rights, but it violated the stern conditions of my E-2 visa, given (uh, sold) to me by the Korean gooberment: No private tutoring.

Oops.

And it did result is somewhat of an unrelated, wholly unforeseeable disaster, too. 

It was a cold and snow-blowy February morning when my plane touched down in Korea's Jeju, a destination marketed by the gooberment's tourism department as 'the Hawaii of Korea".  Sleet was collecting on the dying palmate leaves of imported palm trees lining the streets.  I was doing my best to integrate myself into Korean culture, working my day job at a hagwon (private school) and I supplemented my income modestly by teaching a brother and sister in their home.

February 14th, Valentine's day arrives. Unlike in N.America, Korean Valentine's day isn't just for lovers.  Everybody gives everybody chocolate. Disappointed kids of the school told me this over and over, with their hand out. "Sorry. I didn't know", I said lamely. They gave me chocolates any way, which rotted my teeth as much as the guilt rotted my mood. So I, with my trousers full of chocolate and my heart full of sorrow, went home at the end of the day.  

Well, not home. I went to my covert destination to do heinous things with children: teach them English!  Walking in from the snowy streets, I was immediately pleased with warm feet. In-floor heating--a standard in Korea-- rocks. How could I know that it would be instrumental in a looming catastrophe? 

As per usual, we bowed informally before beginning the lesson. I sat down on the floor (Korean custom) and began interacting in my English-teachery ways, but within a few minutes, the parents were buzzing around me with tissues and buggy eyes.  Unable to communicate effectively in English, they just offered (repeatedly insisted) their tissues. Was this more Korean custom?  I didn't think so, but how could I be sure?  I took one and put it in my plaid shirt pocket, offering a 'thanks'. But they circled me more tightly with even more of their tissues. I don't know what they were saying, but it seemed like "take it!  take it!" Being new to Korea and not graceful under WTF situations, I excused myself and went to the bathroom to see if my nose was bleeding or my brain was coming out of a hole in my forehead. Nothing. One thing was for sure: I couldn't teach under these conditions. What the hell was I supposed to do with the tissues?  Did they expect origami?  

Be gently stern. I'm new here. They should understand that I don't get their customs yet, I told myself. 

I go back to face the tissues and I see, to my horror, a brown smear where I've been sitting.  I reflexively grab my ass and blush hotly as my fingers dip into something warm and sickly moist. I look. It's brown. And drippy. My stomach sinks.

The fried noodles, octopus, spiced caggage (kimhi), garlic soups, chili peppers, and unidentifiable meats I'd been eating since I arrived spun through my mind. A bowel-liquefying combination... 

I grabbed the tissues and cleaned my mess with no more dignity than a cowering dog. This isn't one of those "well, these-things-happen" moments that you just shrug off.  I just shat on their floor.

And the smell...wait a minute.  Sweet? Savory even.  Then it clicked.  My trouser pockets full of chocolates had melted from the in-floor heating. I didn't spring an anal leak!  Heavens bless!  

And of course I start explaining this as fast as the physics of tongue allow and of course my kind, uncomprehending hosts are looking at me like a deranged, babbling, psychotic foreigner covered in feces who won't get out of their living room. "seriouslyitsjustchocolatebecausemystudentsgaveittomebecauseitsvalentinesdayandthat'swhatKoreansdoandthechocolatemeltedanddon'tworryit'snotshitbutiwillcleanitupanyway" 

I only produced some frightened glares.
Body language, I decided. I put some in my mouth and say "mmmmmm. Chocolate".  Isn't that a show-stopper.  Just imagine. The father looked like he might martial arts my head in.

After I'd produced the wrappers from my pockets, we all had a good old fashioned laugh at my expense. Ha ha ha.  

Next blog:
The ridiculous thing I did when they invited me for dinner, the following evening.

Confessions of a 5-toed Sloth

1) . "D'ja crack it over your head?" asked my grade 11 chemistry teacher.  I was like, "no" and scoffed. But the on-coming blush was like, "yeah, I sure did".

The object in question was a hardcover chemistry textbook, and actually, I didn't crack it over my head (thank-you very much Mr.Blush). I slammed it repeatedly with enough force that I saw stars as the cover buckled.  I was that confused.

I really wanted to be a genius and this textbook was providing me with evidence that I probably wasn't one, and so I thought, "maybe a little brain damage will give me that extra shove into Einsteinian IQ".

2) So that last sentence wasn't true, it was a sarcastic "joke".  I really broke the book over my head because I have a neurosis that causes me to punish myself and I'm trying to make light of it. OK? Yeah, thanks.   Thanks for making me put it all out there, for all to see and judge me by.  As long as you feel the need for me to bear my bleeding soul, you should know that I don't use blunt objects any more to punish myself. I find words to be quite effectively painful. So there, happy?

3) I'm such a stupid, stupid jerk for being rude to my readers.  They hate me, and they should.

4) I took my expensive camera to the dump to take pictures (OK OK, my dad drove me).

It was nice to get out of the house.  It was a break from the usual (ie. nothing)

5) My daily "to-do" lists these days are sparse:
1) drink morning coffee.
2) wait for colleges to contact you.
3) go back to bed.

Wow. This post is super organized. I could, if I wanted to, refer you to section 5-3, the "going to bed" clause.  

6) But seriously, I'm 33, I'm divorced, I have no job, no house, no car and no clear 5 year plan (I'm also single ladies, and at times I fancy myself a genius. Call me). Instead of seeing this as a world of possibilities, I sit and stew. I'm dancing to the wrong song: Don't happy, be worry. And with a to-do list like that, I've got lots of time to dance.


Sometimes I try to change myself. Here's a method I've used that never works and always provides me a brain hernia:

1) Promise myself that I'll do a 180 degree turn, starting tomorrow.
2) Next day, make an unsustainable plan, fuel myself with coffee and ill-tempered motivation, and throw myself at it.
3) Seriously lose it at the first or second obstacle.
4) Blame them! Become rage.
5) Blame self. Become despair. Crumble.
6) Console with cake and deep, unflinching uneasiness. 

Starting tomorrow (oh, here we go), the agenda will be as follows:

1) Drink morning coffee
2) Examine what is keeping me inactive (fears, most likely)
3) Deconstruct them (are they valid fears?)
4) Wait for colleges to contact me.
5) Go to bed.

It's early in the morning here. Sections 6-1 or 5-1, the 'drinking morning coffee' clauses, will give you an indication of why I'm going to walk away from the computer now.

D'oh Canada.

This is the road home, and I've arrived. 

This post was originally to cover the detailed labyrinth of diligent and hair-splitting bureaucracy I've been wondering through, and with which the auspicious and noble-minded gooberment officials of Canada--duly elected by an educated and discerning populace--generously welcome and process their citizens, returning home from an extended sojourn.  But, as this blog is not politically motivated, my true heart and mind shall not here be revealed regarding the security-laden policies, written in the high-minded voice of learned lawyers rather than one established by time, and in a perceived atmosphere of mutual mistrust, tailored to maximize citizen resource expenditure for the purposes of due diligence in the efforts to avoid losses of their own.

Since I'll not yap about that, I'm almost at a loss of what to yap about, given that most of my time and energy here has so far been directed at Houdini-ing myself out of the locks of red-tape. 

1) Paudash has a lot of trees.

2) A worthwhile goal for me right now would be to enjoy this calm, and maybe root out some of the neurosis and get a clearer perspective of myself.

 3) Find a way to earn my keep, and then give the gooberment the opportunity to tax me their farce share.

4) Accept that the gooberment is what it is and that they can punish me but I cannot punish them. I'm not powerless in the face of them, but I almost am. We all are. Part of living one's life is jumping through their hoops when they hold them, or be punished. 

“The only difference between us and 1984 is we dress better”
--Terence Mckenna. 
. 

A Message about Peace and War

A Facebook message from Antero Alli:

"We live in barbaric times glossed over by hi-tech addictions and complex cultural standards.As much as i personally stand for peace, I am no longer naive enough to assume that war will be rendered obsolete anytime soon. The USA is a young... adolescent nation still boasting and testing its prowess on the global stage until it gets its ass kicked and joins all the other countries humbled by warfare's horrible and necessary defeat of selfish behavior.

Opposing evil seems to have the same effect as throwing gasoline on fire. Evil needs opposition to increase its power. If we know what's worth fighting for, we don't have to waste time & energy fighting against anything. Fight for what's good and evil will eventually be revealed as the pain and suffering it always was.

I don't believe MLK and Gandhi fought against evil. I do believe they knew exactly what they were fighting for: Peace and equality. The 'good fight' triumphs over evil not by opposing it but by alignment with a greater power. This is not merely a semantic quibble but an important distinction between what results from such an alignment vs. using one's will to oppose a perceived evil".

--By Antero Alli

Going Home with Poopy Bum.

"Too Legit to Quit"  has been beaming through my head from the moment I got up yesterday.  This has been a spontaneous decision on the part of the weird gray thing in my skull, seemingly uninfluenced by any input. I don't even like this song. Does anybody else hear it, or is MC Hammer my personal prophet?

Perhaps I need medicine for this.
Perhaps I have jungle fever.
Can you get that from a forest?

Oh yes....the forest.
The story about how I find myself miles deep in the lonely sticks of Canada shall be now told:


(Some history: I'm a Canadian whose been living in S.Korea for the last 6 years but traveling home with a few stops---namely Turkey's Istanbul when this story begins).  

To travel is a hardy kind of fun. 
But growing tired of totting around my deflating bank account and constantly vomiting anus, the word "home" began summoning increasingly pleasant emotions. At the same time, my travel buddy, BM, seemed increasingly nostalgic about America. When cheap American-bound flights were advertised in the window of a travel agent's window, the cards appeared to be stacked in favor of return.We'd both been gone so long that the return would be a trip any way.

BM talked me into going to Chicago on my way back.  Deep-dish pizzas, live music, a baseball game, a place to stay, a museum of dinosaur bones, an aquarium with sharks. He made Chicago appeal to the nerd in me.  I was sold. 


The last thing of real beauty I saw in Istanbul was a nurse.  With her killer accent she said, "Please use this to defecate into", handing me a plastic see-through bottle. The doctor would later tell me with a weird robotic enthusiasm that my colon didn't seem to be bleeding. I was glad to leave on such a positive note.

***I've read that a good blog tends to omit bowel problems. If I am offending my readers just know that I'm more delighted to have readers than diligent not to offend them, sort of like a puppy whose excitement to have visitors unduly relaxes his bladder. Strange are the ways we express fondness for one another.***

On the plane to Chicago the next day, I had one of those rare moments with a perfect stranger. It went sort of like this:

Bump bump bump and also, rattle rattle. Turbulence frightens me and there was enough of it that I was actually getting weary (bored, even) of being afraid for my life. 'Oh, *yawn* I'm having those damned heart palpitations again because the plane is rattling its tail off *yawn*'. During one bout, a young woman simply said, "I am SO AFRAID". And my first thought was, "God, repress that crap".  But then my perception abruptly changed (because brains are weird things).  Suddenly, we were some kind of talking monkey (biological truth) sitting in chairs above the clouds (physical truth) fearing our own mortality in a reality we were born into without choice (existential truth). And I admired her simple, honest statement in the face of such complexity. 

We landed safely at Chicago's horrible airport. This is where BM and I parted ways. I decided to forgo fun in Chicago to simply go home and allow my body and rectum some recovery.  After a hand shake and well-wishes with him I bordered a train to Cleveland where my sister lives.


The train represented yet another night spent in transit. 
The circumstances of last week's sleep were like this: 2 nights on a floor, 1 in a bed, 2 in a bus, 1 in a plane, 1 in a train.

Next day: Mike & Ike's (chewable, fruit-flavored candies) isn't a totally unsatisfying breakfast, if you have enough quarters for the dispenser. They also coat your teeth and hence, are a passable substitute for brushing.

Bug-eyed, sleep-deprived, foul-boweled, and ungroomed, I chewed (and chewed) and tried to come to grips with the reverse culture-shock I was being slammed with.  All the open space, high prices, English and cellulite was blowing my mind.

Later, my sister picked me up and took me to her house. There,  my parent's, her, and my brother-in-law and I tried to have a pleasant reunion but their dogs licked me into hives and scratching. Plus I had a "distinct odor". Shower gels and detergent "fixed" it.

Despite being a vegan, she cooked me one of the best meat lasagnas I've ever had. I'd forgotten how much my family rocks.

Cleveland's clouds were pleasantly strange during my stay there

as well as on my way back home, to Bancroft (actually Paudash lake), Canada

and then I arrived...to a bed in a house situated on a quiet lake, with 2 loving parents, out in the sticks of Canada.

I have to figure out my next move. And it's scary. I'm 33 and my skill set seems most marketable in Korea, followed by just about anywhere else but here. But here is where I want to stay. 

Can a year or two of schooling fix this problem? 
It probably can...If I'm too legit to quit. 

2-Day Tour of Cappadocia

 These really

cool rocky structures are

called

 fairy chimneys.  

We call them fairy chimneys today because historically, people used to think fairies made them. At least, that’s what my tourist guide told me.  

In fact, this is the only thing I learned from my guided tour. 

Disappointed was I to discover that wikipedia explains things differently. Consequently, I diligently reserve judgment on this important issue until the day we can travel backward in time and ask our erosion-ignorant ancestors just what stupid opinion they really had.  

***The views and opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of the author, who retains the right to mock, offend, criticize and even lie if such provides the possibility to amuse, confuse or hamburgers*** 

And now...

A Conversation with my Tour-guide:

Her: We have only 25 five minutes here, and as you can see, that fairy chimney looks like an animal, doesn't it? It sure does! It looks like a camel. Can you see? And that one looks like a sleeping dog and blah blah blah.  Blah blah blah.Blah blah blah, blah blah?  Blah blah blah (etc. )

BM:  (wandering away, aiming his camera: ‘snap’, ‘snap’, ‘snap’, ‘snap’)

Her: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah (etc.)

BM: (out of earshot now, but presumably: ‘snap’, ‘snap’, ‘snap’, ‘snap’, ‘snap’, etc. )

(25 minutes later)

Her: Excuse me, but do you know what that one looks like?

BM: Uh, I guess it sort of looks like a sleeping dog or something.

Her:  No. No.  You do not know, because you did not LISTEN.  (storms off).

So, I'm not a fan of guided tours.

Aside from the fairy chimneys, there are also other things called pigeon houses, which are basically just rocks with holes carved into them (picture above). I thought the name  would have a similar weird story behind it involving cosmic pigeons pecking holes to protest burnt offerings to angry Jehova or whoever but I was wrong. They're just structures to house pigeons because pigeon crap is a great fertilizer.  Who knew?  Clever farmers did.

A lot of the other structures were for people. Centuries old churches and, more commonly, houses were carved directly into the rocks.

Back in Istanbul, the next day:

Another traveler: How long you guys been in Turkey?

BM: A little longer than a week.  You?

Traveler: Me too. I'm way into the history of warfare so accordingly, I've been spending time at the Istanbul military museum, surveying artifacts of the Ottoman blah blah blah blah. 

Me: Hm.  We went to Cappadocia.  It was really...cool. 

Traveler: Oh. That place with all the holes in the rocks. 

Me: Yeah. 

Traveler: Hm.