123 I Love You

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2011-10-09T03:39:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the pause guys. I was in the bathroom.

If any of you do Twitter, you can find me at...

@blottohippo

I hope you're doing well. Drop by for a visit!

Hurtful Yoghurt

2009-11-21T22:27:00.000-08:00

It was a Tuesday morning, and as soon as I woke up, I knew that I would be taking a sick day.

Lying in bed with the alarm still beeping, I bit some dead skin off the side of my thumb and began to wonder how I could feel so rotten and, at the same time, still have a massive erection.

No position that I assumed in bed made the feeling go away, so I got out of bed and drank some pineapple juice. When I was done, I put the juice back in the fridge, walked over to my toilet, and threw it all up. The enchanting circle of life.

“Do I have the pig flu?” I giggled, crouching down in front of the porcelain with my knees shaking and hot “sick” tears streaming down my cheeks. I felt as if the word “pathetic” had jumped out of my Oxford English Dictionary and taken possession of my body and soul.

Not a good way to start the morning.

I texted my boss with one word – “sick” – and went straight back to bed. When she wrote me back, it was not to ask how I was faring, but rather to order me to go to a clinic. I didn’t respond, because I wanted her to think that I’d peacefully passed away. I hated the idea of going to a clinic.

Let me explain.

It’s hard enough getting a video store membership here in Japan, let alone getting medical treatment. Sure, I could probably find a clinic, and sure, I know the Japanese word for “ill,” but from that point on I’d basically have to surrender myself to the medical personnel. They’d have the green light to experiment on my foreign body in any way they saw fit – including liquidizing me (just for kicks) or administering a pap smear.

No thanks. I decided to continue lying in bed, thinking about my sickness. And my erection.

What on earth was happening to me? Why was I suddenly so sick? Was it swine flu? No. I would have been running a fever and experiencing intense muscle pain. One of my students had had the swine flu, and he said that it had made him feel as though his testicles were being sucked up into his body. I’m not sure I understood what he meant by this, but I didn’t pursue the matter, because we’d already exceeded the number of times the word “testicle” can be mentioned in a 45-minute English lesson.

No. My sickness probably had more to do with the yoghurt I’d eaten out of my sink drain the night before.

What happened was, I opened a carton of yoghurt. When I tried to drain the yoghurt juice, I ended up letting the entire contents of the carton splat into the sink by accident.

“Oh shit, then.”

Instead of rinsing the yoghurt away, I took a spoon and attempted to scoop what I could from the drain filter into my mouth – all the while seeing myself, from an imaginary bird’s-eye-view, as a 30-something bachelor eating plain yoghurt out of his sink drain.

Even to my crude, unscientific mind, this appeared to be a very unhealthy thing to do – but, you see, so great was my desire for plain yoghurt. The risk involved somehow made my eating experience all the more pleasurable – as if I were partaking of some exotic, forbidden fruit. I went to bed shortly thereafter, and the sickness didn’t strike until the next day.

My sick day was spent lying in bed, perfectly still, or sitting in my beanbag chair, reading kick-ass short stories and drinking peppermint tea. I’m better now.

Gentleman Thief

2009-10-19T04:51:00.000-07:00

Here in Japan, apart from my books and clothes, my most important possession is my bicycle. It is the worst bicycle in the world. It is called “The Sunflower.”

Today, one of the brake lines snapped, causing me to slam into the wall of an Italian restaurant. There is a hole in the seat cushion – right where I typically put my nuts. The tires slowly leak air, so I have to fill them up every week. Did I mention that it is called “The Sunflower”? On the plus side, it is purple – the color of royalty.

Every week I have to go to my local gas station and ask for their air pump to fill up the tires. I hate doing this, because it makes me feel like The Poorest Man in the World. Everyone else is a paying customer, putting gasoline in their cars, and then I wheel in on my shambles of a bike to beg for mere air.

The contrast between me and the customers is most apparent when I am actually pumping the air into my tires. Everyone else is standing by, relaxing, waiting for their tanks to fill, and I am furiously pumping up and down in some kind of mock sexual frenzy – saying the word “fuck” in an exasperated tone of voice whenever the little air nozzle comes off the wheel.

Sometimes I also end up running around the parking lot because the wind has blown away the greasy plastic bag that the pump comes in. I’m usually saying “fuck” then, too.

Today, when I went to the gas station to borrow the air pump, no one was behind the counter. There was a Japanese attendant waiting outside, but I hated the idea of summoning him into the store just to ask for the air pump, so I decided to wait. He would eventually come in of his own accord.

He didn’t.

To get his attention (I knew that he could see me out of the corner of his eye), I decided to steal something. Well, not actually “steal.” I would simply pick something up – an item of negligible worth – and slowly move it towards my jacket pocket. All the while I would be staring at the attendant and making him uncomfortable with my intense eye-beams. He would be forced to look.

The thing that I chose to “steal” was a small figurine with a moving head. There was a solar panel in the base of the figurine, and this is what caused the head to move. Maliciously, I covered the solar panel, thereby depriving the tiny creature of sunlight, and its head stopped moving. It gave me a feeling of real power. I flicked the head. It jiggled. I decided to “steal” it.

Just as I had started to raise the toy from the counter, the attendant came in. He did not greet me, but instead, with a very serious expression, he looked at the toy in my hand.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“I do,” I said.

“Please take it,” he said. “It is my gift.”

“No, no, I couldn’t.”

“Please. Go on. I insist.”

“Ok,” I said, depositing it in my jacket pocket.

He smiled.

“By the way,” I said, “can I also use the bicycle pump?”

Not only did he produce the pump, but he also filled my tires with air. He didn’t even swear when the little nozzle came off, or when the plastic bag blew away in the wind and he had to go chasing after it because I had just eaten a bag of Doritos and was afraid of getting a cramp.

This is the kind of thing that only happens in Japan.

Je suis le King of Pop

2009-10-09T07:13:00.000-07:00

I am typing this in a Japanese Starbucks. I begin work in one hour.

Sitting directly across from me is a huge woman with the largest breasts I have ever seen. When I saw them, I did a double-take – which is saying something, because I typically don’t like to be caught staring at women’s breasts. She is wearing a shirt that says, “Je suis le King of Pop.” It seems a little presumptuous to claim the title “King of Pop” so soon after Michael Jackson’s death, but the French somehow makes it more acceptable.

(But seriously, if I am ever assaulted at night by someone who is in every conceivable way the opposite of the King of Pop, the final police sketch will bear a striking resemblance to this woman.)

The new King of Pop is sitting with another huge woman whose hair is in a bob on top of her head. When they came in, my first thought was “couple of lesbians.” I look around, and it seems that every Japanese person in this Starbucks is huge. You would be hard-pressed to find a mouth that is not breaking down large chunks of food. God bless globalization.

There is a little boy sitting near me in a high chair. His father is putting bits of muffin into the boy’s mouth. Who does this boy think he is, anyway? The king of Starbucks?

As I am typing this, another massive woman comes in. What the hell is going on here? She is literally wearing suspenders. Suspenders! Suspenders is one article of clothing that I would refuse to wear if I were extremely overweight. As soon as she sees me she scowls. What? Am I not allowed to sit here eating my blueberry and cream scone? Don’t get angry just because my face had a look of profound disgust on it. It had nothing to do with you. That’s how I ordinarily look.

A 20-something girl is standing at the sugar and cream counter. Her shirt says, “I am pretty.” The whole shirt is adorned with the word “pretty” written many times, in many different colors and styles of font. The trouble here (and I’m not trying to be mean) is that she is not especially pretty. I wonder if she seriously thought that, by wearing a shirt with a particular word written over and over on it, she could hoodwink me into thinking that she possessed that quality. If this were possible, I would immediately set about hand-stitching all of my own clothing – but instead of “pretty,” I would use such words as “handsome,” “go-getter,” and “not only interested in sex, but also in hearing about your day. How was it anyway?”

Time to go to work.

Holdin' Hands

2009-10-05T01:35:00.000-07:00

I met Nozomi two months ago in a Tokyo bookstore. She was pretty and, when she made eye contact with me for a moment, I thought I saw her smile.

“OK,” I said to myself, “I’ll try and talk to her.” I waited for a few minutes to steel my nerve, rehearsing in my mind the Japanese that I would use.

There were no other people in the aisle, which was ideal. I have tried approaching women before in public places – coffee shops, grocery stores, etc. - and when there are other people nearby, I feel as if I’m committing some unspeakable crime. I feel like a deformed, sinister hobgoblin, trying to lure innocent victims back to my subterranean lair.

Nozomi and I were facing in opposite directions, so, in order to speak to her, I had to do a 180 degree turn and spend some time pretending to browse through the books that she was looking at (Japanese books about flower arrangement). After a few minutes of taking random items off the shelves and inspecting their covers, I turned to her and said “HELLO.” In my nervousness, the word came out much louder than it should have, and I sounded like an autistic boy trying to practice the social graces and getting it all wrong. A person in the next aisle dropped something and mumbled.

There was some initial awkwardness, but we talked about Canada, books, and type-2 diabetes (she’s a doctor). When I found out about her job, I cobbled together a very primitive joke by pointing at my belly and saying a medical phrase that I’d picked up from my Japanese text: “I think I’m pregnant.” She didn’t exactly laugh, but she definitely didn't frown, and, in the end, she agreed to give me her email address.

Things might have turned out very differently if I’d used the other Japanese medical phrase I’d picked up from that phrasebook: “I haven’t had my period for weeks.”

***

Since then, Nozomi and I have been going on regular dates. There are no serious problems so far, but there have been obstacles. When she’s talking about her job, I sometimes have no idea about how to respond.

Once we were strolling down the avenue, hand in hand, enjoying a couple of green tea ice creams, and she whispered this sweet nothing in my ear: “Have you ever heard of acute myocardial infarction?”

“I think I’ve heard of it,” I said, licking my cone.

Or, another time, she got a call from the hospital when we were at the aquarium.

When the call was finished, I said, “What was that all about?”

“Oh, a nurse just wanted to know about how much insulin to give a patient.”

“And what did you recommend?”

“Five units.”

“Neat.”

If you can think of any way to extend this kind of conversation beyond the word “neat,” I’m all ears.

Sometimes, when I think of the many differences between Nozomi’s job and my own, I feel like a little nothing of a man. This feeling is most intense when she gets a call from the hospital, because it reminds me that there is never an urgent need for my expertise. I can’t imagine getting a late-night call from someone saying, "You’ve got to get over here - there’s a group of middle-aged businessmen who need to practice phrases for beginning and ending a meeting! And whatever you do, don't forget to bring your Clifford hand puppet!” It wouldn’t happen.

So, when Nozomi is telling me about her work week, I’m admiring her, but I’m also saying to myself, "I wish I were more involved in the goings-on of the world. I wish I were more necessary.” I know these feelings are probably petty and evidence of despicable male insecurity, but I can’t help it. Take any random day of the week, and try to decide for yourself whose contributions to society are more important:

Monday: Nozomi shows great respect for human life. I rearrange the letters on the Japanese teacher’s classroom door from “Happy Halloween” to “Oh Hell.”

Thursday: Nozomi eases a patient’s suffering by simply listening to him. I spend a large part of the afternoon simply galloping around the lobby in a horse mask. Children boot me in the ass and use the Japanese for “giddy-up.”

Saturday: Nozomi gives her patient information about his complicated illness in a way that he can understand. I draw faces and cryptic clues on every piece of fruit I can find in the office fridge. I eat some of the fruit.

I don’t think any of this will be a problem though, because I believe I can hide the details of my job for a very long time – maybe forever. I suppose it could spell trouble if we marry and have a baby and there’s a bring-your-child-to-work day. But by then it will probably be too late!

She did not appreciate my novelty whistle.

2009-09-28T05:21:00.000-07:00

One of my duties as an English teacher is to stand in the front lobby of my school and chat with students in a non-threatening manner.

I’ve had many injuries in the lobby. A kid once thought that it would be "cool" to drag the sharp corner of a Lego piece down my spine to see what I do when exposed to great physical stress. In return, I taught him the word “MOTHERFUCKER.”

I didn’t and still don’t care. You drag a piece of blue Lego down my spine in any situation – even if it's when I'm at a funeral, standing over an open casket – and I will yell it out again. What? You think that it's a horrible word that should never be spoken, under any circumstances? Then have your kids use Lego to create medieval castles, or aircraft carriers, or pirate ships, or maximum-security prisons in which they can incarcerate themselves for 8-10 years.

When I think back on all of the things that have happened to me in our school lobby, I wonder if I've earned the reputation as a kind of “freak” of the school – if not of my local community.

Take last week for example. I saw a mom sitting and holding her baby. I thought that I would introduce myself.

I brought along my slide whistle – the long, cylindrical kind that extends and makes the “whooooooop” sound that you hear in cartoons when someone's pants fall down. I bent over the baby, and just as I put the wooden whistle to my lips, I realized that the mother was not just holding her baby, but also breast-feeding it. She looked down at my whistle, and since it was practically dipping into the milk, I guess she thought that I was using it as a kind of straw to get a drink of my own.

She looked horrified. To show her that my wooden instrument was a whistle and not a straw, I stood up, wrestled my bulging eyes away from her breast, and started blowing it (the whistle). The cartoon “whoooooop” sound made it look like I was trying to make a joke out of the whole thing, and so she put the baby to one side – like she preparing to kick my ass. I have to say, this was the first time in my life when I’ve literally run away from an awkward situation.

Another time the lobby was much more crowded. A little boy was sitting beside a plastic bag of colored wooden blocks. The boy was crying and tugging on his mom’s pant leg, but she was typing on her cell phone and not paying attention.

“Oh, hi there little guy,” I said. “You want to play with the blocks?”

I dumped the blocks out on the floor, and we built things together.

We built a technicolour pyramid.

“Pyramid,” I said.

“PEER-mit,” said the boy, smiling. Then he used his fist to bash the pyramid that I'd spent five minutes making, and I wasn't even angry.

I thought to myself, “You know, I really think I have a way with children. And at least that’s something.”

Basking in my new role as a kind of “fun uncle” figure, I took the empty plastic bag and put it on my head – like a *crazy* hat. Because the plastic was thick and the opening of the bag was just smaller than the circumference of my head, the bag stayed there, like a transparent top hat. The boy was loving it.

For kicks, I removed the bag and put it on the boy’s head. The opening of the bag was too big, so I ended up putting his head inside the plastic bag. I was laughing, because this truly was a *crazy* hat. After all, what kind of hat do you put your entire head and face in? What kind of weird hat would that be?! At that moment, in my mind, I was the funnest uncle in the world and of all time.

Things changed when I saw the boy staring out at me, trying in vain to remove the bag. His breath was fogging up the inside of the plastic, and I realized that he wasn’t in a *crazy* hat at all, but in a dangerous situation that could cause him to suffocate.

All at once, things became very clear. I had just "plastic bagged" a boy's friggin' head at my workplace, in a lobby that was full of hostile witnesses. Mothers. His mother. With the way everyone was looking at me, you'd have almost forgotten that I was a "fun uncle" figure. I took the bag off (much harder to get off than to put on, by the way), and I pointed to the blocks that we’d been playing with earlier.

“Pyramid?” I said.

From now on, I’m only going to appear in the lobby if someone specifically asks for me. Since this hasn’t happened yet, I expect things to get better.

The Nipple Stigmata

2009-09-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

These days, when people tell me I'm fat, I know they're only joking.

If you google my name, you’ll come across an old photo of me. The difference is staggering. I’m standing there, pasty white and double-chinned, smiling the awkward smile that characterizes all photos from that bleak period of my life as a private high school teacher. I’m wearing a pair of trousers that would slip off me now. The student beside me is smiling with great enthusiasm, as if to say, “Out of the two of us, I am the thinner one.”

Do you want to know my weight-loss secret? I don’t count calories. I don’t bounce up and down on a big rubber fun-ball or wear a pair of medical shoes. I haven’t cut down on beer (F that), and haven't worn my girdle for years, dear. Here’s the secret: I run. Last month I covered 220 km. Since coming to Japan I estimate that I’ve actually run 1/20th of the distance around Mother Earth.

I’m in love with almost everything about running. I love being in the vitamin-rich sunshine, and I love how the blood flowing through my veins feels like a river after the spring thaw - a roaring, heavy-metal river that flows from Mount Awesome to the Great Lake of Kick-Ass. There’s nothing like rubbing my hand up the back of my head and seeing the cool mist of sweat glinting in the sun. The lactic burn evaporates my worldly cares – or at least pushes them into the background for a while so my subconscious can reduce them to bite-sized annoyances.

There is only one thing about running that I hate: the stares of the Japanese townspeople. Everyone has to get a good look in. And these are not just passing glances. These are flat-out, open-mouthed stares – like I’m not a man out for a morning jog, but a wicked poltergeist.

Only beautiful women don’t look (thank you so much). Everyone else is a stare-much – especially when I’m wearing my “nipple stigmata” shirt. This is a white t-shirt that always chafes against my nipples, causing them to become irritated and bleed. The blood trickles down, producing an overall effect that is not unlike the stigmata (the only difference being that it comes from my nipples, and God’s grace doesn't really factor in to the picture).

Once, when I was on the final K of a 10K run, an old Japanese man was so amazed to see a foreigner wearing shorts and moving at twice the speed of “stroll” that he actually stopped in his tracks and turned to face me and frown. What bothered me is that this wasn’t even subtle. I glared at him, and he didn’t look away, which bothered me even more.

"Got a damn staring problem?" I wanted to ask, but dared not.

Instead, I stopped in the middle of the street and started doing jumping jacks. More people gathered round. This was the angriest I’ve ever been while doing jumping jacks. The old man didn’t give in, so I started jumping-jacking towards him. That’s when he shook his head as if to say, “You don’t see that every day,” and started walking away.

I told a friend about this and he said, “You’ve got to be careful.”

Oh no, don't run. You wouldn't want to alarm anyone. Once a woman screamed and ran indoors when she saw me sprinting my last hundred meters in her direction. Another time a school girl may have thought that I was pursuing her, because she was riding her bike ahead of me and her path corresponded precisely to my running route. Calm down everyone. I’m not a predator. I’m not a poltergeist. I'm not really even a rapist. I’m a just out for some exercise. Think about it for a second: would a rapist or a poltergeist be carrying an Ipod nano loaded with Mika tunes?

I don’t want to give you the impression that people think I’m non-human only when I’m jogging. A little while ago I took a break from writing this and popped over to my local bento shop to get some lunch. The shop is nearby, so I just threw on whatever clothing lay between me and the doorway.

While I was waiting for my food, an attractive young mother came in with her son and daughter. The son – about 4 or 5 years old and wearing a yellow necktie – came over and sat beside me, even though there were plenty of other seats available. After staring at me for a few seconds, he stood up on the bench and started stroking my left cheek – as if my face were a semi-precious stone. I should note that I hadn’t shaved, and I was wearing jeans and dress shoes, sans socks. Also, my fly was down. The mother, who hadn’t been paying attention until this point, turned around and gave her son an outraged scolding – like he’d picked up a dirty hypodermic needle and said, “Look mom, a popsicle.” In retrospect, I could have chosen a more opportune moment to hoist my fly.

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether you jog or not. In a foreign country, you will always be a bald freak. But why are you running? Are you trying to attract attention? Pull up your damn fly. Tonight I’ll go for a midnight jog. Maybe that way, by cloaking my body in a shroud of night, I will find sweet release.

Suckle Me This

2009-09-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

I’m still teaching in Japan.

I’m even seeing a woman. She’s a doctor, she’s a PYT, and her hair is shoulder-length. The only reason I’m throwing out these details is to impress you. I won’t even tell you whether or not she’s Japanese, and I won’t tell you her age or hobbies. That gives you some idea about how secretive I am. But I will tell you that we had this conversation the other day:

I said, “Well, you know, if I ever get sick, you’re the first one I’m coming to.”

She said, “But I am gynecologist.”

This is probably the most difficult sentence in the world to offer a rejoinder to, so I just pretended to become curious about the atmosphere of the coffee shop we were in. I looked over at the elderly lady sitting near us who was sipping tea and making extensive notes. Hopefully she was working on a haiku.

I’ve moved out of my crappy old apartment. It was surrounded by bars and noisy as hell at night. I felt like I was becoming unhinged. Do you know what it feels like to lie in bed, night after night until 3 or 4 in the morning, and fight for sleep against the sounds of a drunken Asian man belting out karaoke versions of Joan Jett and her Blackhearts? You’ll end up throttling your pillow as a stand-in Asian fellow while whispering sweet nothings like, “You fucking little shit!...FUCKING. LITTLE. SHIT!!!! FUCKI-LIL-SHIT!!!” Other reasons the apartment was bad include (but are by no means limited to) the trickle-down stain of blood from the previous tenant on the wall (but is it art?), and the fact that there was never any sunlight. You wouldn’t be wrong to say that I turned into a vampire during this period.

It was a time when I became very hostile towards all things Japanese. I stopped reviewing my vocabulary flash cards, and I even tried to tear my copy of Tale of the Genji in half, but the spine was too thick so, enraged at my own impotence, I tore up Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men instead.

Now I live in an apartment on the other side of town. I'm on a quiet, shady street, within walking distance of my school. I live beside a shrine where there is a tree that is rumored to have unearthly, magical powers. As local legend has it, if you touch the tree, you will be given vast stores of energy. I guess we’ll have to see. I haven’t touched it yet, but I totally will dude! That is definitely on my to-do list. Maybe I’ll even make a day out of it.

There’s no need to go rambling on. Thanks to those of you who are still tuning in (but not thank you to the person who said I might be dead). There will come a time in the near future when regular posts begin again, but we all need a break sometimes.

And if you have a bit more free time, why not look at this picture of an authentic Japanese “suckle room”?

Haiku No. 34-35 (regular posts to begin soon)

2009-06-02T05:33:00.000-07:00

35

My hobbies? Uno,
and rejecting folks before
they can reject me.

34

She was nothing to
write home about. For one, she
had a forehead dent.

Haiku No. 30-33

2009-05-17T03:30:00.000-07:00

33

I use the same notch,
but this time my belt's too short!
Weird and magic belt.

32

Driver's licence pic:
I show it to my student.
He says, "MURDERER."

31

It kind of bugs me
when people sit down too fast
on my bean-bag chair.

30

I hear some sex sounds
EEE! OOH! AHH! SUCK ON IT! BEEEEEEP!*
*it's my microwave.

Haiku No. 26-29

2009-05-02T02:58:00.001-07:00

29

Overcrowded world,
plus: the Mexican swine flu.
God...this is your chance!

28

Sam Cooke once sang this:
"Oh, She was only 16."
Pedophile alert!

27

Here is a true truth:
The Japanese cannot do
the human beatbox.

26

"Up and about." Hmmm...
Is it possible to be
up and not about?

Haiku No. 25 (I am still alive edition)

2009-04-23T17:50:00.000-07:00

Some small life changes.
Who needs legs/arms anyway?
Kidding (or *AM* I?).

Haiku No. 24

2009-03-07T18:18:00.000-08:00

24

Grandma calls the cat:
"Heeere pussy pussy pussy."
Sadly exciting.

Haiku No. 21-23

2009-02-27T16:45:00.000-08:00

23

Fine! I Admit it!
YOU ARE A PERFECT PERSON!
(But your butt? Still cracked.)

22

I’d like to slap you
for that thing you said to Neil
about my dog's smile.

21

Today I drew you.
You saw it and you said, “Yikes.”
Your eyes are weird though.

The Tiger Woods of Bowling

2009-02-16T05:04:00.000-08:00

It was our Friday teachers’ meeting, and we were trying to think of a fun, team-building activity for the weekend.

“How ‘bout bowling?” said Marg.

Everyone nodded in agreement.

“That could work, that could work,” said Simon, using repetition for effect.

“Fuck bowling,” said somebody else.

It was me. I was sitting in the chair that gets the least sunlight. What I was doing was, I was holding my pencil by the tip and shaking it so that it looked like it was made of rubber.

“So, majority rules?” said one humorist (Simon).

We decided on bowling.

I’m not saying that I don’t like fun. I just don’t like bowling – or any activity whose success depends on fancy footwork, hand-eye coordination, upper body strength, and wearing rented footwear.

I was on a team with one other guy and two girls. For our team name we chose “Awesome Blossoms.” I don’t know why this name was chosen, because I was in the bathroom when it was decided. If I had been involved in the process, I like to think that the name would have been very different.

Our team quickly fell into an annoying ritual. If one of us got a spare, the others would give this person enthusiastic two-handed high-fives. I wasn’t getting any spares, so it soon became very irritating having to give my other teammates constant high-fives after their spares. I couldn’t stop giving high-fives, because that would have been childish. So instead, I made an "X" of my forearms whenever I gave them – to cancel out any hint of admiration. I hope the others noticed this (but not on a conscious level, because that could create tension at work).

Bowling is a sport of shame. I say this because, after every performance, you actually have to turn around and look your teammates in the eyes. By doing this, you are taking ownership for your throw. You are saying, “I did that. Please give me your feedback.” And your teammates are either saying “We approve,” or, “You are the embodiment of physical weakness.”

Whenever the ball left my hand, it would find the shortest possible distance to the gutter. I don’t know why. I tried everything. I tried follow-through. I tried doing a little twirl of my foot when I let go of the ball. I even tried a little-known move called “The Baby.” This involved cradling the ball in my arm before releasing it, to give it some spin. When I tried this, the ball didn’t even touch the alley. Instead, it collided with another customer. Coincidentally, he was holding a baby! Thankfully, bowling alley floors are made to withstand 10-pound objects falling onto them, and there was no damage whatsoever (to the floor).

The balls were beautifully colored: ochre, violet, and even vermillion. The ochre balls were the heaviest - weighing in at about 14 pounds. The vermillion balls, at 8 pounds, were the “women’s” balls.

After half an hour of tossing the ochre balls, my arm felt like it had developed advanced rheumatoid arthritis. After every gutter ball, I would suck in air through my teeth, wince, and return to my seat staring at my throwing arm, as if to inspect it for damage (but really, it was to avoid making eye-contact with my teammates).

“Gonna have to rub some cream on this when I get home,” I said to Simon.

Simon laughed, thinking that I was making a small joke. I guess everything is funny to Simon. I guess it would be fun to be able to find humor in the simple truths of life, like Simon does. I hope Simon enjoys going through life a jackass.

Eventually, I had to switch to the pretty 8-pound balls.

What troubled me was that the girls, even though they had the option of using the lighter balls, kept on using the heavier ochre balls, as if to mock me. It’s almost as if they were, through the device of the bowling balls, actually neutering me of my own balls – the ones between my legs! Especially Camilla, who, after getting strike after strike, would flex her arms in body-builder poses, and march right up to me to demand high-fives.

“Stop selecting the heavier balls!” I wanted to scream.

At the end of the games (we played two), everyone gathered around in a circle to go over the highlights. Marg got printouts of everybody’s scores, and she announced the top three. Then she read out the bottom three – of which mine was the lowest by far. It wasn’t even laughably low – it was frighteningly low. It was “This guy might have something seriously wrong with him” low.

But still, Simon found it funny.

“Look on the bright side Derek – if this was golf, you’d be Tiger Woods!” he said, playfully slapping me on the back.

“If this was golf, you’d be Tiger Woods!” I said in a voice that perfectly imitated Simon’s, but at a much higher pitch.

We went for ice cream.

Haiku No. 18-20

2009-02-13T05:38:00.000-08:00

20

In my fridge, ice grows.
Not knowing how to defrost,
I replace the fridge.

19

Do you say "icebox"
instead of saying "fridge"? Yes?
You are old at heart.

18

So dark and icy...
filled with rot of yes-ter-year.
My fridge? Or...MY SOUL?

Haiku No. 17

2009-02-10T18:21:00.001-08:00

They said you were cruel,
but oh, I defended you!
I thought they said "cool."

Haiku No. 16

2009-02-09T17:06:00.000-08:00

Lovely silk-smooth thighs...
exquisitely feminine.
Spandex: not my look.

Haiku No. 15

2009-02-05T06:51:00.000-08:00

Sorry for laughing.
I guess I just didn't think
that cats can get AIDS.

Haiku No. 14

2009-02-03T23:01:00.000-08:00

I woke up today,
and on my dick? A CLOWN nose!
Hey, we've all been there.

Haiku No. 6-13

2009-02-02T03:08:00.000-08:00

13

His name was Gaylord.
It's a name you don't hear much.
But still, it suits him.

12

Looking at the stars
reminds me of God's love. And -
my goddamn sore neck.

11

Please don’t be so vague.
"You’ve pronounced it wrong. It’s vague."
That’s what I said. Vague.

10

I jog to lose weight.
Why don't you take a picture?
It will last longer.

9

Lover, take my hand.
I have found my other half.
Prosthetics be gone!

8

Oh no! It is a
WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS!
(I've switched to one-ply.)

7

"I did," I whispered.
Not a funny joke to make
after wedding vows.

6

Her birthday's next week,
but the word "Mom" looks so wrong
on my To Do list.

Haiku No. 4-5

2009-02-01T17:03:00.000-08:00

5

Alien-faced boy
screams, “MOM! I want to go home!”
Sadly befitting.

4

Ugly check-out boy
says, “I need paper bags.”
Yes...
in more ways than one.

Haiku No. 3

2009-01-31T17:04:00.000-08:00

I laughed at your joke...
but really, inside, it hurt.
Hope you like dead dogs!

Haiku No. 2

2009-01-30T17:58:00.000-08:00

Man does wheelchair tricks.
But soon it’s too late to say,
“Don’t lean back so far.”

Haiku No. 1

2009-01-29T00:37:00.000-08:00

A new world order!
Obama said he'll bring change!
¿Why am I still fat?

Hurling Through the Air

2009-01-19T05:33:00.000-08:00

On my flight home, I had an aisle seat. I always ask for an aisle seat. At least that way I know, if the plane starts to plummet from the sky, I will have the freedom to get up and stretch my legs before impact.

After 13 hours of flight, I had come to learn a few interesting things about the girl sitting next to me: she was Chinese, she was off to Kentucky to study human resources, and she had a very deep voice. Her name may have been something similar to “Juice of Apple” or “Juice of Abel” or "Juiceable," but since I asked her what her name was when they were serving drinks, I can’t be sure.

It was her first time coming to America, and she was nervous. I could sympathize. After having lived in Japan for a year, I know what it’s like to move to a foreign land where, when you say your name in a deep, manly voice, people think that you are calling out the names of beverages or other foodstuff. I told her that I would help her find her connecting flight to Kentucky, and she was very grateful. I was very grateful too, because my final destination was not Kentucky.

As the plane began its descent into Chicago, the girl started rubbing her stomach. “I do not feel good,” she said.

Me too! I did not feel good either! Because, when the girl said this, the first thing that popped into my mind was a montage of vivid images of her vomiting – against the window, into the magazine pouch, into my face-nose-eyes-ears-mouth – like an enthusiastic mother bird feeding its young.

“Are you going to...you know...?” I said, and I gave her the universal hand gesture for “vomit.” This is made by stroking the backs of your fingers under your chin and saying, “Uaaaaaah.”

Her body made a sudden, violent jerk, and she cupped her hands over her mouth. I started rummaging around frantically for the air sickness bag. When I found it, the girl snatched it out of my hands, put it up to her face, and leaned forward. The trouble with this little arrangement was, if she did let loose, part of it would probably end up on my knees.

“You know what?” I said. “Hmmm. Could you maybe...face towards the window?”

No response.

I pointed to the window. “Please look that way...so you don’t...you know...on my knees.”

She wasn’t listening, so I placed my hand on the top of her head and gently swiveled it towards the window. This wasn’t the most sensitive thing to do in the situation, I know, but I didn’t even care. Spending three hours in the Chicago airport waiting for my connecting flight with vomity pants isn’t exactly on my bucket list.

Every now and then the girl would turn around and look at me with a worried expression. I gestured for her to keep the bag up to her mouth, and sometimes I would also give her a thumbs-up signal. It was my humble way of saying, “You can do it. It will be the best. ”

The plane tilted and dipped. It tugged and jerked. It smelled of toilet and cooking, and I couldn’t tell which was which. It was very warm. A bead of sweat began to form at the top of my head.

“Yo man! I think I’m gonna huuuurl...,” a nearby man announced.

“I think we all are,” I whispered, with a great deal less bonhomie, and I started flipping through the pages of my duty-free catalogue.

Just when I was looking at a photograph of a fluted mahogany laundry hamper, the girl unleashed:

“UAAAAAAAAAAH! UUUUUUUAAAAAAAAH!” she said sweetly.

It was so loud that I actually thought she was horsing around. It was like the exaggerated sound someone would make if they were imitating someone vomiting. But I quickly discovered that she wasn’t joking, because, when I looked over at her, she was curled up against the window, and the black jacket on her knees was covered in a glistening sheen of stomach bile and ill-assorted food chunks. But is it art?

I was both sympathetic and repulsed.

“Are you going to be ok?” I asked.

I immediately regretted asked the question, because she turned to me with her mouth half-open, and strings of dripping bile were connecting her upper and lower lips. Her eyes were watering, and she made a loud sniff.

“Right...you don’t have to answer that,” I said, and slowly brought the duty-free catalogue back up to my face. I stared at a photograph of a sweatshirt that said, “What part of ‘y’all’ don’t you understand?” for what seemed like forever, and I think I kind of became one with it.

We landed just when I was starting to entertain wild fantasies about seizing control of the aircraft by force and sending it into a controlled nose dive.

As the other passengers were gathering up their luggage and leaving the plane, I stayed with the girl. After all, I remembered promising to help her find her connecting flight. She was not getting out of her seat.

“Go, go,” she finally said, waving me off. “Go.”

“Good luck in Kentucky,” I said.

I did not know what else to say to her, but I didn’t want the last word that passed between us to be “Kentucky.” Really, after what we had been through, I knew that mere words would never be enough. So, instead of speaking, I decided to use the universal language of human touch.

I reached out to pat her on the shoulder to let her know that it would be all right, but, in an effort to minimize contact between the surface areas of our respective bodies, I ended up just kind of pulling a loose thread from her sweater - one that must have been pretty integral to sweater as a whole, because, when I pulled it, the "loose thread" just kept getting longer and longer.

"Goodbye," I said, speaking the international language of English.

"Go," she said.

With that, I dropped the thread - not just of her sweater, but also of our conversation.

A Travel Tale Told by an Idiot

2009-01-11T19:16:00.000-08:00

December 27th, 2008, 7:16 am

I am on my way to the airport. This is the day that I fly back to Canada from Japan.

In the train, I am standing up and facing the doors. On the doors, there are three black smudges. I begin trying to line up the shadow of my head with these smudges so that they look like eyes and a mouth. The train is jerking back and forth, so it’s not easy. When I finally manage to do it, I have a kind of out-of-body experience. I am able to look down and see myself grinning at the shadow-face that I have created on the train door. This makes me very sad, and yet also very happy – because, after all, I have made a face.

8:12 am

I am at the airport and walking to the American Airlines counter to check in my baggage.

I am so focused on trying to find the counter that I accidentally run into a boy who has bright red hair, and I knock a candied pipe out of his mouth. He glares at me and picks up his pipe and dusts it off. His face is so grumpy that, for a second, he looks like a real old man with a real pipe. He curses me, but his words are just jibber-jabber. He says, “Brajabijababubrasha.” Maybe it is Portuguese, but is it possible for Portuguese people to have red hair? Of course not!

I realize that I have no idea what a Portuguese person looks like. I make a mental note to Google “Portugal” when I get home. If I remember, that is. Which I won’t.

9:09 am

I am waiting at the gate to board the plane.

My stomach does not feel good. This is partly because I will be spending the next 13 hours of my life sealed inside a metal tube, breathing in recycled burps and farts, and watching re-runs of the “hilarious” show Monk. I am also not feeling good because, the previous night, when I went out for dinner with a local doctor and his son, I ate the part of a shellfish that you aren’t supposed to eat.

When I put it in my mouth, I said, “This is very bitter,” and I swallowed it.

The doctor said, “It is the bad part. Please don’t eat it.”

“It was poo,” said his son, grinning.

I gently placed my chopsticks in front of me and stared down at them. The doctor and his son probably thought that I was admiring their intricate design, but really, I was trying to align the shadow of my head with them so that they would look like a mouth.

9:35 am

I am still waiting at the gate.

I see the red-haired little boy again. He and his mother come and sit beside me. The boy has a fresh candied pipe in his mouth. The pipe itself is made of black licorice, and small specks of red candy have been sprinkled on the end to simulate burning embers. I truly love the smell of a pipe.

The mother glances over at my notepad – the notepad on which I’ve been recording these idiotic travel experiences. The words at the top of the page are, “I see the red-haired little boy again.” She grabs her luggage and her son’s hand and moves to another part of the room – at the maximum possible distance from me and my notepad.

I notice now that the boy’s hair really is a remarkable shade of red. I wonder if that hair will be a boon or a bane to him in later life? Ron Howard did quite well, but the guy from the Partridge family? Not so much.

10:01 am

I begin to play my favourite airport game. It is called, “Name the Distinguishing Feature.” What I do is, I look at the people around me, and I try to come up with their most distinguishing feature as quickly as possible.

Unibrow! Sweet eyes! Paralyzed from the waist down! Could he be a terrorist?

You should try to remain silent when you’re playing this game, especially if the most distinguishing feature is “full-blown acne.” It is impossible for me to stress this enough.

10:26 am

We begin boarding the plane. As I approach my seat, a very large woman (she would be “triple chin” in the “Distinguishing Feature” game) asks me to help her put her bag in the overhead compartment. Weird how she’d ask me, because, if she were to play the “Distinguishing Feature” game with me, her answer would probably be “needs more protein in his diet.”

I have never lifted anything so heavy in my life. I would have preferred to stuff her into the overhead compartment. What had she filled her suitcase with? Molten steel? A black hole? Starr Jones? As I struggle with it, I look down and see a sly-faced man grinning up at me, taking immense pleasure in my suffering.

“Is it goin’ in there?” the woman says to me.

“It doesn’t seem to want to – ”

“Go on! You got to really ram it in there – ”

I look down at the man again, and he is smiling more than ever, because the woman’s words have made it sound like she and I are having rough sex. This adds a hint of dirtiness to everything that I say after.

“I can’t! I don’t think it’s going to fit!”

“PUSH!”

“I am pushing!”

“Oh, don’t worry ‘bout it then,” says the woman. “If you can’t get it in, you can’t get it in.”

“Ok!” I say, and I let go of the suitcase, thinking that she has it. She doesn’t, and it comes crashing down onto the smiling man. He stops smiling and pretends to go to sleep. He keeps this charade up for the entire flight. Silly little guy.

11:03 am

And we’re off.

Joshua Ferris (thank you)

2009-01-07T19:27:00.000-08:00

It is not often that I recommend books on this online magazine (it is not a blog).

In fact, I have never done it. I’m hoping that, since this is my only book recommendation in four years, it will carry some special weight.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t written about books in the past. I have – but it’s usually only to belittle them because I didn't understand them and I am very angry about that. I'm not proud to admit it, but I once got so angry at Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time that, after the first chapter, I flipped the book over and, while staring at his smarmy-smiling photograph and burning holes through it with my eyes, I said, "I am glad that you are in a wheelchair."

A little while ago, in this online magazine, I complained about George Eliot’s Middlemarch because I didn’t understand it. Do you know how frustrating it is to get through a 900-page study of 19th-century provincial life and not understand it? No? Neither do I. Because I only read the first three pages and the blurb on the back! But I can only imagine how frustrating it would be. Even after reading the cover blurb, I still have trouble talking about the book.

For example, I might casually approach someone at a cocktail party and say,

“Are you like me and have you read George Eliot’s Middlemarch?”

“No, I haven’t. But it is a seminal work of English -”

“I have. I have read it. I have read George Eliot’s Middlemarch.”

“Well...good for you. Did you enjoy it?”

“Enjoy it? I WORSHIP it. How any man could have created such a stunning portrait of female psychology is beyond me.”

“George Eliot was a woman. Her real name was Mary Anne Evans.”

“Well, some people even say Shakespeare was a woman, but he wasn’t.”

“No. George Eliot was definitely a woman. Just Google her.”

“You are a woman and I will Google you,” I say, making the "quote" marks with my fingers and not really even knowing what those quote marks represent. Then I move to the darkest corner of the room and sip the remainder of my cocktail – all the while glaring at the person who I’ve read more books than and who I know more than and who will never win at the game of life because I am the true winner and my trophy is his shame.

This is not turning out to be a very pleasant book review. I haven’t even mentioned the book I am reviewing yet, which is Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.

I will be brief.

I am always on the lookout for very funny books. I also enjoy very sad books. Only a special author, in my mind, can unite funny and sad in a single work. Ferris does this – and sometimes even on a single page. “Funny” and “sad” are not words that do his novel justice, though. Maybe “hilari-haunting” would work, if it were a real word. There are certain passages that were truly...hilari-haunting.

The story is set in a large advertising firm on Chicago's Michigan Avenue. Most of the humour is generated by the office gossip of the characters, but that's not to say that the book is just a collection of the trivial. On the contrary, there are some large, scary questions that loom in the minds of these characters. Is Lynn Mason, the esteemed company parter, actually suffering from breast cancer? And what about Tom Mota, the misogynistic copywriter who is obsessed with the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson? After he is laid off, will he exact revenge by going on a shooting rampage?

Not the stuff that comedy is typically made of, I know, and this is why I ask you to read it for yourselves. Let me also add - the ending rocks.
I have not received such a return on my money in a very long time.

And for those of you who have read it, I leave you with a final question…

What happened to Joe Pope?

Putting the "stmas" back in Christmas

2008-12-23T16:38:00.000-08:00

For the past few days, I have been naked and at the greatest of ease.
I have been at a famous Japanese hot spring resort, enjoying the soothing medicinal waters and coming to the gradual realization that, no matter how hard I scrub, I can never scrub away the "me." Did that get weird?

Would you believe it if I told you that, at one point in the three days, I slapped an elderly Japanese woman in the face with a wet towel? If you refuse to believe it, it means that you do not know me very well. But don't worry - ten years ago, if someone had said to me, "One day Derek, when you are naked, you will slap an elderly Japanese woman (who will also be naked) in the face with a wet towel," I wouldn't have believed it either.

Here is how it happened.

A group of teachers went to the hot spring - and there were separate bathing areas for men and women. Each of us were given a small towel to bring into the bath with us. For some reason (perhaps all of the heat and steam had addled my senses?), I decided that it would be a good idea to throw my towel over the partition dividing the men's bathing area from the women's - you know, just to spice things up a bit.

After I did this, I heard the sweet slapping sound of a wet towel striking naked flesh. I said, "How ya like me now?" and then sank down into the water, smiling cruelly and twiddling the tips of my fingers together - the extent of my satisfaction being directly proportional to the slapped person's shock and annoyance. Then I heard one of my female co-workers say, "Oh my God, I am so sorry." This was followed by a sputtering/coughing sound, and, shortly thereafter, a door slamming.

A staff member came into the men's bathing area and more or less yelled at us for throwing things over the partition. Being yelled at when you have no clothes on is so much more humbling than being yelled at when you have clothes on. I almost felt naked in my shame. On the other hand, I also felt a bit saucy for receiving the lecture while floating lazily in the medicinal waters and making little circles with my arms and legs.

When we regrouped after the bath, the girls told us that my towel had struck an elderly women in the face. It hadn't just struck her, but it had actually opened in mid-air, so, when it collided with her, the towel ended up enveloping her entire face, which was not at all what I had expected.

Fortunately I will soon be visiting Canada for ten days, so, by the time I return to Japan, all of the excitement from this little incident should have died down.

And with that, I wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. May this be the year that you achieve your dreams, or at least summon the courage to pursue them.

Thank you for continuing to tune in.

Derek.

Carbon-Based Life Form

2008-12-10T06:12:00.000-08:00

The amount of paperwork that I have to do for my job is unbelievable. It is almost like a joke.

Today, for example, I spent three hours doing paperwork. That’s 60 x 60 x 3 seconds (you do the math, because I have a bit of paperwork to do). When I am doing my paperwork, I sometimes imagine my heart beating in my chest, and this makes me very sad, because I know that the human heart has but a finite number of beats allotted to it, and at least 60 x 60 x 3 of my heartbeats were just spent making little squiggles (that nobody ever reads) onto a pad of carbon-copy paper (that nobody ever reads).

Often, when I am making my precious squiggles, tiny teardrops fall from my eyes and form little puddles on my report pad. This is typically when I fly into a rage, because it means that I have to rip out the original page and its duplicate and begin my squiggles all over again. I start wondering if this is how serial killers get their inspiration, and I make a mental note to Google “Serial killer” and “squiggle” when I get home.

I know that I am making it seem as if these squiggles are worthless, but my very livelihood depends on whether or not I make them each week. It would not be a great leap of the imagination to say that, if I were to refuse to write my squiggles, I would soon starve and have to wander about naked on the streets. You’d think that, if I were starving and naked, I would just stay put in my apartment, but no. I wouldn’t.

I know that I should be engaged in other, more worthwhile pursuits – like finding love or chasing my dreams. But again, no. When the choice came between “living your life” and “making squiggles,” I went for the option that included the word “squiggles.” So, when people gather around my deathbed 10 years from now and say to me, “Did you have a good life Derek? And by the way, where do you keep the Doritos?”, I will say, “No. Life was a long, drawn-out, sickening struggle. And there was never enough toilet paper. But you know what? I always got my squiggles in on time. The Doritos should be in the cupboard.”

Then I will exhale a great breath, and my eyes will become fixed on some point in the distance. People will say, “I think he’s gone now.” But I won’t be. It’s just a game that I like to play with them. Instead, I will be thinking of Jell-O (especially the kind with little bits of fruit inside it).

I was intimately involved in a grisly murder.

2008-12-01T03:14:00.000-08:00

Mine may not be the most exciting of lives, but also, it is not very interesting.

When I turn on the news and I read about political violence, sexual scandal, or natural disasters, I often take a swig of milk and say to myself, “I would probably sacrifice 10% of my worldly comfort for a bit of spice in my life.” But when I think about how neat it is that my slippers are warm and that my milk still tastes fresh when the expiry date has long since passed, I say, “Okay, maybe just 5%.”

This is the world I live in. This is the world I know. So, when murder and mayhem come knocking at my chamber door – and I mean this literally – it comes as a great relief.

Last week, when I told my mother about the grisly, mysterious murder that I had been intimately involved in (I will tell you about it shortly), we were both taken aback. I was surprised because I had made a private vow not to tell her about it at all. I know how tightly wound she is, and how likely she is to blow everything out of proportion. As I was dialing her number, I was even whispering to myself, “Do not mention the murder. Do not mention the murder. Do not mention the murder.” This didn’t seem so weird to me, but when I put myself in the shoes of the other people who were sitting around me in Starbucks at the time, it does.

The phone rang twice, and my mother picked up. I was in such an agitated state over the events of the morning that, I am ashamed to say, the first words out of my mouth were,

“THERE WAS A MURDER LAST NIGHT IN MY APARTMENT BUILDING!”

“A what?!” my mother said.

“A MURDER, MOTHER! THERE WAS A MURDER IN MY VERY BUILDING!”

My mother freaked. She dropped the phone. She called my father to get on the extension. The two of them then proceeded to interrogate me to such a degree, with each question demanding such an intimate knowledge of the crime, that, even if I had committed the murder with my own two incapable hands, I would scarcely have been able give them the answers they needed.

I could only tell them what I knew.

And here is the tale I told…

***

It all began with a bloodcurdling scream at 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning.

It was a woman’s scream, and it came from somewhere below my balcony. I thought of racing downstairs to offer my help, but then, what if the horrible thing was still there, being all bloodcurdling? I thought of calling 911, but what if the person at the other end didn’t understand English? I don’t know the Japanese word for “woman,” let alone the words for “scream” and “emergency” and “possible homicide.” These are words that I’ve only ever had to use when my family is nearby, so I’ve never bothered to learn them in Japan.

Finally, I thought of writing the words “It’s going to be OK” on a paper airplane and floating it down, on the fragrant morning breeze, to where the woman was, and I was so impressed by what a good person I was to even consider such a thing, that I drifted off to sleep again.

I don’t know how long it was that I slept, but I was later awoken by an abrupt knocking at my apartment door. I got out of bed, grumbling. I put on my slippers, and went over to greet my early morning visitor.

I opened the door, and the man standing before me was a Japanese version of Robert Deniro. The only difference was that this man had salt-and-pepper hair and a warm smile.

I was embarrassed, because I hate it when Japanese people see my dirty, pathetic little genkan in the mornings. The genkan is the area where you remove your shoes before entering a Japanese home. Most Japanese genkans are perfectly swept, and the shoes are all neatly arranged with Howard Hughes attention to detail. Basically, my genkan always looks like shit. There’s an open bag of garbage in the corner, and the shoes are thrown haphazardly all over the place. The smell is the opposite of wholesome. On this particular day it was so dirty that my visitor must have thought I’d defaced it with my filth on purpose, as if to spite 2000 years of Japanese etiquette.

The man and I stared at each other for a few seconds. He was nervously running his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair until he finally came out with it: “I am a Japanese detective.”

“Nihongo dekinai,” I said. I can’t speak Japanese. This was ironic, because I said it in Japanese.

“I cannot speak English,” he said. This was ironic, because he said it in English.

Just when things were getting so ironic that I thought we were auditioning for roles in Oedipus Rex, the sleuth whipped out a pad of paper, and he began drawing a map of my apartment building and the surrounding area.

He pointed to my building and said, “Man catch a die here. Your building.”

“Man catch a die?” I said. “Come again?”

“Man fall. He catch a die. Woman finds man.”

Suddenly it clicked. The detective meant that a man in my building had fallen and died. The screaming woman must have been the one who had found the body.

Some of us catch colds, others catch incurable diseases, and, I guess, an unfortunate few of us even “catch a die.” I thought of calling into work and saying, “Sorry, I can’t come in to work today. I have come down with a nasty case of... the DIES.” I smiled sweetly.

The detective asked me several questions: Had I heard anything? Did I have any enemies? Did I commit the grisly murder? I tried my best to answer him. He too was smiling all the while, because, after all, nothing is more wonderful than a white man standing in his boxers in a breezy doorway, early on a Saturday morning amid the chirping of birds, trying to persuade a Japanese Robert Deniro that he did not throw another man off his balcony. The detective was smiling with his mouth, but his eyes were saying, “I suspect that you have committed murder.”

When we finished our conversation, I offered the detective some chamomile tea, and he politely declined. I was glad, because I couldn’t think of a more awkward situation than drinking tea with this man – what, with the age difference and the language barrier and my possibly being a murderer and the fact that I actually didn’t have any chamomile tea. Maybe he had detected that.

***

On an interesting social note – when I tell my students about the murder, it doesn't bother them at all.

In fact, people’s spirits noticeably pick up every time I mention it. My students come into the classroom, I casually mention the murder, and we are soon making jokes about how my apartment building is a haven for prostitutes, drug addicts, and killers, and about how I might be the next one to "disappear." Maybe they are just happy because murder is more interesting than making complete sentences – or maybe it is because my life now seems to be in more peril than they previously imagined. Or hoped.

Since the murder, my whole vocabulary has changed. I now have to begin and end almost all of my sentences with, “Before the murder,” or “After the murder.” When I do, people look at me with new respect, and they become silent, because they know that I have seen more, experienced more, and learned more than they ever will. They might say to me, “Have you seen the new Bond flick yet Derek?” And I will say, “Yes. I saw it just before the murder.” Or they will say, “Have you ever been involved in a grisly, mysterious murder Derek?” And I will say, “Yes I have. What about you? Oh wait, I already know the answer. No you haven’t.”

Sometimes I will even try to implicate myself in the murder to create an air of mystery. For example, people might say, “What were you doing on the night of the murder Derek?”, and I will suddenly try to look very nervous by wiping my brow and darting my eyes back and forth.

Of course, most people don’t really think that I committed the murder, but they can never say for sure, and I think that adds another little tile in the overall mosaic that is me.

A Neat Thing to Do in the Morning

2008-11-23T00:02:00.000-08:00

This would be a neat way to greet your loved one in the morning:

Wait until the loved one has gone downstairs and is engaged in some solitary pursuit – reading the newspaper, watching TV, or sitting at the kitchen table with his face buried in his hands, dreading another day at work, and entertaining thoughts of beginning life anew in an artists’ colony in the interior of Australia.

Go up to him softly, tenderly, and begin whispering in his ear. Begin whispering, I say, but build up to a great crescendo: crying, screaming, and maybe breaking his "Pobody's Nerfect" coffee cup.

Say to him the following words:

Have I ever told you that I love you?

Yes, it is true. I love you. I love you with all my heart. I love you with my soul. I love you for the man that you are, and I love you for the man that you dream of being, but who you can never – must never! – become. I love you for every sign of your innate goodness – signs that, try as you might to conceal them, are still as obvious as they would be if some dull blade had etched them into your brow in an ornate font. I love you for the better angels of your nature, and also for the worse devils – perhaps more for the devils! It is true! I love you for the magnificent and bloody crimes that you dream of in your innermost heart when all the world is asleep, and I love you for that rich elixir of sweetness that you can pour on men, women, and children with a single word – NAY! – with a single glance! I LOVE YOU ENOUGH TO CARVE A GREAT WOODEN MONUMENT TO YOU EVERY MORNING, WORSHIP IT BY THE LIGHT OF THE NOONDAY SUN, AND THEN BURN IT TO THE GROUND EVERY EVENING – ALL THE BETTER TO PROCLAIM, MY DEAR, YOUR GLORY TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE YET TO KNOW YOU, AND TO THE GODS WHO ALREADY ADORE YOU!

SO GREAT IS MY LOVE!

SO GREAT IS MY DEVOTION!

SO GREAT IS MY PASSION!

Is the coffee still on?

***

Please do this and record the experience. To record it, you may use a video camera, a microphone, or a quill pen and a bit of parchment. When you’re finished, bury everything in a time capsule, wait 50 years, and unearth it.

Relive the experience again with your loved one, and say, “Wasn’t that a good one? Didn’t we have fun?”

WTF Mondays, Part II (Live From Japan!)

2008-11-16T20:48:00.000-08:00

This first photograph is of an adult club near my apartment.

I think they call it "Showboat" because the girls "show" you their boobies, and, if you go in there, you are morally adrift in a great sea of sin. Showboat.

I know it is an adult club because, every time I pass by, a pimply faced, leering man in a filthy “Godzilla” sweatshirt always approaches me from the entrance and makes a “squeezing” gesture with his two hands. Either this means that he is the proprietor of a touchy-feely bar, or he wants me to go to the local grocery store and pick him up some honeydew melons.

What is great is how the “w” in “Showboat” has been made to look like a pair of pendulous, perfectly formed breasts. I like to think that, if I were designing an adult club sign, I would think of making the letters look like privates too.

Here is the sign outside a local eatery:

Yes - you’re right! It really IS a smack of the lips! And, if I might also add, David Copperfield and the Seven Pillars of Islam-Lollipop on a Sunday afternoon.

Before the dinner rush every day, the staff of this restaurant assembles in front of the entrance, forming two perfect columns. Then, at precisely 5:30, the team leader stands in front of the columns, and he begins shouting slogans, which the workers echo back in unison, all the while pumping their fists in the air. I can’t understand Japanese very well, so I can’t tell if they are vowing to serve high quality food or to wipe out entire races of people in the name of the Fatherland. I really should start listening to those language CDs again.

The first time I saw this demonstration I was biking to the grocery store to buy some honeydew melons, and they all bellowed “WELCOME, CUSTOMER” to me at the same time, grinning hysterically. In fact, the same thing had happened to me in a nightmare only two nights before - the only difference being that, this time, I wasn’t naked and oiled, and the black, unicycle-riding Mr. Belvedere was nowhere to be seen.

***

If you take a walk along any river in my city, you will almost certainly see a statue of one of these mischievous river imps, known as “Kappa.”

On the tops of their heads they have dishes filled with water. Based on what I’ve gathered from local lore and Wikipedia, if you do anything to upset the dish of water, the Kappa creature will fly into a rage, tear your body into bits, and scatter your bloodied, broken limbs along the water’s edge. Kappa also enjoy playing the flute and eating cucumbers. It can be fun learning about new cultures.

I was in the tiny little bathroom of my favorite bar when I snapped this next photo.

If you look carefully, you will see a little dish just behind the toilet. I was wondering what it was, and, on closer inspection, I discovered that it was a mound of salt. This made me ask myself: Why? I can think of practically no situation where, after using the toilet, I would say to myself, Needs more salt.

I had come to this bar with another teacher. She told me that, when I was in the bathroom, she had seen a blinding flash of white light come out from under the bottom of the bathroom door. I assumed that this was the camera flash. Since I had no ready explanation for why I would ever snap a photograph in the bathroom, I pretended to be choking. This seemed to satisfy her.

What you are looking at here is the little silver decal behind my toilet at home. On it are written detailed instructions about how to use this toilet. Again, I ask myself: Why? Who has ever stood in front of a toilet, ready to go, and thought, WHOAH! – What the hell? Where do I even start?!

I don’t what is more disturbing – the fact that my toilet comes with detailed, diagrammed instructions, or the fact that I consult these instructions every time I go. But, where else would I have learned that the angle formed between your back and the toilet seat should be no less than 25 degrees, but no more than 30?

And finally, I leave you with the most ironic bike in the world. Not only is there no baby, but there is no car. And the picture of the "baby" is not a baby at all, but a monkey-baby hybrid. Ain't he the cutest?

WTF Mondays (Live From Japan!)

2008-11-10T02:05:00.000-08:00

I haven’t written very much about my life in Japan, and some of you might be thinking that I don’t live in Japan anymore. Or that I have grown to despise my adopted country. Nothing could be further from the truth! I still live in Japan!

To prove it, and also to prove to my family that I did not concoct the entire story of my job here as an elaborate ruse to avoid get-togethers and to live a hedonistic life of drunken abandon in the heart of downtown Toronto (my family is split into two factions on this one), I am going to produce four pieces of photographic evidence.

I took my first picture outside a local KFC. I haven’t researched it, but I’m willing to bet that this is the only photograph on the internet of an old man from Kentucky with distinctly Asian features who is dressed in a Santa Claus outfit with his belt outside the jacket. The way his hands are positioned makes it look like he’s making a vulgar comment. Like he’s saying, “But didja see the size of ‘em fuckin' titties?” But in Japanese.

Japan is really good at two things: almost taking over the world and making their forms of public transportation look like sweet, magical creatures. There may even be a connection between the two. Who knows?

I wanted to get a closer shot, but then I would have been a solitary, unshaven 31-year-old man snapping photographs of elementary school children getting on a bus, and I thought to myself, perhaps not today.

By the way, there are only two requirements to drive this bus. You must:

1. Have a valid Japanese driver’s license.

2. Have given up entirely on this thing called life.

What I am going to do now is show you a picture of a granite hippo vomiting a rainbow.

This was in the middle of a park, and I thought that the vomit rainbow was a slide. When I tried to slide down the rainbow, an old woman who was walking her dog raced up to me and began yelling with all the passion and spittle that advanced senility has to offer. Even her dog looked angry. I tried to explain to them that I was compiling a photo-journal to give the West an unprecedented glimpse into the very heart of their mysterious Island-Nation, but I don’t think they knew what “glimpse” meant. I hopped on my purple bike (“The Sunflower”) to speed away, and in my haste I careened crazily down an embankment and knocked a boy over. Afterwards, his face betrayed no obvious emotion, which was impressive.

And to wrap things up, here we have the most romantic pylon that ever lived.

A little bit forward, but you know what? I think I like it!

Come and Play my Halloween Game!

2008-10-31T07:14:00.000-07:00

It is a quiz, it is only a single question, and yet it will determine your IQ to one-tenth of a single IQ point.

In short, if you get it wrong, your a total idiot and also a moron!

Here is the question: Who is this man?

If you are just sitting at your desk and thinking the answer while twirling a pen that contains many different colors of ink, that’s not enough. This is friggin' Halloween! At this very moment, Iamdressedupasamobilephone! You need to risk everything! I don’t care where you are. Shout out your answer as loudly as you can - with the same intensity as one would use to proclaim the words “Jihad!” or “This is Sparta!” or “Bingo!”

That wasn’t good enough. I don’t just mean raise your voice. I mean scream. SCREAM THE ANSWER! Run up to your boss and slap him across his horrid, pinched, sanctimonious little face while screaming your answer. Punch in a plate-glass window. Drop-kick the janitor whose eyes always whisper "I don't like you." Pass the accounting guy's birth certificate through the paper shredder, tape it together again, give it back to him, and say, "I had no idea that you were born in León, Nicaragua." When his mouth opens in confused surprise, pour paperclips in it.

Better yet, carve the answer into your break room wall with a hunting knife, set fire to yourself, and then somersault all the hell over the place, setting ablaze everything in your path, all the while shrieking your response to today's Halloween quiz question.

Just make sure that people are paying attention. That way, you will never be able to deny your answer, and the guilt - or the glory! - will remain with you until the end of time (or at least until you succumb to your third-degree burns).

Please click on the comments section for the correct answer...

Did you think I had died?

2008-09-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

You know you have been away from blogging for a long time when you practically forget your log-in password. I'm so glad I didn't, because that would be a shameful way to go. It would be like not being able to get married because you forgot your mother-in-law's name.

I was away in Canada for my buddy's wedding, so the past month has been pretty chaotic. There are many, many stories to tell though.

A new post will be up tomorrow, and let that mark the beginning of a new and beautiful friendship between me and you - the anonymous, overweight people of the internet.

Love you long time,

Derrique

A Neat Thing to Do

2008-08-06T06:42:00.000-07:00

The next time you are on an elevator with only one other person, you should say, "It sure is nice outside today."

Wait for the standard reply.

After another few seconds have elapsed, put your hand on the person's shoulder, squeeze, and say, "But I'd rather be in here. With you."

When the elevator doors begin to open, press the close button. This will force the person to flash you a look of irritation. Act surprised. Say, "Oh my God. I'm so sorry. I thought you were Lesley."

Allow the person to get off the elevator. Just before they are out of earshot, whisper, "Lesley? When did you become so...angry?"

Allow the doors to close.

I think that would be a neat thing to do.

10 Ways to Celebrate Friendship

2008-06-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

Do you have a special friend in your life?

I'm sure you do. I also know that, every now and then, special friends need to be told that they are special. So why not send your friend a homemade card? You could make it out of construction paper. And pen. Don't have a pen? Use menstrual blood! It would really mean a lot.

Here are some homemade greeting card ideas. The words in brackets are meant to be written inside the card, you silly beast.

Here we go:

Do you realize that if you take the word “friend” and remove one of the letters you get the word “fiend”?

(Don’t worry though. No matter what they say, you’re not that.)

I don’t know what would ever happen to me if you died tomorrow.

(Seriously – try to be really careful tomorrow. Especially when you get home from work. You never know who might "benefit" from your untimely disappearance.)

A wrinkled, leathery face doesn't necessarily mean you’re old.

(Sometimes it's just an indicator of how much time you’ve spent in the sun. What I'm trying to say is, you're not old. You're just an old friend. An old friend who really likes the beach.)

If I had to put a price on what your friendship means to me, I couldn’t.

(Because then you would probably put a price on it, and then we'd start comparing prices, and things would just get weird between us. I love you man.)

I remember you once put your hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s going to be ok.”

(What was up with that anyway? I've always wondered. It made me feel...whole.)

A true friend is like a violin. In the right hands, it can create the most beautiful melody, and sometimes…

(it is brown, from a foreign country, and extremely expensive.)

A true friend once said, “Friendship without self-interest is one of the rare and beautiful things in life.”

(I murdered him.)

A friend will break your heart. A friend will mend it. A friend will sometimes borrow $100 from you, spend it in Cancun, and then “forget” to pay you back.

(Thank you for being a true friend.)

We laughed until we cried, and when the time came to cry, we laughed…

(Actually, I laughed, and you said, “I don’t find gonorrhea to be a laughing matter.” Sorry about that.)

True friends, like pieces of ivy on the wall, stand together. They also fall together.

(In that case, whoever is the wall must be a real jerk. I think it would be Brian. That guy can be an a-hole at times. Don't you think?)

Feel free to add your own greeting card ideas in the comments section....friends.

This morning I wish I were deaf-blind.

2008-05-15T19:18:00.000-07:00

I always used to think that the worst sound in the world was Ellen Degeneres making her trademark “Caww” in the opening monologue of her show.

But last night I heard another sound – one so much more horrible than anything that could ever be concocted by Ellen.

I now know that the worst sound imaginable is a karaoke version of "YMCA" being sung at two in the morning by a drunken Japanese man, the accompaniment to which is a gaggle of cackling, clapping women who are screaming “sugoi!” (a word that means, “We enjoy your singing, so more of it, please, whatever the emotional cost to those who are sleeping nearby!”).

You might think that I’m just jealous of him because I have not yet found love in my life, and you’re probably right. Man, I wish I had a girlfriend. Thank goodness I have hate to keep me company!

Do you think that I’m exaggerating about how much I dislike this sound? Well, I’m not. I would rather wake up in a semi-drugged state in the depths of some Russian forest and hear a group of men arguing about which one of my organs to harvest.

The song “YMCA” is a perfect choice for the non-native English speaker. Think about it. All you have to do is say “Y-M-C-A” over and over and over and over again. If your English is so terrible that you can’t even read the rest of the lyrics on the karaoke screen, you can easily compensate by screaming – literally screaming – the letters “Y-M-C-A”.

Bloodcurdlingly.

The man’s "singing" went on and on, and when I found myself still listening to the Village People at 3 a.m., writhing about in a blind rage, biting my sheets, thinking about everything in Japan that I didn’t like, and saying, “Oooh, look at me, I can say four letters of the alphabet” in a whiney, whingy voice, I knew I had to do something.

I finally gathered up my sheets and committed the ultimate act of Japanese sacrilege: I slept in the small, closed-off area of my apartment where you’re supposed to put your shoes. If any Japanese people had seen me, they would have been appalled. You are never supposed to wear your shoes inside your house, and you are certainly not supposed to put your sheets on top of your shoes and sleep among them and wake up holding one close to your head, gently stroking the patent leather, whispering about how glad you are to have found a sole-mate.

You want your rules, people of Japan? All right! Ok! Very well! You can have your friggin’ rules about shoes, but we Westerners also have OUR rules. One of these rules is, unless you are a black man in a construction hat, or a fireman, or an American Indian, you do NOT have my permission to attempt anything by the Village People! And furthermore, do not sing the Carpenters!

Have I said too much?

Am I handsome?

2008-04-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

Here is a really neat way to meet a girl:

At your local bar, find a girl who is sitting by herself (never with a friend – never! All the better to pick out your faults, my dear!).

Initiate the conversation by saying, “Let’s play a game.”

Tell her that the name of the game is called Am I Handsome?.

Begin the game by pointing to yourself and posing a simple question: “Am I handsome?”

If she says “no,” say “You lose,” and then start at the beginning of the game again. Replay until she reaches such a state of intoxication that she says “yes.”

When she says “yes,” buy her some mixed nuts and wait thirty seconds before beginning the second game of the evening: “Do you like sex?”

Hey man - sweet pants!

2008-04-14T02:24:00.000-07:00

I am in absolutely no position to pass judgment on other people’s fashion choices. I think I forfeited that right three years ago when I bought a t-shirt with little pictures of famous Irish authors on it.

But today, in Japan, I saw a man wearing bright, bright, bright pink jogging pants.

The moment I saw him I knew that, although I may represent the lowermost rung on the great fashion ladder, he was the rubber padding on the bottom of the ladder to keep it from slipping. These jogging pants were so bright that they reproduced what things must have looked like nanoseconds after the Big Bang. And the results were equally inhospitable to human life.

To add to my amazement, the man was also walking down the avenue – his drawstrings fluttering wantonly in the spring breeze – with confidence. This man had the confidence of an emporium of emperors! WHAT!? He was actually galavanting about town in those bright pink pants. I have never used the word “galavant” before, because I’d never seen anyone truly do it. But make no mistake – this man was galavanting. What was IN those pants?

The weird part is – he actually looked pretty good. It couldn’t have been the pink pants that were doing it. Those pants were basically a way for him to say, “Fuck you world. With one leg of these joggers I will slap in the face all you hold dear. With the other, I shall steal your soul. And with the drawstring – why, with the drawstring, I will tie these pants snugly so that they don’t slip down. Naturally! It can get so annoying if you’re always having to pull them up!”

I stood at the intersection, staring at the man in wonder. As if to further degrade me, he was now talking and laughing on one of the green public telephones. I’ve never been able to figure out how to use those green public phones. And they always eat my 10-yen coins! Yet there he was, in his pink pants, looking like he was talking for the first time in years to a beloved relative - a relative who, although long presumed dead in a fiery plane crash, had actually managed to swim to a remote tropical island and survive on a meagre diet of fish, coconut milk, and memories.

What made this man the way he was? Was it the pants, or was it his narry-a-care-nor-a-trouble outlook on life? And if clothing did have the power to transmit charisma, why had my Irish authors failed?

What began as wonder changed to confusion, and then to envy, and then things started getting back to normal (dark sexual jealousy). I looked down at the smiling, silk-screened faces of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce and bitterly cursed them. Oscar Wilde looked up at me sheepishly, but I went easy on him. After all, his being thrown in jail for sodomy and then dying penniless and alone in a Paris ghetto probably trumps my having a crappy shirt.

But really, I shouldn’t have blamed any of them – especially when they have done so much for me and for humanity already. They clothed me when I was naked, and I count this among the greatest of their services to mankind. I’m proud to say that, in the end, I forgave them.

In the end, they forgave me too. It’s always a good feeling to be forgiven by the dead – except when that forgiveness is accompanied by the unhappy realization that, for the past five minutes, you have been standing on a street corner in a small Japanese town, in the hot, hot sun, scowling at faces on your t-shirt, with your head cocked to one side, mouth open, and maybe yogurt drink dribblin’ out of it.

Whatever. The Japanese have to learn to be more understanding of different cultures (and, in the case of my yogurt, bacteria culture).

Today's Meals, Part IV (UPDATED)

2008-04-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

Would I be crossing any boundaries if I were to tell you that I ate way too much tofu today?

Dipped it in soy sauce too, is what I did.

Do I have any regrets? Some. But I'll think of them tomorrow.

BECAUSE I AM TOO BUSY LIVING FOR TODAY!

(This post would have been so much more inspiring had the subject been something other than tofu.)

Teaching Technique #3: Create a God Out of Paper and Tape. Get Students to Worship it.

2008-04-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

When I teach kids, I get them to draw pictures.

The time that they spend drawing and coloring pictures is time that they cannot use to run around the room, chant, and think of ways to immobilize me and set up a de facto regime characterized by gross human rights abuses.

One month ago a kid drew a picture that changed my life forever. It was a depiction of a girl’s face – hovering on a field of white – with three balls of purple hair arranged haphazardly about its misshapen head. The head is grinning, with two pointed vampire teeth sticking out of its mouth.

As soon as the kid presented the drawing to me, I jumped on a chair and taped it high up on the wall. I pretended to worship the picture by running up, falling to my knees, and bowing fervently before it. The kids went insane with laughter, they tried worshipping it a few times, and then, well, we all kind of started worshipping it for real. But whatever - as long as they're learning English, everybody's happy, right? Also, as an added bonus, all of this worship took up ten full minutes of lesson time.

Every day since then I have added something to the “classroom god” wall. For example, when my student who returned from Hawaii gave me a beautiful “lei,” I used it to decorate the classroom god’s head. At first the Godhead was easy to overlook, but now things have gotten to the point where the main focus of my lessons is no longer English, but rather the elaborately decorated religious icon that stares down from on high.

I have a feeling that it’s starting to creep some of my students out – and, truth be told, it’s starting to creep me out a bit too. I don’t dare take it down, though. I’m worried that such an action would anger my God. My God is taking over my life, and I completely don’t mind.

It is a benevolent God. A kind god. A paper God?

Things have started looking up for me since the classroom God came into my life. When new students come into my classroom, the first thing they do is look up at the altarpiece and experience the God’s insane, all-knowing gaze bearing down on them with the intensity of a thousand suns. I show them how to perform various obsequies, including bowing and reciting a short prayer that I wrote (“Hello God, how are you today? What are your hobbies? I am fine thank you. Bye for now.”).

I also encourage my students to bring small sacrifices to lay down at the foot of the altar: rice cakes, milk, chocolate, and what have you. The weird thing is, they actually do. At the end of the day, I usually have a small pile of food waiting for me. Naturally, I take it home and eat it. So far, the classroom God has not smite (smot? smited? smat? Jimmy Smits?) me yet. I think it would want me to have that food. Who knew that having a God could be so convenient? Or nutritious?

The sad part is, the secular authorities seem determined to persecute me and the other devotees of this revolutionary new faith. Yesterday, the Japanese manager came into my classroom, took one look at the altarpiece, and said, “This is an English school, not a …”. She couldn’t complete the sentence because she didn’t know the word for “cult.” This only goes to prove her ignorance. She went away and came back a few minutes later with her dictionary and said, “cult.” I could have sworn, when she uttered the word, my little God smiled. She then ordered me to remove the God and to stop encouraging his followers to perform obsequies.

In my contract I think I agreed never to talk about religion in the lessons, so I can see how creating a God/altarpiece combo, forcing students to worship it, and accepting and eating their sacrifices might not be suitable for the classroom. I’ve taken the God down. My manager also let me keep the food, which was kind of neat.

(Heavenly little guy ain't he?)

Are you good with 'puters?

2008-03-27T02:03:00.001-07:00

And now a question of a purely technical nature.

I am trying to set up an internet connection at my apartment, but when I opened up the friggin' "network connections" icon (under "control panel"), there were no icons. I think I need the "local area connection" icon to get a connection. How do I get that icon? Can I download it? I would really appreciate some advice.

If you know the answer, feel free to comment here, or send an email to this blog's account (address is in the profile section).

You can imagine my frustration when I called the Japanese technical support hotline and tried to explain the problem using the only Japanese words I know ("fried chicken?" and "clown"). The weird part is that I think I kind of got the idea across. Sadly, my hard drive doesn't come in extra crispy. That joke doesn't make sense, I know. It's the stress.

d.

Weekly Postin'

2008-03-17T04:15:00.000-07:00

Weekly postin' will begin again this week.

Thank you for continuing to tune in.

D.

PS: Since my last post I have lost one of my limbs. Can you guess which one?

PPS: Just kidding.

Hang in there.

2008-01-22T07:10:00.000-08:00

I am in the middle of some major life changes right now (good ones). I will be back to blogging as soon as I am settled in my new life.

Thanks for continuing to check in.

d.

I feel pretty.

2008-01-11T19:40:00.000-08:00

I am moving out of my apartment.

If you're good, I will post three pictures of my neighborhood, so you can see it in all its “glory.” The other day it was gray and overcast, and I happened upon an area that looked like Hitler's soul, complete with graffiti, strewn litter, a forlorn shopping cart, and even a saucy cat with some hair missing who winked at me and spoke in a cockney accent. It was all so incredible that I actually made a little square out of my thumbs and index fingers to pretend that I was taking a picture – just to see how it might turn out. As it turned out, that hand gesture is a Crips gang symbol meaning, “Hello, I am claiming this territory as my own." That explains this black eye. Oh those Crips. So full of passion. Or was it the Bloods? No, I was the one bleeding, so I guess it must have been the Crips. Then again, I am crippled now. Hmm. Anyway, the moral of today’s post is that you should never pretend to take a photo in gangland. And, if you insist on doing so, don’t make the little thumb-index-finger square as small as a digital camera would be – because the gangland folk will get jealous of you for puttin’ on airs.

Simply Having a Terrible Xmas Time (Part 3 of 20)

2007-12-17T18:43:00.000-08:00

Maybe you are reading the title of today’s post and you are saying, “But Derek – why is this part 3 of 20? What about parts 1 and 2? I would like to read about the other terrible things that have happened to you in your life.”

Thank you. You have just revealed that you have not read this blog in its entirety. I began telling you about my terrible Christmas experiences back in 2006, and I expect to continue doing so until the year 2010 (that’s assuming I have roughly 4 or 5 terrible Christmas-related experiences per year, which is not unlikely.)

Christmas is just too much. Too damn much. And ever year it seems to get worse. And longer. It’s gotten to the point where everything I hear, everything I see, is somehow related to Christmas. I mean, what’s really sad is that I hardly have time left anymore to nurture my secret animosity towards happy couples. Notice how I said “hardly”? I find that, if I set aside a little time each morning before work, I can squeeze it in.

What’s wrong with Christmas? Well, let’s begin with snow.

There is snow everywhere. So literally, whenever I go outside, I am cursing the very ground I walk on. I think snow actually came into contact with every square inch of my body today. It fell on my head, it fell on my shoes. I also fell down on top of it, so that meant it sneaked its way into my jacket-pants-crack. The third time it happened I guess I just snapped. I grabbed great big handfulls of snow and held them above my head, yelling, “You want me to get chilly God? Do you? DO YOU!??”, and then I ripped off my jacket and shirt and started rubbing the cold balls of snow all over my head and my naked, exposed flesh. Finally, I burrowed into the mound of snow – as a worm would burrow into the earth (headfirst). Not a high point in my life – but I sure showed God. Man, did I ever.

And then there’s the music. One of my favorite songs is “Hey Jude,” written by Paul McCartney. I have probably heard it hundreds of times in my life. Paul McCartney also wrote another song – one that I don’t like nearly as much. This song is “Wonderful Christmas Time.” I have heard it thousands upon thousands of times. In fact, during the Christmas season, I never stop hearing it. It’s in every mall and every coffee shop. Even when I go home at night and bury my head under my pillow and writhe about on my bed, it is still echoing through the caverns of my mind - taunting me, torturing me.

You may think I’m exaggerating, but there comes a point when you have heard Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time” so much that it starts to become a little ironic. It starts to feel like you're simply dying inside. It starts to feel like you are simply being held as a terror suspect at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with a burlap sack over your head while the US Special Forces are trying to withdraw tactical information from you using non-invasive procedures (Christmas melodies).

What? Pardon me? You haven’t heard the song? Allow me to post the complete lyrics for you:

The mood is right
The spirit's up
We're here tonight
And that's enough

Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time…
Siiiiiiiiiimply haaaaaaaaaaving a wonderful Christmas time.

Yes. I think it goes something like that. But you probably skipped over all of those lines. I think it would be much more effective if you went back and said – better yet, sang – each of those lines. 10, 000 times. Just like corporate America does. Every year. To me. Then, if you still think that Paul McCartney really just wants us to get into the spirit of the season and isn’t actually trying to make our minds split into two insane halves, I will believe you.

As if all of this weren’t enough, the Christmas season also overlaps cold season. My nose has been running non-stop since November 1st. This week alone, more liquid has seeped out of my nose than I have consumed since adolescence. Because I am constantly wiping my nose, the patch of skin above my upper lip is all red and sensitive and chapped. It’s infuriating. It looks like I have a moustache made of leprosy.

Today, as I was teaching my students about common restaurant words and phrases, I was wiping my nose so much that I actually began to worry that the arrangement of my facial features was beginning to shift (not that this would necessarily be a bad thing – but I’d prefer to do it in front of a mirror). My two trips to the bathroom to blow my nose had accomplished nothing. In fact, my nose seemed to be furious that I was trying to control its right to express itself, and it unleashed a cataract of mucus in retaliation.

The situation became so exasperating that I rolled up my sleeves and did something about it – something that I now regret, because some people were really creeped out. I brought my elbow up to my face and slowly dragged my nose up the inside of my forearm in one massive wipe – all the way to the tip of my index finger, and then back down the other side of my arm. After that my nose was still running, so I repeated the exercise with the other arm. My students were stupefied. I was stupefied. My nose should have run out of mucus by the time I’d reached the index finger of my first hand, but it hadn’t. By that point, I was determined to satisfy my curiosity about how much mucus was in my head, no matter what the cost.

What was the cost? Well, I was left standing in front of the class with arms that were covered in enough mucus to make me feel as if I’d only recently emerged from the black lagoon. And my nose was still running.

I’d originally meant for this to be a scathing commentary on Christmas, but I think that I ended up revealing more about who I am, and what I hold dear. I don’t know exactly what I revealed, and I hope you don’t tell me. Please think about the revelation as a Christmas present that is waiting for me under the tree. But instead of opening it on Christmas morning, I will discover it in mid-life. And instead of playing with it for hours on end, I will “play” with it for years. In therapy.

Happy Holidays everyone!

At this point, I just wish I could see my own penis.

2007-12-11T18:45:00.000-08:00

For the past two years, I’ve had an idée fixe, and this has been to lose enough weight to be able to see my own penis in the shower. Some search for truth, others for justice. I search for my penis (I’d even appreciate just being able to see the tip).

Please calm down. Of course I can see my own penis. But to do it I have to curl up my body like a snail’s shell – or like one of those French creatures in cirque du soleil. I will also require a mirror, steel clamps, and four feet of twine. Any more detail than this would probably leave you forever changed, and not in a good way, so let’s leave it there.

But even though I can see my penis whenever I want to, I may as well not even have a penis when I’m in the shower. I look down, and all I can see is belly. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I saw my penis. Think about it – why would I have to?

On second thought, don’t think about it.

(God, why are you still thinking about it? Didn’t I just ask you not to?)

To determine how much more weight I have to lose before my wildest dreams are fulfilled, I’ve created an elaborate test. I may have told you about this before. First, I wait until my penis is completely flaccid, and then I relax my belly as much as possible. My posture must be erect and my hands must be at my sides. As I’m looking down, trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive one, I’m allowed to extend my neck out as far as possible so that my line of sight angles in. Then, if I can’t see my penis, I slowly suck in my gut to see how much further I have to go (all the while humming the theme song from Jaws for effect).

Why don’t I just go out and buy a tape measure? Well, I have one – but the ribbon is made of steel. The last time I tried to wrap it around my belly I almost performed Japanese ritual suicide when, instead of slowly letting the tape recoil into its plastic container, I just pressed the release button and let all hell break loose. Although there is a certain quiet dignity to hara-kiri, I didn’t die that night. In a way though, I guess part of me did die (the part that thinks getting disemboweled with a tape measure is something that only happens to other people).

A while ago I made up my mind to really get in shape before leaving for Japan. I’ve been running and watching calories. But tonight – when I did my shower test for the first time in one month – nothing at all had changed as far as my penis was concerned. In fact, it looked like it had hibernated for the winter beneath the vast, arctic-white expanse of my belly.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said, slamming my fist against the wall and cursing my penis. Never in my life had I been so angry at it. I was furious! In my rage I began to think that the penis had a mind of its own, and that it was purposefully – cunningly – hiding from me because I had kept him in isolation for so long. I cursed and cursed and slammed my foot down. Then I slipped and tore off the shower curtain in my downward spiral. As I lay in on shower floor with the water splashing against my supine, broken body – naked but for my purple shower-curtain shroud – I listened to my Korean neighbor also begin cursing. Maybe he was angry about all of the hubbub coming from my apartment, or maybe he too was angry at my penis for some mysterious reason. I didn’t blame him.

I realized right away that I shouldn’t have sworn at my penis. It doesn’t need that kind of negativity right now, and it certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

I slowly lifted myself up out of the pool of soapy water and gathered up my shower curtain. As I was fiddling with the little plastic rings, trying to reattach them to the shower curtain, I looked down one last time. Since my hands were raised above my head, my body was stretched out more than usual. I finally saw what I had been searching for all this time, and it was more than I ever could have hoped for. I’m not going to tell you what it was that I saw, because I suspect that I’ve used the word too many times in this post already. But it was my penis.

The fact that you are reading the final line of this post means that you are looking for the moral to today’s story. Bless your heart.

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T19:02:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving
to you and, of course, to yours.
I'll have a drumstick.

c. 2007.

Production Notes: Thanksgiving - the most magical time of the year. It is a holiday when people wear sweaters, eat turkey, and come into dangerously close contact with family members.

My grandmother is expecting me to wear the multi-color sweater that she knit for me two years ago - the one bearing the word "WINTER" on it. Some people wear shirts with witty one-liners. Others have clothing with inflammatory political slogans. I wear sweaters telling people that it is winter. Underneath the word "winter" there is a depiction of a man going downhill on a black sleigh. When my grandmother gave me the sweater she pointed to the man and said, "It's you." As an English teacher, maybe I'm thinking about the symbolism behind this too much - but isn't there something a little ominous about a man going downhill alone on a black sleigh? Also, when you look at the sweater in the right light and squint, it looks like the figure in the sleigh is humping a black man.

I have to give my grandmother kudos for trying though. That would be a pretty hard thing to knit.

Happy Thanksgiving guys.

Friday Livestock Painting #3

2007-11-09T15:45:00.000-08:00

Surprise, I'm alive!

2007-11-07T16:56:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while, and I’m sorry. There are two reasons why I haven’t been writing. Let’s examine them in painstaking detail:

1. I have been horny.

This isn’t like the horniness you feel when your body temperature rises by half a degree and you need to pull out your knitting to distract yourself. I’m talking about how you feel when you get home from work, close the door, open your window, howl wildly into the lonely night, tear off your clothes, run around the room breaking things with your head, throw a raw steak in the middle of your floor, and then get down on your knees to eat it – sans hands. Then you hold your open hands up to the heavens above, with bloody rivulets from the steak running down your forearms, and you give a grunt of thanks to Ba’al – the god of rain, thunder, and fertility. We’ve all been there.

(For the record, I didn’t actually do that. The reason why I didn’t do it is not so much because I didn’t want to, but because I can’t afford steak right now.)

2. The second reason for the lack of posts is because, after a little bit of traveling, a couple of interviews, and a lot of paperwork, I have finally managed to secure a good job teaching English overseas. If you know me, you know that this has been a very stressful time for me. Not only have I been dealing with the big question of whether or not I need more Pokemon in my life, but interviews make me sick to my stomach. To cope with the stress, I have been putting all things fried into my mouth for the past two weeks.

Stress, fast food, and horniness: a thought-provoking combination. What do you suppose it has all led to?

Hair loss. Seriously – when I wake up in the morning, I see hair all over my pillow. There are so many that you could probably use them to build a 1”-square log cabin that rises 1/8th of an inch off of your table (should you be so unhygienic as to build a hair log cabin on top of a place where people have to eat their meals). I know that the dimensions of this hypothetical log cabin don’t sound very impressive, but when you consider the fact that it is made out of hair, it is.

(Why would you even say that? Why would you say that a 1”-square log cabin that rises 1/8th of an inch off of the table is not impressive?)

On the other hand, if you were to build a log cabin out of the hair that is below my neckline, you would be able to construct a lovely, fully-furnished signature home, complete with a wrap-around deck.

Anyway, all of the hub-bub is starting to die down, and things are getting back to normal once again. I may have been acting like an absentee landlord of your hearts recently, but now I am back, and I am charging you double the rent. You are asking me if there are any smaller, cheaper apartments available, and I am saying not right now, but we should have some openings in the spring. You threaten to move out, and I say it is your choice – but I am secretly hoping that you won’t.

Mata ato de ne.

Friday Livestock Painting #2

2007-10-26T04:33:00.000-07:00

Friday Livestock Painting #1

2007-10-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

If you laugh at this, we might get along very well.

2007-09-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

I never post videos here, and I never write about Brad Pitt, but this has got to be absolutely the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. I was actually weeping and shrieking at my monitor watching it. If this was a joke, kudos to the interviewer. If this wasn't a joke, kudos to the interviewer.

The bald spot, the "first question," the reference to porno. Holy shit. Praise be to the Internet.

Another Self-Threat

2007-09-24T14:22:00.000-07:00

If I do not make a post by midnight tomorrow, I leave it to the third commenter on this post to decide my fate.

Last week, for example, I narrowly escaped having a micro-penis because I was able to post before my self-imposed deadline. So maybe my third commenter can work the micro-penis angle and extend it from there. But, I should warn you, it can be very tedious trying to extend a micro-penis.

I love you all (with the semi-erotic love of one cousin for another cousin).

I don't have micro-penis (yet).

2007-09-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

Dear anonymous people of the internet:

I am still alive physically (not spiritually, of course, but if you've been reading this blog you already know that).

I have a genuine excuse for not posting here: I have started a new job to pay the bills until I get things sorted out with my overseas situation. I expect to be into the swing of things by tomorrow, at which point I will begin posting again regularly.

If I don't post by Wednesday, it means that my penis is only 1.5 inches long when fully erect (a condition commonly known as micro-penis). So, if Wednesday at 11:59 pm rolls around and there's still no post up, you can feel free to write something along the lines of:

Dear Derek,

You have micropenis 4-ever.

Take care!

Judith

PS: You're dick is small!

Ok? Are we all clear? Until that time, I ask for your patience, and my penis asks for your patience. He justs needs a wee bit of time to get things sorted out.

(Why do I keep using the word "wee" in the same sentence as "my penis" anyway?)

(Furthermore, why do I keep making this tiresome joke?)

The Most French Man Who Ever Lived

2007-08-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

Whenever I go to the local liquor store I always feel like I’m taking my life in my hands. First I have to get past the crazy homeless guy at the store entrance – the one who always walks around town with a big wooden staff and a diseased-looking German shepherd.

On the weirdness scale, the conversation that I had with him last night was pretty typical:

“Say, buddy,” he said, “wanna go to the pizza place over there and buy a couple of slices for a sick old woman who’s lying in bed all alone?”

“No,” I said.

“AHHH MAN! But it’s the lunar fuckin’ eclipse!!”

I know, I know. I’m such an ass. To be so stingy on a night as important as the lunar eclipse. That’s when bedridden women all over the world are most in need of Pizza Hut. But since my bank account balance is temporarily fixed, and since every penny that I spend is bringing me one step closer this man’s social circle, I’m not eager to go throwing it around.

[By the way, today I gave my superintendent my two-month notice. This means that I will have to move out of my building no later than October 31st (All Hallows’ Eve). On the down side, if I don’t get a job before that time, “moving” might very well be as simple as walking out the front door of my apartment building on October 31st and saying “Oh shit” in a voice all a-quiver. On the up side, this is probably going to be one of the most terrifying Halloweens of all time!]

Once I get inside the liquor store, my main goal is always to get what I need as quickly as possible and not make any eye-contact whatsoever. This is because everyone in the store falls into one of three main categories:

1. semi-drunk
2. on parole
3. tattooed with something related to scary sex or death

The place was crowded, and when I got my bottle of sherry I had to wait in line. To make matters worse, The Most French Man Who Ever Lived was at the cash register. He was talking to the clerk and holding everybody else up.

This guy was doing his best to live up to every conceivable French stereotype. Only if he'd been wearing a tight black-and-white striped shirt with a painter’s cap could he have more convincingly declared his allegiance to all things French. Not only was he speaking French to the clerk at the top of his lungs, but he was buying a bottle of red French wine, and, I kid you not, he was wearing a Vuarnet France shirt. He was tall and thin, with long, unkempt hair – a symbol of his Mediterranean passion and virility.

Who the hell was this guy anyway? Je ne sais pas, but he was irritating the hell out of me. Had he just bought a “Learn French in 3 hours” CD at the local Barnes and Noble? He was wasting everyone’s time – mine included. The longer I was forced to stay in the threatening environment of the liquor store, the more I felt my anger turning towards not only this man – but to all things French, including French Polynesia.

Tempers were flaring. The large Polish man behind me had muttered the word “mudderfugger” something like 6 or 7 times already, and I was starting to worry that I was about to become the makeshift victim of his frustration. I turned to the Polish man and said, “Could this guy possibly be any more French?”, to which he raised a massive hand before his face, as if to pronounce a Shakespearian sonnet, and eloquently replied, “He’s a fugging mudderfugger is what he is.”

When the collective drunken ire of the liquor store patrons seemed about to reach a fever pitch, the Most French Man Who Ever Lived, seemingly sensitive to the raised tempers (he was French, after all), turned to the seething crowd with a warm smile and said, “Sorry everybody, we were speaking FRRRREENCH!”

“We know there Jack Cousteau. Now get your wine and get the hell outta here,” peeped the disheveled, broken-hearted businessman with the bottle of Crown Royal.

And so ends another stirring chapter in my life as a ghettosexual.

Au revoir!

Idea #2: Humanity

2007-08-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

If you think about it, the word "black" is five letters long. The word "white" is also five letters long. Come on people. Are we really so different after all?

Wait a second though. The word "Asians" is six letters. What a bunch of weirdos!

Idea#1: Rocks

2007-08-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

If I were to be asked what my favorite type of rock was (igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic), I'd probably have to go with sedimentary. It's the layered one, after all.

[Editor's Note: I'm sorry, but I have decided to deactivate the comments forum for this particular post. After all of the courage that this admission has taken, I cannot bear the thought of anyone mocking my choice of rock. It would just be too much right now.]

Hello. Goodbye.

2007-08-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the lack of action over the past few days folks. I was planning on telling you about my visit with Elsie and her parents, but that’ll have to wait until Monday.

So sorry, I don’t have much for you today. Would a haiku suffice?

(Oh, and by the way, the above line actually was the haiku – 17 syllables and all. Perhaps you would have recognized it if I’d written it in the traditional 3-line form?)

So sorry, I don’t
have much for you today. Would
a haiku suffice?

Anyway, here’s to hoping that you all have enjoyable weekends.

(That was also a haiku, just in case you were wondering. Were you?)

(That was also a haiku.)

Ok, this is starting to get a little ridiculous. I'll stop.

I am terrible at telephone sex.

2007-08-15T16:53:00.000-07:00

Now that things are going pretty well between Elsie and me, don't worry - it doesn’t mean that I’ll be posting about it every day.

As a man who has been single for a very long time, I know exactly what it’s like to hear someone go on and on about his or her shmookums. It’s tedious at best, and at the worst of times it makes you want to put a bullet in your head.

In some ways, it might have been better for this blog if I’d never met anyone at all. Sexual frustration has a lot of entertainment value. That said, I don’t want to be on my deathbed, looking back at decades of sexual inactivity, saying something like, “Man – not having very much sex for my entire life – that was a good one!”

I don’t know what the future holds for either of us, and I’m not going to speculate on that here. She’s definitely going to be moving back to Japan. She has an apartment out there. She has roommates, a job, and a life. If things go well between us, will I pick up and move to Japan? I have no idea. I guess it all hinges on whether or not I think I can survive in a land where Pokemon has achieved semi-divine status. Then again, I’ve heard that they sell large cans of beer out of vending machines, so it can’t be all bad.

Elsie returns to Japan at the end of August.

At the moment, there are more uncertainties than anything else. For example, what are her feelings for me? Sure, she let me put my arm around her while we were walking beside Niagara Falls, and sure, she let me fiddle around with her dials when she came over to my apartment last night while we were watching Jeopardy, and sure, my love for her is already like the deepest ocean – never beginning and never ending – but what does she feel about me? Am I just a hunk of man meat to tide her over until something better comes along? Or does she see something special in me – something unique? When I told her that I am the only one I know whose belly button always has a ridiculous amount of lint inside of it, regardless of the time or place, was that an awkward laugh she gave, or one of sincere human understanding? Hard to say.

A little while ago Elsie called me up. I was watching Jeopardy again, wondering if Alex Trebek had ever killed a man in cold blood.

“I want to hear you say something naughty to me,” Elsie said immediately. "Make up a story. About us."

“Uhhhh…” I said.

“Well?”

“I’m…I’m uh…We’re watching Jeopardy again.”

“What!?”

“No – like last night – remember?”

“Oh, ok. And then?”

"I move closer to you, and I reach my hand up inside your shirt."

“Yes? And?”

“And then…I am undoing your bra strap…”

"Ooh, go on."

“And it’s not easy, because the clasp seems to be stuck, and I have grease all over my fingers from the pork chops we were eating. ”

“Be serious.”

“I am. I’m just trying to make it as realistic as possible. Like what happened last night.”

“Ok, I see. And then what?”

“And then…so now I have your bra off…and I’m just setting it on the coffee table.”

“Yeah?”

[This next part I found really hard – not because I had nothing to say, or because I didn’t know what to do next, but because I knew exactly what I wanted to say and do.

I wanted to say something like “And now my hands are moving all over your breasts like crazy, and I’m squeezing the HELL out of them! And now I’m getting on top of you and rubbing up against your body in a way that is pleasureable for me, but perhaps really quite uncomfortable for you - especially because I don't have air conditioning!! We’re going to have sex soon!!!”

But I had a feeling that when girls are talking dirty on the phone, they secretly want it to be like an erotic novel – complete with foreplay and a bit of a plot – maybe even with foreshadowing and a few metaphors thrown into the mix. She would probably want to ease into things. Not just get straight to the sex.]

“My hands are lightly caressing your breasts…gently, gently. We are black sharecroppers living at the turn of the century…we are worried about the rich landowner coming back early and catching us.”

“God Derek, you’re going to need to work on your telephone skills.”

“Man, this is hard.”

We shot the breeze for a while, and she invited me over to her house for dinner this weekend. Her father will be there. Oh dear lord.

As you can see, the relationship between Elsie and me – even at this early stage – is already fraught with uncertainties and challenges. But I’m determined not to screw things up. I will learn. I will adapt. (And later on tonight, when all the world is asleep, I will Google "phone sex.")

Interview

2007-08-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve been writing this blog for a long time now.

Let me rephrase that.

I’ve been writing this international, online magazine for a long time now.

A couple of days ago I was asked to do an interview for another international, online magazine, and I gladly obliged.

They sent me some very intimate questions, I wrote some very intimate answers, and then I sent them the answers via the internet. This is a very 21st century way of doing things. No human contact. I like that.

At first, my interview didn’t go up on their site for a very long time, so I sent them a short, friendly reminder. I told them that, unless they printed my interview immediately, I would hunt them down like the dogs they are and make them kiss my loafers (the ones with the real pennies in ‘em). Then, what a coinkidink, my interview suddenly went up. I guess violence is a pretty effective way of solving problems after all.

I think there could be some sort of cash value awarded if my international, online magazine gets a good rating on their site, so, at this time in my life, I’d like you to visit them and respond favorably. All you have to do is click on the “thumbs up” icon.

And then maybe, one night, while I am sitting in my sweltering apartment in this economically depressed section of this city without a soul, with hot tears streaming down my cheeks as I desperately try to get the last ounce from my bottle of discount beer, I will think, “Hey, things may be rough right now, but at least I have this beer. I wouldn’t have been able to buy this beer had it not been for that kind person from Mount Laurel, New Jersey who clicked on the ‘thumbs up’ icon. Or was it Greensboro, North Carolina? I like beer.”

Then I will realize that, no matter how hard I try, that last little drop of beer will never touch my tongue, and I will curse the gods. But I will never curse you dear reader. Never you.

Have a look-see.

Wednesday Evening Haiku Moment

2007-08-01T14:06:00.000-07:00

Clippity-clop.
Today I stepped in horse shit.
Clippity-clop.

c. 2007

Production Notes: They say that poetry is the language of the gods, and I don’t think that anyone is going to disagree with this statement after reading today's haiku. In this case we are dealing with the god of jokes about bodily functions, but a god is a god.

Although subtle, the underlying message of today's poem is that I immersed my foot in a steaming pile of horse dung. You may be skeptical – wondering how my day could be ruined in such a turn-of-the-century kind of way. These days, stepping in horse poop is somewhat akin to stabbing yourself with a sewing needle while stitching something for the town quilting bee, or setting yourself on fire while trying to light an oil lamp. But no. For the past week there has been a summer fair near my apartment – complete with a roller coaster that looks like a prop from a Stephen King movie, face painting, a Scrambler, carnies with eyes that look as if they’ve seen way too much, and horse rides for children. So the horses pooped, my shoe found the poop, and then I turned my suffering into a beautiful work of art that will be preserved in the collective mind of mankind for eternity. Clippity-clop.

The $500 Poop

2007-07-30T15:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes my students come up to me and say, “Sir, what kind of car do you own?”

I always tell them the truth. I say, “I do not own a car, guys.” Then, of course, they always ask me why. That’s when I slowly raise my head up from my desk and, making the saddest face imaginable, I say, “Because I am poor.” And I pronounce the word “poor” as two syllables, for effect.

I’m confident enough not to own a car and still hold my head up high. Actually, that’s not true. My self-esteem is currently at a dangerous all-time low, but not owning a car reinforces my lack of self-worth and, as a result, makes life heaps easier for me. Neat how that works, huh? Maybe life would get better if I stopped using the word “heaps.” Hmm. It’s a risk I’d just rather not take.

Renting a car is cheap these days – unless, of course, you bring it back dented and chipped and generally looking like shit, which is what I nearly did this weekend, until the magical forces of nature intervened and saved me the $500 deductible.

On Saturday, as I was carrying my groceries back to the car, I noticed a troupe of young hoodlums surrounding a black Toyota Supra that was parked next to my rental. They were hooting and a-hollering and pushing each other around – trying to get the last word in on who was the true “fag.” I probably should have payed closer attention to them, but I was too busy squinting my eyes at just the right aperture to make another man, who was unloading his groceries into a station wagon, look like Mr. Rogers. The resemblance was uncanny. Little did I realize, by squinting my eyes, I was actually sealing my fate, because I was blocking the group of raucous young men from my line of vision. (So my eyes were like fate and the closing of them was like me sealing my fate.)

When I arrived at my car, after the young hoods had already squealed away in their Supra, I noticed a pretty big dent in the rear, driver’s-side door. The paint was also chipped. So I did what everyone does when they see a chipped mark on their door – I put my finger over it and rubbed vigorously, hoping that it would just go away. This didn’t work. Next, I started trying to convince myself that the mark was a stain, and I began picking at it with my fingernail, and this ended up making it even bigger. Finally I resolved matters by looking down at the pile of paint chips at my feet, saying “Aww shit,” and wishing I had the powers to build a time machine.

For the rest of the weekend I stewed about this. I knew that I would have to pay $500 if the rental company discovered the mark during the car inspection, but I couldn’t think of a way to hide it. I considered everything. I even thought about painting over it with white-out and coloring it in with a grey magic marker (a very teacherly solution), but they don’t make magic markers in grey. Also, getting on my knees with a bottle of Liquid Paper and a magic marker and coloring a car is a low that I am not quite ready to sink to (perhaps soon – maybe even in a few hours – but just not yet).

This afternoon I had to take the car back, but before going to the rental agency I stopped in at Starbucks. When I got back out to my car there was a man standing beside it with his hands on his hips, looking at where the damage was, shaking his head and chuckling. This made me want to punch him in the nuts.

He said, “Birds sure do seem to like your car!!! HAHAHAHAHA!”

“What?” I said, and ran up to look at the spot.

To my complete joy, there was a large stain of bird poop perfectly covering the spot where the damage was. Unbelievable, but true.

“YES!” I said. “And to provide further commentary on what I just said, woo-HOOO!!”

The man looked puzzled, and then disappointed. He was hoping that the bird poop would be a low point in my day. He was probably hoping that it would give him a temporary advantage over me in this great game of life. What he didn’t understand was that the two charred-looking nuggets of feces, surrounded by the mysterious white, represented, to my bank account, $250 each. Things got even weirder when I dropped to my knees and started gently running my fingers over the guano to make sure that it was the real deal.

After that, everything started coming up roses. I took the car back to the rental agency, and they didn’t notice a thing.

Do I feel guilty for what I did? No. Not really. In a way, I consider myself to be like Robin Hood – I stole from the rich (the evil rental car agency), and I gave to the poor (me). Or, to look at it from another angle, I became like a poor man’s version of Saint Francis of Assisi. Whereas birds would land on St. Francis’ shoulder and listen to him preach, my birds come and shit on my rental car in key areas to help me avoid paying $500 deductibles.

Pretty Ditty

2007-07-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the internet amazes me. No matter how hard you search, there are times when you just can't find what you're looking for. For example, I might be trying to track down some rare Civil War memorabilia and then, for whatever reason, I wind up at a site with semi-clad, beautiful Asian women spraying each other with hoses and laughing while trying their best to wash vintage sports cars.

(Ok, I admit it, there were no sports cars involved. I guess I'm not a true man after all.)

I have been trying to find a particular song for at least three weeks now. I've been hearing it on the radio constantly, but the names of the artist and the song are never announced. And now, after having finally found the song after coming across a Korean blog and translating the lyrics myself by learning hangul and developing an elementary knowledge of Korean social protocol, I have finally discovered the name of the artist and the song. And get this - when all of this was said and done and I typed the artist's name into Google, it returned one friggin' hit. WTF!!?

How can you make an amazing song, get major play time on the radio, and still have fewer results on Google than my father - a man who does not own a computer or a television, and who, if he sees you on the street and he knows you, will turn 180 degrees and walk in the opposite direction?

Unbelieveable. And quite frankly, very annoying.

Anyway, I'm going to post some of the lyrics, as well as the artist's name, so that no one else has to go through the hell that I did (although, I must say, the people of Seoul were quite hospitable and I eventually developed a sincere appreciation for Korean folk dance):

Artist: Roz Bell

Song: Yesterday Man

Refrain:

I'm so lonely not only when you leave me oh oh

(The rest of the lyrics are available in the "comments" section of today's post.)

Enjoy.

PS: I just found out that the artist's name returned only one hit because I was spelling it with two z's instead of one. Don't worry though - I will be sure to punish myself severely with whips, paddles, hot wax, and plenty of scented oils later on in the evening.

I am writing this from Afghanistan.

2007-07-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

The whole reason why I am writing this post is because I wanted an excuse to write a post with the title “I am writing this from Afghanistan.”

I know that some (one) of you goodly folk have been coming here for quite a while, so you know about my troubles. You know about the sexlessness, the humid apartment, the lack of job satisfaction, the man who gently poked my penis in the elevator.*

(It was not a cupping. Nor was it a fondling. It was a mere poke. I know. It’s weird. The weirder part is that I wasn’t even really all that offended. In fact...well, let’s move on to the next paragraph of this, my worst post ever.)

You know I’ve been going through some issues. So when I was in the shower this morning, I thought of writing a post with the title “I am writing this from Afghanistan.” Oh, how I laughed! I thought it would be hilarious because it would suggest that I had reached such a breaking point in my life that I decided to pack everything up and head to a backward, landlocked country in the heart of Asia where people pass the time by making throw rugs with intricate designs. It struck me as very funny. But I can’t see any of your reactions. In fact, most of you probably don’t find this funny in the least. You’re probably slowly moving your head from side to side, saying “I think it’s time,” and moving your little mouse cursor up to the “Favorites” section to remove me because I am no longer currying your favor.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I am not writing this from Afghanistan. I’m just hypothesizing that it would be a real hoot if I were. (I’m not).

*I made a joke about the weather to a stranger. He laughed. He made a joke. I laughed. We both sighed. He poked my penis with his index finger. He may have been drunk. I may be and may have been drunk. Aside from this, I can offer no more of an explanation. Why am I writing this paragraph - the theme of which is my penis - in extremely small font?

Shit.

2007-06-17T21:18:00.000-07:00

I have had nothing to post about for the past two weeks. This is nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve never had anything to post about. In fact, I’ve never once done a single post that has not been about me doing one of the following three things:

1. being in a coffee shop line

2. being in an elevator

3. sitting on a toilet

And the crazy part is that this blog has managed to continue, nevertheless, for the past two years. I don’t know if I should look back on that feat with pride, or with a kind of disgust and self-loathing. Although I am a bit proud that I have had so many blog-worthy experiences on the toilet, I can’t help but dream of a world with more variety.

I’m at a stage in my life right now where, quite frankly, I am very frightened of what comes next. I’ve been teaching for three years now, and the only thing that I’ve learned about myself during this time is that I have a deep and abiding dislike of young people and of the collected works of William Shakespeare.

Damn the young people for being perpetually young as I become older and more withered and wrinkly and disillusioned and incapable of digesting meat products. Damn the Bard for writing plays with so many different types of irony in them and encouraging young people to constantly torment me with questions like “Is this irony sir?”, “What is the difference between irony and sarcasm?”, “What is irony?”, “What is sarcasm?”.

I think my parents sense my lack of direction, and today my father did for me what he usually does for me when he gets worried that I might one day end up propped up beside a garbage can in a major urban area and making a mouth out of my left hand and holding it very close to my ear and making as if there is a voice in the hand that is telling me dark secrets about the American government: he gave me a hardcover book.

The book is called The Four-Hour Work Week. Although this title suggests that I would have to spend one more hour of work per week than I am normally accustomed to, the picture on the dust jacket immediately appealed to me because it depicted a man idling his time away in a hammock in some kind of tropical paradise. Naturally, when my father saw this picture of the lazy man, he immediately thought, “My son would like this book.” And naturally, when I saw the picture of the man in the hammock, I immediately thought, “I wish I were that man. I wish I had a hammock. I hate my job. My life is a shambles.”

So it seems like something that I would really enjoy. Thanks Dad.

I’m going to be reading a lot of this book over the next couple of weeks, and if it really does let me in on some secret ways to, as it says, “escape 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich,” I will be sure to tell you. But I won’t say so directly, because that might infringe on copyright laws. So if, for example, the hint is that I should invest in the stock market, I will write a post about running out of stock for my beef soup. Are we clear? But if my post instead paints a quaint little vignette of something interesting that happened to me while I was on the toilet, this will really mean that something interesting happened to me while I was on the toilet.

Be prepared for a reference to the Amish.

2007-06-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

Trouble at my school.

I sent an email today.

Subject?: F.E. Q.

Everyone in the

English department got it,

but are they smart? No.

FE Q: Get it?

“Final Exam Questions,” right?

Nope - it's Feh Qiyoo.

Assumptions were made.

They thought it a tasteless joke,

and the plot thickened.

Head of English Dept.

calls me “subversive agent.”

Natives are restless.

May soon escape to

Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

Buy me a Banjo.

Update: I have a deep voice.

2007-05-29T16:14:00.000-07:00

Every now and then a student whose eyes are all a-gleam with devil-may-care will come up to me and say, "Why did you become a teacher, anyway?"

I get it a lot. Usually it is said to me in the same tone of voice as one would use to say, “Put the money in the bag” or “I own a voodoo doll that has been hand-crafted in your image and tonight I will immerse it in a vat of bubbling acid.”

It’s a great question. Part of what drew me to the profession was the ancient adage, “Those who can’t, teach.” Being someone who couldn’t – on a whole host of levels – I decided that this would be an ideal job. It wasn’t until many years later, after I had already accepted this job as an English teacher, that I heard the second most famous teaching adage: “Those who can’t, teach, and those who can’t even teach end up teaching gym.” I wish I’d heard this one first. Life might have turned out very differently.

But really, I can’t picture myself as a gym teacher. Yes, I can picture myself sitting happily in a corner with a stopwatch, watching my students run laps, and saying things like "work it guys, work it" (I know, it actually sounded pretty creepy to me too). And sure, I can also imagine getting so angry at a student that I end up swatting a volleyball at his fool head – just as was done to me by my gym teacher in junior high when he heard me describing his haircut as “business in the front and party in the back” and then cackling amongst my bandmates in a voice that was just beginning to suffer the humiliating effects of puberty, but that would ultimately become the rich, masculine voice that I use today (when imitating James Earl Jones).

So, in some ways, I can see myself making the perfect gym teacher. The real hang-up would be sex-ed. I can’t imagine walking into a class on a Monday morning, putting my binder on the desk, and saying, “Ok guys, today the curriculum is telling me that I have to talk to you about genital warts. Anyone know what those are? Anyone? Richard? They’re basically just your genitals plus warts. I could quiz you guys on this. Are you writing it down? God guys! I said write it down!”

I don’t mind being a mediocre teacher. Instead of “mediocre,” I like to think of myself as “harmless.” Maybe I’m not teaching my students any valuable life skills. And maybe I am not teaching them English. And maybe, on some level, I am teaching them Swahili. But overall, the students leave my classroom unscathed, and with a solid understanding of the rules of charades. So I am basically preserving their innocence and adding charades. I don't see anything wrong with this formula. I sleep peacefully at night. Or at least I could, until…

They hired another teacher.

He and I are the same height, the same age, and we have the same haircuts and many of the same mannerisms. We differ only in terms of our ability to teach. If teachers were meat products, he would be a filet mignon, and I would be day-old rib-eye steak. If we were cars, he would be a Bentley, and I would be a Kia with an airbag recall. If we were pens, he would be a Mont Blanc, and I would be one of those massive pens with all of the different colours of ink in them that run out after only one page but still mysteriously have enough ink left in them to splatter your pockets and make you look like an unemployed clown.

When I walk past this teacher's classroom he will be strutting his stuff, waving his arms confidently, bringing some damn book to life. His students will be gazing up at him, enraptured. They will stay after class to ask him questions - not just about the book, but about life.

To give you an idea of my own classroom manner, take the following conversation between myself and the woman who is the head of our English department:

Head: I go past classrooms and I see so many teachers just sitting on their asses doing nothing. If I were a student in those classes I would be bored.

Me: …

Head: [She gives me a very intense look that seems to suggest that I am a member of the aforementioned group. I do what I always do when I'm uncomfortable - I try to make a quaint joke to conceal what is actually a very serious problem.]

Me: What time did you pass my classroom, anyhoo?

She laughs and I laugh. Ha ha ha. Hoo hoo hoo. Hiddledeehee. We are laughing because we both know that her complaint applies to me, and we both know that the other person knows it. What she doesn’t know is that I am also secretly laughing at a joke that was made last night on King of Queens. And what I don’t know is that she is laughing because she knows she will soon recommend that my job title be downgraded from “English teacher” to “head tutor” or even "gamesmaster." But we continue to laugh because it improves workplace morale.

Anyway, even if the students approach this new teacher with a level of adoration usually reserved for cult leaders and they approach me as if I were the lone survivor of the Tuskegee syphilis study, I will need to adapt. Perhaps he and I can teach each other new things – things that we’ve never even thought of before. Things that will blow each other’s minds. He might teach me how to plan a lesson, and I might teach him how to do the trick where you hold your right foot in your left hand and then jump so that your left foot ends up in front of your right leg. It's really neat when it works. When it doesn't work...not so neat.

He will learn to hide his anger. I will learn to hide his chalk.

Still alive physically (but spiritually defeated)

2007-04-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

Really sorry about the lack of action here these days folks. You probably thought that I was trying to wait to get to fifty comments on the last post, but no. That's only 99% of the reason. I'm smack in the middle of my final exams at college. They'll be done by early next week, and then things will start getting back to normal.

After that, I will be completely free to lead myself out of the bondage of tenement-dwelling and into the promised land of - I don't know yet. In this respect, I'm kind of like Moses. You guys can be the Jews, and my professors can be like the dastardly Egyptian Pharaohs. And instead of parting the Red Sea, I'm parting....my hair. Oh who am I kidding. I know I don't have hair, and you know I don't have hair. But in all of the places where it is frowned upon to have hair, well, that's a whole other story. Good one, Lord.

Aside from all the studying and essay-writing I've been doing, the only thing of note that has happened was a few days ago at work, when I greeted the gay payroll department employee named Phil by calling him "Phil McCrackin." I said it as a joke, not realizing the terrible implications until 12 o'clock that same night as I was lying in bed, trying to drift off to sleep. Ever since then he's been looking at me with a fondness that seems to say "I am more than willing to fill your crack in. Name the time and the place. I'll bring jello shooters. You bring the velvet sheets."

I tried to put the incident into the form of a haiku for your enjoyment, but once you write "Phil McCrackin" you've only got a few syllables left to play with, and what are you going to do with that? Perhaps if it was a tanka...

Have a good weekend.

Interlude

2007-04-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

I will not be able to post until tomorrow. I am still reflecting on the real meaning of Easter.

I have laid an Easter egg for you.

2007-04-06T11:25:00.000-07:00

I've had a few days off school, and I've been using this time - or at least, I've been supposed to be using this time - to write essays for my correspondence courses. But since I'm using my computer, most of my "essay-writing" time has become internet-searching time.

I've become kind of obsessed about searching my own name. I've found that a number of my students have been writing about me online. Not all of it has been positive. One boy said I was "strange" on his blog, and he also said that I required a bra. So I made an anonymous comment telling him that I wasn't the one who vomited during the Christmas choir concert all over the soprano section. I think I'd rather have man-boobs than do that.

I know why he doesn't like me though. For the first half of the semester he was always fiddling with his cell phone and playing on his PSP or whatever the hell you call it. So one day I took it and put it on my chair, planning to give it back to him at the end of the class. When I gave it back he claimed that I'd broken it. I don't think so buddy. Yes I sat on it, and yes there was a snapping sound - but that was the sound the chair makes. It makes all kinds of sounds, actually - it can even do farting noises. What? You thought that was me? No silliest of Billies - it was the chair!

And did you also know there's a site where students can go to rate their teachers? I'm up there. There are only four comments. These are:

Good guy, but very hard marker.

Dida (sic) summersolt (sic) in class once.

Claims his chair makes farting noises.

Showed us a porno.

The first one is totally false. I'm not a hard marker. I can only remember marking really hard on occasions where I've been having a really rough day, or when someone has a face I don't like.

Yes, I did do a somersault once in class - way back in the day. No biggie - it was the first day of a new semester, and I wanted as dramatic an opening as possible. So I decided to wait until everyone was seated, and I came running into the class, hootin' and a-hollerin', and whipping my necktie above my head like a lasso. I then dove into a somersault and tore some vital cartilage in my back.

I've tried to repress the memory of this incident by staying indoors during the summer, refusing to read the collected works of Somerset Maugham, and not being what one would describe as a "salt-of-the-earth" person. <----This, by the way, was the most shameful attempt at humor ever attempted here. I don't even know why I didn't delete it. I hope I haven't ruined your Easter.

And listen - I didn't show them a friggin' porno, unless you call Shakespeare in Love a porno. But the student has a point- there were probably more bare breasts in that movie than you'd see in a porno. There were also quite a few more references to the works of Shakespeare than you'd get in your typical porno. Go figure.

Anyway, I hope you had a reasonably enjoyable Maundy Thursday and a Good Friday. And please, amid all of the eggs hunts and chocolate bunnies, try to spend some time meditating on the deeper religious meaning behind the holiday (the one that involves baby Jesus hatching from the decorative egg).

Pretty little Jesus, tasty little saviour.

I am practically a lesbian.

2007-04-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

You know something, it's very interesting how art imitates life. The other day someone made a comment on this blog, suggesting that my blind date from a few days ago might have been a lesbian (because she was wearing flannel). According to the commenter, this girl had probably assumed that I was also a woman, and therefore also a lesbian.

This wasn't the most flattering comment I've ever received, and it led to some late-night soul-searching in bed: Do I look like a woman? Was my blind date a lesbian? Am I a lesbian? Should I get rid of my flannel sheets? If I think about Brad Pitt naked for one second will that make me gay? And if not, what about for five seconds?

I'd forgotten about this comment until today, when I was nearly mistaken for a lesbian at Barnes and Noble.

I was with a friend buying a copy of a Shakespeare play that I'm going to be teaching next semester. The boy behind the counter had long hair and glasses, and a bit of a John Lennon aura about him. When I put the book down on the counter he smiled and said, in a meek voice, "Are you a lesbian?"

"A who to the what-now?!!" I said.

"A lesbian, a lesbian, are you a lesbian?"

"No. What the hell are you talking about?"

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. I guess I just assumed that, because you are buying a copy of Shakespeare, you must be..."

"Look at my bald head. That should have been your first clue. Look - just give me my book. I really don't need this in my life right now."

The boy was nonplussed, and he dropped my book into a plastic bag and told me that he hoped I would enjoy my day. Unfortunately, being mistaken for a gay woman kind of put the old kibosh on that.

On the way out, my friend looked at me and said, "Derek, you know what a thespian is, don't you?"

"He said thespian?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Not lesbian."

"...So what's a thespian again?"

Now that I think about it, I can almost see how someone could mistake me for a lesbian. Lesbians and I have a lot in common. They like women, and I like women. They have short hair, and I have short hair. They cannot be legally married in some states, and I have been legally prohibited from entering some states. They harbor a deep and brooding bitterness towards all men, and I do too (the human race, actually, but it's almost the same thing).

I've gone bi-postal.

2007-04-02T16:01:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of posts that I put up last week but then abruptly took down because the Keymaster ordered me to do so in a waking dream.

The first is a post that I made before the blind date with the flannel-clad penny-loafer-wearin' hotty. The second is a creepy post about a book that I had to read for my correspondence course. I like to call them "Post #1" and "Post #2." I think these titles capture the basic essence of what they mean to me, and hopefully, what they will mean to you.

Post #1

My blind date asked me to put the date off until tomorrow. Apparently she needs time to prepare herself for the magnitude of manliness that she is going to come into contact with when I walk through the doors of her bank.

Or maybe she's trying to find out what I meant by "wonderful" when I sent her my picture and said "I'm the one with the wonderful hair."

Interestingly enough, she didn't send me her picture, claiming that she "looks downright hideous in pictures." I don't know what scares me more here - the fact that she said she's "hideous" or her use of the outdated adverb "downright." Linguistically speaking, we already don't seem to be a very good match.

But really, I'm not worried about her looks, because Mother said that she was "very cute." When I asked Mother to rate her on a scale of one to ten, Mother gave her a 7. That's pretty good, because I would be willing to stoop to a 6, or even have a threesome with a pair of flexible 2.5's.

But actually, I don't even give a care how the date goes. I don't need Mother to hook me up with women. I can find my own women (but not as pretty or as sweet as you, Mother). Recently I have been making great efforts to meet women of every religious and racial type. Today, for example, I went up to a black woman in a book store and said, "Do you like reading?". She said "Yes I do," and then I said nothing, playing hard to get. Apparently she thought that this was a pretty good strategy, because she said nothing, selected a book on Wicca, and walked away.

I'm feeling pretty good about the date tomorrow. I'm trying to create positive and self-empowering mental scenarios in my head. The problem that I usually have is, before the date, I envision myself doing something catastrophic - spilling my latte all over my lap or inadvertently walking through a plate-glass window or making a joke about prosthetic limbs, only to find out that my date has not one, but two, and that they were hand-crafted by her father who has just recently passed away after a grueling battle with a rare form of cancer.

Please send me positive mental thoughts.

Post #2

I have to write a 1500-word essay on James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for tomorrow. Haven't started yet.

Unfortunately, I do not understand very much of this book. I understand that the main character is Catholic. I get that. He also has some pent-up sexual desires. I get that. Oh boy, DO I. I also get his desire to escape Ireland. What I don't get are the many, many sentences like the following:

"It was a firbolg in the borrowed cloak of a Milesian."

When I read that sentence I was all hopped-up on caffeine. I'd been fantasizing about the various kinds of torture I'd like to inflict on James Joyce. Before I read the sentence I decided to go easy on him - water-boarding. But after reading it - at 2:12am - I decided to step things up a bit and go with fire / public beheading. I threw my book across the room and put my head down on my desk and wept. Then I stood up, and did the crawl of shame across my floor to where the book was lying, and I curled up and tried to continue reading it. But when I opened the book up again, my eyes fell on the following sentence:

"Had he felt the need of an implicit faith amid the welter of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms, six principle men, seed and snake baptists, supralapsarian dogmatists, and I like eating Cheerios on rainy Saturday afternoons."

"Arrrgh!" I cried, and kicked the foot of my bed, cracking it and causing a splinter to go deep into my Achilles heel - conveniently reminding me that I still haven't read the Iliad for another course that I'm taking, and it is going to be on the final exam. Ancient Greece. Ancient grease!? I thought of the dirty dishes that had been piling up in my sink for the past week. I limped over to the sink, still gently weeping, and yanked out my frying pan from underneath all the other dishes. A single tear dropped from my eye into the congealed, whitened mess of grease. The saline from the tear dissolved the grease and left a glassy clear spot in the middle of the frying pan. I looked at this intently, until - for a split-second - I saw an image of James Joyce, sitting cross-legged on a wooden chair, grinning slyly at me as if to say, You should have bought the Cliffs Notes you silly bugger! Eat shit!!!

I shrieked and cast the frying pan halfway across the room. At last I prepared a hot water bottle and hit the sack. It's been a weird past few days.

I told you it would be a creepy post - why didn't you listen to me!??

Gratuitous violence = A sign of a well-made movie.

2007-03-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I went to see the movie “300” – the flick about the Spartan battle against the Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae. I bet this historical reference caused at least ten percent of you to stop reading. But as a teacher, I feel it is my duty to leave it in.

I went with an old buddy from university and one of his friends, Lionel. My friend and I arrived at the theatre early. As we were waiting in our seats, my friend said, “Watch – Lionel is going buy a large Coke and a popcorn, and he’s not going to offer to share any with us. He does it every time.”

Sure enough, when Lionel came in, he was carrying a large drink and a popcorn, and not once did he offer us any. I have to give him credit though - he was probably trying to get us into the Spartan “mood” of the movie by denying us worldly pleasures.

But what he did offer was his opinion – on just about everything. In the 10 minutes before the movie started he gave a monologue about the highway conditions, ancient Greece, a cyst that he had (didn’t say where, so I naturally assumed his ass), the prescription for his glasses, the sitcom King of Queens, and the American Indian movement. Later, halfway through the movie, Chatty McTalks-a-lot drops his large friggin’ Coke. It lands sideways on his popcorn, which he’d rested on the floor, and from there it pours all over my shoes and socks. Since we were going to see a movie about ancient Greece, I told myself that this was Nemesis repaying Lionel for his hubris in assuming that we actually gave a damn about what he had to say. But, since he’s a Cherokee Indian by birth, I’m not sure if this would apply. I hope it does.

I’m telling you all of this because, as terrible as it was, it still did not ruin my experience of 300.

I nearly had a heart attack during this thing. I was joking a few days ago when I said that the preview made me decide to work out until I had the body of a Spartan soldier, but now I'm not joking. Not only do I want to have the body of a Spartan soldier, but now I think I also want to kill a Persian guy. I went a couple of nights in a row to see it, and both times they were sold-out. I tried to get the crowds in the line-up all riled up by standing in front of them and raising my fist in the air, yelling “THIS IS [please insert my own city name here].” Absolutely nobody laughed, but a few people looked like they wanted to see me drown in a sea of arrows, so I'm glad that I was able to get them into the spirit of war and aggression.

There was one major flaw with the movie, however, and that was the apple. There was an untimely and inexplicable appearance of a Mackintosh apple halfway through that didn't make any sense. King Leonidas, the leader of the Spartans, was addressing his elite fighting unit – the Spartan 300 – telling them about the importance of freedom and honor. But then, in mid-speech, he stopped and bit into an apple. There was a loud crunch and he chewed for a while. My first thought was, Is this a joke? The real King Leonidas would have put the apple down or at least finished it off before starting to talk. And then, to cap it off, the dirty litterbug threw his core on the ground.

Overall though, the apple didn't take away very much from the movie, especially when you consider all of the limbs getting chopped off. That's what makes a good movie after all - seeing other people in intense physical pain. It helps us to feel better about ourselves and to forget about the world of pain that resides within us - within you, within me. Within us all.

Two stumps up!

"I like talk about sex."

2007-03-05T16:47:00.000-08:00

Please don’t think that I am writing this post because I no longer have the winter blahs.

I still have them, and as I told you in my comments section yesterday, I had to upgrade them from “blahs” to “blaahs.” This should tell you something about the desperate nature of my situation. But, symbolically, the snows of winter will soon melt away, and so will my depression. I guess, in that sense, the spring will represent rebirth and new opportunity. I wonder what all of those runny dog turds underneath the snow will represent? Please write a paragraph on this and shove it down a happy-go-lucky person's throat by the end of the day.

There. I'm actually starting to feel a little bit better already.

Today on the bus I ran into a couple of my Chinese students – one big and one small. Both had very close-cropped hair, and both had glasses. Both were very giggly. They were giggling, no doubt, because they came across their teacher sitting on the bus with a 5 o’clock shadow (why should teachers have to shave on Mondays?), eating a granola bar with the crumbs all down his front.

“You didn’t shave today sir,” the big one said.

“Shave what?” I asked, and jammed the rest of the granola bar into my mouth – angry that I had no privacy – even on my city’s public transport system.

There was no place for them to sit, so I stood up to talk to them. Unfortunately the only available space was in front of the doors, and every time they opened they would slide inwards and smack against my spine, causing the burly bus driver to shout “MOVE AWAY FROM THE DOORS.” This all seemed to give great pleasure to my students.

“What course you teach next year?” said the little one.

When I told him he seemed pleased – but I don’t know if this was because he planned on taking my class or on not taking it. If I was a betting man I’d say…

No. I’d better not tell you. I wouldn’t want to do anything to bring the high esteem you all hold me in into jeopardy.

We began talking about a teacher called Mrs. H. She also teaches English. She is the head of the English department. I am the foot.

“I don’t like Mrs. H,” said the smaller of the two.

“Why?”

“She always talks about love and romantic things. I hate talking about love.”

“Me too,” I said. “Love is the worst. Most guys prefer talking about guns and war and that kind of thing. Don’t worry though – we’ll be reading Lord Jim next semester, and that’s more of a guy’s novel.”

“I don’t like talking about adventure,” said the big one.

“Oh no?” I said.

“No. I like talk about sex.”

You’d think, if you were going to say this on a crowded bus, you would at least say it in an inside voice. Not this boy. When he said “I like talk about sex,” several passengers’ heads shot around, and they glared directly at me – as though I’d been like Socrates, poisoning the minds of the youth. But I would not show remorse. I would not drink of their bourgeois hemlock!

“I don’t want to know about it,” I said. And it’s true. I didn’t. At least not from him. And not on a crowded bus. And not with the bus door rearranging my vertebrae every three seconds.

I still had a few stops left to go before arriving at the library, but I decided to get out early for two reasons: first, the Chinese boy (the big one) had just revealed that he liked to talk about sex, and also, the bus was so crowded that he and I were standing so close together that the little downy hairs on the end of his damn nose were tickling against mine. Tee-hee.

I went to the library with the hopes of getting some serious work done. I got the books that I needed, found a nice little nook in the corner by the window, and set about doing some research for my correspondence course essay. But, when I opened the book and tried to concentrate on the material, there arose before my mind an unsettling image of a big, male Chinese face looming over me, breathing heavily, giggling:

I like talk about sex. . .What course you teach?. . .SEX. . .sex. . .I like talk about. . .¿SEX?. . .What course you teach?. . .

It was weird, and for a while I thought that I was going insane. It’s been over two hours since I got home, and as I sit here I’m still hearing his broken English echo through the recesses of my mind. I’ve tried to drown the echoes in green tea (I can no longer afford beer), but now I think that all of the anti-oxidants from the tea are making me paranoid. When watching Frasier tonight I thought that Dr. Crane was trying to send a personal message to me – you know, through the television.

Of course I know that it was probably all just in my imagination.

Or do I?

A Love Poem For You

2007-02-14T05:31:00.000-08:00

Oh God, I know. I've been very touchy in my responses to certain comments lately. Yesterday, for example, I told someone to "deal with it," and then I told another gentleman - who was just trying his best to be helpful by pointing out the flaws in my previous post - to "bend over." This, really, is uncharacteristic of me. Usually I just bottle all of my anger into a small ball in the pit of my stomach (hasn't exploded yet - knock on wood!).

I don't know what's come over me. I guess I'm just not a big fan of Valentine's Day - or any holiday with the initials "V.D." for that matter. Bah humbug Valentine's Day. Down with cupid. Boo true love.

But that's not a very positive attitude. Here's a little Valentine's Day poem that I've made just for you and your special someone. It's a celebration of true love, and though it's only four lines long, I feel that it perfectly encapsulates my feelings about this very special day. I call it "Happy VD Everyone!"

Happy VD Everyone!

Roses are red,
violets are blue.
If I hear you call your lover "pooky" today,
I'll kill you.

Aqua Velva Eyes

2007-02-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

I knew that it wasn't going to be a good day after I went temporarily blind this morning.

When I put on aftershave in the morning, I really pile it on. I do it because it smells nice, and the stinging sensation wakes me up in a way that instant coffee never can. This morning I was feeling dead-tired, and I knew that I would be needing a pretty heavy dosage.

So I cupped my hand and emptied a substantial portion of the bottle into it. Then I lowered my head and started pouring the aftershave onto my cheek. But I'd put so much into my hand that, when I let it flow onto my cheek, a little rivulet of Aqua Velva went directly into my eye.

The negative result? I couldn't see for nearly half an hour. I actually cried - mainly to flush out my eye, but also out of agony and bitter disappointment - and for some bizarre reason I ran out into my hallway, screeching, and I rolled around on the floor in front of everyone who was waiting for the elevator on their ways to work. I did that for a good five minutes, until the pain completely went away. Not a good scene for anyone. But hopefully we will all look back on it later and have a bit of a chuckle.

The good result? I was no longer a sleepyhead. And now I can basically see what's in front of me - and I'm sure there are worse things in this world than being 20% blind in your left eye. Especially if that eye ends up smelling like a million bucks.

Things didn't improve when I got to school though.

I have this one kid in my class who thinks he's better than everyone else. He sits at the back, and instead of listening, he just brings a copy of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot," only peering up over the edge of it every now and then to smirk and shake his head at whatever I'm saying. What really peeves me is that is smart. I'm not saying he's smarter than me, but a few days ago he knew what "fatuous" meant, and I didn't. But then again, I'm the one who made it through to get my teacher's certificate. So, please - you be the judge of who the smart one is.

Today I was teaching the class about Nicolai Gogol's "The Overcoat" - a famous Russian short story. Since this happens to be this boy's area of "expertise," he was smirking more than usual, shaking his head, and correcting me on dates and facts. It was seriously making me angry, but you can't punish a student for being right when you're wrong can you? (If you guys can think of a way, please let me know ASAP).

But to the boy in the back row who reads Dostoevsky's "The Idiot," if you are out there, please heed these words: you may be intelligent, but are you wise? Let me tell you something about wisdom - you're not going to learn it in a damn book. Do you think that you know everything about suffering? Have you, in your short 17 years, suffered even one tenth of what I suffered before 7 am morning today? I was BLIND this morning, damn you. I'd accidentally poured Aqua Velva Musk into my eye. Now that's true suffering. Come back and talk to me when you've poured Aqua Velva into your own eye, and then maybe I'll be ready to listen to whatever it is you are babbling on about.

And by the way, I now know what "fatuous" means. It means "vacantly silly; purposeless, or idiotic," and it's an adjective. I checked.

Hannibal: An Unable Cannibal

2007-02-11T17:26:00.000-08:00

I went to see Hannibal Rising rising this weekend.

It wasn't great, and I can see why they called it "Hannibal Rising." The entire time I was fighting the urge to rise up out of my seat and go see Freedom Writers instead.

Thank God I didn't though. I've heard Freedom Writers is about a teacher who makes a real difference in her students' lives, and seeing those kinds of movies always makes me feel like crap. I prefer stories about drunken oenophiles who have trouble getting laid and who force their students to read entire book chapters in class - like the sad-sack from Sideways (not the handsome one).

Do you see how I did that? See how I casually inserted the word "oenophile"? They say if you use a word five times you will "own" it. So be prepared to hear it often. This does not work with people though. If you say their names five times you will not "own" them, regardless of how obliging they might seem to you.

What happened in Hannibal? Pretty much what you'd expect. His sister gets eaten, he eats some bad potatoes, loses his bus pass, and then he suddenly goes apeshit and starts eating other people who bug him, saves a heap on grocery bills, all the while making clever little allusions to great works of literature and witty puns about cannibalism (I'd like to have you for dinner sometime <---hilarious!) that no one gets but him, because that's how intelligent he is.

The craziest thing that he does in the movie is something that he actually doesn't do. Sure he bites people and fries them up and flambés them - we've all been there - but he doesn't, not even once, make a pass at the Japanese woman who is his guardian. She is about his age, attractive, and they are living in a big mansion alone together. I couldn't get past this. It gave me blue balls just to see it happening. Or, not happening. It made me want to slap him right in his smarmy face.

To understand the next part of this post, you will need to stare at the following picture for five minutes without blinking:

Whoops, sorry. Wrong picture. Now please stare at the following picture for five minutes (without blinking):

This is the actor who played the part of young Hannibal. When you look at this picture you are probably thinking one word: dimple. You are also possibly thinking, Can this guy possibly look any more like Josh Hartnett? They're two different people though. Now you are ready for the next paragraph.

This dimple led me to an interesting theory about the young Hannibal's psychological state. This dimple in his left cheek is so deep that it probably doesn't even fit the definition of a dimple. Gash, maybe. Or hole even. What the hell IS that thing? Anyway, one of Hannibal's hobbies in this movie is going around and biting people's cheeks off. So my theory - and it's just a theory, you don't need to write it down - is that Hannibal is very self-conscious about this dimple, and he is somehow trying to compensate by eating other people's normal cheeks. Kind of like penis envy, but for cheeks. With a bit of cannibalism thrown in for good measure. Weird.

Another weakness of the movie is that it is a prequel, so the young Hannibal is supposed to grow up to look like the older Hannibal - Anthony Hopkins. I didn't see this happening. They look nothing alike. Anthony Hopkins's head is shaped like a sphere, whereas the young Hannibal's head is long and narrow. Plus there's the dimple thing. I was obsessing about this the entire time, and it really took away from my movie-going experience. It also took away from the movie-going experience of my friend, whose ribs I kept jabbing every time there was a scene where the young Hannibal didn't look like Anthony Hopkins, which was often.

So there's no need to rush out and see this one. Instead, why not just give me the money that you would have spent seeing it and spend your evening looking at the ice cream picture that I've included above (without blinking please).

Beautiful Haiku Moment

2007-02-08T04:40:00.000-08:00

Very busy but...
There will definitely be...
A new post today.

c. 2007 (composed in my underthings)

Saturday Evening Haiku

2007-02-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

Dad comes to visit.
Says "niggardly" in public.
Angry black people.

Production Notes: I love how haiku has the potential to capture a special moment and to preserve it for all eternity. Not that I needed the help today. When my father said the word "niggardly" in the restaurant line, the outraged reaction from the people around us was so intense that the incident has been seared into my memory forevermore. I really can't think of a suitable word to describe this reaction - suffice it to say that it was much, much worse than an argument, and perhaps only a notch below what one might call a race riot. Now, I know what "niggardly" really means. It's actually derived from an Old Norse word meaning "to make a fuss." But really, does anyone ever use the word? In public? At a Louisiana-style cajun food restaurant?

Three Terrible (but True) Sunday Afternoon Laundry Room Experiences

2007-01-28T13:36:00.000-08:00

Terrible but True Laundry Experience #1

I see a father doing laundry with his little girl. The little girl is very cute, and, in the spirit of neighborliness, I decide to tell this to the father.

Me: Your daughter is very cute.

Father: She's handicapped.

Me: Oh.....really? I didn't notice.

Father: Mind your own business.

Child pulls my jogging pants down, exposing precisely one inch of my crack.

(By the way guys, I only wear joggers on laundry day.)

Terrible but True Laundry Experience #2

I empty my pockets before throwing my clothes in the machine and find a Chinese 1-yuan coin that my student gave me as a joke to let me know how much he valued my lessons. Maybe it wasn't a joke. I take the coin and, like a true prodigal son, cast it on the floor.

An old woman who is sitting in a chair jumps up, runs over, and picks it up.

Me: It's just a Chinese yuan.

Woman: It's money. You don't go throwin' your money away.

Me: You can only spend it in China.

Woman: Yeah, well, money don't grow on trees.

Me: It's a Chinese yuan. I don't recall the phrase "Yuan doesn't grow on trees."

The Woman grumbles, invokes the name of her God, and pockets the coin.

The child chooses this opportune moment to pull down my jogging pants again, this time exposing 2 inches (Do you remember of what?).

Terrible but True Laundry Experience #3

Terrible but interesting. On my way to the laundry room I notice that it smells like wet dog in my hallway. This is terrible because I don't appreciate the smell of wet dog, but it is interesting because I've never smelled that one before.

Naughty Donkey

2007-01-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

When I turned on my computer this morning and checked my stats, I discovered that, over the course of last night, a gentleman from the Islamic Republic of Iran came to this blog by typing "wrestling brother boner liquid" into the Google search engine.

I think we're all going to need the remainder of the week to try and come to terms with this.

By the way, this article about a couple of wild jungle people made me smile.

I think that my favourite part of the entire article was the following:

Yesterday, however, as further intriguing reports emerged of a mysterious naked man who had been spotted with the woman but ran off when challenged, the family began to close ranks. They have withdrawn permission to take DNA samples to confirm the woman's identity, and police have thrown a cordon around their isolated home, in an effort to keep at bay curious neighbours and the world's media.

I envy the guy in some ways. Whereas I have to constantly worry about bills, relationships with my co-workers, and my weight issues, this guy's life is absolutely, definitely, positively not going to get any worse. How could it? He's in the jungle, dating a "wild" girl who has been raised by jungle creatures - and not only that, but the girl's parents don't seem to approve of the match. Now, because of the attention from "the world's media," this guy has been forced to go into hiding. And one more thing: he's buck-naked.

Sometimes I've thought it would be kind of neat to have a nation-wide manhunt going on for me, but never did I have the imagination to throw the jungle and nakedness into the equation. This guy is not only sucking the marrow out of life - he be choking on the friggin' bone, mon.

This article was perfect in so many ways. It made me made me cry, and then it made me laugh. Especially in the final section, where it gives a brief description of several wild children. Here's one:

Andrei Tolstyk, Siberia, abandoned by his parents as a baby [not so funny....kind of sad]. When discovered by social workers in 2004, aged seven, he walked on all fours and bit people; they believe he was raised by the family's dog [extremely funny and also awesome].

I did a very similar thing in on New Year's Eve in 2004 when, seconds before I was ordered to leave the bar, I was crawling around on all fours and biting people's ankles and ramming their shins with my head and making sounds like a ferocious donkey. My memory of this event is pretty murky, but I think I was doing it because I was assuming - or at least passionately hoping - that 2005 was to be the year of the donkey on the Chinese calendar. My Chinese students have told me that this is "my" year.

But when this happens to you in the future (and you know that it will), I advise you not to tell the bouncer that you were trying to find your contact lens. He will not sympathize with you one little bit.

Words that rhyme with "bunt"

2007-01-15T04:55:00.000-08:00

I've never been comfortable around manual laborers and skilled tradesmen.

This isn't because I think that I'm better than them. Hell no. Actually, most of the people I know who work with their hands are happily married with children, and they're pulling in at least twice my salary. And they're in much better physical condition. AND they can fix toilets. I'm just lucky if I can unplug mine.

So, it's not a pride thing. It's just the opposite. It's a fear thing. Not only do I fear that they like poking fun at me behind my back, but I also fear that they would relish the idea of breaking a beer bottle over my head - especially when they hear me trying to quote the beautiful poetry of Emily Dickinson.

This is why jokes have become a kind of survival mechanism for me. When I was a youngster I was beaten up a lot. At an early age I learned that if you can make the guy who is holding your head over the toilet bowl laugh, there's a good chance that, instead of giving you a swirly, he'll just punch you in your junk and make a string of disparaging remarks about your mother. Under the circumstances, this is the best option. You'll probably have to trust me on that one.

Plus, it's also a hands thing. Blue-collar workers have strong, intimidating hands. Calloused hands. Hands that can install an air-conditioner, twist off a non-twist beer cap, and rip the bodice off of a woman before pushing her back onto the bed and doin' her. My hands, as I've said so many times before, are piano players hands. Nice hands for a 19th-century duchess, but for a modern man? Mmmm....not so much.

This morning my toilet wasn't flushing properly. It was flushing, but not with the same powerful flush that has given me so much enjoyment over the years. This concerned me, because flushing my toilet is one of the few pleasures that I have remaining in my life. If that were to be taken away, I don't know what would become of me. I was determined to get the problem fixed as soon as possible. I called the new building superintendent, and she told me that some "men" would come up to my apartment to investigate. Men? This sent chills up and down my spine. I shuddered to think of what would happen when these men came into my room and saw the poster of Oscar Wilde aphorisms in the hall. And heaven forbid that they should see my oven mitts with the countryside scenes embroidered on them. Either of these would be would be excellent grounds for a swirly.

Before I could worry about this for very long, I heard a rapping at my chamber door.

I looked through the peephole. It was the men.

"Who is it?" I said, trying to stall for time. Then I cleared my throat and said it again, but this time in a much deeper voice.

"Plumber," said a gruff man's voice from the other side. He already sounded angry and I hadn't even done anything to irritate him yet. This did not bode well.

I stood there for a couple of moments with my back to the door, trying to gather my breath. I thought how wonderful it would be if I hadn't told my superintendent about the problem and she hadn't called the men. I tried to tell myself that a weak toilet flush was just as good as a strong one, but I knew in my heart that this wasn't true.

"Gonna open the door or not?" said the gruff, angry voice.

"Yes, yes," I said, unlocking the door and drawing back the chain.

When I opened the door the master plumber immediately stomped into my apartment and was followed by his younger apprentice. Neither of them bothered taking off their shoes. The plumber was tall, stocky, and swarthy. His eyes told me that I'd better not make any sudden movements, and he slammed his toolbox down on the table in the hallway. When God was handing out testosterone, this guy must have gone back for second helpings (my helpings). The apprentice was smaller, and he had a frightened, deer-in-the-headlights look about him. I could relate to that.

"Your toilet broke?" said the plumber.

"Yes....no. Well, I don't know. I flush and there doesn't seem to be any pressure. I like a good, strong flush."

The plumber looked at me like I was a grade-A ass. He pushed past and went into the washroom to test the toilet.

Naturally, when he tried it, the toilet gave the most powerful flush I'd ever seen in all my years of flushing.

"Seems fine to me," he said.

"Well, it sure wasn't flushing like that earlier."

"How much paper you puttin' in there?" he asked, exchanging an undisguised look of amusement with his apprentice.

"Well, as much as anyone would......when they wipe."

"Yeah? And how much is that?"

"Half a roll? Plus the....you know."

"The what?"

"The poop?"

"Keeeeeeeey-raist," said the plumber, shaking his head. "We'll take a look at 'er and see what we can do."

I went back to my couch, and the men set about their work.

For a while they worked peacefully together, taking things apart and putting them back together again. I heard some heaving sounds and some grunts, and a few other sounds that I don't think I've ever heard a man make before.

But then things started to go wrong. Horribly and dangerously wrong. They began arguing with each other. At first I heard some hushed, angry whispers, and then a few swears. This would stop for a couple of minutes, but then it would resume, and each time it did it was louder.

"Put it down," I heard the plumber say.

"I put it down!"

"Pass me that brass locknut."

"HERE."

"That's not the fuckin' brass locknut, numbnuts. That's the PVC locknut."

"Fine! HERE."

"Use your head. THINK."

"Dickhead."

By this point, I was pretty much shaking at my desk, looking doubtfully at my duchess hands and praying that these men wouldn't come to blows. If they did, I would be of absolutely no use. I was making some hot pea soup, so I toyed with the idea of pouring that on them if things got out of control, but I quickly decided that my cajones were 1/8th of an inch too small in diameter to take this kind of action. I would probably just end up shrieking and surrendering my apartment and all of my belongings to their fisticuffs.

Things started getting even worse. They started using words that rhyme with "bunt."

"Let go, ya cunt!" yelled the apprentice.

"Are you going to do it again?" said the plumber, in a quieter, calmer voice.

"Fucking let go!"

"Are you going to do it again, I asked."

"I'm going to fucking kick your ass!"

I couldn't take it anymore. I got up and ran over to the washroom. The plumber had his apprentice in a headlock and he was ramming his head off his knee. I couldn't see the apprentice's face, but his neck was beet red. The plumber looked up at me, grinning the smile of the victor, and still holding his partner around the neck.

"So, can I get you guys anything? Coffee? Beer?" I said.

"No no, we're fine. Mike, you want anything?" said the plumber, looking down at his apprentice, who didn't say a thing. "Nope, I think Mike's fine too. He could use a brain in that thick head of his though."

This threw Mike into a blind rage. He started thrashing around like a wild animal. At first the plumber had the upper hand, but Mike overpowered him. Both men went flying back into my bathtub, and they started pummeling each other in there. I ran over, sprayed Febreeze in their eyes, turned on the shower, and closed the curtain. Then I let them have their privacy.

Things quieted down for the next half hour. I think that the soothing lavender scents of the Febreeze and the ice-cold water managed to cool their primal rage. Eventually they fixed the problem with the toilet. In fact, "fixed" is an understatement. It works so well now that I could probably flush a bowling ball down there, which is kind of good to know.

Before they left, the plumber let me flush a few times, just to see what I thought. I was so jazzed about the improvement that I started gigglin', and the plumber didn't like my gigglin' one little bit.

If you're wondering why, please try to imagine the giggle of a man who likes to quote the poetry of Emily Dickinson and who, after seven beers, tries to convince his friends that he was Emily Dickinson in a past life, and who, when he wakes up the next morning, realizes that he has typed "Emily Dickinson naked" into the Google search engine the night before. That kind of giggle will haunt you.

"Keeeeey-raist," said the plumber one last time. He grabbed his toolbox and started to leave with his apprentice.

I smiled at them and said goodbye, happy in the knowledge that today, if only for a brief time, two worlds became one.

Falling Down

2007-01-12T05:04:00.000-08:00

There won't be much of a post today because I'm experiencing some extreme physical pain. On the way to work I slipped on some ice and fell down. But this was no ordinary fall. Altogether, it probably lasted for about one minute. It started off with the slip, and then I spent a good twenty seconds windmilling my arms around like a freak, not taking the time to realize that this was way more humiliating than actually falling down in public.

Finally, there was the fall itself: I slid across the pavement for a few feet, scraping off most of my cheek, and even a little bit of my left eye. Who knew that the eyeball can actually bleed? Crazy.

The good news? I usually only trip once every season. In the spring and autumn I slip on leaves and grass, in the winter I slip on ice, and in the summer I slip on empty liquor bottles or hypodermic needles (there are a lot of these in my neighborhood). So, I can at least take comfort in the fact that my seasonal fall is over, and I can get on with life.

It is also cool having a limp. I mean, I wouldn't want to have one permanently, but it gave me something to talk about. Of course, when the hot secretary asked me what had happened, I invented a little story. I told her that I'd injured myself while playing indoor soccer, and not that I did it while trying to flee from the sullen-faced Pakistani man with the large backpack who was standing outside my bus stop and who I suspected was a terrorist.

Have a good weekend guys.

The Biscuite

2007-01-08T12:45:00.000-08:00

Sorry about Saturday night's post. After careful consideration, I guess I'm not Franky the Funkmaster. When I woke up on Sunday morning and saw what I'd written, I was shocked and humiliated beyond belief. Not because I said I was a Funkmaster, but because I'd used a semi-colon instead of a colon. If an English teacher does this you are allowed to administer 50 swift lashes to his bare bottom.

I had no right to call myself a funkmaster. Funk and I are mutually exclusive. Where the funk is, I am not. Where I am, the funk is not. I was not given rhythm at birth. That's why, when I was a university student, I earned the name "broken neck" (because when I dance it looks like I have a broken neck - or so I've been told).

So, I may not be a funkmaster, but I am definitely a homo ludens (a Latin word which translates roughly into game-playing man, worshipper of trivialities, or gay luddite - take your pick). I am a homo ludens and everybody knows it. This is why, on Friday, a reader sent me a message telling me about a game that he likes to play called "The Biscuite."

I would have posted this message sooner, but I needed the entire weekend and most of today to recuperate after reading it. I can think of no way to introduce it to you, aside from saying that you'd better sit down, and it's probably best if you don't read it on a full stomach. Otherwise, I can't be held responsible for any medical mishaps that may result from your reading the post.

Here we go now, copied word for word:

hey derek.

i am an avid reader of your blog and inspired by you last post i decided to tell u about game i never played but someof my freinds did. it's called. "the biscuite"

it's simple actually. u take 3 to 5 guys and a biscuite. then everybody starts jerking off. when u finished u have to ejaculate on the biscuite. the last one to finish. u guess it. eats the biscuit! haha.

fun huh...u can also use any other cookie i guess.if u decide to write about this game [ i'd be honoured :D ] i'd appreciate not to use my name..not email :) for obvious reasons . my friends are reading the blog too :)

have a nice day man.

Chad Sanders (chadinator@hotmail.com)

Thank you Chad. I was relieved to know that I don't necessarily have to have a biscuite to play this game. I can't tell you the number of times I've had 3-to-5 guys sitting around in a circle, raring to go, but our plan was foiled for want of a biscuit(e).

Maybe I'll get the fellows together this weekend. Or maybe not. Either way, the game sounds like a hoot.

Father?

2007-01-06T20:39:00.000-08:00

It's 12;30 am on a Sunday morning and I am Franky the funkmaster!!!

Janice could be a slut.

2007-01-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

Today I went to the library to read.

[As a brief aside, I don't think there could be a more boring sentence than this to open up a blog post. I'm seriously trying to think of one, and I'm having a very hard time. Even the sentence "Today I had soup" pales in comparison.]

Today I went to the library to read.

I do this sometimes because it gets me out of my apartment, and I like the peace and quiet of the little study rooms. In my apartment I always have to put up with the domestic disputes of the Pugnacious Pakistanis living to the left of me, or the haunting smells coming from the apartment of the Kreepy Koreans to the right. In the study rooms at the library I only have to put up with the ringing of cell phones and the ever-present moaning noises (mainly my own when I look at the art books).

The walls of the study rooms are always covered in graffiti, and reading this helps to pass the time.

Today's graffiti contained the commonplace and the exceptional. First, let's look at the commonplace:

I love Mike. I want to marry him.

Can you get any more commonplace? I think this must have been copied out of Graffiti for Dummies. Oh, there I go again. I'm just really jealous of Mike. He's probably a real dream.

Bomb the jewz.

I don't think anyone who has the power to bomb the "jewz" is going to be spending his time studying in a little library cubicle. And even if I did have the power to bomb the jewz, was this a command or just a suggestion? Or perhaps the author was simply trying to be ironic, given the volatile state of religio-racial tensions in America today. What really surprised me is that Mel Gibson goes to my library.

Casper was here, January 2007.

This is about as commonplace as it gets, except for the fact that it was written by someone called Casper, who was so comfortable with his name that he was willing to sign it in public place and declare that he was there. He even offered the date as proof, should I ever require it. If my name was Casper I would go into permanent hiding.

So, that was the commonplace. But some graffiti was also exceptional. The following sentence, for example, was not written in pencil or in pen, but someone had actually taken the time to whittle it out of the wall using a knife or some other kind of sharp object:

Turn off the lights when finished. It will conserve energy.

Fascinating. Someone with enough of an enviromental conscience to want to conserve energy, but, at the same time, with so limited a social conscience as to engage in the morally questionable act of carving a slogan into a library wall. The idea of a human soul so rife with contradiction captivated me, and I spent nearly half an hour contemplating it.

Or maybe I was just contemplating whether or not I would really have a good time if I called "Janice the slut" at 454-6689.

I bet I probably would have. She sounds like a hoot.

Happy New Year (Oh, how my head hurts)

2007-01-01T18:43:00.000-08:00

2007.

I brought in the New Year with my arms wrapped around the toilet bowl saying, "I didn't know that I ate mushrooms for dinner." Not an auspicious start to 2007.

Every New Year's Eve follows the same general pattern. I go to the bars with a few friends, tell them how I'm going to "not let things get out of control this year," but then, two hours later, I'm proclaiming that I'm "never going to die" and getting really angry with the DJ for not playing "Rasputin" by Boney-M. That basically devolves into stumbling home in the moonlight, chasing stray cats under porches, and then sleeping under those porches. Last night was pretty consistent in these respects, except for the moonlight (it was partly cloudy).

It's hard to believe that it's already 2007. Especially when I look at the archives sidebar and see that I've been blogging since 2005. That's almost two full years now. When I first started blogging I told myself that, within two years, if I didn't have a book deal and several major studios lined up to buy the movie rights to my life story, I would treat myself to a vat of cookie-dough ice cream, guilt-free. Not a cone, not a tub, but a vat. And I vowed not to eat it, but to bathe in it. I set my sights very high. I haven't had contact from any agents, so I can only assume that books about single men living in economically depressed, sexless urban wastelands are not in this season. Either that or there's a conspiracy to get me to bathe in and then eat a vat of cookie-dough ice cream.

Fine then. I will.

I think it's telling that I have no health-related New Year's resolutions this year. Every year I say I'm going to lift those weights that are sitting in the corner of my room, and every year on January 2nd I lift the hell out of them. On January 3rd I go through unspeakable pain, and then I put them back in the exact same place where they were throughout all of the previous year. I think they look kind of nice there, though. Whenever people come over they always say, "Oh, are those your weights?" And then I give a modest shrug and say, "Yeah, you know." This leaves them with the impression that I wail on my pipes, and I'm satisfied with that.

On a more serious note, I'm definitely going to have to make some life changes this year. I've come to the conclusion that living in this apartment is ultimately going to turn me into a fixture of the building. There are other people who live in my building who are fixtures - and by that I mean, they are as much a part of the building as the bricks and the wallpaper are. They don't just live in the building, they are the building.

Living in a place like this somehow seeps into your pores and takes over your identity to the point where, one day, you will wake up and find yourself wearing camouflage pants, sporting a mullet, and getting money from a payday-advance store so that you can buy your smokes. I don't want that. And most of all, I never again want to see the dirty white aluminum Christmas tree that the superintendent put up in the lobby this year - the one that is crowned, not with an angel, but with a paper McDonalds soft drink cup. That nearly single-handedly destroyed the remainder of my innocence.

This is why I vow, and you can hold me to this one, to move out of the apartment before December 2007. Even if I have to be homeless for a period of time, I will leave this apartment. I also vow to quit my job before December 2007. I'm not sure exactly what will open up, but there needs to be change. I'd like to crack into writing, somehow. But unfortunately, I have no idea of where to begin. Suggestions? Tips? Please keep in mind that I have no professional training and I find it a hoot to write about pubes.

Regardless, I think this is pretty good. These are some pretty positive steps. Because, as they say, "A change is as good as a rest." Or is it "the rest"? Idioms are the worst. I also vow to stop trying to impress you with idioms in 2007.

Happy New Year folks.

(Any interesting resolutions out there?)

Poverty of Riches

2006-12-27T23:15:00.000-08:00

Christmas is a great way to figure out what your family really thinks of you. If you're ever wondering whether or not your family loves you, you can easily determine this by examining the presents that they give you.

For example, if your family gives you a video I-pod, this means that their love for you is sincere. You have nothing to worry about.

If they give you a game of Trivial Pursuit or a Dilbert joke-a-day calendar, they are probably emotionally neutral to you. Don’t worry. It could be worse.

If they give you clothing that they have made by hand, they have long been harboring a burning hatred for you. This may be the kind of relative who will tell other relatives that your baby looks like an alien the moment your back is turned.

Finally - worst case scenario - if someone gives you a can of salmon oil pills in a plastic bag and tells you that these pills are good for fighting depression, hair loss, and lethargic brain function, this means that you should pack your bags as soon as possible. In fact, no. Just leave the bags right where they are. Get the hell out of there. This person is plotting your demise.

Aside from the bottle of salmon-oil pills, most of the presents I got this year came in the form of monetary donations, non-perishable food items, and a donation to the humane society made in my name (most terrible present ever). I also got a book on how to fold origami from my aunt. As soon as I opened the present, I immediately ripped out a page of the book, folded the page into a frog, and presented this frog to my aunt. This became her Christmas present instead of the Dr. Phil book that I would have given her. Now I'm going to keep the Dr. Phil book. If I have a relationship in the future, and if this relationship has troubles (and it almost certainly will), Dr. Phil will help me to solve them with his tell-it-like-it-is southern wisdom.

The best present that I got was a GPS watch. But since I don't have a car or a bike or, on most days, a desire to venture outside my apartment, I wonder how useful this will be.

To test it out, I took it with me in my mom's car and tried to get lost. This was practically impossible to do since I grew up in the neighborhood, but I finally managed to lose my way on a back country road. Unfortunately, only then did I realize that I'd forgotten to program the location of my parents' house into the watch before setting out, so I had to call my brother-in-law to come and rescue me. He was especially irritated when I tried to guide him to where I was by using the positions of the stars.

My brother-in-law is almost a perfect person. I'm not kidding, and I'm not being sarcastic. Is he tall? Yes. Is he handsome? Yes. Is he funny, charming, intelligent, and well-dressed? Yes, yes, yes, and....wait for it....yes. So it was kind of like a scene out of a Jane Austen novel when he came to rescue me - he was all strong and brave and knowledgeable, and I was like the female protagonist, waiting for my male suitor, shivering in my car and trying to figure out if that flashing light in the sky was a satellite or Orion's Belt.

If I'd known for sure that it was Orion's Belt, I definitely would have been able to get home, because I've noticed that Orion's Belt is always directly over my parents' front porch. From the porch I probably would have been able to get back to the house, even without the GPS watch.

But we should all try to remember that Christmas isn't about getting presents. It's about being with our families, and trying, after several hours of intense study, to see if we can manage to pin the responsibility for our major shortcomings on them. I've been working quite diligently at that this year, and I think the fact that I'm not yet living the American dream can be attributed to the fact that I wasn't given eight maids a-milking back in Christmas 1987, even after I’d specifically asked for them.

But what about my penis?

2006-12-26T06:31:00.000-08:00

There's something about the holiday season that makes you want to eat up all of the liquer-filled chocolates at one sitting, go out to the garage, shut all the doors, turn on the car, and just sit in there, all quiet-like. But really, you should never do this - the chocolates won't give you quite the buzz you'd think they would.

How was my Christmas, you ask? Well, first of all, after a hiatus of over 25 years, my father’s eyes once again fell on my naked body. This was terrible. Terrible for my father. Terrible for me. Terrible for the dignity of my family overall. Terrible for national unity.

I'd just gotten out of the shower and toweled off. Before getting dressed I remembered that my suitcase (which had all of my clean clothes in it) was downstairs. I thought that everyone was out of the house, so I ran down to get it.

Little did I know, my father was standing at the bottom of the stairs, sipping a cup of coffee. As I stormed down the stairs there arose such a clatter, and he looked up from his coffee to see what was the matter...when what before his wondering eyes should appear, but my dangling genitals. How queer.

Oddly, the first thing that I thought of after seeing him was, "Crap, I'm getting water all over the carpet," and not "But what about my penis?"

I had to divert father's attention from my naked body.

"Coffee still on?" I said, with perfect nonchalance.

"Still should be some left in your pot," said father, looking at my naked body with disdain.

"My pot?" I said, glancing down at my belly.

"I meant the coffee pot. Sorry there son."

This was a very painful experience for my father and I, but it’s one that we’ll both eventually laugh at. In fact, my father thought it was so funny that he decided to tell the story during Christmas dinner as he was carving up the turkey. He told it in just such a way that everyone had a laugh. Eventually, such levity was reached that my very immature and very weird Uncle Henry finally had the nerve to say, "Was it shaved?", thereby ensuring not a holy night, but definitely a silent one.

My father is also a great one for advice. This year, every time he had something to say, I wrote it down. So I was more or less writing something down for the entire break. This gave him great joy. Little did he know that I will never be following any of this advice, but instead I'll be using it as material for my online magazine.

Here are a few life recommendations that my father gave me this year (feel free to use them to improve yourselves as well):

When I’m reading a book, I should try to move my eyes more instead of my whole head. This will help to preserve my neck muscles.

I should see a doctor about my frequent urination ASAP.

I should cut my hair in a straight line at the back of my neck instead of tapering it (unless I enjoy looking like a boy, in which case I should keep it tapered).

I should eat salmon oil pills to promote hair growth and speed up brain activity.

I should stop saying "for sure" when I agree with someone. It sounds obsequious. I should also stop saying "no worries." I'm not Australian. I should also stop saying "Phwoar." No one knows what the hell it means.

I should quit being so lazy and start thinking about opening up my own university (people do it every day).

I should be more like my cousin Rick (the one who forced me to eat dog food as a child and tied me to a wooden chair).

I should be more like my cousin Fred (the one who once tried to involve me in a pyramid scheme).

I should be more like my cousin Lesley (the one whose parents named him Lesley even though he's a boy).

I should be more like my cousin Andy (the one who hates it when people touch his head. Even if he's drunk. In fact, especially if he's drunk.)

I only need to flush the toilet one time when I use it. Not twice. Never twice.

I should just relax! It's Christmas time!

(But I should drink less.)

(And eat less.)

So, it wasn't a perfect Christmas after all, but I wasn't expecting it to be. In fact, I am happy today because it is December 26th. No other day is farther away from Christmas than this blessed day. Love it. Cherish it. Prolong it.

I’m exhausted. More coming soon.

It is now time to celebrate the birth of Santa.

2006-12-23T09:34:00.000-08:00

Well folks, this will be my last post. Forever.

I'm kidding. That was just a yuletide joke. Or, as the Germans say, a yulenjoken. But it will be my last post until after Christmas (barring some kind of drunken Christmas Eve post describing how much, on a scale of 1 to 10, I believe myself to be a unicorn), so I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas.

I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday with the ones you love, or with those on whose inheritance money you have based your retirement. And finally, may our Christmas overlord Santa shower you with many material possessions. This goes out to everyone except for the anonymous person who commented using only the word "Phwooar" several posts ago. I still have no idea of what that means, but I think he was implying that I speak with a lisp, which is totally not true.

So once again, God bless us everyone (except for the anonymous person who only said "Phwooar" in his comment).

But seriously, thank you all, and enjoy yourselves.

d.

PS: I thought you should know that, just now I heard my brother-in-law shout "Put it down! It's not a toy!" at the top of his lungs. I don't why he said it, or who he said it to, but it's a sure sign that the good times have begun in earnest.

Simply Having a Terrible Xmas Time (Part 2 of 20)

2006-12-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

I don't know - I think I've bitten off more than I can chew with this twenty-part series called "Simply Having a Terrible Xmas Time." I mean, not that much has happened yet, and there are only two days left before Christmas. Eighteen terrible things would have to happen to me in order to meet my goal. But I'm certainly not saying that this is impossible.

During the next few days I will be in close contact with my family, and this absolutely guarantees, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I'll be able to squeeze out ten terrible experiences, but twenty? A lot would have to go down for that to be possible. But when you throw alcohol, family, and unfulfilled expectations into the mix, anything can happen.

I'm almost done my Christmas shopping, and I am very glad of that. I know it's a cliche to talk about how awful Christmas shopping is, but there are many, many painful things that I would prefer to do instead of shopping. I was thinking of it, and honestly, I would gladly lose my baby finger if I never had to go Christmas shopping again. I would become 10% more ugly. I would wear a track suit every Tuesday for the rest of my life. I would even be willing to sacrifice the life of my cousin Rick on my mother's side (the one who, when I was a child, forced me to eat dog food and tied me to a wooden chair).

The second I enter the mall I enter into this crazy, semi-uncharacteristic deeply depressed state. My first priority is getting all the gifts and getting the hell out of there. But I like to put thought into my presents, so I almost always end up spending a ridiculously long amount of time - to the point that I get so exasperated that I'm eventually willing to buy any gift, telling myself that it's the thought that counts. This explains why I bought my legally blind uncle a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone a few years back.

All kinds of terrible things happened when I went shopping this morning. There were a couple of jackasses from the local television station going around the mall with televisions strapped to their backs, handing out programming schedules. Every time I passed one of them I got a flyer. When I was handed my tenth flyer I had to get rid of it immediately, so I tucked it snugly behind the head of a kid in his stroller. The mother was none too pleased. The kid seemed to take it all in stride, which was a bonus.

At one point things got so crowded in the elevator that I actually fell back into the lap of a man who was in a wheelchair. He was a good sport about it when I pretended he was Santa and I asked for a Christmas girlfriend. The weird part is, he kind of looked like Santa too - minus the Davd Koresh-style tinted glasses. When the elevator door opened he offered to wheel me around the mall, but I politely declined.

On a positive note, I made my first friendship with a man with a turban today. I can now cross that off my list. This new friend was the guy who was working behind the information counter. I can't tell you how much we hit it off - it was kind of creepy actually. I started off asking him where the public washrooms were, and our conversation ended with me being comfortable enough to ask him if he's ever hidden a snack in his hat (the answer was no).

Today really was a day of firsts for me. I went into the Body Shop for the first time in my life, and it opened me up to a whole new world. I'm convinced that, if you had a stylish beauty boutique, you could convince women to put pigeon poop on their skin. For example, today I saw wasabi face cream. Wasabi, in case you don't know, is basically the same thing as horseradish. The last contact I had with wasabi was at a sushi restaurant for my male co-worker's engagement party. At some point in the night a bit of wasabi got in my eye, and I started tearing up. It was so painful that, in addition to the tears produced by the wasabi, I actually started tearing up a little bit for real. Tears of wasabi sadness. Everyone thought that I was unsually distraught over the engagement of my male co-worker, and things at work have never been the same since. So I don't think I'm going to be rubbing the crap all over my face anytime soon.

I can't explain to you how uncomfortable I feel in the Body Shop. One sales associate kept on coming up to me and shoving hand creams in my face the entire time I was there. He would put the cream so close to my face that a little bit always ended up on the tip of my nose. The last time he did it I pretended that I was about to spit in the container. He relented, but then he beetled over to a female sales associate, whispered something in her ear, and pointed at me. They both laughed. But I am still the superior one because, unlike him, when people ask me where I work I do not have to say "at the Body Shop."

High fives all around.

In conclusion, I'd be more than content to get nothing at all for Christmas, provided that I don't have to buy anything. For me, it's not the thought that counts. Not at all. Because, do you know what that thought usually ends up getting me? Here's what: a multi-coloured, hand-knit sweater that says "Winter" across the front. Or a Fleetwood Mac CD. Or a single ping-pong paddle, sans ball, sans table, sans other paddle. I'd be more than willing to forego the thought this year. If we all put less thought into things, life would be so much more enjoyable. This is a principle that I've been trying to put into practice, not just now, during the yuletide season, but all throughout the year.

God bless us everyone.

An Unwholesome Experience

2006-12-19T14:36:00.000-08:00

One week ago, on the final day of the semester, a motivational speaker came in to give a workshop for the teachers.

I am a very motivated worker, but not the other teachers. They don't seem to understand the value of hard work. Whenever I try to tell them that life is 99% perspiration and 10% inspiration they just laugh at me.

When everyone was sitting down and waiting for the workshop to begin, a young, athletic-looking man entered the room and ran directly up to me. He put his foot on the empty chair in front of me. His pants were way too tight, and I could see the bulge of his junk just a couple of inches from my face. This was the motivational speaker our principal had hired. But, so far, I wasn’t motivated to do anything other than change seats.

After clapping his hands right in front of my face he shouted, directly in my ear, “LEONARDO DA VINCI!”

I hadn’t had my third coffee of the day yet, so my first impulse was to head butt him.

Then he buggered off to the other end of the room and clapped his hands in front of Mr. Simmons, the shop teacher, yelling, “ALEXANDER THE GREAT!”

Finally he ran up to the podium and pumped his fists several times in the air. “TOM CRUUUUUISE!” he said.

What an ass.

"DAVINCI! ALEXANDER! TOM CRUISE! What do all of these people have in common!?"

“They are all gay?” deadpanned Mr. Simmons.

“They are all men?” said the scowling lesbian art teacher.

This was not an auspicious start to the meeting.

Scott – that was the speaker’s name - told us that all of these men had motivation, and that’s what separated them from other, regular people. I didn’t buy it. The fact that I’ve been so lazy this week that, instead of buying toilet paper, I’ve been using paper towels, then dishcloths, and then all-purpose flour is a question of motivation, and a very serious one. But the fact that I, unlike Alexander the Great, have not yet united all of Greece into a glorious and expanding empire has to do with something more than just motivation. It has to do with the fact that, the last time I visited Greece, they only gave me a one-month student visa. What the hell was I supposed to do?

I'm sorry. That last joke was terrible and I deeply repent of it.

I can’t even tell you what happened at this meeting. Only a few vague mental images remain with me. This is probably what people mean when they talk about repressed memories. Some experiences are just so awful that, somehow, you manage to push them to the back of your mind. That’s what I did with the motivational seminar. The only things that I remember doing are forming a human pyramid with the other members of the English department and being forced to sing the lyrics to Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” – both of which, I believe, were pioneered as torture techniques at Guantanamo Bay.

I think we were supposed to learn something about group work and cooperation through these activities, but I only managed to glean one small, albeit vital life lesson: there is a very specific period in one's life when it is safe to form a human pyramid. But when you're over 30 and overweight - as many English teachers are - it is an absolutely terrible idea, and one that can lead to some very unhealthy physical and emotional repercussions. The English department managed to hold our human pyramid for about ten seconds, but it finally crumbled and I ended up splayed out on the floor with my face nestled in a warm, moist place that I don't really want to talk about right now.

Our fearless leader Scott eventually wrapped up his seminar with some closing remarks on the importance of friends and family. He told us how, in order to achieve success in this world, we must rely on others to help us. I agreed with his message, but not necessarily with his way of communicating it, which involved calling me an amputee:

"I need someone up here," Scott said. "How about you there - you with coffee-stained shirt?"

I walked up to the stage and stood there, glumly facing the audience. Scott put his arm across my shoulders.

"You wake up one morning and you discover that you have no arms and no legs," he said. "What are you going to do? Tell me, how are you going to manage all by yourself?"

"Excuse me?" I said.

"No arms. No legs. Nada. What are you going to do?"

"Take up singing?"

Scott gave me a look of disgust. "Anyone?" he said.

The just-out-of-college, too-eager math teacher finally raised his hand. "At a dead end? Call a friend!" he squealed, parroting one of the depressing little refrains we'd been taught by Scott a few minutes earlier.

"YOU GOT IT!" shouted Scott, slapping me on the back.

"How am I supposed to call a friend? I have no arms," I said.

"Please return to your seat now."

"But I have no legs."

"Sit down Derek," bellowed the principal.

All in all, most of the other teachers thought that the motivational speaker was a success. And I have to admit, by the end of the seminar, I was feeling quite motivated myself. I can't remember another time in my life when I've been so motivated to punch someone else in the junk - or to abuse my own junk, for that matter.

Simply Having a Terrible Xmas Time (Part 1 of 20)

2006-12-17T18:06:00.000-08:00

I always love going to the malls during the Christmas shopping season and participating alongside my fellow shoppers in a feverish orgy of consumerism. I figure, what better way to celebrate the birth of the man who squeezes down the chimney every year and showers the upper and middle classes with material possessions?

Also, going to the malls is a wonderful opportunity to people-watch. For example, as soon as I entered the mall today I saw a tall, bulky man wearing a shirt that said, in bold capital letters, "SIZE MATTERS. PERIOD." This is a bold statement. It would take a lot of confidence to wear a shirt like that. A hell of a lot. It would take more confidence than I have now, or ever will have, regardless of what happens with the rest of my life. Even if Hugh Heffner himself gives me the keys to the Playboy mansion in a televised ceremony during the Superbowl halftime show, I will still not even be close to having the confidence to wear a shirt that says "SIZE MATTERS. PERIOD." But if you can find a shirt that says "Small guys are human too," why, I'd be more than happy to wear that.

I had to find a present for my niece, so I went into a kids' clothing store called "Littl'uns." If you've never bought clothes for a kid before, you probably don't know the first damn thing about kids' sizes. I'm not talking down to you here. I'm just saying.

There are no convenient size designations like large, medium, and small. There are only age groupings. For example, there is one size for one-year-old kids, and another size for two-year-old kids, but if the kid is around one-year-old but big for her age, you will absolutely choose the incorrect size and everyone will laugh and point at you during the gift exchange.

My niece is one year old, but she's built like a linebacker, and I was having a hell of a time trying to find something nice for her.

The salesgirl approached me.

"Can I help you sir?"

"Hello," I said. "I am looking for a female dress for a big child."

"You mean a dress for a big female child?"

"Yes."

"How old is she?"

"Just over one."

"Well," she said, "you could buy her a two-year-old's outfit and she'd grow into it."

The salesgirl showed me a few different outfits, and I finally found a pink dress that I thought would really suit my niece.

You should know that, at first, there was a really dynamic chemistry going on between the salesgirl and me. At least this was true until, when I was trying to decide whether or not the dress would fit my niece, I held it up in front of myself - as if I were the one who was going to be wearing it.

"This dress IS for your niece, isn't it sir?" said the salesgirl.

"Yes, but I figure I'm about fifty-times bigger than her, so if it's fifty-times too small for me then we know we're in business."

"Riiiiiiight."

The salesgirl and I mutually decided that it would be best not to talk to each other after that. She moved to the other end of the store and tried to avoid me, and I stayed where I was and tried my best to look like a guy who doesn't buy female children's clothing for his own personal use. This is very hard to do when certain people have their own preconceived notions. Anyhow.

I bought the outfit and continued on with the rest of my shopping.

Most of my family members are pretty easy to buy for. My mother is, by far, the easiest. No matter what I get, she cries and calls it "the sweetest thing I've ever seen." Usually I buy her soaps or Christmas decorations or Oprah-approved books, but I could probably buy her an AC/DC concert T and she would still react the same way. Bless her soul.

This is true for cards as well. I don't think she's ever not cried when I've bought her a card - even humorous cards. Hell, once I accidentally bought her a card that said "Thank you for always being like a mother to me" because I didn't have enough time to read it through completely, and my mother even cried over that - even though she's my true mother. So now the joke every year is to find cards for my mother that say "You've always been just like a mother to me." This gets funnier and funnier every year. For me.

As usual, I ran into trouble finding something for my grandfather. He's been on the earth for eighty years, and, by this point, whatever he doesn't have he doesn't want. Of course there are probably a few things that he would still like to have, but they're either way out of my price range or illegal in civilized countries.

I don't know what my grandfather does to pass the time, aside from sending me dirty e-mail forwards all day long. In fact, this seems to consume almost all of his spare time. Today, for example, I've already received three forwards from him, entitled "Raisin Bread: Adults Only," "No wonder why China is overpopulated," and "Granny's Guard Service" - none of which I really have any burning desire to look at, and all of which I'm pretty sure are somehow pornographic in nature.

But, I have to say, the raisin bread forward got me curious - mainly because I was wondering how a post about raisin bread could be for "adults only." I just opened it now. As usual it was a long, rambling joke, so I just scrolled down to the bottom and read the punch line ("it's not raisin, but it's a-quiverin' ").

Ha...Ha......Ha?

So, as you can see, my grandfather's interests are limited. This makes him very hard to buy for.

I'm planning on heading out to the malls again this week, and I will report my findings and humiliations to you as usual, in this public forum.

This story begins with a wee African boy.

2006-12-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

This weekend I met a girl for a coffee.

We'd already met once before, so this was our second date. You didn't think that I'd be capable of that, did you? There are a lot of things about me that you probably don't know. Like how I have some African blood in me. This is not necessarily because I'm related to any Africans, but because of the African boy that I ate on a dare back in '96. Quite a delectable chap.

The date went all to hell as soon as I saw the girl, as opposed to it going all to hell in the coffee shop, which is how things typically go. I guess I'm becoming more efficient.

I should mention that I was late by ten minutes for the date. Before leaving to meet her I'd made myself a sandwich, but when it finally got to the point where I was about to put it in my mouth, I realized that the bread must have been way past the expiry date because it smelled like vinegarurinecorpse - one of my least favourite flavours. I hate going on dates on an empty stomach, so I had to whip up something else.

When I finally got to our agreed-upon meeting place she was doing the crossed-arms, foot-tapping thing. Fortunately she smiled at me, and we began our walk to the coffee shop.

"So, you were pretty busy last week, weren't you?" she said.

"Yes. I was wrapping up the semester at school, and I was also working on my correspondence courses, and..."

I should have finished the sentence here, but did I? Absolutely not! I had to press on. Did I add a blatant lie which I thought would make me seem interesting, but which actually ended up making me look like an ass with a capital "A"? Why, of course I did!

What I said next should teach you all a valuable lesson: never lie to those who are smarter than you.

"And........," I said, "I kind of also write for an online magazine."

I glanced up at her to see how impressed she was by this fictional tidbit. She wasn't. At least, she seemed to imply this by spitting on the ground.

"You mean a blog?" she said.

This threw me for a bit of a loop.

"No. Not a blog. Not a blog at all, actually. It's just this humorous online magazine."

"And do you get paid for it?"

"Well, I'm not paid exactly, but..."

"How is it not a blog?"

"Well, I guess by that definition, anything could be a blog. Would you call the Onion a blog? Or the New York Times website? Is that a blog?"

"No, because the writers get paid. Do you get paid?"

"Yes."

"By the online magazine?"

"No."

"And do you use it to describe your daily experiences?"

"Sometimes, yes."

"It's a blog."

She sure put me in my place. But I got her back by being the most totally unfunny, uninteresting, and plain-faced man you ever did see. And then I came back home and wrote about our encounter.

On my online magazine.

I know someone who's getting Ebola for Christmas.

2006-12-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

Something terrible is happening inside my body.

I don't know what Ebola virus is like exactly, but it can't be worse than what I'm feeling, physically, right now. Once in university I had such a god-awful hangover that I actually wept in our dormitory cafeteria, much to the joy of my tablemates. What I'm feeling right now is worse than that. I can only think of one reason why.

A few days ago I made Kraft Dinner, and after I'd washed the pot there was still quite a bit left sticking to the bottom.

This evening I was about to boil some rice (this post will improve), and I noticed the Kraft Dinner stuck to the bottom of the pot. I poured in the rice and boiled it anyway. I think the old KD - the milk or the cheese or something - is what made me sick. But I'm no food expert, and it could just as easily have been the dirty bag of Doritos that I found underneath my seat on the bus.

And holy sweet mother of God, one hour after eating it hit me. I was sitting on my couch watching Everybody Loves Raymond (the hilarious episode where Raymond doesn't understand his wife's feelings and where brother Robert is jealous of Raymond's success) when I suddenly felt like my stomach was about to rupture. I ran to the washroom and sat on the toilet for a very long time, praying that I wouldn't die - not there. Not like that. Not like Elvis.

Finally things started clearing up a little and I could stand up. By that point it was 8 o'clock, and I still had the rest of the evening to kill. Raymond was over, and now there was a crappy exclusive about Brangelina on Entertainment Tonight. Don't get me wrong, I've fantasized many times about what I would do to Brangelina if I were in a 5-star Namibian hotel with it, but there comes a point when enough is enough.

I decided to mark some student essays instead.

With student work, I have very low expectations. You can tell this by looking at the goals that I set for my students at the beginning of each semester. This semester, for example, it was my ultimate goal to have my students use the word "puppy" in the casual sense, and as often as possible. For example, when asking whether or not their essays needed to be typed, I would encourage them to say, "Sir, does this puppy need to be typed?" Do you realize how awesome it is to hear a student with a thick Chinese or Pakistani accent say a sentence like that? The answer: very. It never gets old for me.

Despite my bargain basement expectations for the quality of student work, I actually consider marking student essays to be much worse than contracting the Ebola virus. Basically, it's all just a game. The students try to do as little work as possible putting their essays together, and I try to even less work tracking down all of their errors. I spent about half an hour at this charming little pastime until I read the following sentence in a student essay on Catcher in the Rye. At this point I decided to pack it in for the night, if not for the rest of my life:

"Clearly Holden Caulfied clearly has some problems dealing with adults because it's obvious from his actions."

Say, that's pretty clear. But only because you used the word "clearly" twice and "obvious" once. You know what else is clear about that sentence? Here's what: It's clearly a piece of shit.

When I finished reading this sentence I gave the boy's paper the middle finger, kicked my apartment wall, and was promptly yelled at by my neighbor to "keep it the fuck down in [here]." But of course, only my kicking noise bothers him - not the constant barking of his pack of dogs at 2 in the morning. No, that doesn't bother him at all. That's soothing.

It's ok though. I'm planning to make it up to him. Tomorrow, using my Kraft Dinner pot, I'm going to prepare some chicken soup for his dog-lover's soul.

James Bond: What a Jerk.

2006-12-10T05:31:00.000-08:00

I saw the new James Bond movie over the weekend. Casino Royale.

To start off, what was with the Bond girl? She was pretty - there's no doubt about that - but she definitely wasn't the smoking-hot girl that I've come to expect from Bond. He could have done much better. She was actually normal-looking. I could probably get a girl like that if I set my mind to it.

Well, no. I definitely couldn't. But some of my acquaintances probably could. In high school I could have had a girl that looked like that. What's that now? You don't believe me? Have you already forgotten that I was not only the treasurer of our high school's marketing club but also the guy who was voted "most likely to dress up in costume for a living" for two years running? Oh what? Pardon me? Now you believe me? That's what I thought.

Tammy Bucey, the first girlfriend I ever had in high school, was even better-looking than this Bond girl. She also had a heart of gold. She was always giving up her entire school day to help out in the Special Education room. She never even went to the regular classes because she was so busy helping out the Special Ed kids. And they loved her. They loved her so much that they gave her a name-tag and toys and everything. Oh that Tammy. She certainly was a very special girl. Everybody said so.

Even though his girlfriend was only so-so, Bond himself is setting the bar way too high for normal, everyday men, and frankly, I'm starting to get really sick of it.

First of all, the guy is always tooting around town in his Aston Martin, and he doesn't even care when he flips it seven or eight times (and then walks away, unscathed). He has a well-paying job with decent health benefits and a secure pension. Then of course there's the whole physical package - the blonde hair, the blue eyes, and the six-pack stomach that you could probably wash your jeans on (if you've misplaced your washboard).

But what was truly unbelievable was the shower scene. This blew my mind.

The Bond girl was sitting under the tap with her clothes on, crying. She had just seen a guy get killed. Bond was beside her and he was comforting her. The water from the shower was running all over them, and Bond asked the girl if she was cold. Up until this point, aside from asking the girl if she was cold, I probably would have done exactly the same thing.

She said she was cold, so get this: Bond reached his hand up and, WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING AT THE TAP, managed to adjust the water to the perfect temperature. He knew which way to turn the tap on his first try, even though he was sitting under it and with his back to it. How the hell could he do this? The whole "lefty-loosey, righty-tighty” thing wouldn't even have applied. Or would it have? I couldn't even figure it out after drawing a diagram.

If it was me, I almost certainly would have turned it way too far one way and severely scalded the both of us. Even after that I would have had to get up and face the tap, repeating the words “lefty-loosey, righty-tighty” a few times just to get the damned thing completely turned off. Bond never has to deal with these problems. Like I said, what a jerk.

To add insult to injury, Bond can have sex with just about anyone he wants, wherever he wants, and at any time. I've seen at least five Bond movies, and he's had sex with at least one woman every time. According to my calculations, that means he's bedded at least five women in his life. Five! Who the hell does this guy think he is, Don Juan? Not only that, but he can do it while he's solving international conspiracies. To hearken back to high school once again, I always found it hard solving quadratic equations when I had a boner. And strangely, the two things always seemed to go hand in hand.

Bond and I are clearly worlds apart.

Why do they have to make James Bond so awesome? It's not believable that someone could be like that. Why not make him more of a normal guy? Let's see him arguing with a bus driver over an expired transfer ticket or getting his necktie stuck in escalator. Why not have him downing an entire bottle of sherry in one hour and then calling up his mother and weeping because he thinks his eyes have become permanently crossed? Wouldn't you much rather see someone like that? Someone like you? Someone like me?

So I guess what I'm saying, ladies, is this: forget about James Bond. Instead, you should just settle for a regular guy - someone who will be waiting for you on the couch with a box of buffalo wings when you come home from a long, hard day at work. Wouldn't that be nice?

And I bet it would be pretty nice for you too.

Inappropriate

2006-12-08T16:14:00.000-08:00

So, I was reading over the staff newsletter today. In it, the school principal had written the following words: "We'll be hiring an English teacher in the new year because, unfortunately, one of our English teachers is going to be leaving us."

Now, I asked around, and none of the other English teachers are planning on leaving, so no one knows what to make of these words. In some ways, if you think about it long enough, they kind of imply that someone is going to be asked to leave. This begs the question: Could it be me?

After a few hours of intense soul-searching I have come up with a solid answer:

Probably.

The school principal and I have never seen eye-to-eye. He is a very serious man. I've only ever seen him smile one time, and that was during last year's graduation ceremony when, on the way up to the stage to hand out the English award, I tripped, smacked my head off of the podium, and cut my head on the school crest. Oh, how he howled at that. I don't even know why I tripped. Usually alcohol doesn't have that kind of effect on me.

Over the past couple of weeks he and I have had a number of run-ins. Last week during the lunch break, for example, a girl told me that she wouldn't be able to attend class. I told her that I didn’t have a problem with it, as long as I could confiscate her sandwich. She handed it to me, and when I tried to give it back to her, she wouldn't take it. She kept on saying, “No, no sir, you take it. You look hungry.”

I wasn't about to let an egg salad sandwich go to waste, so I sat down and dug in.

The principal, who had been watching everything, came over and stood in front of me with his arms crossed. "Taking a student’s lunch. Inappropriate," he said.

I tried to explain to him that I was hungry, but before I got a single syllable out he said, once again, “Inappropriate."

I tried to interject, but he kept on cutting me off with his "inappropriate." He ended up saying the word something like five times. But he was the one who was being inappropriate. I think it's very inappropriate to go around saying "inappropriate" when someone else is trying to eat lunch.

Also, last week, the Department of Education came in to inspect our school. The inspector actually came into my class and sat at the back of the room. I could tell right off the bat that she didn't appreciate the lesson on "charades" that I had planned for that day. Still, my inspection report might have been satisfactory had some wise-ass student not made me do the charade for "shaking up a bottle of salad dressing." To read the words is not such a big deal, but try doing the charade.

(Hint: it looks like you are masturbating.)

And now for the absolute worst one of all. You may want to sit down for this.

My principal e-mailed me earlier this week, asking me to show up for Parents’ Night next Friday. On the same day, I also received an e-mail from my friend Bob, asking me to come to his sister’s birthday next Friday. Of course I couldn’t go to the birthday party, because I had Parents’ Night to go to. The trouble is, when I responded to Bob’s message, I clicked on a button that automatically inserted everyone from my “contacts” list into the reply box, so everyone, including the principal, got the following message:

Yo yo yo muthafucka!!!

Sorry son, but I won't be able to be there. I've got a ton of other shit going on right now. I'll owe you one.

Peace, d.

PS: Do you remember the time that you got drunk and slept in a bed of mud?

Now, although this message might get me out of Parents’ Night, learning that it had gone to everyone on my contacts list was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life.

For what seemed like hours I was looking down the list of names, saying things like "HE got it?" and "Oh shit, SHE got it!??" The worst recipients were my parents, my family pastor, an ex-girlfriend who was finally convinced that I had died of food poisoning, and a university professor who once paid me the greatest compliment of my life by saying that my writing was so good that I could probably eke out a modest living as a court reporter.

The principal hasn't replied. He may still be trying to digest it. Either that or he's wondering how I knew that he got really drunk and fell asleep in a pile of mud. In any case, he’s most likely going to file the e-mail under the category of “inappropriate.”

So these are the reasons why, at the moment, job security is a concern for me.

(Oh yes, and I also sat on the school ping-pong table last month and broke it, prompting the drama teacher – who has a flair for witty little sayings – to call my ass a “weapon of mass destruction” in front of everyone. He put a real emphasis on the word “mass,” making it sound like “ass,” which was so awesome. But you probably had to be there.)