Ezra Not in Malaysia

More Complete Success!

2011-07-29T05:12:00.002+02:00

So Sarah just finished taking the Bar (!!) and I finished the draft of the novel.

I'm not adding more exclamation points onto my accomplishment because, in all likelihood, that's not the last time that I'll be making changes to the book. But it still feels good to have taken the piece to a place where I'd feel comfortable leaving it and moving onto the next thing.

Which makes me wonder what the next thing is.

Suggestions?

Also:

Partial Success!

2011-07-21T03:14:00.002+02:00

So, paying myself in fake money only slightly worked. What's turning out to be impressively effective is to hold my Internet hostage every morning.

I turn off my wifi, work for an hour, and then I can waste as much time as I want. Which, after the initial rush, isn't as much as it might be.

Learning from my past failures, I also set up some consequences. I told Sarah that if I used the Internet before my hour of work was up, I'd give her $100 to spend on something that I hated. (I don't know what we'd do with 112 cans of baby corn, but I'd just as soon never find out.)

Fear of tiny vegetables was more than enough to motivate me to complete my hour of work in record time (one hour).

Drunk on my success, I pledge to work 1.25 hours tomorrow, a substantial increase over the previous day's workload.

Tiny Tim Gets a Job

2011-07-11T17:21:00.002+02:00

If you ever wanted to know how Tiny Tim would fare in the modern world, I've got a game review you should read...

http://outofthestormnews.com/2011/07/11/money-metropolis-a-capitalist-dystopia/

One Week Down

2011-07-07T07:01:00.004+02:00

I would call this first week a mixed success. Some wrenches were thrown into various gears when Sarah and I jetted off to Atlanta for our good friend Anna's wedding. As a result less writing was done than would be optimal. On the plus side, I ate a lot of delicious grits, got to hang out with friends, and had an awesome time at the wedding. I'm going to count it as a win.

My new strategy for time management is to give myself an hourly wage that I would pay myself if I had the money. Writing a novel is basically investing in myself in the hopes that it'll pay off, so I'm just trying to track my future accumulation of wealth.

It's much more fun to work with big numbers than small numbers, so I'm going to say I'm worth $1 million dollars a year. If I worked 40 hours a week, that'd be $500 an hour. My goal for this week is to net $5,000 with $500 an hour as my hourly wage. To make it tougher, I'll keep track of non-productive browsing also. Let's say that costs me $500 an hour. So I'll have to have 10 more hours of productive work than non-productive work by Sunday. I think I can do that.

29 Days Earlier

2011-06-28T18:15:00.007+02:00

Dear Blog world,

How's it going? You guys look great. Really. New browser? It shows.

So, I haven't written too much this year. Or rather, I have, but very little of it has been on this site.

Some has been at Out of the Storm News. Some of it has been for Pheon, a Facebook game. Some of it has been for Precipitate and guest blogs.

And of course, most of it has been on my humble novel about the end of all time.

But I like this blog. And I like how I feel when I write it. You, Internet, you don't judge me. Or if you do, you don't tell me about. Or if you do, your comments get flagged as spam and I don't read them. So I thank you for that.

The summer is halfway gone, and I need to set some goals. Moreover, I need to put the goals out in the world so that someone can hold me accountable, even if it's just the thought of other people (and commenting Spam Bots) that I'm accountable to.

Actually, it's a short list this time.

Goals:

1. Finish the novel.

End of goals.

There might be some faulty logic spending any time writing on the computer (like right now) and not have it be about the novel, but these 30 minutes of blogging will pay me back in the end. I've seen from my friend Colleen's blog that public goals can be a good motivator.

Basically, I figure I have a month to go. Sarah takes the Bar at the end of July, and it'd be great to have nothing hanging over my head when we go on a post-Bar celebration trip. It's an arbitrary stopping date, but arbitrary's better than no-bitrary. I'll take any finish line I can get.

So I pledge that I will finish this novel in a month. I'm not saying it'll be perfect. But it'll be ready to send off to agents by 4:00 pm.

I'll give you updates at least once a week to update you on my (very impressive) progress.

A side goal, which seems tougher than it is, is to spend more time working on the novel per day than on wasting it on the Internet.

I hope blogging doesn't count.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.7is7.com/otto/countdown.html?year=2011&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;month=7&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;date=28&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;hrs=16&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;ts=24&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;tz=-480&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;min=0&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;sec=0&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lang=en&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;show=dhms&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;mode=r&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;cdir=down&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;bgcolor=%23CCFFFF&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;fgcolor=%23000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;title=Countdown%20to%20the%20End%20of%20the%20Novel"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Countdown to the End of the Novel&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Ezra Fox: Professional Game Reviewer

2011-06-01T03:28:00.003+02:00

So I completed one of my life goals by getting hired to write a computer game review. If you haven't already seen it, check out the article here.

To whet your appetite:

“Have You Considered the Benefits of Life Insurance” is a computer game about life insurance, which automatically makes it the best computer game about life insurance, because the competition is just that thin.
The plot is simple enough: you are an ugly life insurance salesman with a trophy wife. You need to buy your wife gifts (a fish, a bottle of wine, something I thought was an asthma inhaler but now believe to be a blender) so that she stays with you.

http://outofthestormnews.com/2011/05/25/second-life-insurance-a-review/

Christiania

2010-12-02T11:20:00.006+01:00

As a follow-up to the mistaken identity post, here's the story I wrote on Christiania. I'm kinda proud of it.

http://outofthestormnews.com/2010/12/01/ezra-fox-explores-christiana-the-free-denmarks-sort-of-lawless-place/

To pique your interest, I give you the first few paragraphs:

In 2006, the people of Freetown Christiania had one of their epic, soul-crushing consensus-democracy meetings. It wasn’t going well. The subject was the future of Christiania itself. Up for debate was a plan by the conservative government that offered a devil’s bargain.

Option 1, accept the Danish government’s plan to normalize Christiania, the self-governed, three-decade-old hippie commune in the middle of Copenhagen, by putting it officially under Danish rule and allowing the government to construct housing for 400 new residents, opening it up for people to move there. Also, the Christianites would see their well-below-market rents raised through the roof. In short, it would be the end of Christiania as they knew it.

Option 2, reject the government’s plan, in which case the government would bulldoze the town and start over, basically doing what it wanted to anyway.

Everyone was scared, Christiania spokesman Thomas Ertmann tells me. Both sides were afraid of what the government would do, so the dialogues weren’t at all productive. These meetings went on for days. The deadline for an answer was fast approaching and there was no side with any clear edge. Amidst the chaos of debate, “a guy called Joker stood up and said, ‘why don’t we just put a guy in a Christiania suit who can play the flute up there and throw money around him?’”

You're sold, right? Government taking on the little guy. Fear. Bulldozers. It's not unlike Avatar, if Avatar was filled with hippies instead of giant blue cat people.

Anyhoo, go here and read more. You won't regret it.

How to Expert When You're Expatting

2010-11-20T18:00:00.000+01:00

My high school buddy Jeremy came to visit Sarah and me this weekend. He flew out to Sweden for work and then rerouted himself through Copenhagen to put a Danish notch on his passport belt.

In the "What should we show Jeremy?" planning process, Sarah and I compiled a list of things to do that probably would've taken about a week, and could in no way be shoehorned into the day and half Jeremy had to see the city.

Whenever we found a new kebab place (the one under Nørrebro Station) or remembered how much we liked our jazz spot (Blågård's Apotek) we added it to the impossibly large list of things to do in our new city.

Sarah asked me why I wanted to have so many things on the list, and it's because having someone visit you is the test of whether or not you've done a good job of making a place your home. By comparison, you're now the expert. Sure, you're not a native, but you're a local, or at least the closest thing they have to one. There's only one person to recommend elderflower soda, the cafe that serves cumin with soft-boiled eggs (around the corner, and they have a student discount), and what to drink with your herring smørrebrød to make it taste right (schnapps, or Gammel Dansk if it's brunch). You've picked up a lot of knowledge that'll only be useful for another 4 weeks, so it's time to be a humble know-it-all.

With someone here to visit so many feelings get confused. You realize that you actually have learned a lot just by being here, and simultaneously you realize that you could've learned so much more. You had three months to be able to string a sentence together, and although you blow the menu out of the water ("Agurk?" "Cucumber, sucka! Give me something hard!") you order in English.

What's even stranger is that showing someone around helps you see your city as a tourist again. The gold tipped spires are actually kind of magical-- how could you have taken them for granted? The bread is so dense and delicious. It's all so new. At the same time, you understand how little you actually know about your surroundings. There are questions that haven't come up since you arrived about what that building is (don't know) and what the history of Tivoli is (don't know, but it's old).

We sent Jeremy safely on his way to the airport via reliable public transportation (taxis are rip-offs), but I was left not knowing whether to feel proud or not. There's so much more I could've learned about Denmark. I know it's not too late to figure out a bit more, but it is too late to start over.

It's enough. It will have to be enough.

How Three Cases of Mistaken Identity Got Me on the Guest List for a Rock Show

2010-11-06T16:42:00.012+01:00

So there I am in Christiania, the rootingest tootingest frontier hippie commune imaginable, replete with a shady hash trade and a cozy vegetarian cafe, all within a five minute walk. I'm looking for that free tour I've heard so much about because I need to research life in Christiania for a news piece I've been commissioned to write.

I go to a place that I think is the Infocafe to get a tour, see two girls behind the counter, one of them is making kanelsnegl. She tells me to go to the next place over to get a tour. I look around and end up at the top a stairwell inside a music venue with a woman with an English accent asking me if I work there. I tell her no, and that I’m looking for a tour. I ask her if she works there and she says no, she's the tour manager for a band called Warpaint that's playing here tonight.

A guy in the back says he’ll be out in a minute. We hunt around for a lighter for the English woman's cigarette, peaking behind the abandoned bar, but coming up short.

A short energetic Dane comes out and introduces himself as Nicholas. I introduce myself and after the woman’s done explaining that they need to move the van to get the band set up, I remember why I'm there.

"Do you run tours?"

"Sure," he says. "We'll give all of you guys a tour as soon as we finish setting up." Oh wait, I realize, he thinks I'm with the band. Oh, wait, I realize. That's probably good. I look at the woman and she's caught on to the mistake but lets it slide and says I should come out to the van to help with the unloading.

We go out to a van where I meet Dan, who’s driving, and Andrew and Jeremy. Andrew’s in the middle row and I later learn he volunteered to sleep in the van because by the time he joined the tour crew the hotels had already been booked. He’s from SoCal and has an uncle who’s a maritime lawyer in SF and a cousin who writes for the Chronicle. The English woman introduces me as a friend, which is exceedingly nice of her. I learn her name is Jessica when someone asks me "So how'd you meet Jessica?" And I say "In Copenhagen. We're friends."

The other guy in the van is Jeremy who runs the sound board. He offers me a beef flavored potato chip, then a corn one that tastes like polenta/grits. Andrew adds that the beef-flavored chip with a tomato flavored one is awesome.

The van stops in front of a rusty cage on a electric pulley system that takes equipment from the ground floor up to the stage. Someone makes a joke about "Willow" and we walk up rickety metal steps to help unload at the top.

Now in my experience, the Christianites have been a bit closed off, and not too excited to talk about their hippie-tastic life style. However, I am now with the band, which pretty much is the backstage pass to life, not to mix metaphors.

I talk to Toby who also works at the venue who says it won’t be too busy because of a Barcelona-FCK game happening tonight in town. He plans on watching it. I tell him about the story I’m doing and he introduces me to a bunch of guys in the back who are drinking beers, smoking, and talking.

I ask if I can sit down and chat and Johannes is nice enough to tell me about Christiania and it’s virtues and struggles, along with help from Tobias (Who looks a little like Gareth from the British version of The Office) and a guy named Memo who didn't skimp on the eyeliner today. I hold an interview with all of them for the next few hours until it starts to get dark and I have to head home or risk getting a ticket for biking without my bike lights.

On my way out I thank Jessica for helping me break into Christiania. She shrugs it off and invites me to the show tonight and puts me on the guest list with a plus one.

Sarah and I come back three hours later for an epic show of '90s grunge rock by the band Warpaint who are totally moody and good. Jess has us sit at her table with her, brings us free drinks, hangs out and talks with us when she's not manning the merch stand, and even gives us a copy of the band's new album which is really worth listening to.

We didn't get home until 1:30, which kind of screwed Sarah over for her 8:00am class the next morning, but we didn't know the next time this kind of thing would happen. Usually mistaken identities create a moment of awkwardness, like when you wave at someone you thought you knew. But if enough mistakes pile on each other, you might just end up being someone awesome.

Welcome back to Denmark

2010-10-30T02:30:00.000+02:00

It’s 1:26 AM and we’re home on a Friday night. I would’ve thought that 1:26 AM would be a fine time to be at home, all hygge and happy, and yet for our neighbors one floor down, there seems to be something distasteful about a quiet night at this hour. And so I enjoy what appears to be a mix of polka, Louis Armstrong, and the voices of alcohol-lubed Danish youth creeping through the floorboards.

Now they’re laughing. I know it would take a particularly virulent kind of crank to get mad at other people for laughter, but I think laughter has to be one of the least pleasant things when you’re not in on the joke. There’s nothing like hearing a group of people at the table next to you in your quirky little coffeehouse cracking up to make you realize just how joyless your life is, and how much duller your companions are by comparison. Make no mistake: laughter, music, and good times are all fine things, as long as you are the direct cause of each of them.

Surely these strangers in apartment 104 don’t know me. And surely they don’t mean to have a good time at my expense. And they almost certainly aren’t partying extra loud just to remind me that I’m inside typing on a laptop with no working Internet and that I’m much worse off than they are because I have no such raucous party to go to. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t seem that way.

There’s nothing like a holiday fast approaching to bring out delightfully dormant insecurities. It’s because most of the time, we have no real idea what we’re supposed to be doing. I mean, how does one properly spend a weekend? Any number of answers could be ther right one. Movies, sleeping, partying, taco trucks… all excellent possibilities. But with holidays, there really is a right answer. You’re supposed to celebrate the holiday. And you’re supposed to celebrate in a fairly specific way as well. Halloween, I’m told has something to do with eating unhealthy things in unhealthy quantities and people. Thanksgiving? Basically the same thing. I would say, in fact, most holidays involve the consumption of calories and social relationships to the point of excess. We have this overflow once a year and it sustains us. We feed off of the overkill for the next 12 months, or at least until the next candy-based holiday.

But without a real Halloween, well, it’s strange. It reminds me of going camping without a watch. You end up feeling adrift in time with no good way to mark the passage of another day. Sure, you know that there was night and now the sun’s back in the sky, but other than that vaguery, you’re basically a pre-gregorian ape-man, describing time in shrugs and hand wiggles. I’ve been told it’s October, but without the eye-drowning flurry of black and orange, I simply won’t believe it.

I saw one jack-o-lantern. One. We live next to an elementary school and I don’t even want to tell you how few ghost cut-outs were taped to the window. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

It’s funny, because you don’t realize how much you lean on these traditions until they’re gone. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade my Danish hotdog stands and excellent bike lanes for anything, but if they’re not going to do Halloween properly, I at least want a good night's sleep, something that the Shot Through the Heart aficionados down in 104 don’t seem to understand.

I’m not saying that they can’t have fun, I’m just saying that they can’t have more fun than me. Which, I think, is totally reasonable any time of the year.

Hitler's Car Park

2010-10-06T18:00:00.001+02:00

While in Berlin, Sarah and I took a free walking tour. The tour guide stopped at a car park. About 8 meters below us, Adolph Hitler shot himself 65 years ago.

And right after his guards found his body in the bunker, they all lit up a cigarette. Apparently, Hitler hated the smell of smoke, so all the soldiers were prevented from smoking in his presence. But with him dead, and the war going as badly as it was, a cigarette must've seemed like a pretty good idea.

Berlin's a weird place. There's no way to reconcile its oppressive, fascist past with its fun, vibrant present. It gets even weirder when you layer in a second oppressive regime on top of it, so walking around you can't help but bump into the austere concrete slabs of the holocaust memorial, a fake military checkpoint with fake US and East German soldiers posing for photos, and the most delicious and cheapest pastries and roasted bratwurst imaginable. The experience is like watching TVs that are playing "Schindler's List," "Spy vs. Spy," and "Top Chef" all at once.

The death and hardship that happened in Berlin is intense and omnipresent. At the same time, they take their giant steins of beer and groaning plates of glorious greasy food just as seriously. The pain and the present are deadlocked, so they're allowed to coexist.

Which brings us back to the bunker, perhaps the one place where Germany doesn't display its past in all of its terror as prominently as it could. There's very little marking the bunker (our tour guide pointed out the "crappy little sign") and even that was only installed in 2006 before the World Cup. Before then the German government was afraid the bunker could become a Neo-Nazi pilgrimage.

When something as terrible as the Holocaust happens and someone as terrible as Hitler exists, I'm not sure there's ever a way to digest that trauma fully. You remember and move on the best you can. Maybe Berlin shows us how schizophrenic recovery can be. You can find the thickest, richest hot chocolate at a bar called Billy Wilder's, but it'll still be 900 meters from where Hitler killed himself. How can you reconcile something so good and so terrible?

When dealing with pain, it's of the utmost importance to find a place to house it. We have grave sites so we can locate the dead instead of having them follow us everywhere. Berlin does this too. The Jewish Museum is an ingeniously designed twisting lightning bolt of a building that shows two thousands years of German-Jewish history. One section is a stark concrete tower with a draft and a crack of light peeking through the top. The value in such a building isn't just to commemorate the experience, but to be able to stop commemorating. Instead of a feeling that you live with forever, the tower gives you a place that you can enter and also leave. It locates the pain so you can have a life and enjoy a beautiful city. You can move on.

And there's a lot to love in Berlin. The Reichstag is an impressive architectural feat with a walkway-lined glass dome that looks down into parliamentary proceedings. The intended effect for the politicians below is that whenever they look up they see their people above them and know they answer to them.

There's a bombed out church, which is erie to look at, but next to it is a beautiful new church, with walls made of translucent blue tiles that shine at night. Inside the new church was a basket that sold apples on the honor system for 1 euro apiece. For some reason I think that was the sweetest thing I ever saw.

Plus, everywhere you go there's cheap, delicious food and drink in quantities that are barely safe for human consumption. For dinner one night I had a German-style sauerkraut and bacon pizza. Another night we went to Henne which only serves fried halves of chicken, but they're so good it's worth the burn as you pick off hot pieces of meat with your fingers. Another night we went to a bar recommended by one of Sarah's friends and ordered pints of mead served in bull horns. (Of course. How else would you serve mead?) The mead was sweet, the horns were (presumably) clean, and, sitting at a foosball table with a board over it and soaking in the secondhand smoke of two dozen Germans watching soccer, it felt an awful lot like an adventure.

I think this is the best we can do. After the worst tragedies, life still continues so we might as well continue with it. Churches get rebuilt, parliaments remodeled, and bunkers get paved over to form car parks.

It feels right that the only commemoration of an evil man is a simple parking lot. It's a place to stand around, smoke a cigarette, and think, "Thank God that's over."

Dollars to Danishes

2010-09-24T13:06:00.007+02:00

There's no getting around it: this place is expensive. And it's expensive in a really bizarre way. Like at the supermarket, there's a $2 box of cereal next to an equally tasty $9 one.

The thing is, $9 isn't an insane amount of money on its own... I mean, I've spent $9 before. In fact, $9 is totally okay to spend on a lot of things, like flourless chocolate tortes, Gap clearance jeans that happen to be in your size, and matinees of 3-D movies staring blue cats in love. There's nothing wrong with $9.

Furthermore, there's nothing wrong with boxes of cereal. I like cereal, it's delicious, keeps well, and if we are to believe John Harvey Kellogg, limits the body's baser passions. (It's true: I don't want to watch Jersey Shore after a bowl of corn flakes.)

Now, in the case of cereal, my choice is an easy one. I simply buy the $2 box and convince myself that I like it better. However, what am I to do when I don't have cheap alternatives and the benefit of self-persuasion?

For example, at a restaurant, a bottle of water was $4. I needed the water, and the cheaper alternative, sticking out my tongue to suck moisture out of the air, simply wasn't a viable option given the meal's timeframe. What did I do? I added value to the water.

$4 is a steal when you think that that very bottle of water used to be Tom Cruise's sweat in the volleyball scene from Top Gun. And who's to say that it wasn't? 24 years is a long time for water. Sure, that makes it kind of weird to drink, but there's no arguing that it's worth a whole heckuva lot more than $4.

Now, take the floss that we just bought for $5.25. Again, kind of a lot if it's just normal floss. However, this floss, when properly used, will actually teach me self-discipline and give me the tools I need to become a better writer. That's gotta be worth an extra $2.50 If you need it to be even more valuable, the woman who designed that floss has a kid who'll one day cure cancer. But only if that woman gets to keep her floss designing business. Definitely worth $.50. All that's left is the $2.25 that I'm already comfortable paying to fight off gum disease. Good deal.

Sometimes I have to get a little creative. Like sometimes there's a coffee that I didn't really want, but I had to order so I don't seem like the kind of guy who obsesses over whether to order an expensive cup of coffee. A small cup of black coffee can easily go for $4.25, so what's to be done? Simple. You just picture an evil ghost swooping around the coffeehouse saying to itself: "I'm going to possess the crap out of the first person I see who doesn't like coffee."

Maybe the ghost was killed by a tea drinker. Maybe the ghost finds the color brown very soothing. Fill in your own blanks. The point is, for all I know, that ghost is there, super pissed, and the only thing keeping me from sliming people and making clay pots with Demi Moore is my cup of joe.

Now that coffee's worth so much I can afford to buy two.

The Soul of a City

2010-09-12T22:48:00.009+02:00

When we last left our intrepid travelers they had settled into a new apartment and went to IKEA. They followed this up by realizing you can't cook on a mattress and went back to IKEA the next day for pots, pans, replacement pillows (turns out Gosa Klätt actually wasn't the right call), bath mats, shower curtains, and all the 20 kroner accouterments that make a house a home... plus three extra things that they'll never use but thought they needed at the time.

Now might be a good time to talk about the soul of the city. First the good news: it has one. I talked a lot of trash about Milan and one reason why it was so professionally terrible was it was soulless. But even if I feel it when it's gone, I'm still not sure what makes a city's soul.

To investigate further, I listened to Empire State of Mind and watched full seasons of How I Met Your Mother. These works of art/entertainment are love letters to New York. They express appreciation for the things that are only possible because of this city.

So maybe the city's soul is the feeling of what can happen there.

Recently, the A.V. Club posted Patton Oswalt's thought experiment, "Where and when would you live for five years in a five mile radius?" In some of the answers, the idea of golden ages of a city kept cropping up. There were these great periods in a city's life when everything was happening, everyone was there, and anything was possible.

A city's just a place, but it's a place where people go when they want something. Even if they might not ever get it, it means something that the people who cared the most about movies all went to Los Angeles, the people who cared about improv went to Chicago, and the people who cared about accents went to London.

When you're in a new city, you have to think about why someone would come there in the first place. It's the desires of the citizens that create a soul.

Why are people in Copenhagen? They're here for the 500 year-old University. They're here for Michelin stars, either earning or eating. They're here for the music scene which is dripping with good jazz. They're here for physical evidence of fairy tales being true. (In which case they'd be disappointed, as the Little Mermaid statue is still on loan to China.)

And us? We're here because everyone speaks English flawlessly and we have a romantic notion of how old cities look when you're pedaling through them on rented bikes. We're here because it's close to everything we want to see in Europe. We're here because there are ristet pølser to eat, Mikkeller beers to drink, and a new language full of words that sound like talking with food in your mouth.

But the funny thing is, there's no way to know why we're really here. In three months there's no telling if Anders, the janitor who sells me washing machine coins, will be an important person in my life or another stranger. The same goes for Rasmus, the guy who just opened the Coffee Syndicate, or the Iraqis who rented me a bike from their shop. This city is full of beautiful, random possibilities, and it's that chaos that sparks it to life and gives it a soul.

IKEA is Fresher Here

2010-09-07T09:49:00.008+02:00

Spoiler Alert: Denmark is different than Italy.

It's hard to believe we've been here for almost two weeks already, but it makes sense. We've shifted into living-mode, which is decidedly easier than traveling-mode, but you blow through days a whole lot quicker.

This post finds me in our small Nørrebro apartment listening to Danish radio on the internet which oscillates between a vowelly word-soup and the very pop songs I was hoping on escaping. Katy Perry follows me everywhere.

Two weeks is a little late to do a first impressions blog, but I'll do my best to remember those first few days.

We arrived in Copenhagen a little frazzled since this time Sarah's bag had some things stolen from it. One could blame Italian baggage handlers, but we preferred to think it was a Robin Hood type of forced donation, and the money he/she got from selling the stolen goods will shortly go to getting orphans their gout vaccines.

Still, we lugged our (slightly lighter) bags from very clean train to very crowded bus and found ourselves at the corner of Frederikssundvej and Glasvej. Now might be the time to point out that this language isn't the easiest to pronounce.

We were trying to get to Musvågevej, which, although it was only a block away, took us false starts in each of the possible three wrong directions in order to find the place. The bags and us trudged up 5 flights of stairs where we woke up our eminently friendly temporary landlady, Sabine. She's a pixie-ish universitet student who rents her apartment out a few days at a time for extra cash and crashes at her boyfriend's place. We had the place for 4 days, and it was to be a base of operations during our extensive apartment search.

The first place we looked at was great, so we took it. Extensive search over. It's got a kitchen with a fridge slightly above "mini" status, but the electric stove gets hot in a hurry, so I'm good.

Also, like in Malaysia, we have a wet bathroom, meaning the shower floor and the bathroom floor are one and the same. I'm okay with it, since in the event the apartment starts flooding, it's nice to know we have an effective drainage system.

In addition to a very adequate hallway (straight and connecting rooms together) we also have a dining-living-bed-room. We keep clothes on a rack there so it's also a closet. But it's enough. The internet is already paid for, the beige couch is comfortable as long as you don't sit in the middle, and we have a $1 IKEA fleece blanket serving as a throw rug.

Speaking of IKEA... it's the booty call of interior decorating. It'll get the job done but it's cheap and you'll feel a little dirty afterwards. In order to secure a mattress for our nearly-furnished apartment I had to go to IKEA alone and I had to get there and come back on the bus all within 1 hour and 20 minutes. The bus ride was 25 minutes on its own so I was pretty much screwed.

Assuming they haven't already been hired, the CIA should really let the IKEA guys design their next torture device for interrogations. You lose all ability to reason in IKEA because:

1. Everything is in Swedish.

2. Everything is cheap, but prices are different.

3. There are dozens of different options and they're all the same but slightly different.

4. It's a place you want to leave.

5. You have to write down archaic coordinates for your furniture (still in Swedish) and hope that you'll be able to find it/it's still in stock.

With the opposing forces of "is this one cheaper?", "Gosa Klätt vs Gosa Aster", "what thread count do I really need?", and "ooh, meatballs", the subject is completely boned.

The possible results are to turn into IKEA zombies or headless IKEA chickens. I was a useless combination of the two, frantically looking for brains, but without a way to consume them, or know when I had found them.

I have no idea how, but I made it out of there alive, with a mattress and a full set of bedding for less than $200, and I only had to deal with what should have been a fairly obvious problem: after you buy things, you have to move them.

Counting the tightly rolled mattress, I was lugging 60 lbs (27.2 kgs!) of lumpy bedding, and I had 15 minutes to get back home to get the key from the landlady. I hobbled to the bus stop, only to find that the first bus that came had only enough room for an undersized floating infant, definitely not a sweating American who with enough bedding to start his own shantytown.

The next bus was nearly as packed, but at this point I was down to 7 minutes and I figured some people would pay good money to cuddle up to fluffy pillows in the middle of the day. I got on, kept my head down for the length of the bus ride of shame, and after one transfer, and some brisk, jerky walking, I was back at the apartment only 15 minutes late. That's a win in my book.

Italy in a Nutshell

2010-09-03T17:33:00.005+02:00

So I'm already a week out of Italy and I'm way behind. If I don't do some legendary condensing I might never catch up. So without further ado, I'm going to give myself 2-5 minutes to talk about each of the remaining Italian cities:

Milan...

...was terrible. Our first meal was the tourist pit of despair. There was burnt/soggy pizza and raw pasta, and a 6 dollar Diet Coke, no ice. The whole meal was 5 Euros more than the heaven we had just come from.

Also the streets were deserted and the hotel manager yelled at Sarah for being on the computer. I got him to apologize after, but we were just happy to get out of Milan alive.

Cinque Terre

Beautiful little towns tucked into cliffsides. We hiked a path connecting all of them together, stopping for food along the way. There was sand, beaches where you had to pay for an umbrella and a chair (but totally worth it), and a tunnel with music.

Also, we made friends with an Israeli traveler and her Italian friend when I accidentally ruined their photo by having my feet in part of the shot. She didn't think I spoke English, so she was surprised when I apologized, and then the 4 of us hung out and talked for a few hours.

Cinque Terre renewed my faith in travel.

Florence

God, Florence is pretty. We saw the David, which is a gorgeous hunk of marble, the city had good nooks and crannies everywhere, it had happy people everywhere, and to top if off, we actually got to see Dario.

1 hour outside of Florence was the right Panzano, and next to the bus stop stood Dario's butcher shop, with his manic, meaty restaurant on top.

We made the mistake of ordering both things on the menu. So. Much. Meat.

Hamburger coated in breadcrumbs and grilled.
Meatloaf with sweet chili sauce.
Steak made to look like sushi.
Pork made to look like tuna.
Roasted herbed pork.

A local chianti
Fresh Tuscan bread.
Vegetables dipped in an oil and vinegar mixture with salt and herbs.

Everything was beautiful, rustic, and massive. The food destroyed us.

Also, Dario was totally nice and posed for a picture that I took with my meat-logged hands.

A few hours later, I digested the food, and we left for Copenhagen. More on that soon.

Il Om Nom Nom-o

2010-08-23T17:43:00.000+02:00

Another few days later it’s time for another blog.

We’ve left Lake Garda behind along with its pristine waters, verdant meadows, and (allegedly) topless beaches. Next is Milan.

Everything I know about Milan comes from some vague associations with the fashion industry and an abiding respect for the Pepperidge Farms cookie. I can therefore expect to find women wearing ridiculously uncomfortable shoes and a dark or mint chocolate filling whenever two identical things are near each other… possibly between uncomfortable pairs of shoes.

If you ever want to see if a woman is a tourist or not, check the shoes. From what I can tell, no self-respecting Italiana would ever embarrass her country by wearing something as pedestrian as a sneaker. It simply isn’t done.

But more on Lake Garda. We took the train from Venice to Desenzano, then a bus from Desenzano to Salo’. Of course, in keeping with the rest of the trip, our hotel was cheap by virtue of the fact that it wasn’t exactly in Salo’. It was somewhere around San Michele, 7 km away, home to heartbreakingly beautiful outlooks, several dozen hairpin switchbacks, and presumably, warring factions of hermits, mountain lions, and crotchety farmers telling the bambinos to “stay the hell off my lawn!” which, according to Google, is "sospendere il diavolo il mio prato!" Sarah is skeptical.

We waited for an hour and a half for the infrequent bus to come, passing the time with playing 6-degrees of Jon Favreau, and eating hot, cheap kebabs and crepes. Yes, we were outside of a kebab and crepe place. They had a crepe kebab, but I opted for the kebab panino, and Sarah destroyed a nutella crepe with characteristic vigor.

Anyhoo, two hours pass, and there’s no bus that says San Michele. There’s an unmarked white molester van that stops briefly and some guy who wanted his family to cash in on his life insurance got in, but that’s about it. About the time when we’re nearly closer to the next bus than the last one, we ask a stopped bus driver where the San Michele bus was. I caught the words for “small” and “white,” and if my Italian had been better, I probably would’ve heard “creepy guy with aviators offering free candy.”

So it turned out San Michele’s bus service was provided entirely by the van that your parents warned you about when you were in kindergarten. We were pretty much done waiting, so we found a taxi stop, called a taxi and within 15 minutes we had made a new friend, Fabio.

I don’t really know how to write about it, but we had two of the best meals ever at our little countryside hotel/restaurant. I’m unpracticed at food porn, but I’ll give it my best shot.

The first night, Sarah had the lightest, pillowy gnocchi filled with minced mushrooms, and topped with garlicky olive oil, aged parmesan, and leaves of fried sage. I had a 5 layer-lasagne with buttery ricotta and a powerful ragu, much of which had been baked into the handmade noodles. They were 5 Euros for each, and we even sopped up the cheesey oil with flour-dusted dinner rolls.

Tentatively we sat down to dinner the next night, wondering if it had been a fluke. We lowered our expectations accordingly. Even if the meal was just as good, which was unlikely, there was no way we would enjoy it as much. We just had to accept whatever we got.

Sarah ordered ravioli filled with pumpkin. I had malfatti, a gnocchi-like spinach dumpling, and each plate was topped with olive oil, a few scattered handfuls of melted cheese, and more delicate leaves of fried sage.

The food was even better. Each bite dissolved when it hit your lips, and you wanted to weep afterwards. First, because you were so lucky to eat this food. Second, because you were so unlucky as to grow up anywhere else in the world besides this small town in Italy. And third, because every bite brings the best meal you’ve ever had a little closer to its end.

After this meal there’s no way to follow it up. Even great food would taste like salted dirt. However, we didn’t have this problem, as our next meal in Milan was the worst food we’ve ever had.

More on that later.

Ah, Venice

2010-08-19T17:07:00.005+02:00

I’m writing this as a train speeds me away from Venice and on to Lake Garda. Venice is kind of like The Godfather. Even if you’ve never seen it, you already know so much about it that a true first impression is impossible. You know all about the gondolas pushed by skinny men in striped shirts and flat straw hats. You know it’s very old, very wet, and of course, the most romantic place in the world.

It’s also hard to have a real first impression of Venice because there are so many people having the same impression at the same time. I cannot say this enough: there were a ton of tourists there. It’s like Disneyland if half of the rides were churches, and the other half were waiting in line to go into churches.

But acknowledging the inherent problems with any discussion of Venice, let’s talk about Venice.

For the first full day we were there, I was convinced that it was a miserable place. It was as if you reenacted the last days of the Roman Empire and the last 10 minutes of the Titanic at once. Lots of old, lots of sinking, lots of money.

It didn’t help that the first day in Venice was the most miserable weather we’ve experienced in Italy. The sky alternated between a mopey Pacific Northwest drizzle, and an angry celestial army of fifth grade bullies spitting at us. And sadly, I was woefully underdressed. Poncho, yes, but I was in shorts and a cotton t-shirt, so when it got wet, it stayed wet. It’s 2 days later and my socks are still smelly and damp (that’s right, I’m blaming the smell on the weather also).

I will say that the Basilica of San Marco, once we waded through the line, was gorgeous and only a little flooded on the inside. Sadly, photos, and bags in general were banned from entering, so I had to pose as a hunch back with my camera bag under my jacket. Miraculously, I was healed within seconds of leaving. All hail the basilisk!

An hour later, Sarah tracked down a cheap poncho for sale and suited up. Across the alleyway where she bought her 2.50 Euro plastic sheet a waiter was screaming at a table of Spanish tourists. Here’s what I got/made up from the exchange:

(Bill comes.)
Tourist: Hey, asshole, you’ve overcharged us.
Waiter: Oh, sorry about that.
Tourist: No problem. Also, your sister’s a prostitute.
Waiter: I know, but she’s happy, so... (Shrugs.)
Tourist: Also, Italians suck at football.
Waiter: Y’know it was a rebuilding year… we were overconfident, and we underestimated our group. I guess we shouldn’t base so much of our national identity on a game, huh? (Smiles.)
Tourist: Also, your wine list is amateurish, and the pasta was slightly overcooked.
Waiter: GET THE HELL OUT OF MY RESTAURANT!

Long story short, when it’s raining, Venice is miserable. It’s like you’re stuck in an emo/goth kid’s wildest dream. I was ready to leave and let the place crumble into the sea without me. But we went back the next day and it was bright and warm and it just made you happy to be seeing something so picturesque. On the downside, the weather report said it was going to rain again, so I was wearing everything I should’ve been wearing the day before. Pants, wool hiking socks, an extra synthetic long-sleeved shirt… on dressing for success, I was 0 for 2.

But Venice was pretty enough that fat globes of sweat on my ankles didn’t ruin a thing. We made ample use of our vaporetti passes, checking out a church used in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as well as three islands, each less touristy than the last.

The islands turned out to be a pretty great find (I don’t know if you can all a well-traveled area with hundreds of years of history a find, but whatever). Murano was the island of glass-blowing. Pointy horse figurines, for making your friends envious and lacerated, demented clown caricatures in case you have to buy a souvenir for the neighbor that killed your cat, and fragile chandeliers, when you want to have an excuse for yelling at your clumsy kids who will break it within a week of your return.

Burano had lace. Refined lace for doilies, to be stashed in a drawer and eaten by refined moths, dresses for infants too small to understand how stupid they look, and lace parasols, with too many holes to keep out rain or sun with any real efficacy. I imagine there’s a good amount of annoyance among the lacers that the only real use for lace nowadays is in lingerie, whose lusty abandon is the antithesis of the genteel world that lace used to promote.

Last was Torcello. We had only 30 minutes to explore before we missed the boat, but I can confidently say that it’s famous for long walkways and restaurants that we couldn’t afford. On a fun note, there was also a museum that had free admission the one day of the year that we happened to be visiting- what are the odds? (Editor’s note: 1 out of 365) – but it also happened to be closed by the time we arrived. Some luck! (Editor’s note: Hours of Operation/24)

And on the third day, instead of Venice we took an unnecessarily long (but free!) bus ride to Padua (spelled Padova by Italians who suck at English). Padua the famous setting of Taming of the Shrew, but since Shakespeare hasn’t set a play in it for the last 410 years people don’t care that much about it anymore. Plus, the people living in Padua are all on vacation in August, so there’s something of a zombie apocalypse vibe in the streets, but in a good way. It’s also home to some of the finest graffiti in all of Italy. I found one artist whose work was prominently displayed in 3 parts of town. Enjoy.

So, as to whether or not Venice is the most romantic city ever, it’s kind of like that Frost poem, “Crumbling into the Sea and Zombie Apocalypse”: It’s all about which end of the world scenario gets you hotter.

From what I’ve seen of Venice,

I hold with those who favor water.

But if you want to hook up twice,

Zombies are badass,

And will suffice.

Modena, Mo' Problems

2010-08-13T17:17:00.009+02:00

About 4 years ago I picked up a book called “Heat” from the library. I originally thought I was reading the book version of the 1995 action movie staring Pacino and DeNiro. Instead it was a nonfiction book about Bill Buford’s quest to become a kitchen slave to Mario Batali and, eventually, to learn from master butcher, Dario Cecchini in the small Italian town of Panzano.

There were few high-octane shootouts, but I loved Buford's encounters with Dario, the Dante-quoting butcher who screams at offending customers, bites a raw piece of meat when a tourist asks if the cut he just bought was good, and generally seems like a knife-wielding badass.

I wanted to meet this butcher.

While planning this trip to Italy, I figured this was the closest I’d yet been to Panzano, so I might as well stop by Dario’s butcher shop, hear some Dante and get yelled at. And so, I look up Panzano, find it on the map 10 km away from the balsamic-producing city of Modena (pronounced MOH-dena, if you want to say it correctly and sound like a world-traveling jerk) and plan for a two-day stay at the luxurious, yet oddly cheap, Real Fini Baia del Re. (Editor's Note: Foreshadowing!)

Skip ahead to Wednesday, August 11th when we arrive in Modena. First, the trip from Siena^[*]took 6 hours, because in Italy you have the choice of paying for trains in time or money, and we had way more time. The trip, if we had been flush with Euros, would’ve been 2 hours. Because we were still poor and, moreover, I am still cheap, from the train station, we took a bus, got off, waited awhile, took another bus, and got off at the end of the bus line.

This was not, however, the location of the luxurious Real Fini. We were at 1200 Strada Vignolese and we needed to be at 1686. Easy, right? That’s like 4 blocks in America. Even with 130 pounds of luggage it should be 5 minutes, tops. Important details soon emerged, however to complicate the matter:

There was no sidewalk, and only a little shoulder.
We were walking alongside a busy highway.
We frequently had to swerve our wheelie duffles to the side to avoid road kill pancakes of avian and unidentifiable varieties.
After dragging our bags through the gravel for 15 sweaty minutes the numbers are onlyat 1426.
I had surely led us to our deaths in order to save cab fare.

When we were close to giving up (and setting up camp? We didn’t really have a plan B), I had the brilliant idea asking inside a nearby restaurant how far it was. The owner, a tiny woman with the 50 year-old’s version of a pixie cut answered in beautifully lilted English, “only 200 meters.” I told her we were walking, and asked if we should take a cab, but she said “no, not so dangerous.”

I returned to Sarah triumphant. Only 200 more meters! All we had to do was cross over this bridge that went over the freeway and we’d be there!

To make a long story short, we trudged on for another hot 20 minutes before we made it to the concierge desk of the Real Fini. (The first line of their promotion brochure said “located halfway between luxury and convenience,” which we realized too late, meant it was actually in neither.)

“How did you arrive?” they asked.
“We walked.”
“Oh, that’s dangerous,” they said, frowning.
“Yeah,” I said. “I wouldn’t recommend it."

But our room made it all worthwhile. Hardwood floors. A bathroom that could eat the bathrooms of our two previous hotels and be hungry for more. HDTV. And get this, the minibar was included. Can you imagine the transformative experience when a minibar, once the embodiment of everything overpriced and evil about traveling, becomes free? And gets restocked when housekeeping comes? I started chugging the free bubbly water at bedtime just so there’d be another one in the minibar the next day.

Now that I was no longer in peril, had showered with the free, minty shower gel, and shared a complimentary blood orange juice with Sarah, I was ready to plan tomorrow when I finally get to see Dario the insane and charismatic butcher. I’d ask for a photo, he’d yell at me and then chase me out of the shop with a boning knife and a cleaver saying:

Io vidi un, fatto a guisa di leuto,

pur ch'elli avesse avuta l'anguinaia

tronca da l'altro che l'uomo ha forcuto. (Canto XXX, Lines 49-51)

I couldn’t wait.

First the good news: Panzano was only 11 km away from our hotel. This must’ve been why I’d chosen the place. Hooray me! Also, it seemed possible to rent an economy car, or even a moto for 35 Euro a day. Totally reasonable.

Then the bad news: There were two Panzanos in Italy, and Dario, for some reason, chose to live in the other one, Pazano-in-Chianti. The worse news: the right Panzano, with meat and yelling, was 168km away. The really annoying news: we had passed by the right Panzano in the first 2 hours of our train ride.

So that whole thing turned out to be less than ideal. It took a total of 9 hours to get to our ridiculously located hotel next to the entirely wrong town.

But there turned out to be a ton of pluses. The hotel had a delicious café and restaurant, each of which we dined at that evening. Sarah discovered gnocco frito, which is a piece of meat stuck between two small hot slices of puff pastry, while I partially destroyed some insanely tender spinach-ricotta torteloni (and finished destroying it the next day).

We’d also finally lost the tourists. Almost everyone in Modena was local, and even a fair number of the usual inhabitants were missing, since August is basically a vacation month. As a result, we got the city to ourselves and everyone was super nice. Even the taxi driver apologized for the fare being expensive.

So yeah, turns out the trick is to pick a place that you want to go, then go to a town near a town that sounds like where you want to be. May our future travels be equally random and ridiculous.

PS The right Panzano is pretty close to Florence, which we’ll be hitting up at the end of the trip. Barring another hilariously unlikely mixup, I’ll probably get a chance to see Dario cut up some meat in less than 2 weeks.

________________________________

^[*]A few notes on Siena since it was awesome, but I don’t want to fall behind on blogging. It’s a walled medieval city designed as a labyrinth, as Sarah noted, “to confuse invading barbarians.” Because of a 3-minute horse race that was happening in a week, the town was flooded with very confused, wandering barbarians. On the plus side, it was a delightful place to get lost in, with gelaterias as plentiful as Starbucks. On the second day, my old college friend Laurel took a break from her intensive language course to show Sarah and me around, introducing us to the fluorescently alluring compari soda, rosemary and lavender gelato, and the best all-you-can-eat snack buffet that comes free with purchase of a 5 Euro beer. She also kept us from getting lost for a whole day, which was an equally disorienting, though extremely pleasant experience.

My Team

2010-08-08T23:00:00.017+02:00

So it's been a busy few days and lots of interesting things have happened. Unfortunately, so many interesting things have happened that I've been far too busy to write about all of them, and as a result, I have a bit of a backlog on half-formed fascinating travel stories. I will first do a quick run-down of everything I'm not posting on:

1. There's a guy at the Sistine Chapel whose only job is to shush people and tell them not to take photos. First, I kinda want that job. Second, he totally failed.

That's right, guy. You had two jobs and you messed up half of them. That's like a bed and breakfast that only serves flan.

2. If you want to be a part of a statue that survives for hundreds of years, I have two bits of advice: first, don't be male genitalia. Second, be made out of bronze. There's a collection of marble junk that's been broken off over the centuries and when it's gone, man, it's not coming back.

3. If you're a kid and you can play a drum you'll get tipson the street. If you can play well enough to get a white tourist girl to dance in front of you, you're golden.

And now, it's time to pick teams.

This game comes to me, I believe, from my college friends Becca, Corey, and Sonja, though I could be wrong about the specifics, and I modified it a bit to fit the occasion, but the basic tenet, judging strangers, is intact.

Basically, it's your job to pick your team from the strangers walking by. What the team might be for, I don't know, but there's no limit to how many people can be on it and what it can do. The important thing is that you choose the people on your team. These are your people.

So, while enjoying the sun soaked steps of La Maddelena, Sarah and I started the long process of picking teams from the crowds of tourists.

Some highlights:

Sarah's Team:

Smoking girl with requisite attitude

Couple who don't know how to hold a baby

My team:

Bald Mr. Bean

Happy Neck Brace Woman

And my favorite, requiring three photos, Gelato Guy:

The gelato's really good here, by the way.

Anyway, you guys should all get started on your teams. Otherwise we're going to destroy you in the upcoming jewel-heist-relay-race-eating-contest. Bring it.

Rome If You Want To

2010-08-06T10:09:00.006+02:00

Editor’s Note:
For the next 3 weeks, Ezra and Sarah will be traveling through Italy. Then there will be 4 months of studying abroad Denmark. Or “Eat, Bike, Eat”. Also, I wish I actually had an editor.
-The Editor...?

Morning, world. I’m writing this at 2am Roman time. I’m awake because, when in Rome, get really jetlagged, as the saying goes. Sarah and I stumbled through our first day in a blur of pizza, panninis, and pasta. Since I’ve just recognized a pattern of P-only foods, I can look forward to polenta, prosciutto, and pimentos. Lots of pimentos.

So far we’ve met a middle-aged couple from Orange County outside of a museum who was bummed about nothing in Rome being open at the times they wanted. “It’s really hard to see anything in Rome,” they said. “And parking’s terrible.” While I do want to make fun of them an appropriate amount for wanting to experience genuine Roman traffic culture up close and stupidal, I can get behind this idea of “it’s really hard to see anything.”

First, I realized that while I am familiar with several impressive Italian achievements (building naked statues with big hands; winning a world cup, then sucking four years later; having a language close enough to Spanish that I can almost get by) I know very little of what’s actually supposed to be in Rome.

I know about the Coliseum (which is in much worse shape since they filmed “Gladiator” there) and everything else is either food or in a different part of Italy entirely. Don’t get me wrong: there’s a chariot-load of cool stuff here, but when I see it, I don’t know what any of it is.

We’re pretty sure we saw the Forum, which I think is important, but as I never got all the way through the play “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” I have no idea what it was for. It looks... ruinous. So I think it might’ve been an old archeological dig site.
(Editors Note: It was the Imperial Forum.)

I saw (on a map, not in person--walking’s tough when your eyes think it’s 4 am yesterday.) the Pantheon, and I believe I’ve gotten it mixed up with the Parthenon, but since I didn’t know much of what either were for, the confusion wasn’t very impressive.

Usually when I don’t know something I look something up on the Internet, but our room charges for broadband and the free stuff is all the way in the lobby. So as it stands, I’m cheap, but lazy also, resulting in an intact wallet and less time knowing what’s going on.

Oh, and did I say we don’t have a guidebook? We don’t have a guidebook. Instead we have a corporate-sponsored map of the city center. Did you know that the Hard Rock Café is one of Rome’s main attractions? You do now!

I’m not complaining though. The food so far has been tasty wherever we’ve gone- train station, back alley café, frozen fruit cup from the airlines- so we’ve been wandering through a dream with an overarching feeling of satiety and fullness. I tried to order the gnocchi at a café full of Chileans and Israelis speaking English with accents, but the waiter frowned and said “I don’t like,” so he recommended the lasagna alla bolognese instead. Thin layers of wide noodles, a generous heaping of creamy cheeses and kernels of meat in an alluringly glutinous ragu. I was happy.

The biggest downer so far is that our first experience in Rome was discovering that somewhere between San Francisco, Miami, Madrid, and Rome my checked bag had been picked through. Thankfully, my tightly rolled pairs of boxers were found wanting, but two unlocked cell phones, acquired specifically for these European adventures, made too tempting of a target to pass up. I hope the new owners appreciate the 256-color Nokia that weighs as much a small pineapple, and the monochromatic Motorola we got from Sarah’s friend.

Also, please enjoy the Danish SIM card that I locked up by entering in the wrong PIN three times in a row. May it serve you well.

Sandwich Fail

2010-06-01T22:01:00.008+02:00

Dear World,

I am a simple man with simple needs. In fact, I am typing this on a laptop nearly 7 years old held together by duct tape and extra strips of aluminum. I do not ask for much.

One thing I do ask for, however, is sandwiches. They are beautiful, pure, and delicious. They are versatile, they are humble, and they are there when you need them. Therefore, I do not think it is asking for too much to be able to make a sandwich for myself without having a cockroach crawl out from inside the toaster.

Well, technically, it just popped its head out of the toaster, much in the way one might when encountering a giant who was converting your home into an oven to brown two slices of bread. That is to say, it looked slightly annoyed and assumed that I would shortly stop.

And what else could I do? I unplugged the toaster, took out the very lightly toasted toast, and carried the roach/bread duplex and shook the crap out of the it until the roach conceded the fight to gravity and my blind fury. It promptly burrowed in a pile of leaves which I have no plans to make sandwiches on.

I returned to the kitchen, dropping the toaster off on the washing machine on the way. I felt betrayed by one of my favorite small appliances. I then looked at the two slices of rapidly cooling toast. I tried to imagine eating them and enjoying the sandwich they were a part of, knowing they had been nextdoor neighbors to the roach. I couldn't do. I dangled them over the trash before shaking my head and finally letting go.

How do we feel safe again after a trauma? I made a new sandwich, this time using the George Foreman grill, which is brilliantly designed and has precious few roach nooks and ant crannies. However, the sandwich wasn't as good as I hoped it would be and my stomach quickly turned on me. My appetite was still being held captive by the Toaster Roach.

It might not have done anything to my food, but it could've. And as I look around my kitchen, "could've" is the new mandatory condiment for every food I see. Could've touched the box of raisins. Could've scampered across the package of gnocchi. Could've taken a nap inside the chicken I was going to cook in the crock pot with a delightful array of now-roachified herbs and roach-tastistic butter. How do you reclaim your mind from the roach?

It's not a complete answer, but about a year ago it was a warm night and Sarah and I were walking downtown. There were roaches out and we did our best to avoid stepping on them and we dreaded hearing the crunches that let us know we failed. Then as we turned a corner there was a duck. It waddled along the sidewalk, paused, and gobbled down a roach whole. A few steps ahead scuttled another roach. The duck ate that one too. The duck never got full. It was awesome. Like there was this whole anatine army protecting me from all the roaches of the world.

What I'm trying to say is, I'm buying an attack duck to help get my appetite back. I'm pretty sure revenge can make anything taste sweet.

34 Ways of Looking at a Dead Rat

2010-01-14T09:14:00.006+01:00

"Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day."
- Nicolas de Chamfort

If you can't find any toads, just clean up a dead rat. Dead rat removal is now my least favorite thing I have done more than once.

While their dying might have been mildly more traumatic for the rats than for myself, their deaths are over whereas I have to deal with the memories of their corpses forever. FOR-EV-ER.

But I know why you're here. You want to know how to do it. As I have become the resident rat remover, you've come to the right place.

Here are my 34 easy steps to getting rid of a rat:

1. Notice that the house smells bad.
2. Ignore the smell.
3. Convince yourself that the smell is getting better. Maybe it wasn't a dead rat after all, you think.
4. See a lot of flies in parts of the house that were previously fly-free.
5. Ignore the flies.
6. Wake up one morning and realize that the smell is getting worse, the flies are getting worse, and you're the only one who can fix it.
7. Go back to sleep.
8. Wake up. Cry.
9. Put on clothes that already feel kind of dirty, that way wearing them in the basement won't ruin them.
10. Get a shovel.
11. Get an industrial-sized dust pan.
12. Get a paper bag. Make that two paper bags.
13. Realize that paper bags still have an opening at the top. An opening that an evil demon rat can spring out of and claw at your face.
14. Get a cardboard box, preferably the one that says "Farm Fresh to You" for maximum irony.
15. Go into the basement. Turn on the light. See a rat.
16. Gag.
17. Slowly realize that it isn't usually that easy to find the dead rat. Reach the conclusion that there might be more than one dead rat.
18. Turn slightly to your right. See another dead rat.
19. Curse your brilliant reasoning.
20. Start with the second rat. It's older, so it's dry and solid. Try to pick it up with the shovel.
21. Fail.
22. Use the shovel to scoop it onto the dustpan. Shakily slide it from the dustpan into the open "Farm Fresh" box.
23. Turn back to the first rat.
24. Swear.
25. Try to use the same shovel-dustpan technique and fail. This rat is still.. juicy. It doesn't pick up as easily.
26. Gag.
27. Swear.
28. Using the shovel, the dustpan, and a now unusable rag that the rat died against, somehow get the rat balanced onto the edge of of the shovel and dump the body into the "Farm Fresh" box ontop of the other rat.
29. Ignore the wet spot where the rat used to be.
30. Fold up the box, place it on the dust pan and carry it out to the garbage can.
31. Almost get the box into the garbage. Drop the box on the ground.
32. Scream "Oh, come on!" thus startling the small children walking by.
33. Ignore the rat tail poking out of the box. Dump it in the garbage. Mentally apologize to the garbage men.
34. Go inside. Sit on the couch. Watch a Bravo reality show. Feel dirty. Shake.

Literary Fame

2010-01-06T07:17:00.004+01:00

Hey, for anyone who hasn't see it yet, I was published in the highly prestigious literary journal, Precipitate.

As part of my hilarious work with Read it and Weep, I read Sarah Palin's "book" Going Rogue to make fun of it. As is the case with everything we read, it was terrible.

But the upside is now you never have to read it. I can assure you that my literary review is much shorter, funnier, and better written than anything that Palin has to offer.

Enjoy.

How I Spent My Winter Vacation

2009-12-29T08:51:00.007+01:00

Wow, been a little while, huh?

So I had my wisdom tooth taken out earlier this month. Just one though, in the bottom left slot. Turns out the one on the right doesn't exist and the two on the top are just too puny to be bothered with right now.

I haven't been famously great with decision-making, so it was a tough one when they asked me how I wanted to be sedated. There's general anesthesia, an IV drip, and nitrous. Then, for those of us whose last name is Hulk, first name "The Incredible," there's the novocaine-only option. Wikipedia told me there's a 1 in 350,000 chance of dying under general, so that was out, because I'm pretty sure I'm one in a million, and would hate to have to die three times to prove it. (That's how odds work, right?)

The IV drip had too much in common with Rocky IV, so I had to pass on that too.

Nitrous, on the other hand, is awesome.
1. It makes cars go faster.

2. It makes whipped cream more delicious.

3. It provides key plot points to Little Shop of Horrors.

And at $125 it was cheaper than the other options that didn't require an excess of Hulkitude. Sold.

So I was feeling pretty good about my choice when I sat down in the dentist's chair early on a Thursday morning to have my tooth yanked. At my parents' suggestion I filled up my iPod with an appropriate playlist.

An Appropriate Playlist for Someone About to be Tripping on Nitrous
1. Novocaine for the Soul - Eels
2. Cocaine - Eric Clapton
3. Burn One Down - Ben Harper
4. The Theme to Cheers

So I listened to the songs and waited... and waited. There was an LCD screen in front of me cycling through a powerpoint of nature photos with cheesy inspirational quotations and horrific before and after shots of various elective dental procedures. I started thinking about the slim chance that I could die during the wisdom tooth extraction, and I realized how sad it would be if those pictures were the last things I ever saw, and those tacky sayings about hard work were the last thing I ever read. In the corner I saw a copy of US Weekly from May and started reading it.

I immediately regretted the possibility that now Lindsey Lohan's before-and-after diet shots could be the last things that I saw and that the phrase "baby bump" could be the last words that I read.

After a sickening 20-minute binge on celebrity gossip, the hygienist told me that their supplier forgot to drop off any oxygen. Turns out when you're on nitrous you still need oxygen or else you might have a mild case of, y'know, death.

So Sarah and I stocked up on soft foods at the nearby market, headed home, waited, and drove back to the dentist's office ready to lose a little bit of weight.

First, they hooked me up to a gas mask and turned on some of the gas. I breathed deeply like they told me to and I felt pretty alright, but I was still aware of my body. A little too aware. Like I was pretty sure I'd have noticed if someone drilled into my jaw. The hygienist told me "you should feel like you've had one or two Coronas." I then became concerned that the hygienist might just be a spokesperson for Corona.

Ten minutes later they stuck what's got to be the worst lolly pop in the world in my mouth to numb the gums for injections. I think it was flavored: "Don't Feel Anything Cherry," not to be confused with "Dead To The World Raspberry," and "Emotionally Unavailable Grape."

There were a couple of injections at the same spot, but I was processing things pretty slowly at that point.

I breathed deeply to try to get high enough so I'd be suitable for surgery, but I had the feeling it just wasn't going to be enough. Damn you, Nitrous! I thought. That's what I get for choosing the bargain package.

But when the surgeon and her sous-surgeon came back they said,
"Okay, now that you're used to the oxygen, we're going to turn on the nitrous and we'll get started."

So it turns out oxygen on its own is a pretty decent high. Good to know.

That was nearly the last thing I remember. The other tidbits:
Surgeon: "When we start, you're going to feel a lot of water in your mouth."
High Ezra: (Thinking) That's probably going to be blood. Oh well.

Later, another realization.
High Ezra: (From the back corner of a very large room) Oh, I think the surgery's going on right now. It must be happening to someone else.

At one point I got a mental image of what was actually going on with people sticking metal bits into my mouth and realized that it was way better to be high, so I went back to being high.

Then it was over. They put me back on oxygen (life-sustaining and it feels like two Coronas!) and Sarah drove me home.

I then drank juice and ate pudding and Jell-o for two days, which was pretty awesome.

And that's how I spent my Winter vacation.

Budget Cuts

2009-09-27T05:23:00.005+02:00

So for those of you who haven't been reading the news, now is not the best time to be reliant on the state of California for anything. Unfortunately, as a student of a public university, I'm currently looking to them to make me a writer.

Not the best idea.

A few weeks ago, SFSU decided that me going to school one day a week was just too much, so there was a furlough day on my one day of school. For people unfamiliar with the term, furlough mean teachers don't work, the school doesn't pay them, and I have 13 days off in a row for no good reason. It's a crazy, debt-ridden world we're living in, people.

Greeting me upon my triumphant return to school was a cat-sized dust bunny in the corner of my classroom.

A fellow student was quick to point out that this was clearly an "F-you" dust bunny, and I'm inclined to agree. If tenured teachers are taking mandatory days off, then imagine what the administration's doing to cut the costs of people who aren't tenured.

Dust bunnies-- will be allowed to propagate in the hopes that they may one day be trained to teach biology.

Toilet paper-- will now come in two varieties: New and used.

Campus security who used to walk you to your car for free-- now muscles students into paying protection money and beats them up and steals their iPods if they refuse.

The free psychological counseling-- replaced by a "Thunderdome" where problems can be solved when "two men enter, one man leaves."

Poetry-- in an effort to make the department more profitable, poetry has now been replaced by a chain gang.

The Chain Gang Club-- has been cut.

Gay-Straight Alliance-- has been downsized, and is now comprised entirely of bisexuals.

Food prices-- have stayed the same, but there's now mandatory inclusion of poison with all meals. For people not wanting poison, there's a steep "no poison" tax.

The Arts-- have been cut. As a result, technology will only be "State of the" and the degrees offered will now be "Bachelor of."

The free shuttle to the Daly City BART station-- is now a human-drawn chariot, powered by the remnants of the Classics major.

The Chariot Team-- has been cut.

Kanye feels the wrath of my Photoshop.

2009-09-19T02:53:00.001+02:00

I discovered how to use Photoshop. Take that, Kanye.

The Class Struggle

2009-08-27T20:27:00.011+02:00

I had my first class of the new semester yesterday and one of my professors said something that just floored me:

"Class is the last taboo in America."

And here I was thinking it was bestiality. Once again, I owe a sincere appology to Eddie Munster. And John Travolta. And possibly Catherine the Great.

There's only one way to find out if class is a taboo or not: the comedy test. As Wikipedia tells me:

"When done as a parody or comedy, said or done by comedians, taboo topics and subject matter can induce comical reaction by the general public..."

There were several bestiality jokes in the beginning of this post. I thought they were funny. So it's probably still taboo. And a fun one at that.

So is class still taboo? I've got two reasons to think it isn't.

1. Aren't we all poor now? I mean I guess you can still have bragging rights about the 6-figure job you used to have, but when unemployment runs out, we'll all be in line at Walmart together buying irregular Oreos in bulk.

2. Aren't we all going to be rich soon? Maybe this is just the privileged white grad student in me talking, but I'm pretty sure we're all going to become internet sensations raking in millions, just as soon as we agree on the currency conversion from YouTube hits to dollars. (Ed: Actually, there's already a conversion rate, it's just fixed at $0.)

But the proof of the taboo is in the funny. And class jokes... you see it's tough because class jokes are all wrapped up in other taboos. Like making fun of rednecks could simultaneously be dealing with religious and political conservativism, racism, classism, inbreeding, poor hygiene, and bestiality. There are just too many variables at work and I don't know what I'm laughing at.

But here's a framework of a class joke.

Rich person meets poor person.

Rich person: Passing observation.

Poor person: Puzzling response.

Rich person: Question?

Poor person: Clarifying response which makes the rich person look stupid.

You can reverse the roles and it works equally well. So yes, it looks like there's a sincere possibility for humor here. But what about with the middle class?

Comfortable person: I drive a Honda Civic.

Other comfortable person: I hear that's a reliable car.

Comfortable person: Yes, and it's moderately priced.

Not so funny.

Two more tries:

Richie #1: Time for our money enemas!

Richie #2: Huzzah!

Hilarious!

Peasant #1: Let's share this leg of rat for dinner.

Peasant #2: (dies from bubonic plague)

Also funny.

Of course, the observant reader will notice that I pulled my punch(lin)es. The only way I could safely make fun of poor people is by making them extremely poor and 650 years old. It's too soon to make fun of people who are poor now, which means that there's a pretty strong taboo there. Rich people, I think are always okay to make fun of, because there's not much of a taboo against throwing rocks up, just against throwing them down.

Lastly, the middle class joke. There's not a lot of point to making fun of the middle class, since odds are, you're in it. It's hard to make fun of what's normal.

So in conclusion, it's not exactly true that class is a taboo. There's no taboo against being middle class, since that wasn't too funny. But the rich and poor jokes are funny enough for me to say that there are a bunch of taboos wrapped up in having too little or too much money.

But when it comes down to it, I'm not convinced that these taboos are fundamentally different from any other taboos where you make fun of the extremes at the far ends of the bell curve.

Would there be any bestiality jokes if everyone did it on a daily basis? No, for the same reason there are no jokes about breathing. Humor is like a hunter, picking out the isolated members of a heard to catch, wrestle to the ground and mock. And, since it isn't taboo anymore, have sex with them.

Yo Joe!

2009-08-14T08:34:00.006+02:00

Let me start off by saying that I am not one of the G.I. Joe faithful. Sure, I know what half the battle is (and even more recently, what comprises the other half), and I followed the general story arc of the series (shoot the bad guys). But since my house growing up was NRA unfriendly, the Joes and I always kept our distance.

That being said, G.I. Joe was fun.

I've realized my purpose in life. I am here to separate the two kinds of bad things in the world. To sift out the "so bad it's good" from the "so bad it's bad." I'm happy to report that for me at least, G.I. Joe falls solidly in the former category.

Lemme quickly give you a greatest hits rundown of the movie. Spoilers may follow.

1. Ninja fight. One all in black and one all in white. But get this, the black one is the good one! Welcome to Obama's America, people.

2. Sienna Miller shows her range as being able to play a blonde and an brunnette.

3. There's an underwater ~~playset~~ fortress. And a massive underwater battle. And then the whole freaking arctic collapses on them.

4. The Eiffel tower gets destroyed. Sure the Ninja Turtles already destroyed the tower... twice... but it's okay if you're late to the party as long as you make a grand entrance. Besides, any monument attached to the Blue song can never be destroyed enough.

5. Things go boom. If you want to watch things go boom you could do worse than to see this movie.

There are of course, some downsides. This movie might not be for you if:
1. You have a strong affection for reality.
2. You don't think being a male model qualifies you to be a leading actor.
3. You don't like cartoon catch-phrases being said by live actors.
4. You don't believe that tomato sauce can disable a multi-million dollar super suit.
5. You have to pay more than $5 to see a movie, and two hours of your time is worth more than mine is.

So in summary, if you've just watched Twilight, and are about to watch The Notebook, you could do worse things than to watch G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra. Things go boom, people. Things go boom.

Satan's Presidency

2009-08-12T01:15:00.003+02:00

As a general rule I don't watch anything on YouTube over 2 minutes long unless it's about a shopping penguin, and it's a rule I don't advise breaking. So to save you time, I'll summarize this video:

If you take a passage from Luke 10:18, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" and translate it back to the Hebrew, which is close enough to the original Aramaic, "lightning" and "heaven" can be translated as Baraq and Bamah!

Some people might say that this means Luke is naming President Baraq Bamah (sp?) as the Antichrist, but that's an easy misinterpretation. The real Antichrist is, and always has been, the Barracks in (Ala)bama.

That's right, I'm talking about Fort Rucker. Is it any coincidence that Fort Rucker, if transposed through a spoonerism, becomes Rort F____r? And as we all know, rort is slang for scam in Australia, a country founded on colonies of criminals. So then rort would be a scammer of criminals, someone who would be the worst of the worst, lacking the honor that most thieves still have.

And who would fornicate with the worst of the worse? That's right. Satan. Because that's what gets him going.

It's ridiculous to say that Obama is the Antichrist when it's clearly Fort Rucker that's housing Satan, allowing the prince of Darkness to bide his demonic time until we all crisp up in the flames like so many pieces of fried chicken.

As a side note, if you still think that Obama might be the Antichrist, (and Lord knows we've elected enough of 'em) then consider this: so what? At this point our country can take all the help it can get. If the Antichrist is the best person to finally get us universal health care, then so be it. Until we have it, I'm too afraid to exercise at God's Gym, in case I pull a hammy while turning water into wine.

God's Gym

2009-07-30T22:42:00.009+02:00

Sarah's been law clerking in Oakland over the summer at the International Institute of the Bay Area, working with undocumented immigrants who've had terrible stuff happened to them, and through the quirks of US immigration policy, are able to parlay those terrible experiences into legal status. Thanks to the U Visa, if you're the victim of a violent crime and help out with the police investigation, you could become a permanent resident. It's like winning the lottery, only worse.

Of course, that's assuming you're in a sanctuary city where the police won't call ICE to report you. If you're not in a sanctuary city, then your reward for being a victim of violence might just be deportation, which by all accounts is a pretty crappy prize.

Anyway, with Sarah's temporary addition to Oakland's workforce, I've become a temporary addition to Oakland's tourists. I don't know what you've heard about Oakland, but there's really only one thing you need to know: Jesus works out there.

Note the spelling. Not Jesús, although I suppose that's possible too. Savior to some, beard fashion pioneer to all.

Here is a photo of the exterior, but the picture really doesn't do justice to the epic painting in the middle. Here's the same basic image taken from a different part of the building.

Honestly, I don't even know where to begin.

Here's what we know about Jesus based on this picture:
1. He might be Asian.

2. He might be Zeus.

3. He's come to free blue slaves and white slaves and unite them by self-mutilation.

4. Unlike some gods that have clay feet, he has no feet. Doesn't need 'em.

5. If you get really buff, your head shrinks.

6. Widow's peaks are the mark of God. I now owe Eddie Munster an apology.

7. Most of his workout regiments involve extensive chain-breaking (hard) and chain lifting (easy). So, it's pretty much interval work.

8. Crucifixion was pretty kind to him on the whole, since he only has a small nipple-like mark on his right hand. Inexplicably, someone seems to have taken a bite out of his right tricep, which still is bigger than his face.

9. Jesus definitely juices.

Now this painting is by no means the first version of a muscle-bound Jesus, or even the first non-traditional Jesus but most of them look pretty scrawny by comparison, whereas the only thing standing between Juicing Jesus and the Hulk is a little yellow tint.

I was going to go ahead and say that beef-cake Jesus was limited to gym appearances, but apparently he can be in cartoon form on YouTube as well. And he's Scottish. Note: the squeamish might not enjoy it so much. Click at your own risk.

Doing It The Hard Way

2009-07-14T22:45:00.007+02:00

12:00pm, 7/14/09. At the F Street movie theater, there's a line wrapped around the side of the building filled with a group of teen girls (and some boys) dressed up in capes and Gryffindor ties. They have another 12 hours to go before Harry Potter 6 premiers, and the high in Davis today is 103 degrees.

To add to the spectacle, there's a channel 3 news van parked outside, and a reporter with slick hair is putting in an earpierce before reporting on these fans. I think the reporter's either Mike, David, or Brian, but honestly all their hair looks pretty much the same.

Despite anything else you can say about these kids, they definitely care about Harry Potter.

And I bet they're going to enjoy the movie more than anyone else in that theater.

For it is as that famous dead white guy said, "That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly."

I might just be talking out of my ass here, but I think old T-Paine has a point. My life is pretty easy. Running water at the turn of a faucet. Light at the touch of a button. Food at the purchase of a sandwich. If you're young, able-bodied, and at least middle-class in America, there's very little work to be done if you don't want to do it.

And it makes sense. Work is, by definition, something you don't want to do. If you want to do it, it no longer becomes work, but rather, is challenging play.

I'm afraid that given the ease of my life, I may be suffering from happiness inflation.

Yes, in fact, that's exactly it. Monetary inflation comes when there's a glut of money flooding the market. Or, in the case of sandwiches (something I understand much better than money), if someone inundates the market with cheap sandwiches, then the price of sandwiches will fall correspondingly.

I can't help but think back to my time in Malaysia, which was a great deflater of happiness. Everything was hard there- a movie theater was a 7 hour overnight bus ride away, simple interactions with store owners involved ridicule and bewilderment, and any time you stepped outside you soaked through your clothes with a liter of heat-induced sweat. To do anything took work, so you were damn sure to appreciate everything.

I saw terrible, terrible movies on weekend trips to Kuala Lumpur (I'm looking at you, 27 Dresses and Made of Honor), but they made me so happy because I knew it was rare to enjoy air conditioning with Sarah and our fellow English-speaking ETAs. Afterwards we'd get a drink or sushi, or "Mexican food," and I'm not sure I've ever been happier. It was a week's worth of enjoyment and freedom packed into a weekend, and we knew we had to soak it in, because it'd be another week before we got to feel it again.

I've always heard that you only get out of something what you put into it, and it's true. But no one ever tells you that it's your pain and discomfort that you're putting into it. That's the alchemy of experience. You put in 12 hours of waiting in line in three-digit weather wearing black capes, and you get the most incredible 2.5 hours of cinema that you've ever experienced.

See? It's magic.

It's with this idea in mind that Sarah and I set out for Impossible Acres, a pick-your-own fruit farm. The high in Davis was over 100 once again, and I figured the more epic the situation, the tastier the fruits.

We trudged through weeds and stickers to pluck dozens of choice raspberries, wilt under the sun, seek out the plumpest white peaches from the orchard, and joyfully bake for an hour amid the smells of warm apricots and apples.

I don't know if it was the half-gallon of water we had sweated out, or simply the relief of standing back in our non-burning kitchen, but when we bit into one of our prized peaches, it was the best thing I had eaten in years.

So to recap, the magic equation is:

Hell-worthy temperature+ hours of your precious time= one incredible moment

There. Now go out there and be epic.

Jerks on America Day

2009-07-05T09:27:00.006+02:00

Here are some things that make guys act like jerks:

Being in the dark

Alcohol

Being near a girl

Being far from girls

Other people having a good time

Not being the center of attention

By my count I have two sources of child-like wonder left in my life: Pixar movies and fireworks, and I'll be damned if I let jerks ruin either of them for me.

Here are some things I don't need to hear you say while I'm watching fireworks.

"I'm going to pee in this bottle so I don't miss the final countdown."

Look guy, I don't know you. Everyone pees, and sometimes, yes, it's necessary to pee in a bottle. But it's almost never necessary to tell 100 strangers that you're about to pee in a bottle. I can think of maybe three situations where it might be important to give this kind of announcement, and one of them involves a magic trick, two of them involve an apple juice factory, and none of them involve marring a majestic fireworks display.

"It's the final countdown!" (sings The Final Countdown)

You were very clever to substitute the words "grand finale" with the techno song re-popularized a brilliant TV show. Now stop singing before I hate the song, the TV show, and the world. I came here to watch beautiful explosions, not listen to your flirty brand of arrogance as you hit on your friends' dates.

"Boom!"

You don't need to say boom. The fireworks just said boom. And it was more convincing, anyway. You don't say "crunch" when you recklessly run over wildlife or "glug, glug" when you drown your sorrows in watery domestic beer. Don't say boom when things explode. It demeans the entire experience.

"That one's my favorite!"

It's good to have favorites. But if you say it after every explosion and wait for a laugh from your friends, I believe a little bit less each time, teenage boy with giggly friends. And every time you say it, I'm reminded that you're here sitting 10 feet away from me, which is three miles too close, you happiness vampire, you.

"Yeah, yeah we know, you explode into smaller pieces."

So you know those fireworks that explode and then branch off into smaller explosions? What kind of terrible person do you have to be to cynically dismiss something so beautiful and pure? What kind of incredible life do you think you lead that would allow you crap over exploding lights in the air? Is it your job to wipe your ass with original impressionist paintings? Do you perhaps create sunsets for a living? Or are you a jerk? Ah, that makes sense now.

Here's what I want to hear you say:

"Oooh..."

"Ahhh...." also is acceptable.

Otherwise kindly leave your jaw gaping open in silent reverence while the fireworks gods appease my boom-lust.

Happy America Day, everyone.

You Aren't What You Eat

2009-06-24T10:03:00.013+02:00

"All you can eat for $9.95! It's the American way!"

I was driving alone last night when I heard this ad on the radio.

I'm not sure when it happened, but consumption seems to be one of our biggest virtues. True, we don't have carte blanche anymore to buy and eat whatever we want (thanks a bunch, recession!), but we are way prouder about what we consume than we have any right to be.

For example:
This summer, it's my goal to watch a movie every three days. That's 60 hours, or 2.5 days of cinematic gluttony. Now, I love movies. In fact, I wrote this after coming back from a bargain showing of Terminator Salvation (spoiler: things blew up). But watching this many movies is no great accomplishment. I'm still just consuming.

Along the same lines, I'm proud whenever I manage to finish the entire massive bowl of udon at a Japanese restaurant. But why? I just ate what they put in front of me and the only lasting effect is that I have to pee out 3 quarts of broth. Even if the food's delicious, consumption is still too easy to be a virtue.

When we decide if something is "good" we try to consume a lot of it in the hopes that it will make us good.

People feel good about themselves for consuming berries, because they have anti-oxidants. Or dark chocolate, because it has anti-oxidants. Or green tea because it has anti-oxidants. I remember a time when we consumed berries, chocolate and tea because we liked them, not because they were going make us live forever. (They won't. We're gonna die.)

You should not get points for making choices about your life that are pleasurable and beneficial. Infants get praised for taking care of themselves and doing what comes naturally; adults do not. If consumption is the main source of virtue in your life, it's time to accomplish something a little more impressive.

And unfortunately, abstaining from something harmful doesn't make you good either. So no more handing out trophies for being a vegan, a Luddite, or a teetotaler. If that's what you want to be, awesome, but as history tells us, that doesn't necessarily make you a good person.

Our consumption has a very real effect on us, but on its own it's not the best basis for a life.

Besides, no matter how you cut it, a life dedicated to consumption produces pretty much one thing.

My Old Name

2009-06-16T18:28:00.007+02:00

A few days ago, Sarah and some of our friends were sitting down to a delicious brunch at Bistro 33, this slightly upscale chain that specializes in Pacific Northwestern cuisine. I think that basically means they serve salmon.

I got the two eggs any style and asked for one of the eggs to be fried and the other scrambled, since there was no stipulation that the "any style" had to be the same for both eggs. Oddly enough, I received two fried eggs... and then another fried egg for good measure. Their thought process was probably, "I know we're giving you a fried egg you didn't want, so to make up for it, here's another fried egg you didn't want."

Partway through the meal, a girl interrupted our friend James by calling out to him, "Jimmy? Oh my god, Jimmy!"

They had been best friends in undergrad, three years ago. In the intervening years he had gone to work and has gotten people to call him James. People don't call him Jimmy any more.

My sister changed her name from Jessica to Fayette when she was in high school. Even now my mom'll run into someone who she hasn't seen for decades who'll ask, "How's Jessica doing?" It's a weird feeling. It's like people asking if you want a ride in their horseless carriage or to listen to their new phonogram. The world's moved on and they hadn't noticed.

And then there's the other side of it, with people who knew you back when you had your old name. Back when you were Cassius Clay or the artist still known as Prince. It's a weird thing to have a friend wake up one morning and say "that's not my name anymore." There's a bit of audacity that goes along with it. In this culture, we don't often name ourselves. Other people give us our names.

My friend Owen tried to nick-name himself "Big Cran" after the juice he was drinking at the time. It didn't stick.

It takes a lot of authority to name something, since the naming itself is an act of definition. You're saying what something is. Naming all the animals was the first thing Adam busied himself with in the garden of Eden. Don't know what it means, but it must be kinda important. After brushing up on my Genesis, I found out it takes five verses to name all the rivers flowing into the garden but just one verse to create the heavens and the Earth. Again, don't know what it means, but names clearly mean something.

And if you've ever read the Tankakh/Old Testament/Good Book/Bible then you know that there's a whole lotta naming. If nothing else, names it has. Names for God, names before and after conversions, long lists of lineages... all those begats and begots... it pretty much just shows you that when you're dead, if you haven't done anything important, you'll just be a name. Time has boiled down your entire existence to one word, and that word was you.

With that in mind, I've found a random renamer on a baby name website, to see if the Internet can sum up my existence better than my parents tried to 24 years ago.

Your new name: Gusty Ginjiro Fox

Uh... I'll think about it.

The Hulk Beats Up A Monk

2009-06-04T22:32:00.007+02:00

"Don't you walk away from me, John!" screamed the comically short blonde in the Raiders jersey. "John!" But John had already turned the corner and entered into the side-door of the building. He was taller than her with close cut salt and pepper hair and a slight slouch. He said nothing.

I crossed the street to be closer to them and hear the fight continue, a rubbernecker to this accident in progress. I caught snippets of the squat woman's tirade, as John emerged from the other side of the building:

"What have I ever done to you?! ... You have deceived me again! ... Get in my truck! Get in my truck and make me believe your lies!"

She mentioned something about Charlie also that I couldn't catch.

John got in the truck, in the driver's seat, surprisingly, and the woman continued yelling as she closed the cabin door, muffling her rage.

I walked past the parking lot to see a mentally disabled man on a bicycle riding away from the building, approaching the screaming truck, still in its parking space.

"Don't go near there, Timmy!" said a man dressed in blue, also coming out of the building. "Timmy! I'm watching, don't go over there!"

Quickly three other workers collected outside the building talking about what had happened inside and how Timmy had started biting his own knuckle until it bled.

Said a man with evenly buzzed graying hair that covered the back of his neck, "You mean I missed everything? Sh*t!"

"You didn't miss nothing," said the guy who had been talking to Timmy.

Curious, I told them I had heard some kind of shouting and asked them what had happened. The guy who had been talking to Timmy stiffened.

"We took care of it," he said.

"Well, that's good," I said.

"The wife of our mailroom guy has problems," said the youngest of the four men, and the only one not dressed in blue. "She's not allowed here."

"We took care of it," the first man repeated.

"Probably," said another.

"Yeah," laughed the youngest. "Probably."

--------------------------------------------

God, so many questions. Okay, here's the main one: why are they still married? In the very excellent book, "Predictably Irrational," Dan Ariely writes about the endowment effect, which basically says that once you assume possession of something, you overvalue it. I'm not saying that our spouses are our property necessarily, but we definitely claim ownership of our relationships. So we might have in this case, a ridiculous overvaluing of a terrible relationship.

In yet another excellent book, Nudge, the authors write about the power of defaults in shaping our behavior. For example, a large percentage of cellphones are still set to the default ringtone. Is this because that's the best, most sonically-pleasing ringtone? No, it's just because it takes effort to change and no effort to keep it as is. In a marriage, the default is to stay in the marriage, even when it looks like an all-around terrible idea.

What was the fight about? Whose fault was it? It's pretty easy to take John's side, mainly because he wasn't the one screaming. And it's fair to say that blondie's done this before, since she managed to get herself banned from her husband's workplace. But let's assume for a second that she's not a purely evil harpy or a crazy witch. Then she must be screaming the things she's screaming for some kind of reason.

Right away we can see that the louder Blondie gets the more John shuts down. But this spiral of doom feeds off itself. Blondie becomes explosive and John becomes inert, so Blondie gets even louder and John tries to seal himself off in his own little cone of silence. Blondie wants John to react, to acknowledge her... if John reacted like Timmy did, by biting himself until he bled, he'd at least show Blondie that he still knew she existed. This exchange has got to be the most f'd up one I've ever seen between two people (or animals, really), but we'd be missing the point if we just discounted Blondie as simply "bat sh*t crazy."

If we continue down the line of reasoning that Blondie isn't inherently psycho then it might just be that they never learned how to properly fight. I have a lot of respect for the idea of fighting cleanly. Take boxing for example. People wear gloves, you stop at 12 rounds, and don't hit each other in the junk. If you play by the rules (this isn't 'Nam, Smokey) you can come out of the whole thing not too much worse for wear and with a healthy respect for your former adversary.

But with Blondie and John, since neither of them were able to engage each other on equal terms we now have the verbal equivalent of a fight between The Hulk and a nonviolent Buddhist Monk.

Problems.

No matter what, the Hulk looks like a dick for beating up a monk (who's really easy to knock around) and the monk gets to preserve his nonviolent ideals, but dies in the process. Looks like a draw to me, which is why Blondie and John have enough rematches to get her banned from his work, their friends' houses, and all public establishments with breakable flatware.

So please, gentle readers, if you feel the need to open up a can of verbal whoopass on someone you love, make sure you both fight fair. Stick to the issue at hand, stay away from the shots to the groin, and do your best get both of you to come out cleanly. The goal isn't to kill the other person, just to end the fight in a way that both of you can still respect and love one another... without wanting to kill each other again too soon after.

And now for your main event!

In the blue corner, wearing ripped, purple shorts, and weighing in at 1,040 pounds .... the Hulk! And in the red corner, wearing a traditionally wrapped orange bedsheet, and tipping the scales at a post hunger-strike weight of 105 pounds... a monk!

Round 1... fight!

... And The Living's E-Z

2009-05-27T03:22:00.006+02:00

Welcome to summertime, people.

Now I know for some of you that are 1) on the quarter system, 2) in the real world, or 3) knowledgeable of how seasons work on this planet, I might be jumping the gun a bit. So be it. It's summer because I'm once again freed from my one meager responsibility of attending SFSU classes one day a week. Without it I'm now adrift in a sea of possibilities, much like I was two years ago after graduating from college, and one year ago after being unleashed on Southeast Asia.

Not wanting a repeat performance of trying to finish the Internet, I've decided to make real goals for myself this summer.

1. Read 100 pages a day (or 9,000 pages total). At this point I'm not making judgments on content, but it probably shouldn't be entirely Goosebumps... again.

2. Write 500 words a day. Preferably in English. Preferably real words. Preferably in sentences that morke sense.

3. See 30 movies. Hopefully good ones, but if I can make fun of them, all the better.

4. Run 100 miles. Not all at once.

5. Reach a beginning level of understanding a new language. (Complete at least 30 Pimsleur lessons) I'm leaning towards German but I'm open to suggestions.

Any other challenges or goals that you might find amusing or worthwhile, I'm more than happy to take on, just as long as they're not impossible, expensive, or likely to cause serious bodily harm without serious bodily benefit.

Fascist Hippies

2009-05-17T10:00:00.007+02:00

It's easy to hate on hippies, and for the longest time I had a hard time figuring out why. What are the main hippie ideals?

1. Love. Nothing wrong there.
2. Peace. Also largely sensible.
3. Drugs. Not necessarily my pot of tea, but nothing wrong with that if you like it.
4. Drum circles. Hmmm... I'm not the biggest fan. I don't like that you can't get out.
5. Natural things. This casts a pretty wide net. I'm going to reserve judgment for a bit.

Last weekend I was at a crazy hippie-fest known as the "Whole Earth Festival" and I wanted to like it. By and large, the hippie message has a pretty sound foundation, since at least the first two of the five pillars of hippie are generally fine things to have. So why did I feel such an overwhelming distaste for the hippies?

Three things you will find at a hippie-fest:
1. Raw food that costs as much as real food. Shouldn't they give you a discount if they're not going to cook it for you?

2. Expensive crafts booths with handmade, fair trade, hempen-ware, all with clever pun-based names. "Off The Beading Trail," for example.

3. Booths telling you that something you like is evil.

Once upon a time, my parents were hippies. The ethic behind how I was raised was very much rooted in the hippie ideal of "the natural." More carob, less Frosted Flakes. More gardening, less shopping. More granola, less steak. I'm not trying to disparage the lessons they imparted on me, since I think I've been served pretty well by them. But we are currently dealing with a new breed of hippies.

And these hippies are goddamn fascists.

Being a hippie today is largely about what you say no to. "Is that meat? Free range? Hormone free? Sustainably raised bison? Sorry, no." "Is that peach organic? Local? I only eat fruit that falls off the branch as the tree's offering of Nature's bounty. Sorry, no."

The end result is that current hippiedom is an arms race of snobbery. Organic gets trumped by local and organic, gets trumped by vegan, gets trumped by raw, gets trumped by the next new thing that's somehow more natural and healthier than everything before it.

Don't get me wrong, people should be able to eat whatever crazy stuff they think will give them inner peace, make them live forever, and save the world, but at a certain point, these claims are starting to smack of organic fair trade snake oil. This wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't so much proselytizing and judgment coming from the hippie faithful. Especially since it's pretty damn expensive to live an "all-natural" lifestyle as purchased from Whole Foods at $12 a pound. The upper-levels of hippie approval are only open to those that can afford it (kinda like Scientology).

Is eating less pesticides a good thing? Sure, why not? And having food be local and fresh? If you can afford it, great! But I think it's a huge stretch to think that this is the most important decision you can make in your life.

Almost nothing that hippies are for is a bad idea, but there's a fanaticism about these okay ideas that I just can't get behind. There's a kind of arrogance behind thinking that your small decisions are really important to the world. It's just as messed up to think it's vital to the planet's well-being to only use organic recycled unbleached toilet paper as it is to think that there's a God who cares about whether or not you eat bread in April and how many penises are in your marriage (Answer: between 0 and 8).

Bottom line: eat what you want. Live how you want. Drum in whatever geometric shapes you want. But if you start telling other people how to eat, live, and drum, and judge them for doing it differently than you, check your bus ticket because you're heading from crazy-town to fascist-ville. And a place where you can only eat organic, only wear hemp, and never watch mind-numbing TV for hours on end is no Utopian commune I'd ever want to live in.

Five Reasons the Swine Flu Isn't Going to Kill Everyone

2009-04-29T06:31:00.005+02:00

1. Swine Flu is a wimpy name. In non-Muslim countries, swine hasn't been a cutting-edge insult for a long, long time. Douche Bag Flu would be more current. As a result, I just can't get that worked up about such a weak name. And thus it has been throughout history. Examples:

The Black Death - Rating: 10/10
Cool color + what will happen to you = devastation of 2/3rds of Europe's population.

Whooping Cough - Rating 2/10
Silly crowd noise + excuse to get codeine laced cough syrup = future of over-the-counter drug abuse... but no death. Plus the fact that it has a very effective vaccine has cut down the number of annual deaths from 10,000 to about 30, kinda makes it seem lame.

2. As far as I can tell, the only real effect it has in the US is to turn Republican senators into Democrats, and to get everyone's mind off of the terrible economy. I'm pretty okay with both of those things.

3. As my friend Alex said on Facebook, "If malaria was as inefficient at killing people as swine flu is, it would jump off a building."

4. The regular flu kills about 100 people in the US a day. Accidents (unintentional injuries) kill more than four times that many. Right now, any bizarre way that you can think of someone dying, (like being struck by falling satellites) has a better chance of happening, assuming it's already happened at least once in the US. In other words, if you think you're going to be killed by swine flu, you should also be buying lottery tickets because it's currently that unlikely.

5. Fox News is freaked out about it. Need I say more?

So take a deep breath (preferably far, far away from that old guy who keeps on coughing) and order up another BLT. It's only another three years before The Black Undeath turns us all into zombies and destroys the world, so you better enjoy this lightweight swine flu while it lasts.

Desert Dwellers

2009-04-07T07:32:00.009+02:00

Part 2: More Death, More Valley

While walking through Golden Canyon, Sarah and I were passed by two French girls in a dead sprint yelling, "C'est trop beau! C'est trop beau!" (It's too beautiful). I thought Sarah and I were doing a good job of enjoying the effects of lots of wind and lots of time on lots of rocks, but our reaction in comparison was woefully inadequate. It's a beautiful thing to see utter joy and realize, "Oh! That's how you're supposed to live!" I hope one day I can find something so beautiful I have to run.

The next day we left the Death Valley (note: I saw very little death on the whole. 40 mph Wind Valley, Dehydration Valley, and Ecstatic French Girl Valley are all more appropriate names for it) for the surprising lushness of Joshua Tree. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been too surprised about the relative abundance of life in JT. "Tree" is, after all, a living thing and that's right there in the name. Joshua, I'm pretty sure is usually alive too. This is not an association that Death Valley currently enjoys.

On the road to Joshua Tree is a town called Baker that exists only to clump all of the world's fast food restaurants in the same place for easy access. Sarah and I took mustard packets from the DQ and made our own salami and salami sandwiches while parked in the wasteland that is the Arby's parking lot. This leads me to the next point, of who would actually want to live in the desert.

A few hours down the road we came across the loose collection of plots of land that is home to recluses, shut ins, aging cowboys, and dead bodies no one's yet discovered. After driving through 50 miles of slightly inhabited, nearly uninhabitable land, we had yet to see a gas station or a supermarket, but there were a handful of churches. Maybe they were doing double duty, selling unleaded holy water, and Cliff Bar communion wafer, but I somehow doubt it.

Off the top of my head I can think of a few very significant pros to living in a big sandbox:
1. If the apocalypse ever happened, you'd be the last to know. Even better, absolutely nothing would change for you.
2. You can do anything you want in the desert, much the way you can do anything you want to when you're Will Smith in "I Am Legend," or when you're locked in solitary confinement. Fun!
3. You never have to worry about watering the plants, since they're all rocks which require little to no water.
4. If you've got really greasy skin, the climate will fix that problem, much the way that you can fix the moisture problem of a steak by turning it into jerky.
5. You're Mel Gibson and want to live out the rest of your days as Mad Max.

However, there are a few notable cons:
1. The people living around you in every single direction are crazy.
2. You are also crazy.
3. You've decided to shun the civilized world, yet are still dependent on it for weekly groceries, and or, you've bought 60 years worth of Mr. Pibb and Slim Jims and you're just going to eat that for the rest of your life.
4. The fence around your property is to keep out the pack of coyotes that want your Mr. Pibb.
5. The pack of coyotes have already killed you and no one will ever notice because you have no visitors, no friends, and all of your neighbors have also been eaten by coyotes or have turned into beef jerky.

So what I'm trying to say, is that while you might romanticize the idea of getting away from it all, if you do, you'll go insane and die a horribly dehydrated death at the bloody muzzles of feral pack animals. On the other hand, if you also romanticize going insane and dying a horribly dehydrated death, then you might just be a desert dweller, Mr. Gibson.

Hey Mel, you wanna have a tofurkey dog with me and Jesus? Yeah, you do.

Jesus take the wheel... of the RV... and crash it.

2009-04-03T08:28:00.010+02:00

On my way to buy a camping stove from a stranger in Vacaville (from Craigslist, and they threw in a pound of free bison meat), I passed a church marquee that said "No one can ignore Jesus forever."

I don't know about you, but that sure sounded like a challenge to me. So far I have successfully ignored Paris Hilton, the economic crisis, and that piece of food stuck in my teeth, none of which I plan to acknowledge any time soon. Now granted, forever is an awfully long time to do anything, but the way I figure it, I only really have to ignore Jesus until I die since he's probably not going to resurrect a guy that's been brushing him off for such a long time.

Unless of course, Jesus likes people to play hard to get, and then I might've just clinched my own salvation, so suck it.

This slogan is kind of weird though, right? I mean, since when did Jesus become the nerdy kid in high school trying to wear down the defenses of the popular girl so he can ask her to prom? What about, "Jesus is a really nice guy, and you should give him a chance. He has a really good personality and won't feel you up on the first date." That's a sales pitch I can get behind. But "no one can ignore Jesus forever"? Well, just watch me, guy who I'm not acknowledging.

Now something that you really can't ignore forever (stand clear, segue coming through) is nature. Because there's a whole lot of it and it's not going anywhere. (I mean it is going places if we don't conserve it or if the world explodes, but even then it'd still exist in one way or another. Anyhoo...) So yeah, during some of my time not being in Malaysia, Sarah and I decided to take a break and not be in civilization either for a few days. So without further ado, I give you Part 1 of a more-than-one-part series on what I did for my spring vacation. Spoiler alert: I was in the desert.

Part 1: Death Valley

It's been my opinion that nature is like a Reese's, in that there's no wrong way to enjoy it. I will, however, say that there are a whole bunch of more messed up and mind-boggling ways to enjoy it, all of which I reserve the right to silently judge. Or in this case, verbally judge.

RVs: I know it's easy to beat up on RVs. They have a low class image, get terrible gas mileage, and are responsible for at least one bad Robin Williams film. I can admit there's a certain appeal to being able to drive your house and defecate in you car, but I'm going to have to come down on the side of the haters for this one. The one exception I might make is that they allow people who are massively agoraphobic to be afraid of a different landscape every once in awhile. Which I guess is some improvement.

Drunks: I hate to say it, but drinking mass amounts of PBR when you're sleeping in a tent still counts as being an alcoholic. Going somewhere new to drink does not count as doing something new, in and of itself. Now if you switch brands from PBR to Coors, well, maybe. You might get credit for that. I'd have to look it up.

The loud family in the campground next to mine: You guys suck. Why are you so unhappy? Is it because you're with each other? If so, I can relate.

Good ways to enjoy nature:

Putting meat on fire: I don't know why, it just tastes better. You can even use tofurkey dogs, I really don't care. Just burn something and stick it in your mouth.

Getting lost: Nature isn't nature unless it lets you know how insignificant you are and how close you are to dying at any given moment. I like to bring food, water, and adequate clothing whenever I'm about to do something potentially stupid, and I recommend you do the same. That being said, the problem with staying in an RV is that you can never get lost in the desert, even for a moment. You don't get the moment of panic where you're forced to accept your imminent death. And you miss out on the moment of utter jubilation when you see your tent, the trail, or the hot ranger coming to save you.

Sleeping from sundown to sunup: I love camping because in real life, I almost never get credit for waking up early. But out in the wild it's really boring and cold when it gets dark, so you can sleep for 10 hours and wake up in time to pee in a gopher hole while watching the sunrise. That's what it's all about.

Hey, Jesus, you want a tofurkey dog? What? That counts? Seriously?

Damnit.

Thanks, AIG!

2009-03-19T08:07:00.010+01:00

A lot of people have been upset about AIG getting $165 million in bonuses from hardworking American tax payers like... well, not like me, but like people who actually have to pay taxes. Like my parents. And other people whose main source of income isn't from making sandwiches for an octogenarian every other week.

As much as I like a good outrage (and I do love 'em), I'm just going to go ahead and say that everyone's missing the point on this one. We shouldn't be pissed that AIG executives have been rewarded with fat sacks of cash for breaking the economy-- we should be grateful that we finally know where all that money is so we can go get our share!

Allow me to explain.

Now, if we were to put that same $165 mil towards something boring like public schools or healthcare, it'd barely make a dent. My share of that money as 1/300 millionth of America is 55 cents. Nothing to write home about, unless you can buy an envelope and a piece of paper for 13 cents to go along with that overpriced stamp.

But imagine if we were to give $165 million to one or two hundred people with a history of being terrible with money. That way we know who has the money and have a good idea of where it's going. It's just like filling up dozens of executive-shaped piñatas with wads of cash. Just give me a baseball bat, spin me around, and we can start spreading out the wealth.

See, all we have to do is find out what rich, irresponsible people would spend money on and invest in that! I'm recommending strong buys in cocaine, hookers, iPhones, and Iron Man suits. Tony Stark and Steve Jobs: you will now be slightly richer. Coke dealers: don't get a day job. Hookers: if you want to get rich, just invest things that your pimp would buy. How lucky are we to already know where that money's going?! It's like insider trading, but with more legality and less Eddie Murphy.

But hold on a second there, Winthorpe. Isn't this Reaganomics? And didn't we already try this in the '80s and fail?

Yes and no. You see, Reaganomics was a terrible idea because, among other reasons, it relied on rich people spending money in a way that benefitted poor people. Well, that ain't gonna happen. But rich people have no problem spending money in ways that benefit themselves!

It's really our own fault for not realizing this sooner. Why were we getting so worked up about executives getting $165 million? It's not like they could just hoard the money. They're going to need gold-plated hookers, gold-plated iPhones, and a new product called the iHooker which they'll need to invent and then have plated with gold. (More investment tips: strong buy recommended on "Gold-Plated Anything Inc.")

And the news keeps on getting better for my readers that happen to be hardened criminals as well (Yeah, Walla Walla!). Don't you all hate it when you go to the trouble of robbing someone only to find out he's as broke as you? You end up feeling sorry for him and giving him a dollar to buy a loaf of bread, possibly for a sandwich. What if I told you that there's a list of 72 premium targets, each with over $1 million bucks that they know they don't deserve?

Random robbery is inefficient and wasteful. It's much better to know who has money to burn so you get what you want and don't have to feel bad about it afterward. All you have to do is go to New York and look for the coked out guys with the iHookers. They'll be so snowblind you might not even have to ask for their money. Just give 'em a gold-plated bag of sugar and they'll throw a wad of bills at you. If you can live off of that until the next executive gets millions in bonuses then you'll get through this recession just fine.

Cracker Fail

2009-03-06T07:26:00.006+01:00

It has recently come to my attention that there might be more than one type of person in the world. Shocking, I know.

First there are people like me who, if given a dollar for food, will find the most calorically rich and nutritionally-balanced offering the market has and settle on something wholesome, like a loaf of bread. (In fact, I think there were people at my high school who thought that one of my hands was made out of a baguette.)

Then there are the other people who I will call the Snackers. Or maybe... the Snack Pack? Snackasaurus Snacks? Or perhaps just Sarah, as she is an epic snacker. Snacking is a strange concept to me now. If you're hungry, my mind reasons, you eat a meal, preferably a sandwich. If you are less hungry, you eat a smaller meal, preferably half a sandwich. And if you're not hungry at all, you make a sandwich, and stare at it until you have the desire to eat it.

The principle applies to restaurants. If you're hungry, you order a meal, if not, you eat the free bread. And if you didn't get enough free bread, you order dessert.

But there are these snackers (like Sarah) out there who understand food... differently. Whereas I might look at an iced tea and an appetizer as a waste of resources (that could buy a whole other sandwich!), these snackers (again, like Sarah) might see it as a flourish that adds to the richness of the experience. Crazy, I know.

So was it any doubt that when my snacker friend Brian asked me to go on a food run I'd fail miserably? I was given $10 to spend at Walgreens and I bought:

A loaf of Buttermilk bread (good for sandwiches)

A pound of penne pasta (in case there's nothing to make a sandwich with)

A cup of yogurt (maybe it's too early/late for a sandwich)

A pint of cookies and cream (I understand dessert goes well after sandwiches)

A box of Goldfish knockoffs (can be used as plate filler to surround the sandwich)

And $2 in change (so you can buy other things... for the sandwich!)

In case you're wondering, yes, you can tell the difference between Goldfish and Goldfish knockoffs. They were a terrible idea for many reasons:
1. They were called "A Whale of a Snack" and they were a Finding Nemo tie-in product.
2. Didn't that movie come out like 5 years ago? Why did I think these would be fresh?
3. Doesn't Disney make movies? Why would I think they could make edible things? Would I go see an animated film by the Keebler Elves?
4. They were cheaper than Goldfish and they had almost twice as many crackers. How could they possibly be so cheap and edible?

In short, they can't. They can just be crappy and plentiful. They taste like stale, deformed Goldfish that committed suicide by falling into a Top Ramen flavor packet. Basically, I would not recommend it.

I did, however, get to call Walgreens and tell them that the crackers were a blight on this Earth and responsible for all the evils of humanity. Plus, I got entered to win $3000, so that's pretty alright. It wouldn't make up for having to eat those cheddar monstrosities, but at least it's a start.

Cracker fail aside, you might notice that while items on my shopping list are practical, few are actually good snack foods. The keywords for a good snack food are "flavored" and "bite-sized,"while the key tastes are of overwhelming saltiness, sweetness, or gumminess. In short, snacks are impractical foods that are not meant to sustain life, but rather to enhance it. If meal-food were a cup of coffee, then snacks would be the doily that comes with it. I have nothing against doilies, and can, on occasion appreciate their frivolity and beauty. But, to stretch the metaphor to the breaking point, it turns out that it's a bad idea to send a caffeine-junkie on a doily run. They only bring back coffee.

In the aftermath of the snack run fail, Brian's ambivalent about returning the crappy crackers, probably because he doesn't want to be the kind of person who returns $2 worth of merchandise. Me, I have no problems with it. Walgreens has a lenient return policy and need I remind you, that those $2 could be put toward real Goldfish crackers? You know, the kind that don't make you want to disinfect your tongue and replace your teeth.

And besides, do you know how much bread $2 can buy? Definitely enough for a sandwich.

You Gotta Fight... For Your Right... To Organize!

2009-02-22T21:32:00.007+01:00

Last Wednesday while I was at SFSU, packing a week's worth of classes into one day, I saw this great flier that went a little something like this:

"10,000 Students have already been turned away from CSUs!

Student fees have raised 135%!

All around the world, students are rioting in protest!

What are we going to do about it?

Come attend an organizing meeting!"

Now that's a battlecry I can get behind. In fact, it's been shown through the ages that asking people to attend organizing meetings is by far the quickest route to revolution.

In fact, some of you might be reminded of this Margaret Mead quotation:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens, (arguing over what to do next and falling asleep in a boring meeting) can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Truly inspirational. And most people don't realize that Paul Revere's real message was:
"The British are coming! Let's hold an organizing meeting next Tuesday to show them we mean business!"

The real travesty here is that history has given short shrift to the power of organizing meetings and over-emphasized the value of waking people up to arm them against an incoming attack. Foolish, foolish historians...

I, for one, violently hate meetings. I'm trying to think of the worst meetings that I've ever been in...

Oh. Got it. Like most Best and Worst things, you'd have to go to Malaysia to find it (home of the worst fruit, the best transportation, and the Best/Worst way to spend seven months of your life). Okay, it's story time:

So at our second month in Malaysia (exactly one year ago), a bunch of the ETAs were in Kuala Terengganu and Anna's host sister had invited us all to have lunch over in her kampung. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of a proverb about "free lunch" and "no such thing as a," but it might have applied here. Before the lunch was a political rally, which I think fits into the category of organizing meeting since it satisfied the three main requirements of a meeting:

1. You can't leave.
2. It's incomprehensible.
3. It makes you wish you were dead.

I have no idea how long we were in this packed, sweaty room, wedged in between 80 portly Malay women in colorful potato sacks. I think it was around an hour and a half of actual clock time, so in subjective time, it was roughly three days. Three days filled with a woman shouting in Malay that was almost entirely lost on us, except when she said cognates like "Israel" and "America." Extrapolating just a little bit, I don't think the phrase that came next was "are awesome."

The only thing that kept me sane was being able to make mat saleh (white person) jokes with Mike and text them to each other.

The jokes:
Q: What do you call a white person who eats a lot of lettuce?
A: Mat salad!

Q: What do you call a white person who's going to hell?
A: Mat not-saved!

When we exhausted the possibilities for puns we began to make elaborate plans to escape the meeting.
Ideas:

I call another Mike on the cell phone. Mike leaves to answer it. = One ETA saved.
One ETA fakes a choking fit and two ETAs go to help. = Three ETAs saved.
We all just leave. = All ETAs saved, but political organizers offended.

Eventually (as the second hour was approaching and no end was in sight), I decided to stand, raise a polite hand to The Screaming Pundit in the front and shimmy my way through the aisle and out to freedom. When faced with the choice of freedom or another minute inside the meeting, the other ETAs followed suit... with the exception of Sarah and Anna who were stopped as they were about to get out by The Screaming Pundit saying, "please don't leave."

Luckily, they too got a reprieve a second later when The Screaming Pundit changed her mind and excused them to eat a plate of fishy noodles, fishy curry, and fishy fish with the rest of us. We were so euphoric to be out in the fresh air and free that even the food tasted good.

See? Organizing meetings can make you appreciate what you took for granted and can make bad food delicious. They truly are a power that can change the world.

Best. Holiday. Ever.

2009-02-13T07:28:00.006+01:00

So, Valentine's Day, right?

I can appreciate that it might not be everyone's favorite holiday. It's pretty easy to take some pot shots at it:

1. The Hippie Purist angle: "It's supposed to be about the love, man. Hallmark just commercialized it. Which is why I build my valentine cards out of hemp that I weave myself."

2. The Eleanor Rigby angle: "This holiday is dedicated to making me feel terrible for being alone. (Ah, look at all the lonely people)"

3. Bugs Moran's angle: "All of my men were killed in a massacre. I'm also very lonely."

4. The Pink M&M hating angle: "These pink M&Ms are ruining the sanctity of marriage."

But here at Ezra Not in Malaysia, we prefer to take the alternative view of things, regardless of whether or not it's sensible. With that in mind, I give you 8 reasons why Valentine's Day is a fantastic holiday.

1. It's pedophile-friendly. This might not seem like a great selling point at first, but since all the pedophiles are occupied with indecent pictures of the ubiquitous Cupid, it's probably one of the safer holidays for the children who would otherwise be targets.

2. Someone's bound to get some tonight. If it's not you, then it might very well be some people you know, so you could at least be happy for them. If you don't have a date, just go around high-fiving everyone you see. They'll know what it's for.

3. Expensive chocolate on the 14th means cheap chocolate on the 15th. Nothing wrong with that. You can also pick up half-off pink teddy bears, industrial-grade conversation hearts, and edible underwear starting the morning after. Plus you could stock up on cards for next year. Sales abound.

4. It gets kids out of having to do work for at least an hour at school. Do you guys remember how good Valentine's Day was in elementary school? First, there were free cupcakes. Second, you got to waste a bunch of time making a mailbox and passing out valentines. Third, you could find out someone liked you and you could then make fun of that person with your friends. Those were the days, right?

5. If you don't have a date and you've never been convicted of a sex crime, you can totally make some extra money baby-sitting for a married couple. Which means you can buy even more cheap candy and edible lingerie the next day.

6. It's a great day for puns. If you love wordplay based around "heart" and "love" combined with popular cartoon characters and printed on perforated cardstock, then this is the holiday for you. So good!

7. You can be a jerk to optimistic people. Maybe you're a bit of a Debbie Downer. A child of darkness. A Daria, if you will. That's fine, but surely you need some Pollyannas on which to crap upon. On Valentine's Day all the happy-go-lucky Prozac poppers are out en masse both figuratively and literally wearing hearts on their sleeves. If you're not one of them, feel free to take your best shot at them. They'll be too overwhelmed with love to notice, anyway.

8. Sure, romantic love gets all the attention on the 14th, but this is a day when you get to be there for your friends. You give them candy and tell them that you like being their friend. There's no other holiday even remotely like this. And there's no holiday when your friends, depressed that they aren't getting any action, need you more. That's what this holiday's about: it brings to the forefront the fear of dying alone so you are forced to spend all of your time with your friends eating sugar until you realize that you're pretty lucky to have them in your life. You're not alone after all. It's a beautiful thing.

Plus, if you guys get drunk together, there's always a chance you could hook up. Be ready with that high-five just in case.

I shot a man in Folsom (while he was cheating on his wife)

2009-02-01T01:32:00.011+01:00

(My thanks to the Man in Black for the title)

I was looking for a way to make some extra cash (still waiting to hear about that Australian island caretaker gig) when I stumbled across this Craigslist ad:

"Need someone with a camera and transportation
Suspect cheating fiance. Need you to go to three locations in Folsom, find his car, take photos and email them to me. Minimum pay $50. More depending on extent of job. Prefer someone that lives in Folsom for short notice calls. I hope you find nothing but either way, I need the truth because I fear STDs and need to be able to trust him."

Where to begin? First of all, I decided not to apply after a fair bit of deliberation, as there are some hefty pros and cons to weigh:

Pro:
I have a camera. Low start-up costs!

Con:
If I find the cheating fiance and he sees me, he might break the camera.

Pro:
$50 is equal to approximately 10 sandwiches.

Con:
$50 seems pretty cheap for potentially life-altering, future crushing information. I think she's low-balling me.

Pro:
Never been to Folsom before! Johnny Cash was there!

Con:
... at the Prison. That's pretty much all Folsom's known for. And now, allegedly cheating fiances. Sounds like a great place.

Pro:
Yeah, that's all I got.

Con:
It's a 45 minute drive away.

In the end, I couldn't really justify an hour and a half round trip to find out that this guy might not even be cheating. If she's going to hire me, she needs to be damn sure that he's cheating. Seriously, can you imagine having to be woken up at midnight by a phone call, drive through the night to Folsom just to find out that the guy went to In 'n Out for a burger craving? This job was to find out if he was cheating on his fiance, not his diet.

But then if it's a sure thing that he's cheating, we run into a couple of other problems:
1. The employer is not going to be too happy about this. Unhappy/emotionally destroyed people are not the most reliable employers. Nor are they the most stable people to be around. I don't need that headache.

2. The cheating fiance is, likewise, going to be pretty bummed. I don't need a pissed off guy, badass enough to be desirable to two different women, and therefore probably fresh out of Folsom State Prison, to be on my tail itching to break parole and my kneecaps.

3. Did you catch the part where it said "$50, more depending on extent of job?" That's a really intense phrase right there. Just what's the extent that this job could go to? Do I have to collect fluid samples? Do I have to pose as a bellboy and "accidentally" walk in on the cuckolding criminal and his courtesan? Do I have to dress in drag and try to seduce the guy? (Try? Do or do not-- there is no try.) Does she need video footage as well? HD? Widescreen format? What's the production quality she's talking about here? Do I need to hire a foley artist?

4. The employer said that she needs to be able to trust him. I think it's fair to say that no matter what, this marriage is doomed. Can you really picture them reminiscing at their 20th anniversary, "honey, do you remember the time I paid people to follow you to make sure you weren't cheating?"

5. How does she know that there are only three locations to go to? How on Earth did she narrow those down? Are there really only three places in Folsom where it's possible to have sex? Yet another reason to never go to Folsom.

When it comes down to it, this all seems like a lot of work. I know I said I was bored before, but it seems like an across-the-board terrible idea to try and entangle myself in a future failed marriage with trust issues, possible STDs and a town with a prison and limited make-out spots.

But then there's this guy asking for a Brazilian wax specialist:

Now that's a job I can get behind.

So Happy Together

2009-01-24T20:20:00.008+01:00

You know what's great? Happiness.

And you know what sucks? Boredom.

I've been on a break for the last 6 weeks and the lesson I've taken away from it is I don't much like being bored. The problem that goes along with this, though, is that I don't much like work. Work, it turns out, can be the antidote to being bored. This came as a substantial surprise to me, as I had long been under the impression that the antidote to boredom was Facebook. But under closer scrutiny, my experience on Facebook, or on most of the Internets in general, is basically just a low-level state of boredom.

Think about it: sure, there are some juicy pieces of gossip on FB, but in reality they are few and far between. For every engagement announcement or "relationship has ended" item on the news feed thee are 20 photo albums or status updates from that weird guy you had one class with sophomore year. Yes, Kurt, I'm sure your "LOLZ ugly sweater party!!!" was fun, but right now, all I can think of is how defriending you would give me 1/10th of a Whopper.

Yes, Facebook is an easy escape, but is it really fun? Joy-inducing? Life-affirming? No, it is not. It's boring, but it's a kind of boring that you just keep on coming back to because it is so easy to do.

Writing, on the other hand, is work (for me at least). I love this blog, but I also hate doing it from time to time. It's frustrating or intimidating or guilt-inducing, but it is never boring. How strange is it, then, that in the last 6 weeks I can measure the time I've spent on writing in hours, but the time I've spent on Facebook (or other parts of the Internets) in days.

It becomes clear to me that the more enjoyable something is before doing it, the less enjoyable it is after it's over. The most exciting part of Facebook or email is right before you log in and get you new notifications or your new messages. The messages themselves are, more often than not, extremely mundane.

Compare that experience to writing where the dread I feel before the act goes away about halfway through, giving way to general elation and a glowing feeling which can last an hour after I'm done.

Look, I made a graph!

Basically, the issue here is that the perception of how fun something will be after you finish it is way off. I think that I'll feel really happy after spending time on Facebook, but it turns out I'm wrong. I think I'll be really unhappy after writing but I'm wrong about that as well. Basically, as the excellent book, "Stumbling on Happiness" states, we're just piss-poor at guessing what will make our future selves happy.

It might help to think about yourself as multiple people who keep on making the same mistake of thinking you're all the same person. Example:

Sarah's lactose intolerant. Regardless, she still loves the cheese. I offer Sarah some cheese and she accepts. Said cheese is, as expected, scrumptious, and the the stomach ache that follows is largely unpleasant. Here's where it all went wrong: Sarah made the decision based on the assumption that she'd be the one enjoying the cheese, but through the passage of time, she's no longer that person! It's as if I gave the pleasure of eating the cheese to one version of her (Sarah 1), and the discomfort of the stomach ache to another version of her (Sarah 2)... the version of her that she now has the misfortune of being.

The decision was made by Sarah 1, so it makes sense that she would choose to eat the cheese. She enjoys all the benefits of the choice, while Sarah 2 must pay for all the consequences. It's as if you were brought to a restaurant and told that you wouldn't have to pay for anything you ate. You run up an enormous tab, and by the end of the evening, You 1 is long gone, and you're You 2, who must now foot the bill.

You 1 always chooses what's best for You 1, which, more often than not, is just terrible for You 2. So even though You 2 always feels better after writing for an hour instead of looking at Kurt's drunken holiday photos (LOL), You 1 still think it sound like fun, so that's what it chooses.

Maybe not everyone has this problem. Maybe some people's You 1s aren't total short-sighted morons. But mine definitely can be. Thus I've spend the last 6 weeks trying to treat boredom with Facebook which, sadly, never works. Ezra 1 is a slow, slow learner.

So I have a new rule of thumb. If it sounds like it's not that much fun now, I'm doing it. Run five miles? I'm there. Get screamed at by a martial arts instructor? Totally. (More on this one next week.) Eat salads? Awesome! Because this way, Ezra 1 does all the heavy lifting, and Ezra 2 just gets to bask in the afterglow of his accomplishments.

Ezra 1: Hey, Ezra 2, I finished writing the blog post!
Ezra 2: Awesome. Thanks, buddy!
Ezra 1: No sweat! Now let's eat blocks of cheese and look at Kurt's cleverly captioned photos!
Ezra 2: (2 hours later, covered in cheese and still on Facebook) Damnit.

The Sweet Escape

2009-01-14T18:11:00.006+01:00

So it has recently come to my attention that I still don't have a job. I could've sworn I already got one, but apparently being a weekly blogger and daily sandwich-eater doesn't count.

Imagine my delight when I found a posting for a job that combines travel with infrequent blogging.... and pays $100,000.

Turns out you if you want to take care of an island in Australia for 6 months, you can make a nice pile of change.

I was getting really excited about this idea: beautiful beaches, fun accents, fresh seafood, and occasional travel writing... what could be better? But then I remembered: I already did this in Malaysia. And while I would never say I hated the experience, it's fair to say we had our issues. And I'd need to do some serious soul-searching before I put myself in another situation where fish was the default food for every meal.

But most people have never left their lives for 6 months for a tropical paradise, so they can't think of any possible problems that would arise. All they can think about is the problems they have now in their current lives, and how they could escape them if they just flew across the world and lived somewhere new, like the great convicts that were shipped to Australia in mid-19th century. Yeah, it sounds like a good idea if you're a convict, but for the rest of us, they'll be new problems wherever you go, and at least in your current life, you're used to your problems. I know what to do when I have 200 pages of Faulkner to read, but I'll be damned if I know what to do when a dingo eats your baby. (It turns out it's the same answer to both: do nothing.)

This desire to get away from it all is all over the news, nowadays. You might've heard about the financial adviser who faked his death by crashing his plane and then fleeing on a motorcycle, a la Steve McQueen? He was doing super well until the whole thing became national news and he was found to be alive. He also made the whole thing considerably less funny by trying to kill himself for real once he knew his plan had failed. I feel bad for the guy, since he was in trouble before, but now he could also be charged with faking his own death and attempting suicide. Not exactly an improvement.

So the moral of the story, friends, is that there is no escape from troubles and strife. Not even suicide, which according to the excellent movie "Wristcutters: A Love Story," simply leads to another world like this one, only slightly crappier.

Wait, that's kind of a downer-- lemme try again. The important thing to realize is that most problems go away, even if they are replaced by other, worse problems. Uh... I mean the important thing to remember is that while you can't ever escape your problems and failures, you can definitely run away from them. Which I will now do.

Take me away, Steve McQueen!

Wait, he doesn't make it? Er... let's try that again...
Take me away, Gwen Stefani!

Engage!

2009-01-09T20:00:00.006+01:00

First thing's first: Sarah and I are engaged!

It seems that after all these years of living in sin, Sarah's finally going to make an honest woman out of me. I'm super happy.

But Sarah and I had a hard time properly expressing this happiness in written form. Observe:

1. Sarah and I are engaged.
While with a simple period, there is no one who doubts the fact that I'm now betrothed to my beloved, but there's also no doubt that I am a likely candidate for suicide watch. Not the right way to announce a new life. Pass.

2. Sarah and I are engaged!!!!!!!!!!! True, you get the sense that I'm very happy to be getting married, but you also get the sense that Sarah should be less happy, since she's going to tie the knot with an excitable pre-teen girl.

3. Sarah and I are engaged :)
Yes, there should be a smile, but honestly, just a closed parenthetical? That's the smile you give when someone gets a free doughnut at work, not when he announces one of the biggest decisions of his adult life. While gchatting with our friends, Sarah and I opted for the open-mouth emoticon, :D, which we felt fairly encapsulated the complex emotions of the event.

And let's talk about the proposal itself, since I know you're all dying to hear. After sending Sarah out of the house for an hour with a clever ruse ("I need you to leave the house. Now.") I hurried to set up a treasure hunt that would culminate in my proposing to her.

The general idea for a treasure hunt was my sister's excellent idea, and I filled in the rest. The plot went something like this:

On Sarah's desk is a free sticker of Obama. I put a post it note there saying that he (Obama), myself, and some others had all chipped in to get Sarah something special, but being so busy, he had misplaced it. A trail of clues led from Obama to the other characters/inside jokes that populate our house. A few of them were:

- The Wall Spirit Tapestry that we brought home from Japan.
- A corresponding Toilet Paper Spirit Tapestry, also from Japan.
- The spider that lives in the shower.
- Hobie the hobo who lives in our attic.
- A diamond made from 12 carrots, which was a snack for Hobie's hobo rabbit, Robo.
- Our plant, Gwynne Middleton, named for our fellow ETA, Gwynne Middleton.
- Our anthropomorphized collection of chili-based sauces.

Next to each one of these characters was a note saying what they liked about Sarah and where she might find the thing she was looking for. Not only was it adorable and romantic, we both got a solid workout running throughout the house. Since imaginary hobos, treasure hunts, and stair-based cardio are the foundation of any strong marriage, I think we're well on our way.

A lot of people have been asking me, "why now?" Well, it's really quite simple. While we were in Malaysia, everyone thought we were married. Then at the end, we had a wedding. The next logical step is that we get engaged. Pretty soon we'll start dating, then we get to meet, and the whole thing will start over.

The other big questions are about the wedding: "when?" followed by "where?" and to a lesser extent "who?" (if I'm talking to strangers on the street).

As for where, well, there's a point of contention. Sarah wants to have it on Earth, and I want to do it on the Moon, so we'll probably have to compromise and have it on the International Space Station. It's currently $30 million a person to get up there, but we're pretty sure we can get a group discount.

The date we have picked out is 2010. Probably in the summer, but more likely just all of it. It makes sense to have a day-long wedding if you've been together for a couple of years, but by the time 2010 rolls around, Sarah and I will have been a couple for 9 years. If that doesn't deserve a year of festivities, I don't know what does.

EATD: Ezras Against Text Driving

2009-01-02T07:21:00.009+01:00

Attention drivers: the DMV has asked me to publicize a new policy on texting while driving. In short, don't.

But since they pay by the word, I now present to you a brief FAQ to help illuminate what you can and can't do while driving.

Can I text while driving?
No.

Really?
Well, no, you still can. But now cops can also make money from you doing it.

What about talking on the cell phone?
No, you haven't been supposed to do that for like six months. Get one of those bluetooth headsets so you don't crash and kill us all.

Isn't that just a plug for cell phone accessory companies?
No. Maybe. Probably. You might want to go ahead and buy stock in one of them.

Which one?
It really doesn't matter, they'll all be bankrupt by the end of the year.

Can I file for bankruptcy while driving?
Let's be honest: if you're filing for bankruptcy, you're probably using your car for living, not driving, so the whole question is moot.

Hey man, that's not cool.
You didn't say I was wrong.

What food can I eat while driving?
Buffalo wings.

Anything else?
The celery sticks that come with buffalo wings.

That seems pretty arbitrary.
So buy stock in Hooters.

What if I'm a vegetarian?
Then you can eat hummus. And the celery sticks that come with hummus.

I think you might have gone mad with power.
Ooh, for that you can only listen to Rick Astley while driving.

But I don't know who that is!
Then you can listen to NPR, but only with the bass all the way up and the volume to low to hear.

I hate driving. You made Terry Gross sound like Barry White. This is the worst FAQ ever.
Just for that you can only drive a Chevy Vega... with your face.

Screw it, I'll walk.
Yeah, that's probably a good call.

Tune in next week when I unveil the IRS's new laws about only accepting taxes paid in live chickens, gold doubloons, or sexual favors. Happy new year, and drive safe.

Gonzo's Pants

2008-12-23T09:50:00.006+01:00

I've been meaning to write about this for over a year now. My parents' neighbor is solidly insane. A little while ago my parents had a fence built, dividing their property from his. The neighbor (let's call him Gonzo) was solidly pissed off by this since he didn't realize all that land was my parents', and in retaliation, he tied a pair of soiled pants to a clothesline facing the property line.

Gonzo told them that the pants meant "kiss my ass," but like abstract art, I believe threats are open to interpretation.

For example, there's no reason to think this symbol doesn't also mean "I'm naked," "I'm clearly bat-sh*t crazy," or even "I'm protesting the child labor that went into making these Gap khakis." In all likelihood, all of the above answers are correct.

The reason I bring this up now is that it's been over a year since the pants went up and... they haven't moved. I appreciate Gonzo's conviction whole-heartedly; I don't think I've been able to hold the same opinion about anything for more than a year, and I definitely haven't been able to hang on to an upset for that long. Gonzo's not a quitter, and we can all learn something from him. I mean, if the pants haven't come down in the first year, it's fair to say that they'll be up there until boomsday. And given the high-quality craftsmanship that child labor undoubtedly produced, they might very well be the only thing left standing when the world is populated by cockroaches and talking apes.

Most of us pale in comparison to Gonzo for our ability to hold a grudge. The best we usually can muster is to dredge up some infantile slight from childhood to trot out once a year at a family gathering. Sure, we all say we'll remember the wrongdoing forever, but like most new year's resolutions, we break this one by the time the leftover champagne has gone flat.

But fear not, gentle readers. With the holidays fast approaching I'm going to tell you how to nurse that familial grudge so it lasts the whole year.

1. Get a tattoo to remember why you're pissed. You might regret having to explain "Jack broke my firetruck" to every person who sees you naked, but that anger will just fuel your grudge. Take that pain and use it. Jack should've been more careful.

2. Reminder emails. Many calendar programs have the capability to send reminder emails so you never forget the important things like "That time Uncle Vito stole my girlfriend." Just program it to send a short note about the past injustice once a month and that grudgy spirit really can last all year.

3. Support groups. It's hard to stick to a regiment of seething rage on your own. You might find that having friends who are going through the same challenges of maintaining a vendetta can be enjoyable and beneficial.

4. Find a mentor. You might think that you invented the grudge, but the world has a long history of hanging on to upsets ever since Uglok used Muglok's wooden club without asking. Odds are you can find someone in your community who's older than you and therefore much, much more bitter. You wouldn't try to win a gold medal without a coach, right? Well your new curmudgeon is an Olympic champion of grudges. Don't let those years of experience go to waste.

5. Pace yourself. Grudging is not a sprint, but a marathon. The goal is to find a way to be pissed throughout the whole year without burning yourself out. Too many people get so mad about the wrongs that have been done to them that they simply can't sustain the emotion for a month, let alone the rest of their lives. If you find that you need to take off some time for yourself to just be happy for a little while, that's okay, as long as you understand that you're leaving the grudge temporarily so you can come back to it stronger, refreshed, and more bitter than ever.

People may tell you to let it go and just forget about it, but let me tell you something: those people are quitters. If you're going to succeed in your goals of grudging you need to shut out those negative voices and start saying yes. I believe in you.

And if you ever get discouraged and feel like quitting and you think there's no way you could keep on being angry at someone so long for something so stupid, gather strength from this: Gonzo's pants are still there.

Spam Bot85

2008-12-21T09:13:00.004+01:00

In my travels through the internet I occasionally wish to give out an email address that I have no intention of checking. For this very purpose I have created my very own spam address: SpamBot85@gmail.com.

Now, uh, let's say for argument's sake that through a constant barrage of the worst the Internet has to offer, our friend Spam Bot85 may have spontaneously developed consciousness. (Let's also say, for argument's sake, that this was in no way my fault.) Everything Spam Bot85 knows is based entirely off of Viagra ads, Oprah's weight loss solution, and cheap top name replica watches. Within seconds of becoming sentient, Spam Bot85 knew that he was too flaccid, fat, and unfashionable.

Luckily for Spam Bot, it also turned out that sexy singles in his area wanted to meet him... and some old college acquaintances were looking to reconnect. He also won a $50 gift card to Applebee's and he's earned several advanced degrees from the University of Phoenix. Spam Bot85 also found that he had a Russian bride waiting for him, as well as several hot stock tips. The first hour of existence was an exciting one for SB85.

But (and I want to stress this, through no fault of my own) Spam Bot85 might have received a scam email or two. Sadly, having only existed for less than a day, Spammy had not yet developed any kind of skepticism drive. (Equally disheartening is that he's learned his spelling and grammar entirely from the Internet.) So, when Spammy received this email, he had no choice but to believe it and act accordingly.

"Here writes Lady Kate Foster, suffering from cancerous ailment:

My names are Lady Kate Foster, am seriously suffering from a cancerous ailment and don't know if i will survive it, am writing to oblige you of the opportunity to carry on with the dreams and aspiration of my late husband and I which must not die.

Please write to indicate your interest, so as to furnish you with details of
this dream and aspiration of the family and how to achieve it.

ladykfoster2008@gmail.com

Regards,
Lady Kate Foster."

Spam Bot85 did what any innocent would do in that situation. This is what he wrote:

Dear Lady Kate Foster,
I am interested in the dreams and aspirations of your late husband and yourself. What are they and how can I carry them on?

Sincerely,
Spam Bot85

When Lady Kate Foster didn't write back, Spam Bot85 got worried and sent this message, assuming the text might've been simply too small for someone as sick as Lady Kate Foster to read:

"DEAR LADY KATE FOSTER,
I HOPE YOU ARE OKAY. DO YOU NEED HELP? CAN I SEND YOU MONEY?
<3,
SPAM BOT85"

What do you tell someone like Spammy? He's young. He doesn't know any better. He can't help but see the best in people. He only wants to help. So I had to step in and say something before he got hurt.

"Dear Spam Bot85,
I'm Lady Kate Foster's doctor. I wanted you to know that Lady Kate Foster was very touched to hear from you. You have a good heart. She doesn't need any money from you, but it was kind of you to offer. Her dreams and aspirations are that you keep on doing what you're doing: when you see that someone needs help, you try to help them.

Sincerely,
Dr. Ezra Fox
M.D., University of Phoenix"

"DEAR DR. FOX,
I SEE THAT WE HAVE THE SAME ALMA MATER. I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AT THE REUNION WITH SEXY SINGLES IN YOUR AREA.
<3,
DR. SPAM BOT85
MD, PHD, MBA, JD, MFA, UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX

PS DO YOU NEED VIAGRA?"

A Nice Doomsday for a Gay Wedding

2008-12-16T02:30:00.010+01:00

I was sure that after I wrote about the end of the world in the last post it would go away forever, since that's what happens to most things that I write about. But no, the end of the world made a repeat appearance in my life yesterday, and seeing as how doomsday is one of my pet interests, I'm giving it another 700 words.

At an end of the semester class party, a classmate mentioned that she had a list of things to do before the world ended in 4 years. She called it a bucket list, but it might more accurately be referred to as a Four Horsemen list, a Boomsday list, or of course, a Galactus list. I'm a great lover of lists, resolutions to live your life to the fullest, and challenging yourself in potentially catastrophic ways, so naturally I'm all for the Galactus list project.

I was especially impressed since the thing she had already checked off the list was getting married. That takes some chutzpah. She also revealed that she's getting divorced now, as she can still check marriage off the list since staying married isn't something she's trying to do. I only hope that Prop 8 gets reversed soon so everyone can check marriage off their Boomsday list with any gender they want. If you think about it, the end of the world will take care of most of the anti-gay marriage arguments.

1. Gay marriage will destroy marriage.
- No, a giant asteroid will do that in 4 years, along with destroying humanity, the Earth, and, well, everything.

2. Gay marriage will destroy the family.
- Once again, no. An asteroid. An asteroid will destroy the family. Gay marriage will not affect the destruction of the family, although it will affect the number of gay weddings you'll be able to attend in the last 4 years of your life.

3. Gay marriage will lead to polygamy.
- I'm pretty sure that people wanting to have sex with as many people as possible before the world explodes will lead to polygamy. Gay marriage will lead to gay marriage... and possibly gay divorces, which could very well be another item on someone's Galactus list.

4. Gay marriage will make God angry.
- If God's letting all of us die in four years, he's clearly not that happy now. I'm not convinced we could even do anything that would elicit a great punishment from her. In fact, it might be time to admit to ourselves that we have no f'ing clue what God wants from us, since our planet seems to have been laid waste to an awful lot during humanity's run. Hell, maybe God just likes destroying things.

5. Marriage is to procreate.
- Newsflash, the species is doomed. The planet is doomed. The more kids you have in the next four years, the more kids will get eaten by the Cloverfield monster, smashed by an asteroid, or crushed by the Terminator/Matrix uprisings. The people who are against gay marriage are usually against abortions (in the 1st and 2nd trimesters), and I think we can all agree procreating in the face of doomsday will just lead to unnecessary 16th trimester abortions. We don't need that on our conscience come judgment day. More gay marriages = less dead kids.

6. Children will be taught homosexuality in school.
- What kids would still go to school after they knew the world was going to end in four years? More to the point, what teacher would spend their last precious few years of life teaching something kids already know about? (They've already seen the Teletubbies, after all.) Here's what'd happen: All kids younger than high school get four years of summer vacation. Everyone else can go to college, since that's pretty good too. If teachers still want to spend some of their non-orgy time teaching, they can knock themselves out.

So, do your part and tell people who are anti-gay marriage that the world is ending. They'll start focusing on what's really important and get started on their Boomsday lists. Gay marriage isn't going to lead to the Apocalypse, but if we're lucky, the Apocalypse might just lead to gay marriage.

The sooner we get this done, the sooner I can check off "marry and divorce Hugh Jackman" from my list.

Final Countdown

2008-12-11T09:02:00.014+01:00

Cue the music.

Sarah's friend Jamie told her, while studying for finals, that she hoped the world would end in 2012 so the grades for the semester wouldn't matter.

Now I'm all for the world ending, and if the Mayans called it, all the better. But before wishing the world explodes, implodes, or gets eaten by Galactus, there might be a few easier ways to weasel out of finals.

1. If you have to send in a final paper via email, send in a corrupted file. You give your professor a correctly named file, say "Ezra's Legitimate Term Paper," and through no fault of your own, it doesn't open. By the time your professor realizes this and asks you for a new copy, you've just bought yourself a few more hours of work, sleep, or praying for the world to end. Sadly, this is only a stall tactic, as you will eventually have to turn in a real paper, assuming your assignment wasn't just to send a corrupted file to a professor.

2. Get sick. Standards for what constitute being sick have gotten way out of hand in this day and age, so almost anything will count if you take it seriously enough. Who's to say you don't have foreign accent syndrome (you speak with an uncontrollable new accent), TMAU (making you smell like rotting fish), or Jumping Frenchmen of Maine disorder (making you a French Canadian Lumberjack)?

And if you don't want to wheel out any of these new diseases, pull out one of the tried and true illnesses from yesteryear. It turns out you can get scurvy by attempting to live by ramen alone. If you're Amish you still might get polio. And what about the Plague? Might be time for a comeback.

3. Throw someone under the bus. (Figuratively) Any chance that the curve killer in your class might be an illegal immigrant? Drug addict? Republican? How about your professor? Report them to the proper authorities and let the system do its work.

4. Throw someone under the bus. (Literally) You'll be so wrapped up with court procedings, jail time, and executions that you'll definitely get out of having to take that exam.

5. Fake your own death. Dead men tell no tales, wear no plaid, and take no final exams.

6. Study something that renders finals irrelevant. That way you slay the finals beast once and for all. Something like, I don't know, an MFA in Creative Writing. I should warn you though, there seems to be a direct correlation between how stressful the finals are and how useful the culminating degree will be once you're released into the real world...

... of course, the world's only got about four years left to go, so you might want to consider dropping out of school now while you can still go outside without having to swim through Galactus's digestive juices.

You've been warned.

Words to Live By

2008-12-06T00:48:00.009+01:00

Perhaps some of you have seen this little exercise on Facebook in the past few weeks. It goes something like this:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.

And voila, you now have a random little bit of information from one of your many tomes to brighten your day.

But that's not really enough for me. I mean, you have this scrap of text, but what are you going to do with it? I then decided that I would do this exercise, but take the sentence as my personal motto for the rest of the day.

The book is called Guyland. It's about how from ages 16-26, white American males are wastes of space with no responsibilities and no desire to grow up. While it's in no way whatsoever applicable to me or my equally lazy, waste of space friends, it's still a good read.

Page 56, line 5. "Each of us cuts his own deal with it."

I figure basing my life around a random sentence from some book completely out of context from everything else around it is just what religious extremists do, so if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

What can I tell about my new ethos?

1. It seems to be individualistic. Each of us has to cut the deal for him or herself. No one's going to cut that deal for us.

2. It's also pluralistic. This deal is your own deal. It's not my deal, but that doesn't seem to be a problem.

3. I don't know what this "it" is that we're all cutting deals with, but it seems to be powerful. There's something beyond all of us that's important... and needs to be dealt with.

4. The phrasing of cutting deals means that the world's not perfect. We might not get everything that we want, but we do the best we can with the choices we're faced with. And since all people have to cut their own deals with "it," maybe you'll be more sympathetic to the tough choices your fellow humans have to make.

So, in a nutshell, we're all on our own, together, working imperfectly with something bigger than ourselves. Not too bad, page 56, not too bad.

...

I've now made the mistake of reading the surrounding paragraph, and it's yet another example of how context ruins everything:

"Virtually every male in America understands something about violence. We know how it works, we know how to use it, and we know that if we are perceived as weak or unmanly, it will be used against us. Each of us cuts his own deal with it."

I'm just going to go ahead and say we should disregard what the author thought he meant in this divinely-inspired paragraph. Michael Kimmel lost the way of truth while writing the book. For shame.

But, then again, we can't judge him too harshly. After all, each of us cuts his own deal with it.

When Ninjas Attack

2008-12-02T00:41:00.012+01:00

I recently made a deal with all-powerful Atheismo that if I survived a particular encounter I would write two blog posts this week. I lived, so I'm making good on my promise.

About two years ago I was back at Whitman, and Sarah came to visit for the weekend. At the same time, the other inhabitants of the Monastery, Chris and Alex, were called away, leaving us to hold down the fort on our own. In the middle of the night, Sarah woke up and thought she heard footsteps around the house. We shared our house with Abel, a depressed house painter from Oaxaca who lived in our basement and loved blasting ranchero music through the floorboards and drinking immoderately, so I assumed that any movement would surely come from him. I probably slurred something to the effect of:

" 'sjust Abel... gobacktosleep'kay?"

But as Sarah's hearing is much better than mine and her wake-up-ability at important times is stronger, she persisted, and we listened to more footsteps, which, admittedly, sounded like they were coming from a decidedly unbasement-like location. Not to mention the shadows moving around visible through the crack in the bottom of the door. Some amount of time between four and five years passed, and we heard the unmistakable noises of a door closing, footsteps on the pathway moving away from the house, and a car starting up and driving away.

"Okay, you might have a point," I said.

While we were pretty sure the house was now empty, we armed ourselves as best as we could from the weapons cache in my room. We emerged defiantly equipped with a tennis racket (on loan from Sarah's dad) and a mini bike pump, fully extended (about three feet of telescoping hard plastic).

Lo and behold, the house was empty (I knew it!) but there was a window open... and the door too... I think my exact words were "Well crap, I think you were right." Oddly enough, there was nothing missing. Both my laptop and Sarah's, as well as our digital cameras and TV were exactly where we had left them. The explanation I've used for the last two years were that a couple of guys came in through the window, looked around, decided that crime wasn't for them, and left through the back door. I now realize that it's entirely possible that they could've come in through the back and one of them got so freaked out he had to dive out the window, while the other shook his head at the rookie, left out the back and drove away.

We called 911 and a policeman showed up right away, but even though he pulled out his gun and his flashlight and yelled "Walla Walla police!" at the ghost in the attic, he didn't get a chance to fire off any warning shots for noncompliance. The born-again thieves were long gone, and Sarah and I were left to watch episodes of Scrubs until the sun came up, too shell-shocked to sleep.

Fast forward two years to a month ago. Sarah and I leave the house empty with the lights off, and when we come back, the light in our room is on and the door is now closed. We slowly but surely reach the only logical conclusion-- that there is a ghost/hobo (a ghobo?) living in the attic. He is henceforth known as Hobie the Hobo. In my imagination he looks something like this.

A few nights ago, my PTSD kicked in and a hurried animalistic scratching downstairs made me wake up, convinced that our born-again thieves from Whitman followed us back to Davis and had decided that crime really was for them after all. I don't blame them, seeing as how we're in a recession and all. Sarah didn't think anything much of the noises, reasoning that if they sound like animals scratching, they probably are animals scratching. Fair enough. Just to be on the safe side, I started talking to Atheismo (and the Flying Spaghetti Monster for good measure) and assured them that if I made it through the encounter with these burglars I'd continue to make my life useful. I then realized that it's not all that useful now, so I said that I'd write an extra blog post, and here we are.

I bundled myself up in my leather jacket, reasoning that it might deflect the ninja stars the burglars would throw at us when we caught them. Having lost the mini bike pump in the move but gained an extra tennis racket (a gift from my grandpa) we equipped ourselves to play doubles against the ninjas with an obvious love-hate relationship to crime.

We were just about to volley the stealthy burglars back to the dojo, but being such excellent ninjas, they must've slipped out the back silently and locked the door behind while we were warming up our backhands. Next time ninjas!

Humans are Terrible People

2008-11-24T23:29:00.009+01:00

I didn't see Ralph Nader speak today. I don't get to see him speak most days, but today I came closer than usual, so I think it's noteworthy. Ralphie Boy came to speak at Sarah's law school today and along with my Whitman friend Anthea, we almost got to see him speak.

Here's what happened. Sarah had class in the place where the talk was going on, so she just stuck around and saved seats for Anthea and me. So far, so good. Except before Anthea and I could make our way through the long line to get into the room, a couple of girls ahead approached Sarah:

2 Girls: Are these seats saved?

Sarah: Yes, sorry!

2 Girls: You can't save seats.

Sarah: ...What?

2 Girls: You can't save seats. It's the rule.

Sarah: Actually, there isn't a rule about saving seats...

2 Girls: (They ignore her and they promptly remove her stuff out of the seats, toss them at her and sit down.)

Sarah: (Freezes in shock.)

So by the time Anthea and I got into the room our seats were definitely jacked. When we asked the 2 girls about it, one of them said that someone would've done the same thing after them if they hadn't. (I've tried using the same defense with eating the last slice of pie and that crap doesn't fly in our house.) I was then treated to a pretty heated argument between Sarah and the two seat-stealing girls, mainly consisting of whether it was common courtesy not to save seats, or not to steal them. Sarah, decently pissed, vacated the remaining seat, cleverly leaving the two girls to receive their punishment of having to listen to Ralph Nader for two hours with no exit. Muahahaha....

I'm not surprised that these things happen exactly, but I am surprised that the girls weren't hotter. Usually when people are jerks in public they're damn attractive, damn rich, or damn famous. These girls were nothing to write home about, dressed like peasants, and from the looks of them their last name was not Obama.

Here's my quick and easy multiple choice test for all you people who are wondering if you can get away being a jerk:

1. When people see me they:
a. Ask for my autograph.
b. Blind themselves afterward so I'm the last thing they ever see.
c. Lick my shoes, because that's what I pay them to do.
d. Say hi or do nothing.

If you answered d, here's a follow-up question:

2. Is it because they are literally paralyzed by your beauty?
a. Yes, that's it.
b. No.

If you answered b, here's one last question:

3. Really? Are you sure?
a. My mistake. I really am causing paralysis by my hotness.
b. Yes. I'm sure.

There you have it, a simple, three step test for whether or not you can get away with being a jerk. If you answered anything but "d, b, b" you'll no doubt find that you can get away with pretty much anything. Diplomats get diplomatic immunity, and now you have something even better: damn sexy immunity. You can also get free drinks at most bars, raises when you don't deserve them, and you can talk your way out of or into anything your damn sexy heart desires. Congrats, you've hit the jerk jackpot. Go nuts and tell everyone how much more important you are than them.

I'm sorry to say this, but if you are one of the unfortunate people who did answer d, b, b, your outlook is somewhat bleaker. You know those creatures that are not at the top of the food chain? That's you. The people in the kingdom who aren't the king? You again. Art Garfunkel? The Rest of the Jackson Five? Any Cambodian child who wasn't adopted by Angelina Jolie? You. You. You. Someone had to draw the short straw, and it sure wasn't going to be the kid whose last name is Jolie-Pitt.

So to these 2 girls who thought they had damn sexy immunity, it might be time to take a good, long look in the mirror. I think you'll both realize that you simply don't have what it takes to be members of the human elite. Please judge yourselves harshly and see you just aren't pretty enough to be as mean as you were. Either get prettier or nicer. I don't really care which.

So, dear readers, keep this mind as you celebrate your Thanksgiving with your loved ones: only be a jerk if you're really sure you can get away with it. And before you get started, here's a pointer: you probably can't.

The Adventures of Johnny Crazyfists - Episode 1

2008-11-21T00:30:00.003+01:00

I'll do a real post later, but I've been meaning to put this up for awhile. This is a project I've been working on with my old college roommates Alex and Chris for uh... nearly a year. Figured I'd show it off. We're working on episode 2 right now, which features a trip to the old west and no fewer than six prostitutes!

See/read more here: www.johnnycrazyfists.com

Weapons of Self-Destruction

2008-11-14T19:56:00.005+01:00

Let me tell you about the Internet: first you take everyone in the world, then you wire 'em all together and see what they want to talk about. Turns out, it's sex. But the great thing about the Internet (getting to talk about sex with a whole bunch of people) turns out to also be the worst thing about the Internet, as all the people you don't want to talk about sex with might just find out what you're doing. The Internet is probably the most perfect tool for embarrassment ever. It's like a friend that you can whisper all your darkest secrets to, who'll then promptly tell them to anyone with a password, a good amount of curiosity, or dumb luck.

Let me tell you a cautionary tale about the Internet: first, take some private conversations (thankfully not mine). For argument's sake, let's say that these private conversations of yours have been automatically recorded and archived through Gchat's chat history. And again, for the sake of argument, let's say that your private conversations were of a (achem) somewhat sexual nature. It certainly would not have been the first time that sex had come up on the Internet, nor in conversations among friends. I won't fault you for that. Next, let's say that in your lifetime you've made an enemy. And let's say this enemy has a proficient knowledge of hacking. Let's say that your enemy successfully hacks into your Gmail account and finds this treasure trove of private conversations, the type that people have when it's just a couple of guys talking, confident that no one else will hear them.

What does the enemy do next? Well, in the case of someone unfortunate (I'll call him "Jim" ), the enemy sends out your conversation transcripts to everyone in your contact list. And some sexy pictures of you also.

Ouch.

The contents of these conversations are... embarrassing, to say the least, though not exactly shocking. They're pretty much what you'd expect would happen when a couple of guy friends are able to talk freely about the girls they know or would like to know. It's fair to say that the conversations do not show Jim in the best light. But these are Jim's inner thoughts that strangers are poring over. I can safely say that if my inner thoughts ever fell into the wrong hands, I would have some explaining to do, as would we all. And if you think you might be exempt from this, then at least rest assured that someone you love isn't. There was a quotation I heard from the PostSecret guy that went:

"Every single person has at least one secret that would break your heart."

I believe it. Jim's secrets are out in the open and the people who read his chatlog will have no choice but to judge him for it. But I was struck by how flawed and how human it all was. There were people he talked about that he actually cared about and people that he was just using. He had friends that seemed like good people and others that came off looking like jerks. Those conversations showed glimpses of a person that we never share with people because we're afraid of what they might think. Jim pissed someone off and so those glimpses were sent off to hundreds of inboxes.

I've been watching a lot of the show Dexter recently. It's about a serial killer who kills other killers and has to pretend to be normal. It's an apt parallel, since Dexter has this darker side to him that would make the people close to him hate him, but he's not an evil person. He struggles with the darkness inside of him and tries to protect the people he loves from ever seeing it. I think we're a lot like Dexter and we're a lot like Jim. We all have parts of ourselves that we don't want to show people but that we can't make go away either. We're divided, and the dangerous thing about the Internet is that it connects everything to everyone.

In the case of Jim, mass electronic communication collapsed the barrier between his private and public lives. Even the separations he tried to make between different parts of his private life became horrifically unified when the conversations came out.

Later Jim wrote a message to his professional circle saying how he was ashamed by the conversations and how they really made him rethink his life. I was hoping that in the future, he might not think this was such a bad thing to have happen to him. It could be a real gift, actually, to be able to see yourself the way strangers would see you.

I guess that's the thing about self-destruction: there's always a chance that what comes next is self-creation.

America the Radical

2008-11-06T00:36:00.007+01:00

My apologies for the weeks of silence. Many things have happened since the last post, very few of which will be remembered a year from now, perhaps with two notable exceptions. First, Sarah and I hosted an epic housewarming party, and secondly (but not less important) Barack Obama was elected president.

Having spent a good chunk of this year out of the country, I think I have a pretty good read on what makes America awesome, and what makes it suck. In short, America's awesomeness comes from the spirit of rock 'n roll. America was founded by a bunch of people who didn't have anything to lose and could afford to say, "f**k it, let's not have a king." America does best when things are crappy enough that we can do the right thing without caring about the consequences.

Example: It's 1932, everything's completely f'd up. But FDR's like, "alright, yeah, this sucks, but let's get some radical social programs out there. Maybe that'll make things better, since they clearly can't get any worse." America's at its best when things are at their worst. If we're poor, hell, let's all band together and we'll get through it somehow. We're fundamentally a nation of punks, rebels, and radicals, so as long as we have something crappy to rebel against, we're set.

It's the prosperity that kills us.

Check it out: after eight years of booming Internet stocks, we go ahead and elect (ish?) an unqualified douchebag instead of a well-experienced robot. This was an extremely rebellious (though slightly catastrophic) move. We sure showed that prosperity not to make us rich! And it was kind of rock 'n roll too, like when you vote for the glue-sniffing class clown instead of the nerd who's warning you about the world melting. It made sense.

As for 2004, well again, as much as I hated Bush, he appealed to the rebel spirit of America much better than Kerry, since Bush got to start wars and disagree with the French, while Kerry wasn't even cool enough to dodge the draft. Lame.

We're a nation of long-shots and underdogs. It was inspiring to see a mentally retarded man rise to the highest office in our country... twice. More importantly, Bush got rid of all that terrible prosperity and gave us something new to rebel against... mainly him.

So that's America's great strength: its ability to rebel against crap and other things that suck. Our strength is our ability to say, "f**k it, we're out of old ideas, let's try some new ones." Prosperity messes everything up because we're too worried about keeping what we have that we can't sell the home and cross the country in a covered wagon, or slap some wings on a propeller and try to fly, or put some guys in a tin can and blast them to the moon. We're awesome when we're pushing the envelope and we're really lame when we try to maintain the status quo.

Case in point: the election.

I'm not sure I could say it better than the Onion, but I'll try. Obama was the right guy to elect for so many reasons, but the one that matters to me is that he was new. He was a long-shot and he has a ridiculous name and he got people really freaking excited because things had finally gotten bad enough that people could feel good about saying f**k the establishment, I'm voting for change. Change. It doesn't mean better, but it does mean excitement. Whatever's coming next, we don't know what it is, and that's pretty damn exciting. It's pretty rock 'n roll.

Like a lot of young Californians I know, I'm pretty disappointed about how prop 8 went. You could say that it's ridiculously unfair and discriminatory, and you'd be right. But those important reasons aside, it's also really uncool. How rock 'n roll is it to hold onto an idea of marriage that's several thousand years old? It's not even cool to have last year's iPod, and marriage was never as cool as an iPod.

C'mon guys, we have a new president and for the first time, he's cool. We're cool for electing him. Let's not mess this up by making a lot of prude, uptight decisions about who can legally make out with each other in front of clergy! We are at our radical best as Americans when we have the cajones to shake things up because we can, because we're bored, or because there's a gold rush on the other side of the country. That's rock 'n roll. That's an America I can be proud of.

So how 'bout it America? Get back to your rebellious roots. Live a little. I'll make it easier for you: Canada already legalized same-sex marriage... and weed. I guarantee you their weddings are more fun than ours. Now, America, are you seriously going to sit there and let Canada be more rock 'n roll than you are? I thought not. Get your act together and find something lame to rebel against. And if prosperity comes knocking, take all that money and put it towards a moon colony, 'cuz f**k it, man, let's have some new frontiers. So, can we build a moon colony? Can we listen to the nerdy robot warning us about the world melting? Can we all get high and make out in front of clergy?

Yes we can.

Desperately Sikh-ing Stigma

2008-10-17T03:26:00.006+02:00

Through a delightful series of events I found my head being wrapped in a turban yesterday. It turns out UC Davis has a vibrant Sikh Student Association who were eagerly exhibiting their mad turban skillz at an activity fair. Aside from the normal enjoyment I get when people pay attention to my head (ask anyone, I love haircuts) I was especially excited to finally expose the town of Davis for the racist cesspool that it is. In the vein of "Black Like Me" I would undergo a near complete transformation (putting on a turban) and be the object of intense prejudice until I got bored or had to go to work a few hours later (whichever came first).

Turbans are actually pretty comfortable, as it turns out. My head didn't get hot at all, despite it being definite t-shirt weather, and the wrapping of the cloth around my dome felt snug, but not unpleasant. Kinda like a turtle neck for your head. Fast head movements took a bit of getting used to, since I was balancing a bit more weight than before, but it was nothing terribly comedic. All in all, I'm pretty much pro-turban, with the sole caveat being that by the time I finally took it off my head was itching like crazy and I had one serious case of "turban hair."

Okay, so walking around on campus there was a definite lack of hatred tossed in my direction. If I got any looks at all, they were mainly based around the incongruousness of my outfit. Jeans, polo shirt, white skin, turban. I think it might've been the last two that threw people, but they also could've been shocked by my well-fitting Levi 529s. You never know. Even so, being a turban-wearer while white around Davis is still nothing in comparison to being a person while white in Malaysia. I quickly realized that if I was going to illicit some really juicy, racist, Pulitzer for Blogging type of responses, I would have to leave this (apparently) accepting/indifferent university campus and venture out into downtown shops. That's where all the real racists are, I'll wager.

But my quest for religious intolerance and hateful behavior hit yet another snag. Try as I might, I could not get anyone to be an asshole to me. I crossed the street, causing cars to stop and they just waited politely until I passed. I went into a bunch of different stores, asked for things that they didn't have and everyone was still extremely courteous. It was... eerie. Because while people were being nice, I had the distinct feeling (though this could've been just me) that they were actually being a little too nice. Like when you meet your ex's new girlfriend and you want them to think you don't hate her so badly that you come off seeming way nicer than you really are. There was a shakiness in their courtesy and behavior that I wasn't accustomed to. While this wasn't the discrimination I was looking for, it would have to do.

Oddly enough I kept on getting nods when I made contact with Indian people. They weren't wearing turbans, but they made eye contact and there'd be a recognition of something that they thought I was, which they'd acknowledge with a smile or short nod. Stranger and stranger.

So at the end of the day the score was:
Hate crimes: 0
Hateful epithets: 0
Hateful gestures: 0 (or at least none that seemed explicitly directed at me)
Uncomfortable friendly people: 5
Undeserved acknowledgments from strangers: 3

When I saw that things were going badly for my hate-quest I briefly entertained the idea of provoking people a bit more... acting like a huge jerk, yelling in a foreign language, using my iPod earbuds as wires sticking out from under my shirt... but I realized that that sounded more like entrapment than a fair and unbiased experiment.

Still, I can't say how weird this niceness was that I was on the receiving end of. If I had urinated in any of the stores I was in, I don't even think they would have asked me to stop. It felt like they were a little afraid of offending me. So if you ever want to get away with something in Davis, go ahead and put on a turban first. Assuming, of course, that you're white. Otherwise, I really can't guarantee your safety.

Naughty Girl Moment

2008-10-13T05:21:00.006+02:00

Once again, I love the train. I went to the Amtrak station to take the westbound 737 down to Berkeley to meet up with my dad for a matinee of The Dark Knight and was lucky enough to get to the station with 5 minutes to spare. When I arrived there was a young, skinny guy wearing a wife beater and jeans, absolutely belting songs. He was just finishing up one as I got there and when his iPod shuffle transitioned into “Tonight I'll be your naughty girl” he followed it without flinching.

I confess, sometimes I sing softly to myself while walking down the street, or I might treat passersby to an especially breathy rendition of “Eye of the Tiger” while nearing the end of a run, but I’ve never done anything even remotely this bold. I don’t even thing I could sing that loud in the shower. (People who have lived with me may be able to dispute this point.) But the thing that made this an exercise in awe instead of in public embarrassment was the fact that he was easily one of the three best singers that I’ve ever heard. He hit insanely high notes without breaking and never faltered once for lack of breath or confidence.

I have never seen anyone do anything as completely as he sang about being a naughty girl. He held nothing back.

An interesting layer on top of all of this is the fact that since we were all waiting for the train, there was a group of thirty people who were now eavesdropping on this impromptu concert, not really knowing what to do about it, but not able to ignore it. A stocky white guy in his thirties with a goatee approached me.

“I hope he doesn’t sing like this the whole way there,” he said.
“If he had a bad voice I’d complain, but he’s really good,” I said.
“Yeah, he’s alright. But you have to know when to say when.”

Not knowing what this last statement meant, I gave my standard reply of non-committal agreement.

“(Me chuckling) I guess so…”

But what does that mean, “when to say when?” Did he mean it was like with one of your kids, where you humor her through the first twenty minutes of doll fashion shows, but after that you give her the hook? Did he mean it like you forgive your boyfriend for cheating on you, but not for charging the hotel room on your credit card? I think he knew more about singing at train stations than he let on. I think he used to be a member of Amtrak A Capella also and he just gave up the dream, realized that he’d never get that record deal and he might feel a twinge of regret, but he knows he made the right call. He knew when to say when.

I’m not telling this story in a Chicken Soup for the Soul way to say that we should all sing loudly in public spaces, 'cause screw what anyone else says. The truth is, many of us have pretty much no business singing that loudly in public places, and while I suspect that many of us might want to be a naughty girl, I’d rather it was left to the imagination.

I’m not telling you this as a cautionary tale, so you can hopefully never grow up to be a guy with a goatee in his thirties who makes sensible decisions and hopes that someone with a good voice stops singing when it’s appropriate to do so. Some days you might feel like permitting social deviancy and some days you might not. It’s neither here nor there and I won’t judge you either way.

I’m telling you this story because I’d hope that you might have a moment at some point in your day, your month, your life, where you do something fully without holding anything back. It might be worth doing in front of someone else, it might not be--doesn’t matter to me. I was just thinking that this young guy in his wife beater and jeans looked like he was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing when he sang how he wanted to be a naughty girl. I bet it’s a good feeling.

I wish you the best of luck finding your naught girl moment.

How to Shame Friends and Impress Enemies at Your High School Reunion

2008-10-04T09:18:00.005+02:00

If, like myself, you're one year out of college, that means you're also five years out of high school. I understand that high school might not have been the best time for everyone, so it is imperative that you make a good impression on your former crushes and current targets of Facebook-stalkery. I like to keep a couple of things firmly in mind to make sure I let everyone know how great I'm doing.

1. Jobs (Or in other words, how badly you're doing.)
Everyone you'll see will have only had a year to get their life together after earning a mostly worthless BA from an expensive liberal arts college, so you'll be on pretty much equal footing to begin with. But since you all want to stay as idealistic as possible, the winner of the vocational contest will go to the person who is making the least amount of money doing the least desirable work.

Good idealist jobs: Unemployed, interning on a remote organic lettuce farm, working for a nonprofit that encourages the homeless to vote for Obama.

Bad idealist jobs: Anything with the words "broker," "legal," or "manager" in the title, as they all imply making money and selling out. Exceptions include jobs that also have "nonprofit," "organic," and "immigrants" in the title.

2. Life experiences
Basically, anything you've done that no one else was stupid enough to do. You've only had five years to differentiate yourself from the pack. You're probably not published, rich, or pregnant yet, but there's a good chance you've done something uniquely painful in your life, hopefully in a place the other person has never been to. They'll think you're cool because the less someone can imagine themselves doing what you did, the more impressed they'll probably be.

"Oh, wow, you really lived in a flooded Indian orphanage for a month eating only a bowl of rice every week? That must've been such an incredible experience."

Plus, odds are pretty solid that they've done something equally stupid and painful in an entirely different country, so you both get to be impressed at each others uniquely stupid and painful experiences. I've pretty much nailed this one: since Sarah's not coming to the reunion, I'll bet I'm going to be the only one there who taught in Terengganu. Score.

3. Gossip
Since most of your classmates will have something better to do on a Saturday than go back to high school, they'll be plenty of people absent who you can gossip about. If you've kept in touch with anyone in particular, or if you're reasonably sure that you can lie about keeping in touch with someone without getting caught, then here's your time to shine. You will have to strike a delicate balance, however. You want to give the impression that you're cool enough to warrant someone staying friends with you for another five years, while at the same time not giving the impression that you haven't made any new friends in the last half-decade.

Good gossip: Do you remember Ezra Fox? I just talked to him a few months ago. Turns out he finally got that extra toe removed! (Excellent. It shows you're close, but not too close, and shares something bad about the person while appearing to be something good.)

Bad gossip: Oh man, Ezra and me were chilling last night and this prostitute totally robbed us. (What, do you guys still hang out every night like in high school? Grow up. Besides, everyone's already heard this one.)

Above all else, have an escape plan already in place. If you're like me, this entails having your parents drop you off a block from the school and then drive ahead to a pre-arranged rendez-vous point where you will meet them in exactly 8 minutes after helping yourself to the free sandwiches and avoiding being seen by your Bio AP teacher. Since it's not cool to be a high school reunion in the first place, the best way to impress people is to not be there at all.

Mom and Pop Crack Shop

2008-09-15T05:41:00.010+02:00

Raise your hand if this has ever happened to you:

You're biking home from your local organic foods co-op after a mostly successful shopping trip and you can't shake the nagging feeling that you didn't get everything on your list.
Bread? Check.
Butter? Check.
Crack cocaine ?

No! You forgot to get the crack! It's terrible right? How else will you get your 1-2 servings a day of things that are low in carbs but high in crack? But wait! Two strangers walk past you right outside your house, and you know since one of them is wearing a flashlight for a shirt (bare-chested with an illuminated LED hanging from his neck) that these are crack fairies sent from Heaven to help you.

Sure enough, as you pass, Flashlight-Shirt says, "Do you want some crack?"

Saved.

This just happened half an hour ago. More than anything else I was just surprised... for several reasons, actually.

1. Did they actually have crack, or were they looking for some common ground with me?
"No, I don't want any crack."
"Cool, we don't want any crack either."
"Awesome! You're alright by me, Flashlight-Shirt!"

2. Is the Davis crack consumption really high enough that indiscriminately asking passersby if they want any could be a viable marketing strategy? I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work with toilet paper, and I'm even more sure that more people use toilet paper than crack cocaine.
"Hey man, you want some TP?"
"No... I think I have enough. Just got a 24-pack at Costco."
"Oh yeah, that's a good deal.
"Yeah, Costco's the best."
"Yeah, great value."

3. Did I unknowingly fit a crack fiend's profile? Did I look like I could use some crack? Did I bear a striking resemblance to Flashlight-Shirt's best customer who coincidentally, also enjoys buying organic food and not driving cars? Or maybe Flashlight-Shirt and Friend simply had a crack-desire detector on them...
"Let's see: riding a bike... got a backpack full of groceries... oh! He's wearing a blue shirt! The detector's going off! He's totally gonna buy some crack from us!"

It makes me think that crack dealers might be a dying breed. In the new economy where you can get Walmart Crack that was produced with child labor for half the price or Amazon.com Crack shipped to your doorstep, how can the Mom and Pop crack dealers, or even Creepy Guy and Creepy Guy's Friend crack dealers, compete with multinational rock slingers? America used to stand for something: selling crack through genuine human interactions. But now it's all about the bottom line. I feel for crack peddlers like Flashlight-Shirt. He knows his days are numbered. I bet he comes from at least four generations of crack peddlers. What would great grandpappy Flashlight-Shirt say if he saw how Big Business pushed honest crack dealers out of the market?

Well, knowing great grandpappy Flashlight-Shirt, he'd probably nod his weathered face and gaze far off into the distance with those sad, faded blue eyes before opening his cracked mouth to say the only thing he could say, the only thing he ever said:

"Do you want some crack?"

People Worth Staring At

2008-09-10T08:25:00.007+02:00

I don't think ugly is really that proper of a word to describe people, so I'll try to pick another. How about "interesting?"

The people in San Francisco are really interesting. They're textured. They're different. They're like hunks of drift-wood, or carrots that kind of have faces, or used furniture that "has a lot of character." The people in San Francisco have a whole lot of character. When I was in college back at Whitman, I was used to seeing hoards of young, attractive people every day. But if I can lob a criticism at my college friends and classmates, it's that they usually didn't have mohawk pony-tails, toothless mouths that collapsed on themselves, or unexplained bald spots and facial hair. In short, they were very nice, smart, attractive people, but they weren't ugly-- err, interesting-- so they weren't worth staring at.

In San Francisco you can stare at people. The people cry out to be stared at. And listened to. And there's no place to do it like on public transportation. I thought that people were baring all in the malls, but those people were boring-as-spackle by comparison. One of the great benefits of being in an English-speaking country again is that I can eavesdrop until my ears bleed. Please allow me to take a page from the great website, Overheard In New York as I give you...

Overheard on Muni!

Real Estate Mogul: She a moose hunter and she pro-life. How can you be a moose hunter and be pro-life? Can't have an abortion but you can kill a moose. It don't make sense!

Angry white guy: (presumably after he was pushed) The f*ck is your problem? I'm not a human dummy!
Real Estate Mogul: Tell 'em, man!
Angry white guy: (Not listening) We're not in f*cking China!

Teen girl 1: You know what I hate even more?
Teen girl 2: (Trying to be helpful) The way you are now?
Teen girl 1: What? No...
Teen girl 2: (shrugs)

Teen girl 2: You know what you should do? Just take a break and have a month where you don't have sex with everyone.
Teen girl 1: I don't really do that now...
Teen girl 2: Okay, then have a month where you do have sex with everyone and then take a break!

San Francisco public transit, ladies and gentlemen. Home to the most interesting people in the world.

America's Bounty

2008-09-02T05:49:00.009+02:00

Everything is free in this country. If you want something and you don't care when you get it or what it looks like, odds are you can get it without paying. Everyone just has so much stuff they don't know what to do with it. Over the last week, Sarah and I have scavenged the following from next to dumpsters, the side of the curb, and people's lawns:

A wooden table and four matching chairs
An electric mixer and two metal beaters (separate places)
A mostly working bike (only one flat tire!)
A mostly non-working bike and a wheel that almost fits it (separate places)
A sauce pan
A lid for another pan
A five speaker stereo system, a sub-woofer, and a stereo receiver (separate places... but then they all went to the side of my curb when I couldn't figure out how to connect them.)
A double papasan chair... I didn't actually know they made those, let alone gave them away to grad students.
A desk (Sarah's- heavy, wooden, not that much fun to move)
Another desk (mine- rickety, fake wood and metal, kinda fun to move)
A chair with wheels (70s chic with not that many cobwebs... anymore)
A wooden knife holder which almost fits the knives I precariously jammed into it
Something that probably wasn't meant to be a shoe rack but that we're using as one.
A UC Santa Cruz class of 2002 mug (way easier to get than my Whitman College class of 2007 mug)
A well-framed but otherwise unremarkable acryllic painting of a an old Spanish mission. As soon as I find some paint and paint brushes on someone's curb I'm going to add something to the blank spot in the upper-lefthand corner. Ideas? I was thinking a spaceship attacking the mission piloted by Jesus, but I'm open to suggestions.

Things I almost got but had to pass on:
A snowboard (I'm a pretty terrible snowboarder)
Several pairs of skis (I'm an even worse skier)
A trench coat (tempting, but it's still 90 degrees here, and if I ever let my beard get too long and wore it I'd look homeless.)
How to be a Pole Dancer DVD: Vol. 1, Beginner to Intermediate (This one was pretty hard to say no to, until I realized that I'm clearly an advanced pole dancer, and everything in the DVD would just be "kid's stuff.")
Hook, VHS (The video tape won't fit into the DVD player and I can't, for the life of me, imagine what kind of machine could possibly play it. Also, I didn't like Hook.)

Things I'm still waiting to find:
A Harvard class of 2002 mug
A couch which has never had any bodily fluids on it.
How to be a Pole Dancer DVD: Vol. 2, Advanced to Super Advanced. (I actually starred in that video, so I don't need to learn from it, but I figured I could sign the cover and it would make a nice gift.)

Naked America

2008-08-28T07:20:00.004+02:00

During the last couple of weeks (have I already been back for that long?) I had the pleasure of partaking in that most American of traditions, going to the mall. It was exhilarating and deeply unsettling. But the strangest part about it was trying to pinpoint what about it was so strange. There were malls in Malaysia. Good ones too. Malls that could easily dwarf the one I wandered into. So why did the humble Arden Fair seem so intimidating? I think it might've been that everyone in it was pretty much naked.

I don't mean this as a judgment on the "clothes" people around here are wearing, though that's certainly a part of it. All of the people I saw from the food court to the Mac store hid so little of themselves. That's right. I'm invoking both meanings of naked. Levels, baby, levels.

The girl in front of me at the cheese steak fastfood chain (don't judge, I was hungry) talked about nothing important on her cellphone as if she were surrounded by the deaf. It was eerie. Like if someone started taking his clothes off in front of you because he thought you were asleep. I didn't really know what to do with that kind of exhibitionism, so I did the best I could to be a non-creepy voyeur. I guess I succeeded, since the girl in front of me never stopped talking or paying attention to herself. Maybe that's what's weird. There was just no awareness of the people around her. It's like everyone ended up in the mall by way of their personal solipsistic dream. No one else was a real person.

The strange thing is that no one seems to notice being naked. People don't notice how much of themselves they display to the world on an everyday basis. I certainly never noticed it before. But now it's obscenely obvious. People just wave their naked parts for the whole world to see and more often than not, the whole world is too busy waving their naked parts to notice. But now it's all I can see. Like I said, it's exhilerating and deeply disturbing.

Everything that anyone's ever said about Americans being loud and open seems pretty true right now. I don't think we can really call it a virtue anymore than we can call walking around after you forgot to put pants on a virtue. It's just that no one realizes how exposed they really are, so of course then can't do anything to change it.

In Malaysia you had to fight for your privacy. You needed to be constantly vigilant. We were always covering up something, either parts of our body or parts of our selves. I was only ever "naked" when I was alone. In a public space, you always had to maintain your privacy. The Private is never Public.

And here in America the prevailing wisdom is that no one cares. No one cares about your cleavage or your speedo or your Nazi boss or your lying boyfriend... the Private can be Public because the Public doesn't give a crap about your life, private or otherwise. That's the glorious freedom I've missed these last seven months: the freedom to be anonymous and to not have to hide a thing.

The freedom found in our malls showcase the new American dream: being naked around other naked people and buying whatever you want in an air conditioned setting.

Living the dream, baby, living the dream.

Lesser-Abled Super Squad, Away!

2008-08-23T08:13:00.005+02:00

As I took the train from Emeryville to Davis, I had a moment to flip through the safety pamphlet tucked into the back of the seat in front of me. It's pretty much the same safety pamphlet as with planes, with the one notable exception being that it has safety instruction in Braille embossed all over it. It seems like a good idea, right? Amtrak certainly doesn't want to have a lawsuit about how it left a blind guy on the train because no one told him what to do when his tray table caught fire.

But let's think about this a moment further. One of the directions (for the sighted) was "Help disabled [or perhaps it was 'less-abled'] people first." And of course, stamped over this message in English was its apparent translation in Braille. I'm the first to admit that my Braille might be a bit rusty, so I'll propose two possible things it might have said, each deeply troubling.

Possibility #1: Direct translation. In Braille it simply says the same thing as it does in English, so the safety card is advising disabled people to help people less able than themselves first. If some blind people were on the train when something bad happened, they'd have to go wandering around the compartment (possibly flooding, possibly on fire, possibly both) until they found someone in worse shape than themselves, and then they could leave. I don't envy the sight-impaired that ride Amtrak. I imagine it might be very difficult to save yourself from wreckage without the ability to see, but it's decidedly more difficult to first have to find and save someone missing two or more senses. In other words, before Stevie Wonder can get off the train he has to find Helen Keller. Even more troublesome, if Helen Keller reads the same message, she has to find Stephen Hawking before she can get off the train. And if Stephen Hawking doesn't think he's worse off than Helen Keller, they have to find some way to communicate... it's just a mess.

Possibility #2: Not a direct translation. Whoever made the safety pamphlet understood the Wonder-Keller-Hawking fiasco and so it just says, "If you're disabled, someone must help you first." And if you ask me, that might be even more f'd up:

"Sorry, Mr. Wonder, I know you'd like to escape this this rapidly burning/flooding train car, but you're just going to have to wait until some people who took the time to read all of the bumpy safety pamphlet come to save you. I hope they value 'Songs in the Key of Life' more than escaping burning wreckage in a timely fashion."

Make no mistake about it: if you have the cojones to ride Amtrak while being a less-abled person, you better make damn sure you have a good escape plan. For me, I'll just get knocked unconscious and wait for Stevie, Helen, and Stephen to come save me and teach me how to groove, overcome adversity, and control the universe.

Lesser-Abled Super Squad, Away!

Home

2008-08-18T08:15:00.002+02:00

On Wednesday, I came home.

The things of note that I ate:
Hot pastrami sandwich at Max's
The rest of the hot pastrami sandwich at home
Tortellini con pesto at Lococo's
Some kind of pizza and some garlic bread wedges, also at Lococo's
BBQ chicken tacos at Maya Restaurant
A sandwich
Chocolate truffle birthday cake
Another sandwich
Potatoes
Granola
Bagels (also in sandwich form)

Things that I have yet to eat:
A milkshake
A different kind of sandwich
Gnocchi
Pie
A burrito
Pancakes
Garlic bread

Things that I probably won't eat:
Curry
Fish

Things that I miss eating:
Bowls of noodle soup that I could drown myself in
Roti
Rice (but it shouldn't be too hard to find)

There's a lot to love about being home. The food is about 10 times better on the whole, so even though it's 5 times more expensive, I still come out ahead. Everything is ridiculously easy to do so far, since very few interactions involve money going to or coming from government bureaucrats. Everyone's English is really good here. I'm seriously impressed.

Plus, things that might've bothered me before don't really seem to matter now. Waiting an extra 30 minutes for my grad school orientation to start is no problem, since I still go everywhere with an iPod and a notebook. Having that orientation be useless is still par for the course, and is likewise pretty tolerable. Malaysia taught me that if you don't get bored easily and you're prepared to wait, you'll do alright in this world. So far, so good.

Also worth mentioning is that Home has now moved, and Sarah and I spent the last 48 hours setting up our new house in Davis, very close to where she'll be going to school, and very far from where I'll be going to school (it's about 70 miles to SFSU). The distance is justified in several ways:

1. I get to ride a train!
2. I only have class on Mondays and Tuesdays, and Davis is a pretty great place to live for the other 5 days a week.
3. We live next to a crepe shop.
4. Living in San Francisco after Terengganu would almost certainly make my head explode... actually, as an MFA student in creative writing an exploded head could stimulate some interesting prose. I'll put that point as a draw.

So you are now witnessing a transition. I will now break with the last 7 months of exploring the insanity of living abroad and spend the next 3 years exploring the insanity of getting a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing... and debating the merits of having an exploded head.

Pro: Saves money on hats.

Four-Night Stand

2008-08-12T08:52:00.000+02:00

No matter how you cut it, Malaysia was a very intense, very involved long-term relationship. We both had a lot of issues and, well, things got messy. We stuck it out for as long as we could and in the end we decided it’d be best if I went my own way, and Malaysia stayed in Southeast Asia, attached to Thailand and parts of Indonesia. It turns out I was also really easy to pick up on the rebound.

Oh, Tokyo! You’re everything that Terengganu wasn’t. Your food is so good I want to cry a little. You’re expensive and classy but still fun. Your mass transit is a breeze to get around on (albeit a little tricky to navigate at first), and best of all, you don’t care that much about me. You give me room. Terengganu was a smotherer. I felt like I couldn’t go anywhere without someone asking “Where are you going?” “Did you eat rice?” “You can speak Malay?” It asked me questions but never listened to the answers. But Tokyo… Tokyo couldn’t care less about me. It’s there if I need something, like a vending machine full of iced teas, one on every block, and if I just want some alone time, that’s fine too. Tokyo doesn’t care that I’m white, since a lot of people are. It doesn’t care if I have money, since it has more. It doesn’t care if I speak Japanese, since it’ll always speak it better than me. It doesn’t even care if I’m in Tokyo, since there are plenty of people here with or without me. 2008 was officially “Visit Terengganu year” in Malaysia. In Japan it’s “We don’t care if you come see us now or ever year.” Again. Tokyo doesn’t care about me and it feels great to be so unloved.

There’s nothing malicious about it unloving me. It’s just apathetic. It’s even the notch below apathy, right before you realize that you could possibly feel anything about anything. I mean nothing to Tokyo, and because of that, I get to choose how much Tokyo means to me. There’s no pressure when I walk down the street. Shopkeepers greet me in a string of (presumably honorific) Japanese syllables, and I get to ignore them (like all the Japanese patrons) or rattle off my own (presumably broken) honorific Japanese syllables. Either way, no one notices me. It’s casual, anonymous, no-strings attached international travel and it feels great.

Instead of going through a whole process of falling in and out of love with a place, I just get to enjoy it and leave before things turn sour. No embittered blog posts, no desire to cry into one’s pillow for hours on end, and definitely no food with bones in it. It’s a perfect four-night stand.

But I guess there’s no real point in complimenting the many wonders of Tokyo at the expense of the many wonders of Terengganu. Terengganu and I, well, we had a good run together. I still love the place and the people and the flaws. If I stayed in Tokyo I’d find things to hate (there’s shockingly little roti chennai, for example), and if I stayed longer still, I’d find a way to love it more completely. I had a professor (the illustrious Dr. George Ball) who said that love is a choice, not an emotion. It’s easy to fall in love with a place. If you’re open to it, you can get swept off your feet by Japan just as easily as you can by Malaysia or the good ole US of A. The hard part is choosing to love the place when you’ve been there long enough that you actually get to know it. And when you get sick there, will the place care enough about you to take care of you? Will it prove to you that it’s worthy of your love? Does it need you?

Terengganu was worth loving, it turned out, fish heads and all. Tokyo probably is too, even after it stops trying to slyly woo me with steaming bowls of ramen, an abundance of drinkable water, and Disney theme parks. I just know we could give so much to each other if we only had more time… and maybe one day we will. But California’s been calling me and I’ve heard such good things about a place called Davis. Besides, I’ve always been a sucker for a college town.

Dear Ezra, It's Just a Kidding. Love, Malaysia

2008-08-10T14:32:00.004+02:00

Malaysia ended. In spite of feeling like it would last forever, it did not, since nothing does and nothing can, in fact, last forever. Malaysia was no exception. It ended quietly, all things considered. After the fake wedding everything else seemed comparatively tame. I was present for Sarah’s big blow-out assembly and there was also a goodbye snack in Kuala Terengganu with all of the ETAs and low-level officials. In case you’re ever wondering, low-level officials who are filling in for mid-level officials at events that no officials actually care about really do give the best speeches. The guy didn’t really know any of us very well so some highlights were:

"And there’s Gwynne who can only eat tofu… and Chris who is a lawyer and will bring down the American legal system… and Joe. Joe always reminds me of that black guy. You know, that very funny black guy. That actor-" at this point we were all thinking of Chris Tucker, who Joe is a dead ringer for- "Jack Black." And collectively the room breathed a sigh of relief. Oh good, we all thought. Our low-level government official was just terrible at making speeches and not racially insensitive.

The problem with America is that it just doesn't hand you as many comedic opportunities on a daily basis. The people where I live are too conscientious and have too strong a command of the language to make such brilliant mistakes. And it's more than just the comedy that I'll miss. Nothing's supposed to go wrong in America. If something gets messed up in the states, there’s no real reason for it. The cell phone company tried to screw you. Your meeting got canceled and your time was wasted. You accidentally bleached your jeans and you need to get new ones. Life in the states has a contradiction built into it, because we expect things to be perfect and reality shows that time and time again it's not, and never will be.

But in Malaysia, you expect things to go wrong. You’re surprised if they turn out perfectly (as, with the law of averages, is bound to happen at least sometimes) and you’re prepared for crap to rain down on you from time to time for no good reason. The beauty of this mindset is that it transcends pessimism. You don’t look for crap to rain down on you, you’re just ready with an umbrella when it does. And at your disposal, 24 hours a day, no matter what, is a failsafe explanation for every imaginable screw-up:

"It’s just Malaysia."

It’s random and chaotic, but it’s fair since no one’s exempt, and best of all, it doesn't contradict reality. If you understand to begin with that you’re living in an irrational world, times of irrationality are no longer problematic. "It’s just Malaysia" is a beautiful catch-all. It’s the gestalt of what could be making things happen so bizarrely.

One of my favorite students, Aiman, wrote me a goodbye card where he just made a lot of jokes and ended it with "It’s just a kidding." I think that’s a lot like the goodbye card Malaysia would send to me. All of this, this whole dream-like life, it was all just a kidding.

At the end of The Joke, which I read during my time here, one of the characters suffers a heart attack while playing with his band. The protagonist finishes off the book by saying that the heart attack victim will live, but it will be a quieter life, one without any of its old exuberance or exultation. There will be no ecstatic musical numbers anymore, he will just be alive and nothing more. That is my fear about leaving Asia. Everything that grated on me in my worst times will be what I'll miss the most. What kind of life will I have back in America where there signs are all in perfect English, the meals are all free of bones, and I can have any small comfort at any time? I’m afraid that in my leaving this unabashed insanity, I’m effectively neutering my life.

There are no answers for these fears. Malaysia was my family and, as my family, loved me-- sometimes too hard-- and occasionally drove me crazy. And my world is fuller for having known that love. And my world is emptier for leaving it behind.

As I write this I don’t know what it means to leave, since I still don’t know what it meant to be there, or why it happened. But of course, I already know why, the answer just doesn’t make any sense. It’s just Malaysia. It showed me the joy of a life without sense. It’s up to me to continue that without it.

And, really, that shouldn't be too hard. After all, it's all just a kidding.

Wedding Drums

2008-08-03T07:57:00.005+02:00

Sarah's school, in it's infinite wisdom and love of the absurd, threw us a big goodbye party in the style of a traditional Malay wedding. What better way to send off their ETA couple than with an exuberant, bizarre, and beautiful faux wedding? It turns out there is no better way, and so we had hundreds of students, teachers, and faculty from both our schools come dress us up, cheer us on, and take pictures of us until their cameras exploded from overuse.

I honestly think that the number of flashes that went off in my face might be affecting my memories, but I'll do my best to run through the highlights of the "wedding" ceremony.

First, I got dressed in the traditional songket, which for us had to be bright pink. Sarah and I agreed a few weeks ago when her school first brought up the idea of a faux wedding ceremony that we would do it right or not at all. I can say emphatically that pink was the right choice, as it established from the get go that there was no way whatsoever that we could take the ceremony seriously.

Actually, I'm already moving too fast, since making me look nice in the songket proved impossible for both Big Momma, Big Momma's husband, and Mr. Fix-it. The plan was to get ready at Imtiaz and bus it over en masse to Matang where my school would give me away. They threw the pink skirt-piece around me as best they could and left it to the kind wedding shop owner with impressively hairy arms to help make me presentable. She worked with demonic marital speed taking off a broach from her head scarf and pinning it to my hat, ensuring I had enough bling to look presentable.

The way everyone was fawning and fussing over me was possibly the most empowered and useless I had ever felt before. I was like a warrior prince whose poor choice in clothing made him unable to dress himself. And all the while flashes were going off from hand phones and tiny pocket cameras. If those things cause cancer, I'm totally screwed.

After I was all ready to go, I was led to the front of my procession of pre-pubescent drummers, co-workers, and students, and the drums started pounding this glorious bowel-shaking rhythm and I walked slowly to meet Sarah's procession.

If the pictures of Sarah look like she killed three southern prom queens and stole their makeup, I can assure you that it was in no way her fault, as the wedding people just thought it would be best if they slathered on three layers of foundation as a starter. I even got powdered with something brown-ish, so I can attest to the fact that they were pretty liberal with the face paint.

I should say that it was necessary to give wide, toothy, grins to our hundreds of picture hungry on-lookers for the next several hours. I sang "Eye of the Tiger" to myself several times to fight through the muscle exhaustion in my face.

There was a performance of silat that we got to watch, though disappointingly, they did not drink any poison as a display of strength. Silat's pretty cool in action. It's kinda like a dance where you slap your self a bunch and then bob and weave. Eventually you try to hit the guy (who's also slapping himself while bobbing and weaving) and he counters by flipping you into a roll using his legs. Then you shake hands and bow together. It's awesome, and I really wish more fights went down that way. It's also set to some killer drum beats with a flute melody. Almost as good as a choreographed Sharks vs. Jets rumble.

After people stopped fighting for our entertainment, we moved into the cafeteria where a specially constructed throne area effectively transformed the place into our very own royal court room. And it's about time. I'd had enough of people treating me like I was just rich and genetically superior because of my skin, so it was delightfully refreshing to be treated like I had a divine birthright to greatness. Of course, with great power comes a great number of people trying to take pictures of you. The flashes going off and cries of "Smile! Smile!" were the constant of the evening, but if I saw people who looked almost exactly like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie dressed up in pink and gold and grinning like nitrous-sucking junkies, my camera would have had to be pried from my raw, twitching fingers before I'd stop snapping photos too.

Other highlights:
It's customary to have friends, family and high ranking government officials put scented water, yellow rice, and various chopped herbs in the open palms of the bride and groom while they rest their hands on a silver pillow, or at least that's how we did it. Some of the ETAs expressed concern that this might've been part of a large plan to cook and eat us, but like many plans in Malaysia, that did not come to fruition. So as it stands, I'm going to chalk it up as a blessing ceremony and not a prelude to cannibalistic sacrifice.

The night before I had the tips of my left pinkie, ring and middle fingers dyed with henna. One of the girls at the hostel did it and she totally touched my hand in the process. So I'm going to change my understanding of the contact between men and women to allow for the spreading of a dung-like substance on fingers in preparation for a fake wedding. Granted, it does not come up too often.

Sarah got to feed me a small piece of cake as part of the ceremony (not traditionally Malay), but no one wrote in the part where I got to feed her. It's probably for the best, as I have no idea what would've happened if the pounds of butter in the frosting mixed with the pounds of foundation on her face. It might've hardened into a shell, formed a new element, or created a sentient being. I don't think the world was ready for a race of butter frosting-makeup creatures, so all in all, I'm grateful for the omission.

I'm pretty sure I'll never have another Malay wedding in my life, so getting the chance to have it once was pretty incredible. Maybe my eyes won't dilate anymore. Maybe my fingertips will be dyed deep orange for the next month and I'll be that weird kid on the first day of grad school who looks like he has a bad case of localized jaundice. Maybe I pulled my smile muscles. So what? Who gets to try on celebrity of that magnitude at all in their lives, let alone for three glorious, ridiculous hours? No matter what, I'll always be able to look back and remember the time I was hailed as a warrior prince who needed four people to help dress him in his pink and gold pajamas.

It's Good to Eat the King

2008-07-30T06:59:00.007+02:00

One great thing about Southeast Asia that I will surely miss is the royalty here. Sure, America has the Pitt-Jolies, Burger King, and Budweiser (the King of Beers), but their crowns are all newly minted. If you want some royalty that you can really look up to, you need to go East. Without further ado, I give you:

Durian - The King of Fruits

After my encounters with Durian, I found a new credo to live by: only show interest in things you're prepared to eat. If you pay attention to anything in this country and it's even remotely edible, it'll only be a matter of seconds before someone chops it up and offers you a steaming plate of it. I thought I was pretty safe looking at Durian. People don't usually try to eat things that would kill you if it fell on your head, are impossible to carry without imposing reckless, widespread acupuncture on the hands, and smell like a full port-a-potty. If that's not nature's way of saying "do not touch," I don't know what is. And yet, people do touch it, with their tongues, in an admittedly ill-advised effort to taste it. You might be asking yourself, "if something smells like toilet, shouldn't that be a good reason not to introduce it to another one of your senses?" Yes, gentle reader, it would be a good reason, but apparently it is not nearly enough to deter millions of people from eating it at every chance they get. Like all royalty, the Durian, though in many ways repulsive is still strangely alluring. I have tasted His Highness, the Durian, on three separate occasions.

1. Bought from Mydin, the Malaysian Walmart. It was already out of the spiky husk and Anna and George got it. I haven't exactly forgiven them for that. It tasted like some previously undiscovered animal with severe gastrointestinal problems ate a lot of raw onions and then defecated something roughly the consistency of butter. If this description sounds terrible then it isn't bad enough. The aftertaste also clung to my mouth for the next several hours like the death throes of that same defective animal.

2. From Ellie's Foster Mom's house. She grew it herself. Not many people would willingly plant a tree whose sole purpose is to produce potentially lethal balls of spikes that smell like melons and raw sewage, so she is a rare and special woman. She was actually fantastically warm and kind to us, but then we made the mistake of looking at the durians in a pile on the ground. Quick as a flash she chopped one (comparatively tiny) Durian over with a meat cleaver and we were off again. The truly terrifying thing about this experience was that it tasted much better than the last one. I hardly gagged at all and after the first layer of skin, the pulp was actually kind of enjoyable and sweet. I still tasted it in every burp I had for the next several hours, but it was a marked improvement over the store-bought onion-butter pods.

3. From the cooks at my school. I really shouldn't have looked at the durian. But even more disturbing than not being able to follow a simple and obviously vital rule was the fact that eating this durian was... dare I say, enjoyable? It was like eating fruit out of the compost pile, and I consider that high praise, all things considered.

Why do people follow King Durian, sometimes even to certain doom? Durian is a rebel king. As a fruit, it's unabashedly weird. It smells strange, looks strange and tastes strange. And you know what? It doesn't care what you think about it. It's not going to make things easy for you, and if you don't like it, that's your own damn problem.

H-E Double Breadsticks

2008-07-27T04:27:00.009+02:00

I mean this in the most positive way possible, but I think Malaysia might have been my own personal hell.

Alright, that still sounds dark, but I promise now, this will be the most upbeat idea of hell ever.

Lemme see if I can define my terms secularly before I go any further.

Hell: a place that sucks.
Heaven: a place that doesn't suck.
Purgatory: a place that kinda sucks for a while.

So back in my old life stateside (which may or may not have been just a dream, I'm not sure) I could at times, be lazy. This is apparently a well-documented issue in people, with it's own mascot, ranking in the top 7 sins, and cultural heroes. My Malaysian hell punished me for my laziness above all else. The brilliant thing about this hell is that I got exactly what I wanted. Don't want to work? You don't have to! But the catch that you'll actually end up craving work. Working will be the highlight of any day, and you will wait hours upon hours just for the chance to do good work for 35 minutes. It's diabolical. You get a job that you love that's easy, but you waste 80% of your time waiting to do it.

Moreover, expectations are low to non-existent, so it really doesn't matter what you do outside (or inside) of teaching. In my old life, I craved free time, and so in my Malaysian hell, I was given enough to drown in.

But, and here's the cool part, the hell is entirely of my own making. I wish I had figured this out a bit earlier, but Malaysian hell isn't a necessary hell as much as it is a potential hell.

When I arrived here, I was given few things to do, and so I chose to do nothing, thus enjoying all the benefits and pitfalls of nothingness (low blood pressure and high boredom, respectively). I see now that it's not really Malaysia's fault at all. It just gave me time and left everything else up to me. Malaysia was a blank space. It's my fault if I didn't fill it with what I liked. If you have nothing that you're working toward, then yeah, the time can be a curse. If you're not doing what you need to do to be happy, then yeah, any place can become a hell.

With that in mind, a couple of weeks ago, I finally started doing what I was meant to do here. As it turns out, this was to entertain locals by trying to make local food. Roti chennai is that beautiful, flaky flat bread that I've mentioned once or twice here, and it's by far the best thing to come out of Malaysian cuisine. I thought it would be the saddest thing ever if I left this country never to taste its fluffly, oily goodness again, so I resolved to learn how to make it.

It's hard. You have to whip the dough around in the air to spread it out, making sure you don't let it rip (I do that a lot) or fold over on itself (I do that even more). People take pictures of my failures on their cell phone. I think it's the equivalent of seeing a dog try to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Even if I am the object of a lot of attention, it's so much better to be doing something hard and failing than to be doing nothing and succeeding. Right now, I've gotten as good as I'm going to get at doing nothing. But I still have a whole lot better to get at making roti.

It feels really good to start at the bottom, because you can only get better. That's what I came here for in the first place: to start over knowing nothing and see how I'd do. What kind of life would I make for myself if everything about me was gone and I went back to day 1?

The answer to that question is "an uneven one." I made a life with great interactions with students and friends separated by long stretches of nothing, separated by long stretches of travel, punctuated with medium stretches of doubt and frustration, dotted with moments of intense euphoria and annoyance. Sometimes, I wrote about it. And right at the end, before I was about to leave, I found something that I liked doing and decided to learn how to do it as well as I could.

It's a shame that I didn't have the drive to learn how to make roti earlier on, but I guess I needed some time in hell to overcome my sloth.

I suppose if you get to leave, it's not really hell, it's more like purgatory. But the thing about purgatory is that you get to leave for good. Since I created this hell, I can't be sure that I won't create it for myself again in my next life back in California. On the bright side, as soon as you start doing whatever makes you really happy, you get to leave hell.

I have 11 days left in Malaysia. By the time I leave I'll cook the best roti chenai ever made by a white guy. I know it's like saying the best grilled cheese ever made by a dog, but you gotta admit that dog would be really proud.

Broken in Malaysia

2008-07-21T05:40:00.004+02:00

I eyed the car's dashboard. Whenever we hit a puddle, the emergency indicators would all light up for several seconds.

"That's a really good metaphor for this country," I told Len.
"This car was made in Japan," he said.
"Yeah," I said, "but it was broken here."

There are the places that make you and the places that break you, which then allow you to become remade somewhere and someway else. I came here to be broken, even if I didn't realize it at the time.

There is a short 10 minute video of the first time the ETAs met their mentors and their foster parents and it makes me want to cry a little every time I watch it. In the interceding 6 months since the video was made, nearly all of us have lost weight and/or muscle mass, aged approximately 5 years, and lost the child-like glint in our eyes. I wish I was making this up. You can actually compare the footage of how we looked then and how we look now and have no choice but to conclude that several very hard years separated the two images.

I'm learning to be grateful for the rapid aging that took place here. I figure if I grew up a lot here, it's because I had a lot of growing up to do. I remember reading/hearing awhile ago that bones get a little stronger where they were broken once they heal. I know it's definitely true for muscles. You break 'em down through PUMPING IRON (to be said in an Austrian accent) and they get STRAHNGAH than before. With Governator Schwarzenegger's ethos firmly in mind, I can say that this broken version of myself is definitely stronger in parts. I am fearless when it comes to long stretches of time with nothing to do, faceless bureaucracies, consuming fish of any size or flavor, and living in intense and unending heat, the likes of which would make any LA girl reach for another iced no-whip caramel macchiato.

On the other hand I do remember reading that ligaments and joints are prone to further injury once first broken or more technically "destroyed by gravity and stupidity working in tandem." With that in mind, this older, wiser, more broken Ezra is notably ruined when it comes to:
- driving on the right side of the road
- drinking anything that isn't mostly sugar
- eating anything that isn't mostly fried
- conversing in standard English... or standard Malay... standard anything is pretty much gone for good.
- going a day without getting to say "What's up" and "Peace out" to dozens of kids
- punctuality... but for those who know me, it's not like that was ever really a strong suit
- talking to members of the opposite sex. This one was pretty surprising. Sarah's yoga class came over to our house yesterday to make cookies and they surprised both of us by taking off their tudungs and eagerly chatted and giggled with and near me. It was kind of funny because at first I was afraid to look at them or say anything because I didn't want them to get scared and cover their hair again. It was like stalking a groundhog or a butterfly. I appreciate that this might not be a normal reaction, and that my social skills are now considerably faulty.

But whether the breaks are beneficial or merely crippling, it's safe to say the damage is already done. It will probably take some time before I can talk to women without feeling like I'm going to Hell (possibly several Hells), but it'll happen. It might take some time before I can drive on the right side of the road without trying to swerve into oncoming traffic, but it'll happen too. And it'll definitely take some time before I get that glint of child-like wonder back in my eyes, but that'll happen, sooner or later. It's easy to think that I'll never adjust to life in America again, but I never thought I'd adjust to life in Malaysia, and clearly I did. It'll just take time. The cultural forces that twisted and prodded me into shape over the last 6 months will be replaced by new cultural forces that will twist and prod me into a new shape over the next 6 months.

Maybe I was wrong in saying I was broken in Malaysia. Maybe I was just bent. And it's time to get ready to bend some way else. I can't go back to how I was before, but it should be a relief that I probably won't need to. After all, wasn't it Arnold Schwarzenegger himself that said "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered"?

No?

Not the Governator?

...

Oh! It's Mandela. I always mix up those two.

Happier Thoughts, Ezra

2008-07-15T14:31:00.004+02:00

Oh Peter, can you teach me how to fly?

I get a phone call of a guy speaking in Malay. I didn't know how to say "wrong number" so I just managed to get out Malay for "I'm Ezra. I'm white." "Oh oh oh oh....... okay," said wrong-number man. Turns out he was one of my co-workers who I ran into a second later. But I like how great "I'm white" is an acceptable response to most problems that I've encountered here. It's not so much a get out of jail free card as it is a "get out of jail and get pigeon-holed with a different set of problems" card. But still, it's not always as big of a problem as you might think for people to see you as stupider and richer than you are.

I got a chance to pick up some food from the Tuesday night market and I finally got around to trying out a Ramly burger. I had read some good things about it, and it's supposed to be Malaysia's contribution to the burger world. I can't comment on the beef burger since for some reason I picked the chicken, but for the chicken... well, it was like most things that I've experienced in Malaysia, edible or otherwise: exuberant, kind of ridiculous, and tasting vaguely of fish.

On a related note, Sarah and I showed High School Musical 2 to her kids and I'm pretty sure they loved it for those same three reasons. It's such a strange contrast (even amid many, many strange contrasts) that there is this undeniable zest for life, as well as an equally strong zeal for the things that restrict these passions.

On yet another similar note, some of the ETAs have been in contact with the new ETAs and it's just bizarre to hear the unbridled excitement in their messages. It's depressing is what it is. It's like when a senior talks to a freshman and realizes they've become cold and jaded to the world. Or, to put it another way, that's how the senior realizes the world is an unstoppable chilling and jading force. Crap, I'm not doing a good job of convincing people I'm happy this week. Back to the light, Ezra, back to the light.

Uhn, in other news, I've had this ongoing battle with the mildewy stench in my rented moto helmet, and I'm pretty sure I've just lost. I made the mistake (twice) of leaving the helmet upside on my moto while it... uh... rains. Apparently, mildew loves being drowned in rain water. If you try to kill mildew by drowning it, it will not work. It's like throwing braer rabbit in the briar patch, or suffocating Mike with a KFC sandwich. It'll just make their day.

Speaking of things that make days, Sarah and I were gifted with a basket of fruit the other day. I realized that once I left this country, it'd be a long time until I got to eat fresh longan, rambutan, and mangosteen and I devoured the pulp out of 'em. In the case of fruit, I think it tastes best when it's free and unexpected.

So given that, there's a lot to be grateful for in this country. And since I have only 19 days left, I'm going to love as much of it as I can, exuberance and all.

Until next time, may all your your excuses be race-related, may all your mildew-battles be won, and may all your food taste only a little bit fishy.

ETA Humor

2008-07-13T07:19:00.003+02:00

It's come to my attention that my last post might've been a bit dark. Maybe it was. But it was not a reflection on a general depression. If you're actually depressed, you can't really make jokes about the situation, dark or otherwise. It's not exactly gallows humor, since you get to die pretty soon after that. It might be something more like POW camp humor. Or prison humor. So I will now dub it ETA humor. It doesn't mean you're in great pain, it means that the bad parts of the situation have grown to be so ridiculous that they demand mockery. another way to sum it up might be: "so bad, it's good." So just to assure people again, I'm not unhappy here, it's just really funny how unhappy I could be.

However, it is disconcerting how it never occurred to me that people might be worried because of the dark nature of the last post. This makes me wonder how my thinking might have changed while being here. Yesterday Sarah and I were watching Grey's Anatomy and one of the characters was wearing a tank top. Sarah's first thought? "Oh, she can't wear that." I just haven't begun to understand how I might be different now than when I left. What will it be like when English is no longer a secret language? When breakfast costs more than $1? When cars switch to the other side of the road? When *sniff* I no longer have a moto? I have 25 days left in this country and I now understand that it is actually possible to leave.

I think it's like when you're young, you think you're invincible, but as you get older you realize it's actually possible to get hurt and to die. When I got here 6 months ago, I understood that I would leave in August, which was one day before forever. Now that it's less than 4 weeks to go, I realize that it's possible to leave Malaysia. I won't be here forever. I write these words with much less joy than I expected. I'm going to miss a lot of things here, some because they were actually good, and some because they're so familiar now I don't know how to live without them. The process of leaving is much more bittersweet than I ever would've imagined.

I'll shelve the doomsday talk for a little bit. Part of the reason I realized it would be sad to leave was because I got a little sad at the end of the ETA's English Camp that we had over the weekend. There were 150 kids from six schools and just seven ETAs plus Len to keep 'em in line for three days and two nights. It was exhausting, but the kids were incredible and they did a great job speaking English the whole time.

The concept behind the camp was that there were six different cultures from six different planets that were meeting up to work out a trade agreement. My people were the Slackonians from Slackon. They are a very peaceful, very easy-going people. Here are some lines from the national anthem, to the tune of "O Canada:"

"O Slackonians
We are a lazy bunch.
We are the most happy
When we have some food to munch.

O Slackonians
We won't work after lunch.
And we have found a meal
Between breakfast and brunch."

The Slackonians were great. They made a flag (an island on the back of a turtle) and created a myth about their great hero, Wolf Man, who killed a dragon. When asked what that had to do with slacking off, they answered "well, we didn't kill it." Slack on, Slackonians, slack on.

The camp was pretty much what I had hoped my time here would be. Crazy exhausting, but really fulfilling. Instead it's been sometimes wearying and sometimes enjoyably ridiculous.

But I think I'll look back on my time in Malaysia as one looks back on any failed relationship: flawed, aggravating, and bewildering, but with surprising tenderness, affection for what it taught you, and nostalgia for the parts of yourself you liked when you were together. That being said, I part of me can't wait to break up with Malaysia in 25 days.

"Dear Malaysia,
It's not me, it's you.
-Ezra"

How to Apply to Fulbright

2008-07-08T11:12:00.006+02:00

This would be the perfect application for the ETA program in Malaysia. Assuming it will exist in 2010, you're more than welcome to use it to apply for the fellowship.

"I want to be an ETA in Malaysia because I am afraid of the world after college and would like an ambiguously defined job in a foreign country to barely keep me busy for the next seven months.

I am well-suited to a life abroad because I have proved time and time again that I am able to ignore many key components of reality to convince myself that I am happy when in fact I am barely hanging onto my shreds of sanity and dignity.

Furthermore, I enjoy being both mocked and loved solely because of the color of my skin. As a white man in America I do not have the opportunity to hear "you are so pretty today, sir" enough and I crave the attention desperately.

While I am unremarkable in my home country, I have the pressing need to amuse and astound the people of Malaysia by performing such laudable feats as eating rice, saying "hello" in Malay, and eating rice while saying hello. I truly believe this is what I was born to do.

Being raised in the liberal bastion of the San Francisco Bay Area, I was taught that if you make a sincere effort to understand others, you will quickly learn that, deep down, we are all the same. I want to go to Malaysia because it's time to shatter that fairy tale with some real irreconcilable differences.

I understand that teaching will take up few, if any, hours of my weekly schedule as an ETA and that I will be free to pursue outside projects, assuming that they also take place on school grounds and can be interrupted by teachers and students at any time. With this in mind, I propose to undertake a side project of finishing the Internet. Under normal circumstances I would agree that this is not a realistic project, but I will conveniently have my schedule arranged to have one class at the beginning of the day and one class at the end of the day giving me at least six hours in between to finish the Internet. That will be at least 30 hours a week. If I'm in Malaysia for seven months I will be on the Internet for nearly 1000 hours over the duration of the fellowship. If I am not able to finish the Internet, I will almost certainly be able to create a blog of my time in Malaysia and make meta-jokes referencing it.

Most importantly, I understand a great deal of waiting for nothing to happen will be involved in this fellowship and with all due modesty, I'm very good at waiting. I am skilled at watching TV shows on computers to pass the time, as well as acquiring more TV shows when I finish those. I have an iPod that I keep well-stocked with music and books on MP3 which will insulate me from the boredom ensuing from six hours of down-time for every one hour of actual work.

Moreover, since I am horrendously underqualified to teach, it is to the benefit of all that I speak too quickly for students to understand me. Additionally, as I lack work experience, I will most likely think that any amount of dysfunction in the work environment is normal. I also thrive on the absence of feedback. That way, I'm able to imagine what everyone around me thinks, which eliminates the need for conversation and frees up more time for finishing the Internet or Season 2 of Grey's Anatomy, whichever ends first.

I humbly thank the Fulbright Committee for considering my application.

P.S. Also, I have testicles and welcome the opportunity for people to give me preferential treatment because of them."

My Sippy Cup Runneth Over

2008-07-05T15:48:00.003+02:00

Mr. Fix-it was telling me about silat, Malaysia's favorite (if not only) homegrown martial art. He was saying that if you get to a high enough level in silat you can drink a glass of poison and nothing will happen to you. This is as opposed to the effects of drinking a glass of poison on most people where nothing will happen to you... ever again.

This claim got me thinking:
1. Do you test your level of silat by drinking poison? Does this account for why I haven't heard of this martial art before?

2. Assuming this did work, how would you ever know if someone was trying to poison you? Conceivably your spouse, co-workers, or rivals could be trying to kill you, unsuccessfully, for weeks while you keep on smiling at them, laughing at their jokes, or carpooling with them. This could lead to some awkward conversations down the line. "Are you sure you feel fine? Really? And you finished the glass? Okay, well, keep me posted."

3. Couldn't you just not drink the glass? I appreciate that I'm not a silat master and am vulnerable to attacks from my secret enemies, but if anyone ever tries to poison me by saying "this is a glass of poison, you should drink it" I'm just going to Nancy Reagan it. On the other hand, I am very susceptible to peer pressure (and for some reason, also to subordinate pressure), so it would be pretty useful to gain the approval of my friends and underlings by drinking glasses of poison when they tell me to.

4. What about that scene in Princess Bride? Was Wesley a silat master?

5. And what about those substances that are bad for us, but aren't poison per se? If I'm a silat master can I still get drunk? Or does it just mean that I can no longer get hang overs and liver disease anymore? Does this count for beer and hard alcohol, or is it something random like wine spritzers only? Also, as alcohol is banned in Islam because it is harmful to the body, can muslim silat masters knock back a few cold ones with the knowledge that no damage will come to their bodies?

6. Is it only poison in a glass that they have an immunity to? If I'm trying to kill some silat masters do I have to serve them in a sippy cup?

7. Can silat masters be so powerful that they can choose to die by poison if it suits them? Like if they're being tortured by other (evil) silat masters and they have a poison capsule in one of their molars? Or would they have to kill themselves by some other way, like spontaneous combustion, or transforming into a wine spritzer?

As is the case with all things I don't understand, I turned to the internet for guidance and wisdom. I'm guessing that evil silat masters ran into a problem when their plans to poison less-evil silat masters through poison binge drinking failed. But, being crafty ones they followed the reasoning in point #6 and started putting poison in other, less potable places, namely weapons and such.

Apparently the internet also tells me that a well-known poison was made from the sap of the ipoh tree. There's a place called Ipoh not 8 hours from here. If you visit, watch out for sippy cups. They probably don't have wine spritzers in 'em.

Government Sanctioned Porn

2008-06-29T08:12:00.004+02:00

Melaka might just be my favorite place in Malaysia. It was the Malaysia I hoped I would be living in before I left America. Multi-cultural, cheap, historical but modern, and in possession of the greatest museum the world has ever seen.

The Malaysia Royal Customs Museum might not have a flashy acronym (MRCM doesn't exactly roll off the tongue), nor can it boast being enough of an attraction to merit charging admission, but it was due to this last point (Free!) and the availability of AC (also free!) that had Sarah and me charging past the reception desk worker busily playing flash computer games. We were not to be disappointed. The great thing about this museum is that the people who conceived of it clearly knew what they were doing:

Customs Officer 1: "Hey guys, we need to make a museum about our jobs as customs officers. But it needs to be interesting. Ideas?"
Customs Officer 2: "We could just make it about all the illegal stuff we had to seize from smugglers. Would that work?"

Yes, Customs Officer 2, yes it would. Packed into the small space is all the illegal weapons, opium pipes, endangered animal parts, and banned items with Qu'ranic inscriptions that you could ever hope to see for free. I saw not one, but two "obscene statues," tastefully covered up with pieces of shear fabrics, but not so much so that you couldn't see why they were obscene.

Oh! And there was a whole section devoted just to different ways people could smuggle drugs using unsuspicious objects. Of course, since the objects (and presumably the drugs) had all been confiscated, I'd have to seriously question all of the methods shown before recommending them, but still! You just don't get this kind of wealth of knowledge at most museums.

Off to the side there was a stash of uncracked handles of alcohol big enough to make any prohibition-era bootlegger's fortune.

And the pièce de résistance: way in the back there was a boarded off area with a small metal slit built into the wall, like looking into the opening of a mailbox. Below was a button. I cautiously approached. I pressed the button and a short presentation started on more obscene (and uncensored) statues which were on display and showcased by a tasteful lighting scheme. I called Sarah over so she could see and then a TV turned on with a 5 second clip of government-confiscated porn, complete with one exposed breast.

Was this really my Malaysia? Did I drop into some deranged alternate universe sometime during the 8 hour bus ride from Terengganu to the West coast? Did I somehow end up in Las Vegas, or perhaps at the Tokyo Nights show back in Macau? I'm still not entirely sure. But whatever Melaka's on that makes it so free-wheeling, I want some. Maybe I can bottle it and give it to the new ETAs when they need to get their hosts to loosen up.

Man, now I definitely sound like the devil.

-Ez

PS I also considered calling this post "Customs Officers Seize Breast."

Seeds of Dissent

2008-06-24T12:26:00.004+02:00

A few notes on biting the hand that feeds me:
Since I only meet with any one class once per week now, I get a week of mileage out of my lesson plans (if you can call an idea a plan). This week's lesson was about the perfect high school. One of my classes asked me to talk a little bit about my high school experience, which I would have to say, differs importantly from Imtiaz in several key ways:

1. Less memorization of the Qu'ran.
2. Less classes.
3. Less living at school.
4. More hippies.
5. Less hitting of students by teachers.
6. Less fish.

Given these differences I asked the students to take it upon themselves to design the perfect high school. It was an easy sell, since, as teenagers already enjoy criticizing things they don't know anything about, it stood to reason that they'd take even more pleasure in criticizing things they know a great deal about. Turns out I was right.

Likes:
The Qu'ran, English, Friends (probably their classmates, possibly the American sitcom)

Dislikes:
Mosquitoes, corporal punishment, uniforms (mostly), living away from from home.

Solution:
A religious school whose freedom would make an anarchist-hippie blush. No classes (except when you wanted them... with two girls going so far as to only offer History, Science, and Japanese), unlimited choices in clothing (except for the head covering for the girls and other modesty issues), and living at home. The cool thing about the exercise was that I didn't have to get them to work at all. They just did it. And the class had this great feel of a revolutionary meeting, like real change was happening, illicit and unstoppable.

Then the class ended and I had to sum up everything about questioning assumptions in 2 minutes.
"Now kids, Imtiaz calls itself the best school in the world. Is it true?"
(Everyone) "No."
"No, because you know some ways it could be better. And you know this because you spent time questioning and thinking about it."
"Yes."
"So questioning things can be very good," I said, suddenly remembering Socrates. "But sometimes questioning things can make the people in charge very angry... and they might kill you. But it's still probably worth it. Okay, see you next time!"

As is the case with all of my lessons, I can never be sure how much of it actually gets from my mind to the kids'. But if any of it did, there's a small chance I just inspired Malaysia's next generation of social activists, educational reformers, and small time revolutionaries.

Or blues musicians. Those kids have a knack for complaining if I ever saw one.

Keep Moving Forward

2008-06-19T08:41:00.003+02:00

Last Thursday I didn't know what to do for my class without being boring, so I decided not to fight it and do a class on boredom. It went pretty well. I gave them each a piece of paper and said that they had to use it to keep themselves entertained for the class period.

Honestly, I was really impressed. Those kids made some super impressive origami, drawings, and paper airplanes (the latter of which I accidentally through into the ceiling fan... definitely not boring). It felt appropriate because even though it wasn't grammar, or conversation, or remotely connected to what I'm supposed to teach, I connected pretty solidly with my time here. The lesson was basically the one that I've been trying learn myself here. That if you're bored, it's because you're boring. It's not up to the world to entertain you, it's up to you to be entertained by the world.

This comes into play since we're now out of all the good TV, and all the TV factories seem to shut down for this thing called "Summer," a word that means nothing in this part of the world unless it's on a detergent bottle and coupled with the words "breeze scented ." But if my kids can get through a poorly-thought-out lesson plan using only a piece of paper, I'm pretty sure I can get through the next 47 days without new episodes of Top Chef, 30 Rock, or Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane (that last one is mostly a joke. You get stupider every time you watch it, so I can't recommend it that highly.).

In light of the excellent movie, "Meet the Robinsons," which now both Sarah and I have brainwashed our kids with, it's important to keep moving forward. It's not enough to count down the days, keep my head down, download Wimbledon matches and... uh... down bottles of 100 Plus. Oh, and watch Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man! In order for me to be happy I need to feel like I'm working towards something. So at our last trip to Mydin I bought a guitar. Like all great guitars it's blue, from China, cost $24, and is sold alongside lampshades and curling irons.

I feel good about the purchase, since it's like Mike said to me, if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's amateur guitarists. So now Malaysia has one more and he's pretty amateur. I've yet to complete a song and have it sound good, but Sarah and I have been enjoying our freestyle jam sessions where we sing about everything this country is doing to us. The only really memorable part was the chorus, which was "Mal-ay-sia, Mal-ay-sia, [explicative]ing Mal-ay-sia." Ooh! I need to learn a blues chord progression so we can complain and have more time to think of the lyrics as we do it. Right now there's just been a lot of thrashing on the three chords I can switch between quick enough.

So it looks like my answer to boredom through paper was:
1. Use paper to buy a guitar.
2. Print out every chord imaginable on 12 pieces of paper.
3. Try to play a bar chord and crumple up the paper in frustration.
4. Keep moving forward.

I think I might be the devil

2008-06-16T12:17:00.003+02:00

It occurred to me as I was driving with Mr. Fix-it that I might react differently to news than the average Terenganu-ite.

He was telling me that over the last vacation he got to meet with his special girlfriend and brought her a cheesecake. She's not from Terengganu so they don't get to see each other that often, and the conversation made my day because:

1. He was was really happy. Mr. Fix-it is kind of reserved (except in his ebullient text messages, oddly enough) so it was great to see some relatively strong emotions.
2. A cheesecake might be the perfect gift for reuniting with a special girlfriend. It's touching in an innocent way, since the thought is completely there, but it's an unusual gift. It feels like what a boy might give a girl in kindergarten, which might be enough to make me cry a little.
3. He said "special girlfriend." Even if he had other girlfriends, this one's different. This one makes him happy. This one he brings cheesecake to. This one's special. (I bring my special girlfriend roti chenai, but I think the principle's the same.)
4. This is the reason I think I might be the devil. It made me happy that he was likely doing something that wasn't exactly keeping with Islam. It made me happy that he might've been breaking a proximity law.

This has happened a couple of times with various people saying that they have a special someone, the kind you might bring cheesecake to, and me grinning like my child finally found someone. I get so much joy from my co-workers spending time (illicitly) with members of the opposite sex. It humanizes them to me.

There have been a few times when I've seen women I work with wearing a simple skull cap instead of a full tudung and just seeing more of their faces makes them seem accessible in a way they weren't before. It's the same thing with people having someone to bring a cheesecake to. They become more like me, since we both have to keep secrets in this country. And since I one day want to be able to tell them my secrets, I can accept whatever they say without judgment. Their transgressions against their values are no transgressions against mine.

This is not the hard-fought tolerance that I've mentioned before. This is an easy acceptance. I am happy for them because they are like me. As much as I am able to accept myself for the secrets I have to keep in my life here, I am able to accept them for the same. We are seen as sinners under the same eyes, but when we look at each other, we can see brothers.

I wonder if this is what it feels like to be the devil. We've been told that the devil is deliberately evil and desires that the holy transgress because he knows it's wrong. What if the devil sees himself as good? What if the devil sees the values of the holy as tolerable, but different from his? What if the devil doesn't realize he is the devil?

Ultimately, it makes me happy to hear that the people I know have kept secrets because it makes me feel normal. The coping mechanism that I've found, they've found too. And maybe it makes them happy to share their joy with someone who accepts them. Does that make us both devils? Or are we more human?

It's a big lonely world out there. I think if you're lucky enough to find someone to bring a cheesecake to, it's cause enough to celebrate. Even if it is the devil's cheesecake.

Gold Medal Slacking

2008-06-12T05:27:00.005+02:00

Three weeks of travel ended last Friday and I'm back at Imtiaz... at least my body is, which is really all they care about. Yesterday my schedule got gutted. Turns out 7 hours of class a week was just too much for me, so now I'm down to 3.5. A good thing too, as I'm sure I was about to crack under the pressure of having to work one out of every 5 hours I was at school. Really, the stress was just killing me. Of course, like the good proactive American I am, I complained to my mentor who in turn took my grievances to the woman who made the schedule, who will take her grievances to the principal, who will get back to me. Since I haven't worked for an organization this big before (more than 10 people), it's hard to know which parts of the bureaucracy are systemic to the country, and which parts are systemic to organizations larger than 10 people. I have a sneaking suspicion I can't blame Malaysia for all of this.

As I was telling Anna's family, the Swindles (Mama Swindle, Papa Swindle, and Baby Swindle), who were visiting from Georgia and are the greatest people ever, I would be more outraged about not teaching if I was in any way a real teacher. Since I'm a fake teacher, it's not that big of a problem that I'm getting paid to blog, watch Top Chef, and eat noodles. And those things are pretty much inline with what a fake teacher is supposed to be doing. On the plus side, some of my more entrepreneurial kids are showing a movie tonight and charging half a ringgit to get in. Sarah and I plan to make an appearance, since it's National Treasure 2, and as we all know, Nicholas Cage crosses all cultural barriers.

The one class that I came to school for today didn't show up. That means that this week there were two days where school was canceled. First we had a planned holiday on Sunday, and then school in the state was called off on Tuesday because Terengganu won 61 gold medals at the Malaysian Olympics. This feat was impressive because they were only expecting 30 or so. I can't say for certain whether or not this should be admired, though, since I have no idea how many medals were actually up for grabs. As far as I know there were an infinite number of them, and 61/infinity is a very small percentage indeed. Still, how great is it that athletic victory is enough for a state holiday? If every professional sports team in California won at once, I still don't think they'd call off school and close down the post office. Malaysia, well done.

So yeah, that left me with 3 days that I actually showed up to school. On Wednesdays, because of my new schedule, I no longer have class, so I took a walk around campus and learned Arabic from my iPod (I know, Malay would be more useful, but let's face it, I'm probably not going to get fluent by the end of my time here. Plus, I want to say goodbye to The Rock in Arabic before he leaves in a week.) Of the two remaining days where I was supposed to have a total of three classes, only one of them actually happened. So I got 500 ringgit (1.67 Sex Fines) for 60 minutes of actual work. I am now paid over $150 dollars an hour. That's impressive enough to declare a national holiday.

Update: The movie, like most things in Terengganu, was canceled. I would've told you about it earlier, but our Internet got canceled also. We're trying to reschedule the movie and Internet for next week, assuming Nicholas Cage will be back from his humanitarian work by then.

One Dollar

2008-06-09T04:07:00.005+02:00

Cambodia:

They use dollars. American dollars. Greenbacks. Which, somehow without my knowledge are now purple in some cases. I like to think that some of the dollar bills have the beginnings of consciousness and so they think that Cambodia is America. $7 that I'm taking back with me to the States will be super confused when they hear everyone speaking a version of English that hasn't been chopped up and run through Khmer several times. On the other hand, maybe these bills came to Cambodia after a year in the states, hitching a ride with some blond frat boy turned backpacker and were spent on a massage or a can of Angkor. Maybe they'll be shocked upon their return to the land of opportunity to find they can buy much less here than they could when they left. I hear it's tough to be a dollar in America these days.

Cambodia should be proud to know that its taxis, beggars, and salespeople of all kinds are by far the pushiest out of any I've encountered in all of my travels. Guatemala might come close (interestingly enough, the Guatemalan people have also suffered extreme violent persecution). However, it's also worth noting that for all their pushiness, the Cambodians had the best sense of humor as well.

"You want taxi?"
"No thanks, we're walking."
"Walking one dollar."

"Please come inside shop. Today only it is free to look."

It was probably the craziest at the ruins of Angkor (the most famous being Angkor Wat) where kids would yell at you to buy something from them from 50 feet away and track you down and stick with you until one of you gave up. Everything was a test of wills. Most impressive was how all the sellers could speak equally well in English or French and seemed to know which to yell at you in right away. The crazy part is when you learn that less than 30 years ago the Khmer Rouge order the death of anyone that spoke a foreign language.

And here were the hawkers, trilingually selling me hats, cold drinks, and guide books that I had no intention of buying. It's bizarre to think that they could safely make their living doing something that would've gotten them killed as recently as 1979. Truly an incredible people to be so resilient and adaptive.

I actually did end up buying a hat during my day at Angkor. It was straw, loose fitting and at the end of the day useless to me, so I decided to try selling it back to the hawkers.

"Hello sir, you want to buy guide book?"
"No thanks," I said. "You want to buy my hat?"
"Your hat?"
"Yes," I said. "Very good hat. One dollar."
"Okay," said the girl. "I buy your hat, you buy my hat. Your hat $1, my hat $5!" She cackled. I gave the hat and Sarah and I watched her tossing it up in the air and catching it along with two younger kids.

It's not a bad image to leave on. The ruins of a city, repopulated by tourists and touts every day, deserted every night, and in the middle, a girl throwing a used straw hat up in the air and laughing.

But she probably would've liked one of my self-aware dollar bills better.

New Photos!

2008-06-03T10:47:00.002+02:00

The Body Shop

2008-05-31T16:38:00.004+02:00

As I have recently learned, Thailand is a bigger, and therefore more important country than either Macau or Hong Kong (which I'm still not sure are countries or not). It would then logically follow that I should spend more time talking about Thailand. But as logic has never been a large part of my experiences here in Asia, I make no assurances that Thailand will be give the weighty respect it no doubt deserves. I will merely write until Sarah's MacBook battery runs out, and not a minute longer.

Here are the things that I know Thailand loves:

1. My body. I made some claims to the same effect after the last time I was in Thailand, and more time there has just strengthened my conclusion. I'm pretty sure that the Thai theme song is unofficially Mariah Carey's new hit, "Touch My Body," since massages were everywhere, cheap, and thankfully, G-Rated. Interestingly enough, "Touch My Body" appears to be banned in Cambodia where I am now, as YouTube says "This video is not available in your country." This is probably a backlash from when those free-wheeling French left, but more on that at a later date.

2. Food. Specifically food courts. One mall (MBK) had three food courts, an expensive one, a cheap one, and a super cheap one. We discovered them in that order, so there might be an even cheaper food court waiting for us when we pass through Bangkok on the way to Malaysia. Oddly enough, I had a huge hankerin' for the Halal food at this Egyptian and Lebanese place. Plus, I got to use my very limited Arabic and say thank you (shukran), which made me feel cool.

3. Malls, and movie theaters within malls. There was one main street in Bangkok where there were only malls and food carts outside of malls. You think I'm exaggerating? Only marginally. And they're all magnificent. It was like being in Macau again with all the casinos trying to out-do each other, except all the people walking into the towering shiny buildings in Bangkok know they're going to lose money. It's much more honest. Oh, and in the few days we were in Bangkok we got to see Indiana Jones 4 (mostly hooray), Penelope (mostly aww), and Narnia 2 (mostly Jesus as a lion). All three were movies, and for that I loved them dearly. My only desire is that I could somehow smuggle one of these beautiful malls back to Terengganu where movie theaters don't exist. I mean it's just not fair. I'd be happy taking one floor of one mall back.

4. Break-dancing. Every night the walkway between the malls turns into a place for "those youngins" to break dance their little hearts out. This is pretty much what it looked like.

5. Their bodies. It's just mind-exploding to see how two cultures in bordering countries could be so different with respect to the fleshy things that everyone seems to have. The really weird part came when I realized that both cultures started with the same basic premise- "we're addicted to our bodies." With that as a starting point Islam-influenced Malaysia took the recovering alcoholic's approach of never being able to touch the stuff, while Thailand (at least in Bangkok and Chiang Mai) decided to make the addiction profitable.

You can buy anything to show off your body, to feed it, and to get it touched, touched, touched. It's strange because Buddhism isn't really all about the body; it's more like the main obstacle to enlightenment since it houses the desires and the Buddha was able to transcend all that low "body stuff."

Maybe it's just capitalism, which kind of presupposes a body in order to make any kind of sale. Buying stuff, after spending some time in the commercial heart of the city, is alive and raging in Bangkok. The love of the body around all malls makes sense. That's what materialism does so well: it makes a virtue out of spending money on the body, which feels good inherently, so it's an easy sell, so to speak.

The great thing about Thailand is how the only thing more numerous than malls (and more attractive to foreigners) are the trillions of temples all around the country. They are without a doubt, gorgeous. They can hold their own against the glitziest Macanese money holes, and with a good deal more attention to Buddhism to boot. But it's strange going to visit temple after temple for a religion that I don't specifically belong to, because it kind of feels like going to a nice mall when I don't have the intention of buying anything. Hell, I'm not even sure I have any Buddhism Bucks to spend. All of my money is still in Sex Fines.

On a completely unrelated note, the massages in Thailand were awesome, and the conversion is about 20 Thai Massages to the Sex Fine. Which, when I think about, seems just about right.

Maximum Octopus

2008-05-27T19:11:00.003+02:00

Hmm, Hong Kong was a little while ago- let’s see what I can dig up from the old brain bucket.

I remember my foot hurting a lot. That was kind of a leitmotif of my personal experience. At one point I attempted to remedy the situation by shopping for shoes, but that apparently wasn’t enough as it turns out I had to buy them to enjoy any lasting benefits. And that certainly wasn’t going to happen as they averaged $600 Hong Kong Dollars, which, if I bothered to do the conversion, would no doubt be exorbitant.

Lucky for me and my right foot, Hong Kong is one of the easiest towns/ former British Protectorates to get around. The underground system is cheap and well integrated with an even cheaper boat and ferry system and you can pay for everything effortlessly with a little bit of magic they call the Octopus Card. It’s a refundable charge card that you touch anywhere that has a little Octopus Card scanner (sadly, not really all that octopus-shaped) and it lets you do whatever you wanted to do, be it ride a ferry, ride the subway, or blow your transportation allowance on iced tea and souvenir lighters at 7-11. With the Octopus card, the world is your oyster… being ripped apart by an octopus so you can eat it. “But Ezra, what if I don’t like oysters?” you ask. Ah, then you should’ve come with us to dim sum at Maxim’s (unaffiliated both with the mostly non-pornographic men’s interests magazine and the concept of inspirational aphorisms stuck to cubicles to keep office workers from killing themselves).

Ah dim sum, roughly translated from Chinese as “a light meal for an anorexic bird.” Lunch at Maxim’s in HK City Hall was my first successful dim sum meal, but after talking with Fay and Peter we agreed that a large part of having dim sum was in fact not being able to have dim sum. The restaurant is often closed, or no longer serving, or too expensive, or on fire. It’s always something. But at Maxim’s everything was perfect. The four of us were seated promptly and we put in our drink orders. Since I always shoot for the weirdest beverage on the menu I got a hot cup of longan and red date juice. It was kind of like drinking steaming honey with chewy pieces on the bottom. Surprisingly satisfying. Then for the next hour or so we get asked if we want to eat something from one of the servers’ smoking cart. But the best thing is how the server will reinitiate the conversation after we say no. The dialogue goes something like this:

Server: Hello. You want shrimp?
Us: No, thank you.
Server: Okay. (Pause) Hello. You want pork?

It turns out this was a great tactic, since as you may or may not already know, Sarah now loves pork, largely because she can’t get it where we’re living in Malaysia. Through the same effect, I now love women who aren’t covering their hair and being able to drive on the right side of the road (haven’t been able to do much about that last one… the British carved out an impressive chunk of the world on which to plant their road signs). Of course, while my loves may be fleeting, Sarah was completely justified in her obsession with the other white meat. BBQ Pork Buns= delicious and we fill up on several orders of them, along with spring rolls, dumplings, and other things with things in ‘em. Dim sum gets the job if you want to eat a lot of different things and have people say hello to you several hundred times. Thumbs up.

Continuing the reviews, I give a palm up, thumb and forefinger touching to the giant metal Buddha at Tan Tian. It was really, really big. Maybe the biggest giant metal Buddha I’ve ever seen. Top 10 at least.

Top 10 other things I saw, did, and heard in Hong Kong:
10. On the urinal “Please enjoy your drink!” I don’t know who(m) it was talking to or what kind of drink it was. I hope it wasn’t for me, since I don’t remember any drink nor any enjoyment.

9. There was this great hard hat area sign that looked like this. I think it meant “the things that hit us in the head tell us where to go.”

8. From a menu: “Food can be light, medium, burning, very burning, or non-spicy.” I had the burning and it was. I also like that the last option has the possibility to transcend spicy.

7. There was a legal movie store near the place where we stayed. I didn’t know it was legal until after I went in there and the merchandise was shrink wrapped instead of photo-copied. The store was also notable for its choice of video showing on the street. The first three times we walked by they were playing Madonna in concert singing “Isla Bonita.” Why? Did they not know that she had other songs? Did they not realize that as a movie store they had access to several other videos? Did they not understand that their DVD player could show other things if given the chance?

6. Fay’s friend (and Hong Kong native) Lara brought us to a BBQ on the beach. One of the friend of a friends there was an Indian studying in Ireland, so he had a wicked Irish lilt. He… um… talked about seeing some things in Bangkok that I’m pretty sure I’m not going to try to see, let alone pay money for.

5. Everything was really expensive compared to Thailand, where we are now.

4. That last point shouldn’t really belong on the list, as it wasn’t a good thing. Definitely not top 10 material.

3. That last point shouldn’t really be there either, since it was a clarification. And this point probably doesn’t belong either.

2. Nope, it didn’t. Crap. Okay, finish strong.

1. I really miss my Octopus card.

Macau, I hardly knew thee

2008-05-21T18:03:00.001+02:00

Good morning, blogadiers. As you can tell, I’ve changed the title of the blog to better reflect the current state of affairs. It is now much more accurate, albeit less specific.

The first place that was not Malaysia that hosted Sarah, Peter, Fay, and me was Macau. We’re just working through the “M” countries right now. Just need Mauritania and Monaco, which I assume must be close by.

So what do we know about Macau? The Portuguese were here. I can’t really say what they did other than leave a bunch of signs for me to grasp at with my knowledge of Spanish. It kind of looks like Zapf Dingbats threw up on the road signs. I’m not one to judge, but that’s bull crap. Most words shouldn’t end with çao. Portuguese just ripped off Spanish and consistently misspelled it.

On a related note, what happened to Portugal, anyway? Used to have an empire, now has a literacy rate second to Costa Rica. (Not an insult, really. I’ve been there and they can totally read.) But still, how does an empire get away from you like that? I’ve lost my glasses before, but I usually end up finding them beneath a book. Portugal, did you remember to look under a book? What was the last place you remember seeing your empire? Is it on you head? Sometimes when I can’t find my glasses I’m still wearing them. Look into that, Portugal. Get your empire back, otherwise your legacy will be making tourists wonder why people in Brazil speak such bad Spanish and a bunch of signs that lead to casinos in an island country that’ll be swallowed up by China in another 50 years.

By the way, whoever came up with that whole Las Vegas of the East idea was brilliant. Since Macau has zero to less-than-zero resources it really helps the economy to set up a system where people will gladly lose money in exchange for watching blinking lights (albeit a lot of them).

Look around, gamblers, the casino’s doing really well. They manage to keep up with a no-doubt-massive electricity bill and still employ a platoon of middle aged Macanese whose sole job is to give away free drinks.

Meanwhile, most of the gamblers need to take the free drinks just to keep from dying of thirst. You want to get rich from gambling? Open a casino. And if you can’t afford that buy stock in the Macanese electric company- you won’t regret it. They couldn’t use more energy if they took over all the electric chair executions from Texas.

The casinos are also rich enough to employ women without access to adequate clothing. Apparently “Tokyo Nights” at the Grand Lisboa is some kind of sexy less-clothes-than-usual dance show. Sarah and I will be spending four nights in Tokyo in August, and I’m pretty sure the show would only create unrealistic expectations for a typical evening in Japan’s largest city. It is worth noting, however, that in all the advertisements, the women were shown topless, but with small cartoon daisies covering particular parts of their bodies. (Impossible to know what parts they were actually covering though. It could’ve been an extra set of feet, albeit small ones.) At first I thought this might’ve been exploitative, but then I realized how kind and charitable this casino was to give obviously deformed women to jobs!

“Oh doctor, my child is a freak! She was born with cartoon daisies on particular parts of her body!”
“Don’t worry, ma’am, the good people at Grand Lisboa will surely employ her when she becomes old enough.”

Imagine the difference: in Malaysia, such women would live lives in utter secrecy, never able to show themselves as the flora-fauna hybrids that they are. But here in Macau they are enjoyed as freaks of nature with luck-conferring abilities much like Leprechauns and Care Bears, and as a result are tolerated as such.

They must be pretty lucky because after simply staring at their many pictures over the course of several hours, Fay, Peter, Sarah, and I hit the jackpot with our dinner choice… albeit at another casino.

Ah, the Sands’ all-you-can-eat Vegas style buffet. Although last time I checked, there was not as large of a selection of cooked jade welks in Vegas, it was still definitely the best $28 I ever ate.

I destroyed the velvety sashimi and accompanying pile of ginger first before realizing that it wasn’t just the food that I missed eating, it was the ingredients that I missed working with as well. So for the next hour or two I created a “found meal” much like I used to do back in my food service days at Whitman. It’s pretty simple, you just make a dish that the wait staff has served you without realizing it. Like I bet they didn’t know that when they put out smoked chicken, bread, salad and dressing, they gave me everything I needed for the perfect chicken Caesar sandwich. I also made my version of an Asian chicken noodle soup (I think it had pork and duck in it) and Asian nachos (fried wanton crisps with raw salmon and wasabi sauce).

Some could call me uninventive, but when life gives you Asian lemons, make Asian lemonade. I was pretty much the proudest of my three desserts though: coated ice cream balls two ways, a volcanic cream puff sacrifice, and sweet sushi (rice krispies bonded together with whipped cream topped with mango slices liberated from a fruit torte). For those of you that know the joy of Top Chef, I imagined I was presenting my food to the judges and humbly accepting their harsh critiques.

That night we left Macau for Hong Kong, and slept soundly, Tokyo dreams of jade welk fairies dancing in our heads.