This is something I've had kicking around in my head for a while, but was spurred onto the page in partial response to @Foxxx's Thoughts Stirred by Stripclubs Ah, the gentlemen’s clubs. In my younger days, I spent… well, no. If I was still doing it, it would be far too much time, but there’s a time to every purpose under heaven, and your late teens/early twenties are the perfect time to be throwing large chunks of your paycheck at women wearing less than small pieces of cloth. But now it’s mostly the nostalgia, thoughts of a time when I might have genuinely appealed to them, because the fact that I no longer do is a very important point, one that I’ll get to later. See, I know their jobs, I’ve done their work. No, not gyrating nearly naked on a stage to a bass beat, but the rest of the job, the hard part. Sitting and chatting up the lunatics to pay the rent. I worked for seven years at an eikaiwa, an English conversation school. Part language instructor, part social worker, part babysitter, part whore, listening to, feigning interest in whatever the customer student had to say. Bored housewives, looking to kill time in the afternoon. Their children, so that mom could do the grocery shopping and get a cup of tea in peace. Businessmen who left work early every Saturday night to catch the last lesson of the day, the one that ended at 9 pm. The mentally ill. No, really. One of the schools I worked at was near a large psychiatric hospital, and the doctors there would recommend their patients take English lessons because it would give them a chance to socialize with people who were not allowed to show annoyance, or insult them, or even break off the conversation. No matter what. And no, we weren’t trained or qualified for this sort of thing, and yes, the complaints of people who were still wearing their hospital ID bracelets and occasionally barking were taken just as seriously as any other, and entered into your permanent employee file. Just be nice. Just keep smiling. Just keep talking. So I sympathize with the young ladies at the club, and try to be a model customer on those rare occasions when I get together with my buddies and pay a visit. Would you like a drink? Yes, I’ll probably be getting a private dance, but not right now, thank you. You’re also a teacher, really? Ever run into a student? Oh, how about a parent? Yeah, that’s gotta be weird, I’ve had stalkers at my job too. But the thing is, the important thing, of course, is that ring. Now, I’m no Mike Pence, I don’t dress up like a girl scout and suck off the gardeners while my wife pegs me with an unlubricated daikon radish, but I do try to limit my time with members of the opposite sex in circumstances that might arouse suspicion. Chatting with an attractive girl half my age in a bar might be looked at the wrong way, and if she found something genuinely attractive in my misshapen, underfinanced, and slightly pedantic self, there could be a real problem. As long as it’s a purely professional relationship though, where I give her money and she says nice things about my Uniqlo shirt and lets me see what she’s got under hers, well, that’s all on the up and up, as far as I can see. But there was a problem once. I slipped, broke the rules. Blame it on too many years of teaching I guess. When I started at the uni, the gyaru (gal) look was all the rage. Miniskirts, fishnets, tight crop-tops, too much makeup. Believe me, I wanted to look, it was a struggle, but I learned to keep my eyes where they belonged, to avoid even the suspicion of sexual harrassment. And that night in the club, when I was talking to Chantalle, respecting that Chantalle was just someone that Denise (or whatever her real name was) put on when she took off her clothes for work, that she was, like everyone else, just trying to get through the day, the week, the life, keep food on the table, but when I was talking to her there in that semi-private booth where nothing could happen, and she said… “I don’t want to sound weird or anything, but all this eye contact? My boobs are down here, dude, and it’s rude not to stare.”
When "the Lord" or "Lord" is invoked without further detail specifying which Lord is being addressed, all inquiries and requests will be routed to the Right Worshipful the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Magid Magid. Check your assumptions before you criticize the bling.
I can tell my mood by the way I walk. Yeah, I know most people can probably tell their moods by, well, checking their moods, and I can too, usually, but there are times when I feel alright but I notice that I'm walking parade-deck style, people diving into traffic because I'm squared-up for a fight but in my head I'm just replaying the last episode of Anpanman* that I watched back in 2005 or so, or I'm just mulling over my class standards for academic year 2019 but I discover that I'm slumped over like I've got a bodybuilder's weight kit strapped around my neck and I realize that I've got to figure out what the boys in the subconscious are up to and fast because there's something wrong down there. Or other times when I find myself actually bopping down the street, yeah, I usually know what's up with that, I had a story breakthrough or the court finalized my execution date or some such, but... Wait, this has got nothing to do with walking. Fuckit. So I decided to post something positive, little bit about those Thai kids getting rescued out of the cave and nearly ended up fetal/catatonic in a puddle of tears about that SEAL who died in the effort. Good job and all, and it sucks that he died, but there's something else going on here. What? Spoiler: *Irrelevant spoiler Twenty words of the contribution I made fifteen or so years ago to that Wikipedia article have survived the edits to the present day. I'm not going to tell you which twenty though
I didn't much like the movie Vanilla Sky, but it's the example that comes to mind right now (if you haven't read The Execution Channel by Ken McLeod. If you have, you'll have a clearer idea of what I'm getting at). There's so much going on in the Debate Room news these days. The US president's unconventional, and some say dangerous style of leadership, climate change, the World Cup, earthquakes and flooding here in Japan, Nicaragua has deployed a high number of internal checkpoints for what reason I know not, I'm sure you could post a dozen things happening in your own sphere of interest, but these past couple weeks I can't shake the feeling that somehow that little story that keeps popping up in the background, those Thai boys trapped in the cave, the retired Thai Navy SEAL who died trying to save them, their teacher a former monk training them in meditation techniques to reduce oxygen consumption in their little bubble of air down there deep in the earth, that that's going to be the big reveal, that was what the story was about the whole time, we just didn't realize it because it was on the channel the bartender switched away from to catch the footie, the autoplay video in the sidebar that we muted, the story on the side of the newspaper that faced the camera, not the MC....
Effective immediately, whenever a "god" or "God" is invoked, unless otherwise specified, the deity mentioned will be assumed to be the Sumerian god of Earth, Air, Wind, and Storms Enlil, who sits broadly on the white dais, on the lofty dais, who perfects the decrees of power, lordship, and princeship, the earth-gods bow down in fear before him, the heaven-gods humble themselves before him. We appreciate your understanding and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. All Hail Enlil (left, with sceptre)!
This started as a response to the Movies - What did you think about the last movie you watched thread, but got long-ish so I'm putting it here. Two nights ago 50 Shades of Gray came on the cable and I figured what the hell, I'll give it a shot. Eight minutes. Probably not even that, since the cable company runs a couple commercials at the hour when the show is supposed to start, but it was eight after when I started screaming at the TV. Do I want to see a fucking dishrag get treated like toilet paper for two hours? And an incompetent dishrag at that. Did anyone notice that her roomie was too sick to do the interview but was fine when she got home? And I know that the film isn't a fan favorite of the BDSM community, but can you get more dull and inane and predictable than having a boy billionaire who needs to be in control everywhere, even the bedroom? And no, sex isn't or shouldn't be a zero/sum game, women aren't objects to be conquered but still where's the achievement in a handsome (I assume so, I'm a terrible judge of male looks), fit, and insanely rich man dominating an insolvent doormat!?! At least show him with someone who's somewhere on his level, or even better, flip that tired old script and have him wearing the middle-aged French maid's uniform while she pegs him fucking senseless. Not my thing either, but it would certainly be more amusing than watching the lord of our modern feudal manor beat a peasant for two hours. So I made it to the twenty minute mark, right after he kidnaps and strips her, flipped over to a re-run of Top Gear, and passed out.
So yeah, the random job opportunity came up, and what can they say but no? And I've done nearly fifteen minutes, maybe even twenty of research into the company corporate culture lifestyle product pros cons salary problems opportunities and what the hell, I might be a match, why not but then I talked to a friend, a coworker, someone who knows the things that others don't, our situation, our opportunities or lack thereof and he raised some very reasonable, constructive, helpful questions. Not criticisms. Questions. Because we're in the same boat, age income experience qualifications lifestyle fucking mentality and he raised some questions and he woke up my fucking nafs. Which I learned I've been thinking of the wrong way, it doesn't mean what KSR said it did, or not generally, and the Quran views it differently than the Sufis in the book did but let's call it the nafs for lack of a better... What's that? There is a better name for it. Depression would be one. Impostor syndrome would be another. The Cold Equations would be a third. And who are you to think that you couldn't bluff your way through the fucking interview, Iain. The listing is wide open, you've got a skill set that's very rare. Very random, but very rare, and these are nerds, they know shit about shit that isn't coding and GIGO and RTFM, which is all that matters in this day and age but you could bring something, some reality, the dust in your teeth as the man in the round hat screams at you "That's not cover, move your ass in three two one you're fucking dead now bend, bend and thrust, dig me a fucking swimming pool and..." That moment when you can only remember where you live because there are yellow lightbulbs in front of the restaurant on the first floor and you don't speak the language and you hold no currency to speak of and... "9-1-1" "Help help daddy fell down and he's not moving" and she sounds young so fucking young there's no way CPR is going to work and you hope that the ANI/ALI is working, you hope that the address on the monitor is correct because Jenny might not even know her address yet, she knows the number to dial but "Okay honey, everything is going to be okay, where do you live?" but it's not going to be okay or is it because once you get all the info you can you pop the call over to the fire desk and they send out the ambulance and another line is ringing another complainant another citizen another person is having the worst day of their life and you're going to deal with it in two minutes or less and on to another and another and another until the last syllable of almost getting fired because when you were good you were very very good but when you were bad you were rotten and take that for your "diverse experiences" but but but the money the money the moving expenses the visa the green card does she even want to move how's her dad doing how much does an apartment cost is there public transportation what if the job doesn't work out and... ...and I don't anthropomorphize my depression but maybe I should, I don't hear voices, not that way, not auditory hallucinations but fuck if the Wachowski Sisters didn't get it right with Old Georgie whispering in my ear "Think about it, be realistic, it's never going to happen, you know that, you'll never even get a response back, and that's if bloody if you get your ten-year old resume sorted in time and you've got to write a cover letter too plus there's another field for a letter letter and they want a writer but they don't say what you'll write and do you dare breach your anonymity you're an English teacher who is an aspiring novelist who's had two thousand words or so published on a defunct site, why not just tell them you're a barista at Starbuck's in the Slums of Beverly Hills but really you're an actor you had a part in your first grade class play Meow meow meow a most unhappy cat, I cannot catch a single mouse or sneak up on a rat" where's my Oscar Golden Globe chance at a future the nafs lives just above the roof of the mouth...
While I was browsing the net the other day, I chanced upon a site that was hosting some sort of international short film festival. After looking at a couple of the titles, I discovered what appeared to be a Japanese romance movie. Now, my language ability isn't so hot, but I always like the opportunity to learn more about local culture so I figured I'd give it a shot. As my wife was still at work, it was up to me to understand as much of it as I could. The beginning was a little confusing, but I eventually started to understand the situation. However, just when it the film started to make sense to me, the video equipment developed some sort of glitch that obscured part of the screen. My monitor is pretty old, so I paused the film and checked the link on my tablet to try and ascertain the source of the problem. Whatever it was, it wasn't on my end; the tablet gave an identical result. Disappointed, I went back to the main menu and found another local production, but lo and behold, the same difficulty manifested itself a few minutes in. Since my devices were okay, I thought it might be a site issue, so I checked the next suggested film, which opened on a young Russian lady who was apparently daydreaming about finding a husband. Imagine her surprise when not one, not two, but three suitors called on her. At the same time! Now having to choose between paramours is a staple, I'm told, of romantic fiction and can serve as an important plot driver. However, this young lass was quite clever and the group arrived at a solution that, while somewhat unsanitary, left both her and her admirers quite happy. While some of the camera work was a trifle unsteady (I think one of the actors was doubling as a cameraman!), there was none of the glitching that had been present in the Japanese productions. I just think it's a pity that the Japanese entrants had so many problems with their video equipment. Japan is a country well-known for producing quality electronics, but even the best tools are useless in the hands of poorly-trained users. It's just kind of depressing to see my adoptive country perform so poorly on the international stage.
I'm watching a documentary on North Korea on National Geographic, and they're talking about the Sony Pictures hack. The guy (sorry, missed his name and credentials) on the screen says "That a tiny little country, a fourth-rate power, managed to bring down a movie studio is proof of their power outside their borders." That is... Fuck Americans. So fucking convinced of our superiority in all things that we're amazed that a sovereign nation could do damage to a fucking entertainment company? An entertainment company that was set to release a fourth-rate comedy that, oh, incidentally called for the assassination of their head of state? I'm no fan of North Korea or the Kims. My first adult job was trying to bring those people down, but goddamnit America, can you not realize the entitlement your project? Just for a moment? Prolly not.
Over on the "What are you cooking tonight?" thread, @Homer Potvin has been sharing his accumulated wisdom on restaurant costs and profits, which I find absolutely fascinating. No, really, I'm not being sarcastic. So I went out to tabe/nomihodai (an all you can eat, all you can drink restaurant) with a friend the other week. There were options from two to three hours, with last order coming thirty minutes before your time was up. Since the breakdown between two hours (90 minutes ordering) and three hours (two and a half hours ordering) was only about $4 each, we decided to go with the three hour option. Two people, three hours all you can eat, all you can drink alcohol, for 8400 yen (roughly $84 bucks, since we get paid in yen as well). This was an ideal venue to figure out the customer cost/benefit equation, since the restaurant offers ala carte as well as all you can eat, but the ala carte has a fixed price of 300 yen ($3) per item, so it's easy to figure out how much we would have spent had we not done the all you can eat. Japanese izakaya (the best translation is "pub", although there are differences) eating style isn't one where you order your meal, it comes, you eat it, and commence to drinking, it's more of a tapas type thing where you continuously order small food and drink until you lose consciousness or start a fight with a mirror. For simplicity's sake, I've divided things up into courses, as defined by one or both of us ordering another drink. Let's go, shall we? View attachment 22978 If you're having trouble focusing on the pics, that's: 9 mugs of beer 1 chu-hai (alcopop) 9 glasses of wine (the carafes are 90ml each, one glass of wine is 30ml) 7 orders of sashimi 1 order of fried chicken 1 order of edamame (possibly two, it's automatic) 1 Caesar salad 1 sliced tomato salad 1 ginger salad 2 (miniscule) sirloin steaks 3 orders of grilled shiitake 1 small mixed pizza 1 order of corn tempura 1 order of sauteed shimeji mushrooms 1 order of sauteed pork and onions 1 order of chicken skewers 3 slices of tiramisu 2 mini parfaits and 3 pieces of strawberry cheesecake For a total of 49 items, at $3 each, or a tab that would be $147 which we paid $84 for. Not sure if the restaurant lost money on us or not that night, but I can't try much harder that I did.
I remember one night when there was a minor earthquake. The train had pulled forward only a meter or two and was well within the ends of the platform when the safeties kicked in and stopped it. The doors stayed closed for forty minutes during evening rush hour before the driver got permission to back up that short distance and release his passengers to seek other means of transport. Luckily for me, I'd missed that train and there was a beer vending machine on the platform, so my buddies and I just got drunk and watched the windows of the carriages get foggier and foggier as the mass of sweating passengers overwhelmed the ventilation systems. Air Gradia 452 has arrived, please remain in your seat until the captain turns off the seatbelt sign.
Just for old times' sake, mind you, I'm not in the market for this sort of thing. Anymore. Old men, eyes hidden behind shades glance quickly up and down, spot the locally made clothes, but most importantly the backpack, not right, not their clientele, puffing quickly, disapprovingly on their smokes and it's back to the conversation but see that one? They do, cigarettes fall and are quickly crushed under cheap double monks, backs straighten, the guy, the guy with the tastelessly expensive suit, the big guy walks past without a sideways glance but the spot-check from corporate has just taken place or did you honestly think that all those little bars up on the third fourth seventh ninth floors, the “health massages” and soaplands, the girls who call out in Korean and Tag, or Japanese with the soft mushy consonants from the continent over the sea, were owned by, were in competition with each other? Oh no, they may come from across the sea, you know the one, the one whose name we can never agree on, but the one thing that everyone knows is true is that the people over there, he points towards the sun, is it rising or setting, Mr. Franklin? I don't know, my boy, but take my word on two things: First, all cats are gray at night, and second, those girls from over there where the sun sits low on the horizon? They aren't like the local girls, they've got more freedom, they'll do things that the good and proper young ladies from our homeland would never consider, not even for, well, let me work out the exchange rate. Licentious little bits of scrumptiousness, the accents and hues change, but the Beast is always the same, this I know. Know? you say, how do you know this, what kind of person are you, are you one of them, are you some sort of monster but did I ever tell you otherwise? Did I ever say I was a nice person, or did you make that decision on your own? Did you see me looking, did you notice and judge whether it was a casual interest or not, and how casual, or did you catch a gleam of intent, was it just a memory, or are you projecting? Again? Just stay outta the big guy's way, and let's go have a beer, this place ain't for us, not on our pay-scale at least.
I was reading @Corbyn's blog entry Building Confidence in yourself and your writing and started working on a response to it when I realized I had enough for my own post. Credit for the inspiration goes to @Corbyn, read their post first. Point 2 is particularly important, since we're always told "Write the kind of book you'd like to read." Well, the kind of book I like to read often has things like "Hugo Award-winning" or "by the master of the genre" in front of it, and I ain't that good. It's like asking someone who's just plunking out their first original song on a piano what they like to listen to and why, and hearing "Well, Beethoven's Ninth is pretty good, I like the way he layers the various instruments on each other." Not going to happen. And I know that my WIP, assuming I finish it, even if it gets traditionally published, is never going to be the sort of thing that wins awards. At best, it'll amuse the reader for the time he or she is reading it, but once they put it down, it'll probably drop out of their memory banks pretty quickly. And that's okay. Because I go back and read For Us, the Living by Robert Heinlein; a book so terrible it was never published in his lifetime. A book so terrible it never should have been published, and never would have been published had he not forced his way through it, set it down, and kept going. He knew he had something that people wanted to read inside him, he just had to keep digging until he found it. Now, I'm not nearly as enamored of Mr. H's work as I was when I was young, but his sales and continued following prove that he had something to say, something that never would have gotten out to the public if he'd looked at his first efforts and said "Fuckit, it ain't Melville" and given up. Everything you do can be improved. Everything you do gets easier the second time, whether it's popping a blister, making love, or writing a story. The first time you did it, you fucked it all kinds of up, but once you've done it twice or ten or fifty times, it'll become second nature, and you'll be able to look back at that first attempt and say "Damn, that really was horrible, but look at this one." Now I've got a forgettable urban fantasy to crank out, see you in the airport bookstore.
So I went to see the reboot of Splash today, somewhat forearmed with some mild spoilers from a friend who really enjoyed it. Yeah, speaking of spoilers? Lots here. But anyway, I get that it was a fable, I get that it was allegory, I get that the rules of reality don't apply, but... Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. I liked the egg timer, been boiling a lot myself lately, but I got into slammed into critic mode fairly early on, when the set dressers forgot to read the script. At first I thought it was an error by a character, which would have been interesting, but at no point in the movie did the Schutzstaffel ever appear on that marquee, which means nobody in the production team was paying attention. Yeah, this sort of thing sets me off. I'm sure @Wreybies knows what really soured the movie for me, and where the absence of one letter above was disappointing, the absence of “T,” “P,” and “I” was just... And where was J.K. Simmons? Just one little voiceover? Yeah, I know, unlikely, but it would have been worth a laugh. The cunnilingus scene would have been followed by the “Let's see how bleach sits with you, boy” scene, but then the movie would have been over. Hmm. Which five star general was that? No, tell me. Which one was it? I know Hollywood takes a special pride in not knowing a SPEC-4 from a PRC-77, and likes to have their characters salute both of them, but Which Five Star General Was That? Go look it up, I'll wait. It shouldn't take long. Yeah, I thought not. The modern faucets were a nice touch. Now, I've got a problem here, by which I mean that there is a problem with me, not the movie. Nobody could have fixed the fact that my demographic most closely matches the big bad's, so I'm on shaky ground here and I know it, but Hollywood is still up to its “older, out of shape, balding man pines for young hotty” thing, but it seems to me that, since grandpa is gay, he's owed. What if Texas Pete the Pie Man just wasn't into the whole daddy thing? And was still a hotty racist? Take a page from White Man's Burden and flip the script again, what if it was Frasier Crane chasing after Tomi Lahren? Look closer. But the thing that really got me was just the predictability. You'll have to take my word for it, but I can't think of a single surprise in the movie that wasn't telegraphed before filming began. The only movie I can remember that was easier to forecast was Quigley Down Under. Not that I could give you every scene, but the first ten seconds of each and every scene gave you more than enough to write the rest, it was just, to borrow a phrase, “laid out before [us] like a map of sex.” Speaking of which, if they ever make Blue Mars into a movie, they should really consider Gianna Michaels for Zo. But I digress, but it doesn't matter. Better hope she can grow fins and webs as well, lest she go from being a mute to an aquatic cripple, easy meat for the first shark or sea lion that comes along. Why do they always have to be magical?
I thought about workshopping this, but it's really not worth it. I've got no experience with the software in this story, so there are probably lots of errors, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. My stomach growled. “Siri, where’s the nearest Subway?” “This city doesn’t have a subway system, but there’s bus stop one block east of here.” “No, I mean a, um, someplace I can get,” What were they called in this part of the country? “a hoagie? A, um, hero?” “Hogan’s Heroes, the complete series, is available on DVD from Amazon for thirty-nine ninety-nine, with free ship—” “No, Siri, not a DVD, I’m hungry. Is there anyplace around here I can get a big sandwich, um, a grinder?” “Opening Grindr. You have three possible matches. Match number one, Vinnie: ‘Hey guys, looking for a foot long spicy Italian…’”