Author: Dave

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you wouldn’t want it to get too cluttered

Man, that's longer than Tracy.
Ugh man, I’ve got that ten-hour plane-flight funk going on. You know, that thin sheen of been-up-too-long sweat and grease all over my body. Coupled with the stretched, frazzled feeling you get from bring travel-worn – I’m ready to sleep in my own bed. I got bumped from business class on the long leg of the flight, so I’m in the next best place – the exit aisle with no seats in front of me, on the aisle seat. I actually think this would be fine were the arm rests just a tad freakin’ wider so as to accompany my ate-too-much Taiwanese food hips. I mean, my wallet is pressed so tight against the armrest that it’s holding the seat-recline button in perma-depress – which is really pissing me off. The only problem with sleeping in this seat is that I tend to naturally lean out into the aisle to keep from laying my head on the shoulder of the attractive young Japanese woman sitting painfully close to my hip pocket in the seat next to me. I think they are stewardesses, I hope they don’t mind the snoring.

Got home to find the lawn in a shambles. See, we had some decorative concrete curbing (mow-strip) installed one Friday while I was gone, and apparently the install crew got the sprinkler treatment during their job (at least this is what I imagined happened). To fix this problem, they decided to simply turn off the main water (they had no choice really, not being able to access the controls in the garage or anything). Anyway, Sharaun didn’t notice the sprinklers weren’t coming on until the lawn told her by turning a nice I’m-dead brown. Not her fault, how’s she supposed to know. She ended up calling me at a customer in Taiwan, where I proceeded to work through an extremely frustrating 20min debug process in which we attempted to figure out why the sprinklers weren’t working. Eventually, and without even getting divorced, we figured it out and got them up and running again.

But you know me, I take a lot of pride in the yard. I mean, I’ve worked dang hard to keep it looking OK. And now with the appearance of the dreaded crabgrass the week before I left, the large spotty-brown thing I once took so much pride in is just a neighborhood eyesore. I know it sounds trivial, but you don’t know how much it frustrated me to be greeted by that sad sight upon pulling up to my beloved house after a two-week stint overseas. Anyway, I hit it double-hard today with a nice dose of crabgrass killer and some kinda turf-builder, and it’s been getting enough water – so perhaps the majority will grow back. I mean, I guess when it comes down to it, who cares right? But man, that seriously bummed me out.

This weekend was sufficiently laid-back: hung with friends, cleaned the house, worked a tad in the yard. The thing is, I’m really gonna be slammed this week at work. I have several commitments which I placed “on hold” when I was traveling, and they will be coming back to judge me this week. I’ve got to make good on some promises, and one involves getting a big project done by tomorrow evening. It’ll be tough, but I think I can swing it – even if I have to work late. What’s worse is, I have to take Friday and Monday off because we’re climbing Mt. Whitney this weekend. Don’t even get me started on how woefully unprepared I am for that. I should’ve been running every day for months, instead I’ve been stuffing myself with Chinese food and Bloody Marys – just hoping my weary legs can carry my clinically obese ass up that mountain. We’ll find out I suppose.

I promised you guys the scans of the Taipei Hooters menu that I boosted one night whilst at dinner. It’s funny for a couple reasons, both of which I think are obvious. Firstly, these girls have no hooters. I mean, c’mon y’alls, we all know the “hooters” in Hooters isn’t really talking about owls like the logo may lead you to believe. They mean boobs! No, I’m for real, that restaurant Hooters is all about boobs. Anyway, we took to calling the place “Hoot” because the “ers” was actually pulled around the back of the shirt being that there was nothing in front for it to stretch across. Secondly, at Hooters in Taiwan you can order all sorts of seafood. Shock! Seafood at an eatery in Taiwan?! These people live and breath fish man. Pat even complained one morning because his bacon at breakfast tasted of fish – and that’s what I mean, everything there is seafood. Oh, it may not be seafood overtly – like fish or prawns or whatever. But you can almost bet that it was made or cooked with seafood or some seafood “essence.” I’m being unrealistic for the sake of comedy of course, but really? they love some seafood. And yes, I know it’s an island. Anyway, without further ado – the Taipei Hoot menu:


Janet was our waitress, and mighty attractive if I may say. You could land a plane on her chest, but she was cute nonetheless. Note that you can order “Chips and Salsar” or the “Fried Fishman Platter.” You can keep the fishman thanks, I’m not feeling terribly cannibalistic today – but salsar, now that sounds new and exciting.
Here’s the flipside, where you can feast on such delicacies as “Curly Squid” and “Pork Knuckle.” Man, when did Hoot go all gourmet? To be fair though, the “Fried Mushroom” only costs lantern-house-menorah-sailboat, pretty good if you ask me.

I think it would be cool to sell a shirt that had nothing on the front but the words “Where I stand.” Then on the back there would be a short list of items and two columns, “Yes” and “No,” with a box for each column after each line-item in the list. Before I get to the list, lemme say that the purpose of this shirt is controversy. You take the few most-debated political and social issues today and list them out – then sell all the yes/no permutations. I imagine a list something like the following:

  Yes No
There is a God.  
Capital punishment is just.  
Keep abortion legal.  
Affirmative Action is rad.  
Gay people will burn.  
Three AK47s? No problem.  
Welfare works!  

Anyway, you wouldn’t want it to get too cluttered, so I think that list would be enough to enrage enough people. Then you wear it around see, and people know right away where you’re at. Maybe I should make these shirts. I mean, there’d need to be 128 of them to get every possible combo – then you could keep stats like which permutation (combination?, I forget my statistics) was most popular and stuff. It could be a whole website, people could even vote on the next issue to be added to the short-list. Hmm? Oh yeah, and for any of you entrepreneurial bastards out there – I’m pretty sure that’s my intellectual property now that I wrote it down, so don’t even think about it.

And I’m out, g’night.

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do i have to do this again?

Shea-shea!!
Tokyo. Again. And again I’m just passing through, still haven’t been able to see Japan. This past week, I was originally booked for Japan, but plans changed and I stayed in Taiwan instead. Anyway, that’s all old news now, history. I’m on my way home, finally, after what seemed like a month-long two weeks. Really, I got to the point where I welcomed the hotel bed as my own each evening. A spotty week for writing, or maybe I should say posting – because I actually wrote quite a bit. A couple paragraphs from Tuesday, some crazy outlines for an intended Wednesday entry, and last night’s famous unfinished Thursday-night-in-the-bar entry. Anyway, I’m gonna make the verb-tense workable and go ahead and publish most of it riiiight about? now.

[Written Tuesday afternoon in some hotel conference room, after giving my initial presentation to about 150 Chinese dudes.]

Damn. Nothing can humble me like giving what I feel to be a bad presentation. I mean, I just got off the stage and I think I stunk it up royal. I blanked on a couple of really easy questions and just didn’t have confidence in my knowledge of the material. Man I wanted to run out of that room. What’s worse: I’ve got a totally different one to give in another hour, one I’m equally undereducated on. Ugh, right now my only solace is thinking that I can head back to the hotel in shame and take a nap if I want. I’m sure from the audience it didn’t look that bad, but knowing that I was just reading from the material with no knowledge to back me up sure made me feel crappy. What a terrible feeling, and embarrassing too. I’m ready to leave Taiwan again.

It’s funny how a bad experience like that can make me want to crawl into a cave and hibernate (read: lock myself in the hotel room with the “do not disturb” light on and lounge around in my boxers). It’s my laziness kicking in I guess. To make matters worse, I had an 11pm conference call last night and didn’t get to bed until 1am, only to wake up in four hours for another call at 5am, then it was straight from that call to here. Now I’m dangerously tired and trying to stay awake for my next class. Funny thing is, whenever I do come off a less-than-stellar speaking engagement, I always question why I like doing it at all. I mean, not putting myself up there means never having to be embarrassed. Talk about a quitter attitude huh? But, I know I’ll do it again, because I like to – and I like it most when things go well and I come off feeling like a champ. I suppose every one has a “stinker” once in a while, presentation or not. (Note from the future: The next presentation and the Q&A sessions that followed in the days after went superb, more than making up for the self-loathing my initial bomb instilled in me.)

Another editors note: Wanna see my “free writing” notes for that last paragraph? Oh, what? You do? OK, here it is: funy, performp poorly and start questioning how much i like it. lazy, from youth, etc. Wow, exciting huh? I mean, it’s these sneak-peeks into the behind-the-scenes workings of the blog that just set me apart from other writers. At least, to me I mean.

[Written late Thursday night from a corner table in Henry’s Bar at the Sherwood Taipei, three or four bloody marys into a night getting tight on spiked ‘mater juice.]

Sitting here in a dark corner, cigar smoke and Mandarin fill the air. I’m looking out across the dim room to the bar – where the bartender is making me a new bloody mary to replace the one I just finished. Her name is Tracy, but in Chinese it’s something longer and is drawn with a lot of little sticks and boxes that look like lanterns and houses and tic-tac-toe games. I know because she wrote it down for me on one of the paper coasters she brings the drinks on. She’s trying to teach me more Chinese before I leave, but the bar is busy and she can only come talk ever once in a while. So far I can recognize about twenty characters, and understand a few words in every sentence. Next time I come, she says, she promises to speak better English if I promise to speak better Chinese. Deal.

Anthony and Pat were here, but went out to the night market to see the people drink snake’s blood. In all my time in Taipei, I’ve never had the urge to go to snake alley. It sounds interesting as all get-out, but the locals look down on the place as dirty and giving them a bad name. Last night I went to karaoke with two girls that work at this bar. Tracy actually changed her night off to go, all the bar staff knows it and they give me funny looks and talk about me in Chinese (I can recognize my name, “Da-Way,” in Mandarin). A buddy of mine from the states who speaks Mandarin and is also friendly with the bar staff hooked up the outage, and they came and grabbed me from my second-favorite bar down the street and whisked me away to karaoke. Everyone knows I have a crush on Tracy so it was all a big joke. We ended up having a blast. The Taiwan beer and milk-tea flowed freely and my head didn’t hit the pillow until 3am.

So tonight I’m practicing my words again on the drink coasters: fire, human, door, time, ask, month, temple, big, sun, house, one, two, three, four, understanding, ten, and love. Later I’ll end up hanging at the bar until they close at 1pm, drinking more bloody marys and finally winding things down with some milk-tea-made-with-love. Time to hit the hay, and what do you know it’s 4am again somehow. Taipei was fun this time, a bad presentation, a good presentation, two nights of karaoke, and a handful of nights where one more hour out would’ve meant seeing a sunrise.

I’m done, I’m outta here. Until next week when writing once again begins on US soil, Dave out.

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damn you soda popinski

Duck and move! Duck and move!.
Monday in Taiwan and it was time for a “shift-change.” Most of the crew from last week took off and a new crew came in this weekend. Anthony’s here, and we already did some tromping around the city, some good eatin’, and some cocktailin’ at the hotel bar.

Honestly, and not to brag or anything but, I’ve been living like a king this past week. Nay, not of my own doing – these country just treats you like one. They open doors, pour drinks, wish you good evenering and good afternoorn, it’s totally awesome. The other night I was lounging on a plush couch with my legs spread wide in a I’m-all-man pose, drinking champagne while house beats rumbled from the ceiling and waitresses called me “boss.” I handed out business cards at 3am to other “industry” types in some crazy dance club. In some ways I love it here, but I am pretty ready to go home.

The other day I went to the local computer market (a two story “mall” that’s bursting at the seams with computer and electronics equipment), and bought a better controller for the anticipated Zelda64 marathon that will be my flight home. It’s smaller, more accurate, and the force-feedback works. It should make Zelda’n much more better, and more force-feedbacky. I haven’t had much time to play it lately though, as we’ve been busy running around the city visiting this customer and that customer. We did, however, get together in the hotel bar the other night, all with our laptops, and have a marathon NES session. We played Tyson’s Punch Out! for like four hours, just sitting in a corner drinking beer and trying to beat Soda Popinksi. It was awesome, once the crew saw me playing some old NES they all wanted them. Nerds to the bone man, how embarrassing.

Anyway, today is kind of a “free day” where we had some time to come into the office and work instead of being carted around the city by some maniacal van driver. Pat got in early this morning so I’m actually writing now as I watch him present his material to some customers. For me, tomorrow is the big presentation day – thinking about 200 people per class and I’m doing two pretty much back to back. I’ve been working on my material and trying to bone up for questions. Hoping it all goes well. Then we do the crazy two-customer-a-day days on Wednesday and Thursday, and get Friday off before we fly out Saturday morning. I can already tell it’s gonna go faaaast.

So, you know, usually when I go to Taiwan I write all about the crazy junk I eat. Well, I think I must’ve gotten used to what was once “crazy,” because the urge to write about food hasn’t struck me this time. I mean sure, I have eaten some interesting stuff on this trip, standard fare really: octopus, fish eyes, shark fin, coagulated pork blood, etc. We didn’t, however, order the “fried intestinal tract” or “stir fried chicken testicles.” No crap man, they eat everything over here! Oh, and we went to Hooters! Hooters in Taiwan y’allz? yeah, uh-huh. We took to calling it “Hoot” since the “ers” part was actually on the back of the shirt – these women may be hot but they ain’t fillin’ out no Hooters tee. Not only that, but Hooters Taiwan don’t be compromisin’ y’all – sure they have wings, but they also have all manner of cooked undersea-life goodness. I actually stole a menu that had some pictures of the waitresses, including ours, I’ll post it tomorrow if I can remember.

Well, that’s it for me. Huh? Still hard-up for some more quality reading? Check out Ben’s site then, he’s been updating more regularly and even posting little web-narratives punctuated by pictures which are teetering dangerously close to the edge of blogdom. The kayak and Advantage stories are good, so quit being such a pussy and check ’em out already.

OK, I gotta run? Pat just got in today and wants me to show him where the hookers from last week’s story work. Dave out.

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take that Dodongo

Back in the F-L-A!
First off, thanks, readers, for the comments on yesterday’s blog. Made the effort all the more worth it.

Apparently all this rain the past few days is because there’s a typhoon churning off the coast of the island. I thought I left my days of tropical-weather-tracking behind me when I moved out of Florida. It’s OK though, it seems it’ll pass us by doing nothing more than giving a good storm or two. I mean, with the humidity here it might as well be raining everyday anyway. The eye is set to pass just offshore of Northern Taiwan, which is right where we are. Anyway, kinda nice to have a Florida-esque thunderstorm raging vainly against my open hotel window while I sleep – I’ve always dug being inside while the elements thrash outside, somehow gives me feeling of power or whatever. Like, try as is may, it can’t put forth enough effort to overcome the effort that man put into the shelter which houses me. We win: human engineering 1, weather 0. I say that now, when this week alone the earth and sky have so far teamed against me in both an earthquake and now typhoon. Damn, does Taiwan have volcanoes?

My trip to Taiwan so far has been filled with omen. OK, not “filled” with omen, but at least containing some omen. I’m not sure what it all means yet, but if one of you four who read this are armchair numerologists – get back to me with your interpretation. See, when I checked into the hotel – I got room number 1111. Now, I thought that was kinda cool – and immediately came up with some good jokes about how I’m all “number one” or something. Since then, the number one is all over my trip. Every time I take a cab ride, the total is spot on 100NT? each time for four separate rides. When we go to customers to present, we sometimes get temp badges. I didn’t check on the 1st day, but yesterday my badge was number 111. Is that crazy or what? I checked my flights back, and none of them are all ones – so I take that to either mean they will end in a fiery crash into the sea, or something? at least.

I skipped dinner last night, unintentionally, heading up to my room for a “nap” after a Boddington’s with the boys in the hotel bar. I hit the bed around 8pm and didn’t wake up until the typhoon loudly hurled rain into my window around 1am. I missed a phone call and a knock on the door, I think the 4am bedtime the night prior really sapped me. Anyway, I ended up getting about eleven hours of sleep – which I think is the main contributing factor to how energized and well I feel now. I even managed to wake up early enough to give myself some time to play a little Zelda64 before breakfast (I’m so freakin’ addicted, I totally just liberated Dodongo’s cave on Death Mountain and I’m kicking butt – I’m actually looking forward to a possible 10hr of uninterrupted playing time on the flight home). We were slated to head to some club which is infamous for it’s Wednesday night “ladies night,” but I sacked it instead. I’ll be here next Wednesday anyway, so I can scam the Taiwan-tang then if need be.

I gotta say, I look pretty awesome in some dress clothes. I mean, I’m still fat and whatnot – but I clean up OK. This morning I made sure to ask Sharaun if my intended shirt/pants combo was legal: blue shirt and black pants. It seems it would be legal, but dependant on what shade of blue the shirt was. I described it as light to medium blue, at which point she blessed the ensemble (seems dark blue and black won’t work). So anyway, I’m sitting here, looking dapper as all get out, ready to wow these dudes with my public speaking skillz. It’s good to be able to talk to Sharaun each morning and run my planned outfit by her, since apparently I’m totally incapable of knowing what “goes.” It’s OK though, because with her to rebuff me as an “idiot” for even suggesting dark blue and black, I don’t have to worry about it.

I’m getting tired of presenting the same thing over and over again. Tired of the forced laughs and smiles and feigned interest in things. At least next week I’m presenting some different material to a semi-different audience, maybe that’ll be enough to keep me awake. At our first meeting today, our audience sucked – eight presenters to three attendees. Three attnedees? For most of the previous sessions we had a pretty good turnout. Sometimes I wish I could just chill at the hotel or bum around the city instead. Owell.

If you guys wanna call Hammertime, the featured guest of yesterday’s entry, her international number (I think all Taiwanese hookers who are worth their salt have international numbers) is: 886955863197. ‘Night y’allz, Dave out.

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hammertime

No sex?
Taiwan. Again. I’ll write today’s entry in the style of “5th grade essay.” Intro paragraph over.

Of Taiwanese Hookers and Hundred-Dollar Grape Juice
An Essay by Dave

One day when I was in Taiwan last night, me and some buds (poor grammar intentional) just wanted to go have a good time. We went to some food, where I ate a fish head, tail, and even eyeballs! After the meal, all my friends and I decided we should to go the big street market to look for some things to buy. I like the big street market very much, mostly the booths that sell boiled animal entrails skewered on sticks because they are funny and gross to me. I try not to laugh, because this is this man’s profession to sell this gross stuff! Anyway, we get many good jokes from the big street market, and are always giggling at the stinky smells that are all over in the air and on the people. Probably the most funny are the shirts by GIOGIO ARAMNI and shoes by PUWA.

After shopping at the market, I ended up buying a cheap ballcap and some of my favorite cologne (probably fake like everything here). Now my friends and I are getting tired of the crowded stinky marketplace, and the hot weather is making us sweat. Someone says, “Let’s go to where they have karaoke!” and the rest of the crew says, “Yes!” We climb in taxis and ask for a good place for “singing, drinks, and pretty girls.” The first place we go is guarded by several yucky men with small headphones in their ears. The yucky men are very happy to see us and all jump up to lead us upstairs. Soon, we hear that this kind of special karaoke is very expensive, almost $70USD per hour, per person. I bet the reason for this is that it’s not really karaoke at all, it’s mostly $70 for the sex that you can have with women while you karaoke. Since we are not really looking for sex right now, we move along trying to find a more better karaoke. Surprise! We are in the part of town where everything comes with sex! Everywhere we go there are more yucky men grabbing arms and saying “very happy ending!!” I think we should go to a new place, so we get in another taxi.

This time we make it more clear, “karaoke, drinks, girls, and no sex.” “Hmmm…” thinks the Taiwanese man.. “… no sex?” It seems maybe this kind of karaoke doesn’t exist. But our driver was very cool and young with a ponytail and emo glasses, so he suggests a better place. It’s a bar, says the driver, where girls can come sit and talk to you while your drink beer – and guess what, no sex! We think, “This sounds great!” and start going. We arrive at the intersection of a couple small alleys, and there are bars everywhere! All the bars have some women standing outside saying things like, “Come have beer here, only $100NT and we are the best!” The first bar we go to is very normal, with many pretty girls who flirt with us from behind the bar. We stay for a beer and then decide maybe we should look around some more of the bars. I think this is where the idea went wrong, because we should have stayed at the normal bar.

As we walk down the street, some not-pretty girl runs up to me to bring me to her bar (the best bar, of course). She has some teeth, and some are not in the right places where teeth should be. Eventually, we do go into Megan’s bar (Megan is her name, she told me already). As soon as we sit down, we realize this is a special bar. For each of us guys, one girl comes and sits next to us. Our beer comes to the table, and the girls start to talk to us about all kinds of boring things! Soon, they ask for a drink – and we decide we will buy them a round. Megan, my girl, the one with the teeth, leaves and brings back three very small silver cups with some dark red wine or other liquor for the three girls. We also have Candy who is from Vietnam and is actually very pretty, and some other girl who I think has the same dentist as my girl Megan – none. To be funny, we call my girl, Megan, “Hammertime” because it looks like someone took a hammer to her grill. Don’t worry, it’s OK because she has no idea what this means – thankfully words like “gap-toothed” and “death-breath” aren’t understood by our new friends.

Soon, the girls finish their thimbles of drink, and ask for another round. We agree, since by now we are having a great time calling them names to their smiling faces and pretending to be different people who are very important inventors from Australia and the Himalayas, again, this is all OK because they barely know what we are saying so who’s going to tell them we don’t travel the world in yachts? One time, a smart friend of mine finally asks the girls how much their tiny drinks are making us spend. His girl, who has a ugly-tie with my girl, says that we are paying $400NT for each little drink. My smart friend maths-out that this means these few drops of stuff are almost $15USD each! Wow!, we wonder what this surely strong liquor is, and ask if we can taste it to find out why it’s so good. Now guess what? The secret comes out! It’s only grape juice! The girls drink tiny drinks of grape juice for $15USD each and pretend to get drunk while we really do get drunk. What a good business idea! By the time we left we were into that bar for $5000NT, over one-hundred bucks…

By now all the formalities of this social visit are over, and our troop of ladies are paying very good attention to us by holding our hands, and touching our shoulders, chest, and even thighs! I keep having to move around and stand up for no reason to avoid Hammertime’s wandering hands and dragon-breath. To me, it’s past time to go. Soon these women ask what room we are in at the hotel, we give room numbers of our other friends who decided not to come out with us, because we think that would be a hilarious joke on them. The whores give us their cellphone numbers just in case we want to call them while we’re in town, we can call for anything – but mostly sex. By now we’re glad we all have fake names and live in remote locations across the world. Since we are all three co-presidents of our big company, we decide we better leave and get some rest before making all our “inventions” tomorrow.

This is where the essay ends, but don’t worry one day I will write about the after-party. For now thought, it’s almost time for my turn up in front of these customers – presenting to a bunch of people who probably catch only about 60% of what I’m saying. No worries, no name-calling here.

Dave out.

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I shaved for you

Mmmm... beetlenut.
Taiwan. Again. Sitting here in the offices of one of our customers while another member of our traveling marketing troop presents up front. Marketing always gets to talk before engineering, it’s just the way it goes. Figured it’s as good a time as any to get a quick entry in. I was planning to write last night but I had my great “catch-up” sleep. You know, that night where you sleep like a corpse after traveling to a 15hr+ timezone. So far though, it’s been good. Yummy food, decent beer, and ridicu-hot Florida-esque weather. Yay Taiwan.

For the flight over here, I thought I’d try something a little different this time. Usually, I just try and sleep as much as possible, and get through the 10hr trip with only a few crazy dreams and some bedhead. This time, I took a little while to load my laptop with both a classic NES emulator and a N64 emulator, along with a bunch of ROMs. I configured a cheap Wal Mart controller for the emulators, and boom – access to hundreds of old-school Nintendo games for the flight. Just like 5th grade again. Anyway, I started playing Zelda64 for the Nintendo64, which came out when I was college. Holy crap, I am now hopelessly addicted to this game. I played for nearly six hours on the plane and another couple in the hotel that night. And I find myself finding excuses to head up to the room for an hour and get some Zelda in. Hopefully I won’t beat it before I leave here so I can have something to play on the flight back.

The more I come to Taiwan, the more comfortable I am here. I guess it just comes with a sense of familiarity, you know, getting used to you surroundings and the way things work. On Saturday we took the public transit (MRT) downtown to poke around, and it was no problem having done it before – even for a couple of white boys who don’t speak the language. We headed down to Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world, and did some shopping. I hate shopping, but I love people-watching, especially in a foreign country, so it was OK. We’ve got a really good group of engineers and marketing brothers out here this time, so going out is always enjoyable no matter where we go.

Changing subjects, I was thinking before I left about what it’s going to be like when the backyard is finally done. I mean done like done, done like I can lay out a hammock and look around the backyard while relaxed – instead of spotting a million little projects that still need to be done. That backyard has consumed my spare time like nothing else before, I think of it all the time. It’s been a monumental project that I’ve given a lot of sweat and muscle too, and I’ll kind of be sad to see it go. Although, it will be nice to have the option of yardwork-less weekends and evenings again.

The “desert island” beard I was growing is gone. That’s right, in preparation for my trip, I mowed my face before leaving the other night after coming in from the yard. I had been planning to keep the shaggy unkempt mess as a vie for some respect while in Taiwan. See, at one point while my Taiwanese customers were here in the states, and I had neglected my shaving as I so often do, they told me I looked “much more handsome” with the “beard.” So, I started growing a “desert island” beard – a beard which is purposely unmanaged and allowed to grow wild. Only problem is, my beard tends to want to “connect” to my chest hair, which isn’t all that flattering. That and, my beard isn’t really that conventional, I don’t grow a single hair in the “soul patch” or moustache areas – smooth as a baby’s butt. Which makes for a beard that’s pretty unbalanced in favor of the neck, making my lack of chin all the more pronounced. Owell, it’s gone now.

As much as I can, I’m going to try and write each day while I’m here. It’s kinda hard, what with work each day and being addicted to Zelda64 in my free time, but y’know, I’m dedicated here folks. I need to keep my three or four readers abreast on what’s going. Until tomorrow, or whatever, Dave out.

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seriously, for real?

Kakhi, beige, what the?!
This morning I woke up and it was overcast outside. The first time in a long while I don’t remember waking up to the sun. Not only that, it was cool outside. I stepped out into the morning and smelled Fall on the air. I know it’s premature, but it got me so excited for the coming of my favorite season. I could almost smell Halloween night, and I was pumped.

With the Taiwan trip coming up fast this Friday, I’m in a furious rush to get various things done and squared before I leave. This activity burst led to me having a day of unprecedented productivity yesterday. I mowed the lawn and had some more mulch and decomposed-granite delivered, all on my lunch hour. Dropped my new slacks off to be hemmed, and filled some prescriptions so I won’t die from my obscure disease while overseas. It was the kind of day I love, where I’m driven harder each time I tick something off the “to do” list, feeling more accomplished with each one. The kind of day where, when I lay down in bed at night, I feel productive.

Speaking of my various outings today: When I took my regular-man’s pants to be hemmed and magically transformed into tall-fat-man-with-ridiculously-short-legs pants, I was giving instructions to the woman behind the counter. “Both the black and khaki pair need two inches off the bottom, the navy-blue pair needs three.” “Oh,” said the woman, “I better not call them ‘khaki,’ the woman who does the alterations is Korean and might not know what that word means. I’ll call them ‘beige.'” OK, I’m thinking, why not get kindergarten on her ass and just call them “brown?” I mean, just how English-deficient is the Korean seamstress? Will she be able to interpret the “two inches” part or do we need to draw a picture or send a piece of string or something?

The other day, I was surfing around reading up on death metal. I don’t know why, I’m certainly not a fan of death metal or anything – but I am slightly fascinated with the devotion people have to an “art form” which to me sounds like pure shite. I mean, some of the website music samples for the “best” black/death/grindcore bands are hilarious. And then there’s the complete seriousness with which websites review these albums. I mean we’re talking about what are, on average, two-minute “compositions” comprised of rapid-fire bassdrum pounding, heavily distorted guitar crunching, and some dude puking into a microphone for lyrics. I mean seriously, you gotta read some of these reviews. They make absolutely no sense. In a review of Massacara’s album “Enjoy the Violence,” the reviewer pens the following gibberish:

Feral vocals slash across pounding rhythm carrying direct motifs of revolving riffs which in inversion or recombination transfer the listener through Wagnerian visual illustration in sound: shaping harmonic space in collage of juxtapositions to demonstrate change, allowing basic poetic ideas to expand into song structure conveying not catharsis but logical realization within a context where catharsis is an event of listener decision.

What the hell?! Did he even say anything? If you didn’t notice, that’s one sentence. And I’m not entirely sure, but I think there may have been a comparison drawn between the classical composer Wagner and this band Massacara. Really, there’s page upon page filled with these reviews, and I’m starting to think not a single one of them says a damn thing. Check it:

From this modal playing framing atonal song development is a dying Baroque gasp given ferocity by the gutter logicianship of death metal in a rising force of logic within the decaying realm, a negative truth within a larger existential conception which can never be reconciled with the forces of Judeo-Christian morality; its expression (cause and effect as self-inventing forms of calculation and change) brings to mind the ancients alongside the more recent philosophical efforts in Nietzsche and Heidegger to replace morality with a primal, natural valuation of a constantly changing aesthetic landscape with unaltering core values, as seen is the modern time.

Oh. My. Word. What the eff is this dude talking about?! Is there a thought buried in that mess? Again, that’s one sentence. Guys, the “songs” on these albums have titles like “Vomited Anal Tract,” “Orgiastic Disembowelment,” and “Feast On Dismembered Carnage,” and I’m seeing references to Nietzsche and Wagner? Are these people serious? I mean, that’s a whole dictionary’s worth of words and I swear they said nothing. Somebody boil it down for me, gimme a bulleted list or something. Crap, it’s too hilarious.

OK, well, I’m outta here. I’ve gotta take care of some spots of crabgrass I noticed while mowing yesterday. I mean, what is this stuff, magic? I mowed a week ago and there wasn’t a dang sign of it, it was nonexistent. Now, a mere week later, it’s snaking around in at least six different outcroppings. Personally, I think a jealous neighbor may have thrown some clippings in my yard or something. No worries, I’ll take that shit out – for good.

Dave out.