ninja!

back to business. the cruel joke in all of this is that while yahoo! maintains their laid-back casual attitude throughout their asian affiliates, they expect you to be dutifully attired in full suit and tie as is standard for doing business in the region. bastards!

at night the sales team took us out to dinner at the ninja restaurant. what’s the ninja restaurant, you ask? why of course, it’s the restaurant that’s run entirely by ninjas! after entering a nondescript door, we entered a small wooden room with a hostess. she called a ninja, who appeared out of a secret door to lead us through another secret door to our table, through catacombs and secret ninja corridors, complete with hidden bridge and ninja traps! and then we were served ninja food ordered off of ninja menus, and drank ninja drinks while being entertained by ninja magicians performing ninja magic.

it was ninjalicious.

tokyo a go go

after all that running around, it’s nice to have a weekend off in tokyo. it’s extra nice to be able to be in tokyo if someone else is footing the bill. it’s nicest of all not to have to get up at 4am to catch a flight to the next country on your itinerary.

spending most of the day just getting to narita and then into tokyo and setting up in the hotel, we head out to akihabara, the famed “electric light city” consumer electronics district. fun to see all the neon lights from the stores, and even though a lot of shops had closed for the night by the time we got there, my sales rep was able to get a pair of fancy headphones, which was exactly what he was looking for.

but what else to see? tokyo is just so huge and rich and has so many things to do, how do you choose with just a scant day+ of recreation time? i wanted to hit the ghibli museum to see the wonderful world of miyazaki. if nothing else, how about the life-size catbus? alas, you need to buy tickets in advance, and they’re sold out for three months. no totoro for me.

instead we hit shibuya, one of the main shopping districts. waste a lot of time at the shibuya HMV, where i spend a couple hours listening to japanese jazz and hip-hop and experimental electronica. we head over to loft to pick up some other stuff, and then waste a couple of hours trying to find the yodobashi camera shop. as it turns out, it’s actually in shinjuku not shibuya, which it does state under the listing, but the map has it marked as being in shibuya. BAD lonely planet!

after that i head over to harajuku, where all the kids hang out. it’s really a sight to see, with all the gothic lolita girls hanging out with their elaborate costumes. i browse through the clothings stores for a while, but decide that i’m still not down for the $200 t-shirt, no matter what country it’s from, and end up in the huge toy store for a couple of hours, drooling over things like batman legos and gamera micronauts.

finally i hit the muji flagship store, where i have to resist buying everything. although i admit i’m tempted by the muji earthquake kit. and the muji washing machine. and the muji flat travel kit. mmmm muji.

shanghai dang

finally we dart directly across into china, after carefully skirting the coast on our flights to and from taipei. descending into shanghai you see swarms of black empty container ships, floating along like so many slow moving tadpoles.

i have to admit that i had a brief flash of paranoia that they were going to nab me at immigration, scanning my passport and then suddenly asking, “aren’t you the son of that taiwanese independence author and columnist?” and then me having to make a mad dash back to the plane, screaming “TAIWAN IS NOT PART OF CHINA!” eventually being dragged down by legions of immigration officials, and then spending the rest of my days in some little cell making cheap mobile phone car chargers. this did not actually happen, unsurprisingly. however, they do have a whole separate immigration line and booth for questioning of taiwanese nationals.

promptly met by the local sales team, they packed us into a minivan and whisked us out to hangzou, where alibaba is located. (alibaba is a hugely successful chinese b2b in which yahoo! china has a minority stake.) we were on a pretty tight schedule, as we had just enough time to make the two hour drive and then grab some food before rushing in. they picked KFC, perhaps because they thought it would be more palatable to us fat americans? anyhow, why not? let’s just get the whole bird flu thing over with right away! the odd thing about this was that on this trip i’ve been reading murakami’s kafka on the shore, and had just gotten to the part where colonel sanders shows up as a pimp. weird. this also did not actually happen (to me). as for the meeting itself, i suppose it went all right, but it’s a little hard to tell. unlike the korea and japan teams, there were a lot of people there and it’s not clear how much they actually understood. thank goodness the local engineer was there to help translate and clarify.

after that, a nice dinner on the shore of west lake, a big vacation/tourist spot in hangzou. especially tasty were the octopus jerky. not so crazy about the mango with mayonnaise, though. then the long drive back, which i mostly slept through. i’m not sure why we didn’t just fly into hangzou from hong kong, as this would have saved four hours of my life. on the other hand, we got to experience shanghai, which is maybe the fourth largest city in the world? it’s fricking huge. unlike seoul which seemed more spread out, it’s very dense and high and just looks huge. or maybe it was the fact that we got put up in the jw marriot tomorrow square, which has it’s lobby on the 38th floor and actual rooms far above. yes, your ears pop just going to check into the hotel.

the one small perk to this trip is that we keep having our rooms upgraded because we’re staying in these places for the first time. from the suite in seoul to being on the club level in taipei to a corner room on the 58th floor in shanghai, it keeps getting fancier and better. maybe if i got to stay for more than eight hours at a time i could actually appreciate it.

despite not getting to the hotel until 10pm, i decided to venture out and walk around shanghai a little, even though we need to leave at six tomorrow morning in order to make our tokyo flight. i eventually find this large outdoor pedestrian mall a few blocks from the hotel right in downtown shanghai, where people are walking around even though everything’s pretty much shut down since it’s after midnight. i was a little pleased at the fact that i could walk around relatively unmolested, and not stick out like a foreigner. until i kept getting hit up by people every few feet to see if i wanted a hooker. it was funny a couple of times, but then just turned annoying after the next dozen people harassing me. so much for being unmolested. ah well, perhaps i should have worn the wife-beater and flip-flops. or maybe i do look too american, no matter what.

at least i wasn’t approached by colonel sanders. although if i was, who knows what would have happened?

the longest day in the world

good lord.

it’s a little after 3am and i’m up already. getting ready to catch our 4am limo to the airport for our 6:30 flight to hong kong, and then afer an hour layover, a quick flight to shanghai. then a two (possibly three?) hour drive down to hangzou, a meeting for an hour or two, and then back to shanghai for another possible meeting.

and you wonder why i feel more and more stupid as this trip goes on.

hopefully i can make it through everything. although there’s a distinct possibility that i’m not actually up now, i’m actually sleeping, and i’m going to miss my plane in a few hours. that’s the beauty of scheduled posting: who knows what the reality is?

i’m here, and i can’t even really tell you.

(not) back in taiwan

got up at 5am in order to make the 6:30 limo to the airport for our 9:35 flight to taipei. made it all in plenty of time in the pouring pouring rain, only to find out that the flight was delayed for over an hour. eventually we got on the plane, only to sit there on the tarmac while they slooowly moved people over from the plane on our right, which was having mechanical trouble, ending up in taipei THREE HOURS LATE. say what you want about united being a crappy airline to fly, especially in asia, but at least they didn’t make us miss our meeting completely like cathay pacific did. although i do have to admit that the stewardesses are much cuter, but that’s of little consolation, business-wise.

fortunately the taipei team were able to reschedule our meetings for 4:30 and beyond, and all ended up well.

oddly enough, the travel advisory is very alarmist when talking about taiwan:

what the hell? i never worried about the tap water when i was here before. i’m positive i used it to brush my teeth, and lord knows that i’ve had ice before. but maybe i’ve got native genetic super-immunity.

i love (not) being back in taiwan. sure, it’s a little dirtier and scrungier in parts, but i understand it and get it. plus, how can i not feel a little nostalgic for my parents’ homeland? and being able to make out some of what people say when they do end up speaking taiwanese instead of mandarin is a nice plus. zooming around the city, i both laugh at the crazy seemingly reckless driving and also rationalize that perhaps my own prelediction for crazy (and crazier as i get older) swerving around to avoid traffic is not simplly impatience but instead a proud taiwanese trait.

i’m suddenly and oddly nationalistic here, for example looking at the taiwan 101 tower with a strange amount of pride. i ask the local rep if he’s been in it, and he says no, he doesn’t think it’s worth the $15 admission fee. i ask, “but isn’t that worth being in the tallest building in the world?” “what’s the big deal?” he says. “we fly in airplanes all the time, and they go much higher than that. 30,000 feet!” hard to argue with that.

it is hot and oh so humid here. my sales rep asks the local engineer if it’s always this bad, and he says, “no, it’s much better today! it’s always better right after a typhoon comes through.” this is why i kept telling him that there are better times of the year to visit asia, but what do *i* know?

i see the voicemail message from my mom yesterday, and realize that i forgot to call her before i left, to try to avoid this very situation: her expecting a call back when i won’t be back home for another week or so. it’s one thing to go to taiwan and not tell my parents; is it extra wrong to call them from taiwan and pretend i’m not here?

barber pole dances

things i’ve learned about seoul:

1. it’s one of the largest cities in the world (10million+). only recently supplanted by mumbai, sao paulo, and perhaps shangai.
2. you can get GbE internet to the home. for $25/month.
3. but who needs that when you can get hdtv to your phone, allowing you to watch tv on the subway?
4. “korea is a man’s fantasyland”. so says anthony, the local sales rep. despite the customs form asking if you’re bringing in pornography, apparently korea itself is not so puritan. prostitution is rampant. from the seoul times:

anthony notes that while you can go to the barber pole places, the quality is “not that good”. he says that an alternative are karaoke clubs, which vary depending on which country you’re in. in japan the girls come and just sing with you. in korea, they come, sing, and drink, and you can touch them. and in china, they come, sing with you, have drinks with you, and then you can sleep with them.

see all this information i’m learning out here? it’s cultural exchange, man.

to seoul

it’s 10:41p in seoul. on tuesday. i’ve been up for hours and hours and hours, part of my plan to have a good night’s sleep and instantly wake up on korean time. this is where all of my training with needless all-nighters comes in to play!

at the airport this morning we were swarmed by boy scouts. but alas, it turns out they were not also headed for seoul. perhaps the hiking is not so good along the 38th parallel?

12 hours is a long time to be on an airplane. during that time, pretty much everything dies on you, such as:

• laptop battery (after six episodes of the thick of it)
  
• ipod battery (thank goodness for nano in reserve)
  
• spirit of adventure
  
• any sensation in arse
  
• love of humanity

and then there you are, in culturally hot hot HOTT south korea, where all the hip asian culture is being churned out like a huge play-doh factory of soap operas and hip-hop groups. alas, it so far just looks overcast and humid. but i’m sure that asian boy bands are just hiding around the corner, ready to pop out into song…

(btw, at the hotel fancy buffet, the beef knee, mashed pumpkin, and the jellyfish were good, but the healthy snail was unmemorable).

great last minute things

dc comics superhero stamps are out at your local post office. sweet. although: plastic man? really?

check out mike mignola’s pilot for the amazing screw-on head on sci-fi channel this thursday, or if you can’t wait, just watch it online. voiced by paul giamatti with david hyde pierce:

frickin’ hi-larious. it’s great.

finally thanks to davee for pointing out all those adicolor shorts, presumably made for adidas’ adicolor sneakers. check out the links in my 5love on the right. (yes, that’s on the actual blog, you rss leeches! on the main page! why do i even bother?)

monster house!

pretty positive review from nytimes:

so go see it! hmc worked on it and is excited about it. unlike her current project, mimzy, which she is decidedly unexcited about. and very unlike polar express, which may have ruined both trains and christmas for her forever.

five things i learned from aeon flux: the movie

1. great comics/cartoons based on stylized meaningless sexualized violence make for shitty live action hollywood movies (see: tank girl)
2. charlize theron, while by every standard extremely beautiful and thin, still looks too fat for aeon. where’s milla?
3. what the hell is frances macdormand doing in this movie? OR sadly, every actor has their price.
4. anime hair always looks bad in real life.
5. where’s the licking? NOT ENOUGH LICKING.

i do, however, have to give props for them doing the “catch the fly with the eyelash” thing. cool. however, that happens in the first minute, so the rest is pretty much crap.

thievery

i decided that the fp campout is out. it’s just too much. i could maybe have packed up and been ready for my trip by tonight, or been packed up and ready to take hmc to the fp campout by tonight, but not both. once i let this go, everything turned into a much more manageable amount of tasks, and i’m much calmer now.

as a consolation, i went out to the thievery corporation show last night, which was not exactly where i thought it was. when i finally found it in that warehouse thing across from rei, i can see why they claimed that this was there largest solo performance so far in the us. however, larger is not better. huge swath of people, aimlessly milling about and swaying around to downtempo, but worst off was the acoustics of the sfdc concourse, which are like listening to the thievery corporation play a concert through your neighbor’s walls. except that they’re actually playing several apartments down the hall. on the first floor. and all they’ve got is one subwoofer.

everything was all muddy and unpleasant, and yet while i was leaving, everyone was raving about how fantastic that was. was i at the same concert? do they not ever get out much? or maybe i was still so stressed out i couldn’t enjoy anything.

but i’m much better now. honest.

space invaders

this is awesome. live action space invaders. if class was this cool when i went to school, maybe i would have stayed awake long enough to learn something.

revisionist history

bleargh.

for the better part of the day, the entire website reverted to last week. apparently they moved my domain to a different server, which means they did a backup and then restored to a newer faster box.

except that i didn’t know, so all the posts i did between the backup and the restore suddenly vanished, along with various emails disappearing/reappearing all day long.

which had the end effect of driving me INSANE. as if i need help with that right now. honestly.

and just when i thought it was all lost, they’re magically back.

or maybe i’m insane again. or hallucinated the whole thing? this is the sound of me going silently crazy.

ebb12

ok, it’s finally done and on it’s way to all relevant parties. i’m not really sure what made this one take so long, as i had the bulk of the mix done for over a year now. i suppose something wasn’t quite right, so i’ve been tweaking or at least waiting for the right thing to happen, so now it’s all good.

and then there were the production problems: i was going to mix live on the decks and the mixer, but then when i did it this time the levels were all wonky and my high end sort of vanished, which i now attribute to my digitizer perhaps being set to ‘phono’ instead of ‘line in’. and then i went back to digital tweaking, did it several different ways with different programs, finally settling on audacity for the mixing/placement/editing, and then using nero to drop indexes so i don’t have to cut it apart manually, which is a HUGE relief.

not that you guys really give a shit. it’s on it’s way, so look for it in the mail. if you still don’t have any idea what i’m talking about, never mind. and if you guess you do and you want one, just let me know.

you just have to pick “pr0n” or “tron”.

how soon?

today i learned that my asia trip has suddenly expanded to include taiwan and korea. which means that i suddenly am leaving next monday (flying to seoul, then taiwan, then shanghai via hong kong, then tokyo, then hawaii). oh, great. yeah, of course i’m ready. sure… not that i haven’t quite finished unpacking from the playa a few weeks ago or anything.

this ensures that i can’t tell my rents about the asia trip, as they’d kill me if i went all the way to taiwan and didn’t stop to see any of my relatives, seeing as i haven’t been back there for about 14 years.

this also conveniently puts a lot of things into question: do i really go to the fp campout this weekend if i’m leaving for a two week trip the day after i’d get back? is hmc going to be able to make it to hawaii? how am i supposed to pack for both a business trip and a beach resort vacation? will i be able to resist shouting “TAIWAN IS BETTER!!” while in china?

if i never make it out, i guess you’ll know.

birthdays and weddings

woke up ridiculously early to fly down to lost angels for hmc’s birthday yesterday, and then we went out with a bunch of her friends to the hollywood bowl for a nice picnic under the stars, complete with fado and fireworks! quite lovely and it was wonderful to see everyone come out for the festivities. the fado was sung by mariza in her hollywood bowl debut, although the rest of the music was just the hollywood bowl orchestra playing soundtrack music from around the mediterranean, which was comparatively cheesy. at one point, however, they played the music from casablanca, and brought out the actual piano from the movie for the first time in public, which was pretty cool. and tinier than you think.

the next day we trekked down to HOT HOT HOT 102° mission viejo for our cousin’s wedding. which was fine, but maybe (unsurprisingly) the whitest wedding i’ve been to since, uh, cousin shauna’s wedding last year. i wish they would hand out catholic cheat sheets for these things, because i’m not up on all the proper call and response parts (“and also with YOU!”) and when to stand or kneel or do the hokey pokey or what. the reception was lovely except for all the christian rock music, especially the odd creepy christian incest-ish song they played during the father-daughter dance:

“You know how much I love you daddy,
But if you don’t mind,
I’m only going to kiss you on
the cheek this time.”

uh, WHAT? caitlin and i did double takes, trying to figure if we actually heard that right or not.

all in all it wasn’t terrible, although it did make me miss our hippy cult campout for the first time ever. not that i’m bitter or anything. not to mention the distinct lack of any naked chicks or hot tubs. or good music.

did i mention that i’m not bitter?

movie reviews: the formula!

in the interest of time and me actually getting to packing for this weekend, instead of spouting thoughts on the five movies i saw in three days last weekend, i’ll let javi summarize them using his brilliant basic movie review formula. for example:

aside from that, is anyone else really disturbed by all these trailers for this barnyard movie? and can someone explain to me why all these MALE COWS HAVE UDDERS? AM I MISSING SOMETHING HERE?

no gooooooal?

in honor of today’s world cup final (allez france!), i bring you this article from the nytimes:

superman returns reruns

have you seen it? have you seen it? have you seen it? didja love it? didja love it? didja love it?

me neither. (warning: mild rant ahead.)

first off, what’s with the part-time 3-d imax? either pay the bucks to make it all 3-d, or just don’t bother and let me watch the movie on that big imax screen, and maybe just digitally enhance it like they did with batman begins. what’s really annoying is to have to watch out for the green flashing glasses symbol that lets you know to put on your glasses, and then realize later that you missed the brief RED flashing glasses symbol that told you to take them back off because they didn’t want you to watch people talk in 3-d. it ended up being distracting and kind of cheesy, like some cheap 50’s effect. or like the 3-d movies on “monster chiller horror theatre” from sctv.

secondly, when did richard donner’s ‘78 version of superman become the BEST MOVIE EVER? i understand nostalgia and i understand homage, but if you’re not going to even do anything new in terms of visual style or casting or acting, then why even make the fucking movie? can you imagine being the art director on this thing?

you: so, what do you want this to look like?
bryan singer: well, you know the original superman movie? i want it to look exactly like that. except with clothes from today. and shinier.
you: uhhhh… great. why do you need me again?

sure, there are strict conventions that one must follow when making a superman movie otherwise fanboys around the world get their tights in a knot, but do we really need the fortress of solitude to look exactly like the old one? do we need an actor whose biggest trait is that he looks and acts exactly like christopher reeve? do we really need marlon brando again? and if so, as the new yorker says, “Why not bring back Terry Malloy, from “On the Waterfront,” mumbling reassurance from a bloodied mouth? Who wouldn’t take advice from Stanley Kowalski? Or Colonel Kurtz? One scene with him and even the Man of Steel would snap.”

is it just me, or did they manage to combine superman and superman 2 into one movie? minus general zod, they’ve crammed the “here is superman from another planet” plus the “superman gives it all up to do what he wants” with the “superman loses his powers and will the people love him or hate him after he comes back/regains them.” does this mean that this new sequel will combine 3 and 4, starring dave chapelle in the richard pryor role and jack black as nuclear man?

ultimately, i just don’t understand why they even made this movie. i know that superman’s difficult to do because of an inherent lack of conflict: he’s a literal perfect being, so there is not conflict. he’s always good, he’s always for what’s right. there’s no built in moral and ethical wrangling like you have with batman or the adolescent fumbling/guilt of spidey. the only conflict is whether we, the human race, will accept him as a perfect being or not.

but if that’s all they’ve got, didn’t we already see this before?

kung fu table tennis

competition and nausea

i can’t read anymore about big ben going to chicago. it’s making my stomach hurt and my head spin. suddenly, it seems like we gave up darko and carlos for nothing. and memo too!

and now i don’t know what to do with my big ben bobbleheads!

i’ve got to talk about something else. what better than the world of competitive eating?

i happened to catch the nathan’s famous hot dog eating competition on espn yesterday morning. i kid you not.

this was broadcast LIVE. on national tv. how can you NOT watch?

twenty people who qualified by competing on the hot dog eating circuit stepped up and were introduced one by one, with their vital stats displayed on screen, as well as their ifoce ranking. what’s that? it’s the international federation of competitive eating. (seriously. who knew?) and although hot dog is somehow the glamour event, the other contestants came with their respective titles in their specialty events. corned beef. key lime pie. hard boiled eggs. rhubarb pie. ribs. grilled cheese sandwiches. bratwurst. bologna. tamales. shoo-fly pie!

the contestants included the 60-year-old richard “the locust” lefevre (6lbs of spam from the can in 12 minutes), sonya “the black widow” thomas— the only woman and the #2 ranked eater in the world (65 hard boiled eggs in 6 minutes, 40 seconds, 46 dozen oysters in 10 minutes) who normally only eats one meal a day, bob shoudt— who is normally a vegetarian and only eats meat in competitions, and the hot rookie joey chestnut [i can’t make this up!] (6.25lbs tempura fried asparagus in 10 minutes, 47 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes).

although joey made it really close and it was neck and neck during the 12 minutes, with each grappling for the lead, in the end the legendary takeru kobayashi won again, with 53 3/4 hot dogs, breaking his own world record.

according to this foreign policy magazine interview with “competitive eating expert” george shea:

all in all, it was really exciting, stupid, and in many ways very disgusting. i may never eat again.

some selected ifoce records after the break:

more big ben aftermath

from espn insider:

nooooooooooooo

Wallace leaving Pistons to sign with Chicago

my wife went to the playa and all i got was this dirty t-shirt

how was going out to the playa for the wedding?

pretty great.

not easy, but pretty great. let’s skip the whole nightmare drama on saturday morning, for which a large part i blame hertz for being an hour and a half too slow to put my rental contract in my car. what’s the purpose of gold club if i have to wait in line and fuck my already tight schedule up?

we didn’t leave oakland until about 1pm (not our fault! we were relatively on time, for once) and after all the miscellanous stops as well as the horrific weekend outbound traffic, we arrived on the playa at antlerville at about 8:30 pm. god bless those handheld gps units.

fantastic things i forgot about being on the playa:

1. it’s just a crazy ass place. so wide and open, and yet almost so alien. there was a big lake on the west side of the playa, so people had to watch out for getting stuck in the mud, thus forcing an eastern approach to the camp.
   
2. in a lot of ways, it’s much better than at burning man. during bm you are always making judgements about what to do and to try and see, knowing that there’s ALWAYS TOO MUCH TO DO and that you’re missing something RIGHT NOW no matter what. here, there’s not that much to do, and not a lot going on except chilling, relaxing, and…
   
3. hot springs. since it’s not fenced off like bm, you’re free to drive around to the hot springs. i can’t even tell you how wonderful it feels to dip yourself in water after just a day in the desert.
   
4. my god, it’s full of stars. you forget how wonderful and beautiful and fantastic the sky looks when you can actually SEE it. not only the milky way, but how the galaxy twists and curls around in intricate little details, and of course the amazing constant twinkling of thousands of stars, shimmying back and forth. it’s just sublime.
   
5. crazy freeze dried food. we tried some of those meal-in-a-pouch things where you pour in some boiling water, stir, and then ten minutes later, voila! chicken enchilada! actually, surprisingly not bad. pretty damn tasty for food out on the playa.

less fantastic things about the playa:

1. oh, that damned sun. frying our tent such that it’s too hot to sleep by 9am.
   
2. oh, that damned wind. it was lovely and warm at night, but the winds kicked up something fierce. the first night was ok, but on the second day we tried to move around our shade structure (which we picked up from jank city. perhaps you’re familiar with it, out on the highway off of loser lane?), which consisted of a tarp set up diagonally off of the freestanding shade we had, and that worked well during the daytime, but in the late afternoon the shade structure turned into a surprisingly effective tent squasher, despite our attempts to slash it into oblivion (manual? they don’t provide manuals at jank city!). meanwhile, everyone who had bought a legitimate carport type structure from home depot remained annoyingly unmoved by the wind.
   
3. oh, that crazy aggro dog lady. sure, whoever the hell it was who kept pooping incorrectly into her portaloo was just wrong, but that still doesn’t excuse her fightiness.

the wedding itself was quite wonderful. christopher ended up in a nice looking tux complete with cummerbund and jaunty hat, and betty wore this cool crazy tulle type thing decorated with EL wire, which later turned out to be both furry on the inside and reversible. they performed it underneath the art piece that had precipitated their original meeting, and you had to walk through a simple labyrinth to enter, which provided a nice way of holding the space. very simple and lovely, really.

later in the evening, we drove over to camp dismal, which had teamed up with a couple of other camps to buy something like 900lb of fireworks. they had constructed this large faux wild west shootout, with complete fake buildings, and this huge arcade-style duck shoot, with ducks that glided by. with what? well, they gave you wooden rifle stocks, and then loaded them with roman candles, and you SHOT FIREWORKS at the ducks, and if you hit it, you lit a huge firework that went off upwards and then exploded straight down on top of everyone. fucking awesome.

this morning we got up, ate a little, hung out a little, soaked a bit at the springs, and then raced home in only 5 1/2 hours (much better without traffic).

was it worth it all? in itself, definitely. with all of the drama/trauma, still probably. am i glad we went? i think so, yes. much thanks and love to wanda for making things easier in so many ways.

you can't always get what you want

what to do this 4th of july holiday?

well, as of yesterday morning we were still undecided.

the options:
1. bruinslair for their summer celebration. lovely campout up in the woods with all the cubbies, swimmin’ holes, dj’s spinning fine music, and just a nice relaxing time all around.
2. wedding on the playa. harsher time out in space, but more important: instead of just kicking back and having fun, we would be journeying to witness our friends’ union ceremony.

hmc really wanted to go to the wedding, whereas it was somehow more peripheral to me somehow. hmc had talked to betty a few years back and gave her a good pep talk to keep hope alive when she was frustrated about whether it would ever happen or not, and lo and behold, the next thing you know she’s met christopher, and bing bang zoom, here we are, right? i do remember hanging out with betty at earthtones right after that and how happy and excited that she had met this fantastic artist out on the playa. yet now that the time has come, the wedding seemed distant to me, more that i knew that it was going on, but that i wasn’t really that connected anymore and it wasn’t important that i was there or not.

(granted, there’s the issue of whether/how much i’m connected to the rest of my community these days, but lord— one problem at a time, please.)

to be honest, i was really on the side of bruinslair. maybe i’m just that lazy nowadays, but since i’m exhausted from work and hmc is exhausted from work, doesn’t a few days off choosing the thing that didn’t require several times the effort seem like the more relaxing choice? at least somewhere that actually had toilets. and water. and less conditions that could possibly kill you would be nice as well.

warning: possibly deep personality flaw revealed ahead. as roo or anyone else who has tried to travel with me can attest, i’ve got this annoying habit of not choosing any activities, claiming that i’m fine with doing anything or whatever, and that if i actually want or don’t want to do anything, i’ll speak up at that moment. which i still believe to be true to a good degree. unfortunately, this does not preclude me from being passive agressive about actually trying to express this.

so what’s the practical application? example: i think i would rather go to bruinslair instead of the playa for the aforementioned reasons. unfortunately, i just end up hemming and hawing about it, and bringing up lots of ways the playa trip was more difficult and onerous instead of just saying, “you know, i think i could use an easier trip, and would rather go to bruinslair.” thus it ended up turning into a big fight, and after much strained conversation over several days (reason #17 that living away from your wife is hard - arguements take WEEKS to finish) we finally got to the point where she was giving me the chance to pick to see what we were going to do. and yet, i STILL COULDN’T DO IT. i finally had an actual preference in something we were doing, and realized i had a preference, but i couldn’t get over worrying that hmc might be unhappy or feel guilty about not going or whatever. i still couldn’t choose her possibly being unhappy over me being unhappy.

which is crazy, because not everything has to be win-lose. especially things like vacation trips.

after all that, i got tired of all the permutations and agreed to go to the playa. we were running out of time, and i just needed to have something to work towards instead of spinning the wheels in my head around and around.

but at least now i can understand that i need that overhaul. “it makes a funny screeching sound, like WHEEEEE WHEEE WHEEEE…”