Better but Nice Guys Still Finish Last

I had a really scathing post about oblivious people in the world, more specifically the ones kicking the back of my chair and playing the guitar next to me in the hallway of the JSB while everyone else is so obviously studying. I was all ready to publish it when I realized something sad but not surprising about it. Firstly, although I attempted not to, it ended up coming out in the same tone of derision and, as one savvy young blogger put it, highly "pretentious". Initially I hadn't intended to lace it with so much disdain. Nevertheless my frustration both with the behavior and my inability to think of an appropriate way to deal with it led to the spouting of much bile.

So it remains in my drafts and will most likely stay there until I make some revisions. I suppose what I was struggling with was a mixture of utter confusion and self-loathing. Confusion over the absolutely mind boggling oblivion of people who participate in offensive social practices such as: standing in the middle of a busy hallway having a banal conversations about hot tubs using words like "honeys" and "fly", kicking the back of another person's chair as your personal footrest, talking on your cellphone in an area where it's obvious the status quo is silence, not silencing said cellphone in class even though you've had your phone for years should know how to pull that off, listening to your headphones so loud that people ten feet away can hear Fall Out Boy and Dashboard Confessional as clearly as if they had somehow found your house despite the restraining order, or people who think it necessary to play a guitar of all things in the hallway because...well I can't even think of a good reason for that.

I'm sure I'm not the only person chafed by such things, but having companions in my acrimony doesn't make me any less insufferable. I understand that some of my thoughts border on anti-social, and it does cause me a certain amount of introspection. I'd like to approach it with tact and aplomb but have yet to devise an acceptable plan of attack.

Years ago a pair of young ladies visited my home and when then sat down on the couch they folded their soiled shoes up on the upholstery. What is to be said in such a situation? How can I say anything without sounding like a disappointed parent, "Could you take take your shoes off if you're going to have your feet on the couch?" or "Would you mind not putting your shoes on the couch?" No matter how I thought to phrase it I couldn't find a way to say it without the sense of "hey, I don't know what in your upbringing has taught you that it's ok to do what you're doing but it's not" coming out. Eventually I tired of the mental exercise and just said, "Get your feet off the couch." They looked shocked and I suppose they were. The smile or laugh they were expecting never came and I followed it up with, "Seriously, shoes off or feet off." Not my finest moment.

If you walked into your bathroom and happened to step in a puddle of something, for urine turn to page 78 for water from the shower turn to page 63, how would you approach your roommate?

"Gee...hey fella, you know...um...so...in my family we kind of never peed on the floor. I know that some family's are different and that's totally cool but if it's OK with you can we go ahead and not pee on the floor?"

Even with this much deferral the main point is still "normal people don't pee on the floor".

"Um, could you please not talk in the movie? Thank you."

These behaviors are so embarrassing that it's even more embarrassing to mention them. That's why people usually don't say anything when someone is talking through a movie, or on their cellphone in church, or kicking their chair, or playing their guitar. Normal people feel it unnecessary to have to mention these things explicitly, but that is where these people get us. They know we won't say anything or no one has ever said anything so they don't, in fact, know how annoying they are. What is to be done? Nothing, lest in your quest for fair and equal treatment ye be branded as confrontational or a disruptor of the well crafted "Balance" we have established of those who pee on the floor and those who wash socks.

A New Balance

What is this unexplainable attachment to New Balance shoes? They stand as the default shoe for the classless. If it is your desire to make absolutely no social statement except "I have nothing to say about anything important," by all means please wear New Balance track shoes, or any other form of active footwear, every single day. No, seriously go ahead. Though you did not just come from the gym you should feel no shame in stepping outside your home looking like you have no idea where you are going today. The fact that you are not extremely active should not dissuade you from dressing like you are; if you were even remotely active you wouldn't wear our your exercise shoes by wearing them for every and all occasions, but thankfully you have the wit and wisdom necessary to make one of your pairs of shoes your "one" pair of shoes. When you have finally decided that you need only meet the minimal requirement to "covering your nakedness"you will be nearing the realm of what we now call "New Balance". What you will need to continue on your quest for unremarkable social representation is a sturdy pair of khaki slacks; preferably with a good amount of useless and non-functional pockets and zippers.
Now that we have made it to your waist we suggest that you forgo the belt altogether; you don't need this accessory unless you can find one that is just as dressy as your shoes are trash casual. There exists an embarrassing amount of polo shirts in varying designs and hues, available to cover the trunk of flesh that is your torso. Do not concern yourself with the cut or fit, there is no such thing, and men with large and small bellies look equally ridiculous wearing them. If fortune has smiled upon you and you find the majority of your body covered with some form or other of textile, we suggest--as an absolute must-- a clean shaved face with prominent sideburns that stop at the exact bottom of your ear. Little attention should be paid to hairstyle as the current state of your attire now completely detracts from your overall visage. So you've made it, you have accomplished the absolutely probable, the statistically inevitable; you have clothed yourself using the least amount of effort in such a way that will occasion the least amount of comment on your person. You may now feel free to slip unannounced and unnoticed into the milling crowds of similarly unremarkable people.

ps Shame on you

Burning for No Reason

It has now occurred to me that of late I have exhibited much unwarranted heaviness. My lifestyle is characterized by ease and in truth I lack nothing essential. Proximity to negative influences provides adequate opportunity to act boorishly. Unfortunately I have allowed negative impulses to become negative inclinations; somehow convincing myself that I do not know all the pleasant things that I, in fact, paid a rather dear price to learn. I have never cared much for this kind of behavior. I mostly lack the energy to maintain ill humor for more than a few hours, although I was once successful in being unpleasant for three days in a row. Ultimately I become bored with the monotony of one single emotion, more specifically something as varied and therefore nebulous as being unhappy. I can remember numerous occasions when emotional and social stresses brought me low enough to feel—perhaps dejected is the word—it occurred to me that many people in my current situation would cry as a means of emotional release or cathartic easement. Yet every time I attempted to muster the emotion necessary to achieve tears I would get so bored with what I was doing that I would invariably stand up and leave wherever I had been in an attempt to find something at the very least more diverting or entertaining to do if not some more industrious endeavor. And so I found myself gazing rather affectedly out a window on campus and realized that I was acting rather foolishly. I was making allowances and giving considerations to things and people of no consequence to the effect of limiting my own chances at happiness. I would be better off doing more and thinking less but since I can only seem to handle 14 very carefully selected credits in one semester I find much of my free time open to muse about things that absolutely do not matter. Thankfully I have now become fully bored with this current train of thought and feel completely prepared to get something to eat.

Glorious

In an Autumn dream our eyes scanned a dizzy sky. Lying on the grass' back my heart began to itch. So, sleepy in my dream I touched you and told you all my truth. There you and I stood reading each others notebooks in wonder. At the moment of recognition, when I knew you finally understood, that was when I lost you. Like mist around a smoky mountain I mislead you in purity and confused you with Nature's gift to life. Panicked I awoke and reaching found you missing. So I lay my hands to strings to call you back to me. Rising up with the heat of the earth my songs calls out to you. Stand near your window , listen for my whisper for I fear to speak too loudly. Wait for me, I'm coming on the chorus. There I'll meet you with a promise I have no right to make.

Images Bookish

I have been more active with the pencil lately but not so much with the scanner so these are a little old to the world wide web but I'm sure none of you have been to the website where they were originally posted.

Oddly enough I feel rather limited, or should I say guided by the sketches I've been doing. When I draw something, which is almost always random production, I feel the responsibility to present it in the story somehow. So now we know that Yaoteh and Bajie's second oldest brother dies, or is killed rather, but who is that old man you say. Well he could be a representative of some crime syndicate, or perhaps one of seven Lords of the Sabre, maybe Huang Erge owed them money. It's up to me I suppose, but what I don't choose is whether or not he dies. Whoop dere it is.

I hated the figure in the middle when I first drew this because he was...well ugly, and slightly feminine looking. I left it untouched for a while. Then my smarmy streak kicked in and I felt disabused by my own willingness to admit defeat. I decided I could make something out of it and so I did. It turned out to be Rui as a young lad and this picture ended up sparking a plot line for the prologue.

And finally just some worthless profile of Huang Yaoteh. Somehow this character came out looking like Dustin Dowdle. Perhaps that has something to do with the main character been based on myself and since Huang is his childhood friend the translation makes sense. Although I have sought to distance myself from the characters so it doesn't turn into me using Kungfu to solve all my real-world problems and having romantic interests with fictional women who are still out of my league. So I suppose it would be more accurate to say that the characters are inspired by my own experience but I think most people's characters are.

Burning for the New Book

Whilst in China I began writing a story. It began as a dream that was, for the most part, based in truth, meaning what I wrote was initially the actual content of the dream. I was slightly bored so I began embellishing it a bit, and since I was watching a lot, a lot, of Gongfu series in my off time it turned into some gongfu-ninja-samurai-thai boxing massacre, with a little dash of wit and love story (for the kids). I wrote a rather large lump before I came home, but when I was back amongst people who were literate in English I worried that something which had begun to monopolize a large portion of my mind was doomed, like so many of my wonderful ideas, to die in obscurity.

I've struggled with embarrassment that I would even attempt to write a novel, since in the past I myself had pooh-poohed aspiring novelists. I also have difficulty accepting the fact that my interests are largely branded as banal or insipid. For years my friends and I have only partially convinced ourselves that we can partake of things that stereotypical social pariahs do and not be stained by the same. We can like ninjas and yet lack the compulsion to jump out of trees and barns scaring and killing people. We can like a well animated feature without becoming fixated with illustrations of nurses and maids with tailoring issues . It is possible to like unicorns and dragons without having a "burning" desire to ride or marry one. Fighting with wooden swords to the age of 18 is less like make believe and more like extra curricular Kendo practice.

Perhaps somewhere submerged beneath the myriad excuses and allowances of my conscious psyche exists some foregone resignation that, waking, I am unwilling to view or consider. There is a chance, with growing probability, that I have secretly despised myself for years already. Most regrettable of all is that in camouflaging personal disdain by disparaging the enjoyment of the common masses in their pursuit of entertainment, escapism, indulgence or other vices as they sequentially appear and deteriorate, I have myself succumb to the base and common tendency to hate myself without consciously knowing it.


Consequently I have hit a rather effective writers block. Ideas, plot lines, characters, dramatics, architecture, religion, art, romance, humor, gore, violence all come in abundance. Where my inspiration falters is at the instant the finger touches the key to translate imagery into literature. Do I fear mechanics? Do I fear structure? Diction? No. I fear to present the entirety of my writer personality, my soul as a creator. I have found something that I not only wish to give completely and unselfishly to, but something that I actually can. Everything that makes me who I have become could have expression in this book and I'm afraid of what it will look like; not necessarily to myself but to those who may or may not read it. Will those who know me realize they don't understand me at all and those who know nothing of me thank whatever god they may worship that our social paths have never seriously crossed. It's fiction, and nearing sensational fiction at that. Technically in my own world and by my own definition it can only obtain to the rank of trussed up garbage perfumed for the sake of entertaining guests or low ranking foreign dignitaries.

Thankfully my fine-tempered character trait will ultimately see me through to literary victory. I live in a world colored by dualism. I am both spineless and pompous. I have feared so much the approval of men, both not receiving it and then deriding it when I get it. So I will most likely write the stupid book and spend the rest of my life loving it and hating it according to the season and mood.

Burning for the Blue Oyster Cult

There are only so many things one can say about music from the...well whenever the Blue Oyster Cult was still making music. One of the things that can be said is "wow" also "What?"

Remember the time they wrote a song about Godzilla? Also, remember the time that Tobius dressed like a mole and George-Michael heroically flew his jetpack right into him.

If you will recall there is a bridge following the second verse of Don't Fear the Reaper. First the guitar creeps up the cold dungeon wall like the sparking of rats eyes in the dark, blinking and flashing to the rhythm of fetid water dropping to the stony floor. Then the drums shake like chains in a prison, slowly building like bile in the stomach until the Explosion of tremolo picking that announces the arrival of the Count girded in flames. His smoldering arrogance lashing the against the bars of his dungeon, coiling around the buttons of his lordly coat. His visage blazes, burning away hope and love, and scoring down the halls fills the world with fire. The floor gives way in a flourish of white that drips molten disdain deep into the billow of smoke and stone. Heavy chorded rhythm begins an arduous climb up the castle heights. Finally the tower is engulfed to the eaves and a beacon shines over the canyon clouds and blue murk of morning: words "Love of two is one, here but now they're gone."

Burning of the Pantaloons

It seems only right that I enter the world of Blogdom. True, I've only been here for all of five and a half seconds and yet display a dizzying command of common internet disregard for grammar and syntax. And so I'll slap around slang that I presently don't and in all future cases won't ever give an explanation for. There in lies the beauty of literary creation: I do and say what I wish and how I wish to say it and to all those hidden torpedoes--damn you to the depths of the deep blue see.

You


Don't


Know


Beans


Impetus: Apparently there isn't one overarching drive to provide another pile of witless thought to the ever growing heap of virtual flotsam that is Blog. I admit I lack any socially supernal emotion that encourages me to do this. Sadly my most fervent of hopes is that by increasing the amount of utterances I may produce something entertaining to my self at the very least. I suffer from the regrettably common condition of being overtly impressed with my own genius. If by some twist of fortune you too are bemused by what appears on these pages then you may just be as awesome as I am.