Sdtrk: ‘Little man, what now?’ by Morrissey

So recently I was ‘surfing’ the ‘Internets’, doing some research regarding a Japanese television show that Derek and I viewed a week or so ago, called ‘Densha otoko’ (‘The Train man’). What the show’s about is irrelevant to this post, but you can learn about it here. Needless to say, we got a big kick out of it, so Derek is going to download the rest of the series as the fansubbers release them. At any rate, in scanning various websites, I read an article from a 2004 issue of the Japan Times with a paragraph that really stood out:

[I am from the] analog generation, growing up only with television and land-line phones. In fact, an article in Spa (Sept. 7) informs us of digital gaps even between those in their 20s. Twenty-eight-year-olds are the pocket-paper generation; they tend to write long, letter-style e-mails. Twenty-four-year-olds were raised on cell phones (but during the transition period to broadband Net access), while 20-year-olds have only known fixed-fee, broadband access to the Net.

For the past couple of months I’ve been lamenting to mates about how I really don’t write Emails to people as much as I used to, cos I tend to write these rather long, detail-heavy affairs that take up quite a bit of time, so I urge them to read ‘Shouting etc etc’, and I try to ring them on week-ends, when my minutes are free. But I find it rather scary that there will be a whole generation of people who can’t form proper Emails or letters, let alone paragraphs, without ‘omg hi 2 u’ or some variant being in there somewhere, or worse. It’s not so much a feeling of ‘these consarned kids with their newfangled cell-u-lar phones,’ but more like, ‘As decades pass, future generations will be less and less capable of being able to write properly’. You know, when you’re in an English writing class, much like I was a couple of semesters ago, and the teacher feels that it’s necessary to point out that when writing papers, emoticons and Internet shorthand are unacceptable, and someone asks why, and you just want to stick your index finger through your eye, and into your brain, and swirl it around, just so you have something less painful to focus on.

I’d mentioned the quoted paragraph to Allison during one of our car rides in between shoots. She remarked that she’d read somewhere of an informal study that basically said that between the advent of Email and the beginning of text messaging, people were beginning to write on a regular basis. Their literacy levels didn’t necessarily go up (I’ve always said that the Internet is the largest bastion of illiterates anywhere — AOL, I’m looking in your direction), but people were actually getting back to writing. Of course, text messaging ruined all that for everyone, and now you have sites that look like this. That sure as fuck isn’t proper English. I’m not even sure it’s proper anything.

Now, as regarding my former style of writing (for examples, check any entry to ‘Shouting etc etc’ prior to Nov 2004), I knew that I wasn’t writing in standard English, and I was perfectly capable of doing so, but I was electing not to as an experiment. A ten-year long experiment, but nevertheless. That was the main reason I stopped it, as people would look at my writing style and say ‘well he says he’s a Grammar Nazi, but look how he writes,’ without knowing why I wrote that way. But I’d be hard-pressed to believe that that lass in the blog linked above has higher aspirations for her fast-and-loose take on English. Maybe she’s got the ESL (English as a Second Language) thing going, or you can chalk it up to ‘youthful rebellion’, but I’d say it’s a combination of the herd mentality and laziness. But that’s just me.

I’m at the point where I’m attempting to phase out Internet shorthand out of my own writing; after that, I’ll work on the emoticons. I do realise that language evolves over time, but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good idea

Sdtrk: ‘The Black Angel’s death song’ by the Velvet underground

Well! I was going to announce two pretty ace pieces of news on Thursday, but as it turned out, things just didn’t work out the way I wanted them to. For one, I had high hopes that I would have a job today. I’d signed out with a temporary agency on Tuesday, and went in for a battery of tests that I did pretty well on. My agent told me that a local branch of the Muscular Dystrophy Association was hiring, and that they needed people with good phone voices, which is something I’m thankfully equipped with. So I was rather confident when I went in for the group interview this Thursday morn, despite being wedged in a small office with nine other people; the one directly to my left smelling rather like a toilet. Over the course of the debriefing process, Pam, the office manager, handed us each a copy of the script that we were supposed to recite, and she would be playing the Person On The Other End of the Line. Going first, I was fairly spot-on with my reading, and managed to get a couple of rebuttals in when Pam presented them. The debriefing was over in about an hour, and Pam told us that she would be calling our temp agencies, after which she would call the people back who MDA would be hiring. Guess who didn’t get a callback? I spoke with my temp agent, and she said that Pam said that I was very articulate, but I, quote, ‘wasn’t aggressive enough’. Ah. I see.
Perhaps I should’ve screamed the script at the top of my lungs while bashing Pam’s face in with the metal stapler I spotted on the desk next to me, and for the coup-de-grâce, I would hurl her headlong through the nearest closed window into oncoming traffic, my MDA script howlings ringing in her bleeding ears. THEN I WOULD BE INSTANT MANAGEMENT MATERIAL.

As far as I see it, the reason why I’m so inefficient with sales and all things of a persuasive nature, is that ultimately, I don’t care if you accept or reject what I have to ‘sell’. Due to years and years of having my father force me into doing things I was never keen on, I decided that since I try to treat others they way I’d wish to be treated, the last thing I want to become is some salescock leering an inch and a half from someone’s face, whether on the phone or in person, shouting ‘HEY! HEY! HEY! WON’T YOU LISTEN TO WHAT I’M TELLING YOU? HEY! I HAVE SOMETHING TO OFFER! I KNOW THIS ISN’T A GOOD TIME, BUT HANG ON FOR JUST A COUPLE OF MINUTES! HEY! HEY! OH, YOU’RE NOT INTERESTED? WELL, LET ME JUST TAKE MORE OF YOUR VALUABLE LIFE AWAY FROM YOU AND KEEP TALKING AT YOU, EVEN THOUGH I KNOW YOU’RE NOT BOTHERED! HEY! HEY!’ etc. Cos I have no tolerance for that kind of behaviour, and I’d be a hypocrite if I were to act like that. However, the job did pay $12 per hour..
So my agent said to ring her back next week. I told her that I’d be better off in data entry, or any phone-related work that didn’t require me to sell anything. We’ll see how that goes, if it indeed does go.

And the other piece of shit luck is that I was outbid on a Stylophone. I’m less upset about that, as surprisingly, you can still find plenty of Stylophones in relatively good / not-too-expensive condition on the Bay of e, as Pulp is still on their extended hiatus, and hardly anyone remembers Rolf Harris anymore. Once I’m ‘gainfully’ employed, though, I’m feckin’ getting one, by hook or by crook.. In the meantime, I’ll have to do with a virtual version. But it’s just not the same..

Switching gears momentarily: Marika and I caught ‘Charlie and the chocolate factory’ Monday eve, which we both dug. Sure, Gene Wilder’s Wonka had more of an overt sinister menace, whereas Depp’s Wonka seemed like a deranged individual with a serious case of arrested development. Which worked for me, especially when you see the Burton-added bits with Wonka’s father. I don’t know, I was giggling throughout most of the fillum. There was a bit of a sense of this version not really bringing anything new to the table, but it was Tim Burton, so we were happy. Don’t know if I’d buy the DVD, but we enjoyed the fillum with great pleasure. When’s ‘Corpse bride‘ making its debut again?

So yeah! This is why I don’t announce most of my plans to people until they’re finalised and done-with, cos if and when they end up going agley, I don’t end up looking like a gobshite. Heh. Too late for that

Sdtrk: ‘To Alison’ by Ecstasy of St.Theresa

You know what I like doing? Getting into the left-hand lane in front of an SUV and driving slowly. The feckers deserve it, frankly.

I’ve never liked sport utility vehicles. They’re overly large, horribly inefficient with fuel, and 95% of them are just plain ugly (with the exception of the Aztek and the H2O, both of which somewhat resemble vehicles that SHADO would’ve used). However, it’s recently struck home with me why so many people feel compelled to purchase the damned things. I was showing my friend Mari some pictures of the various pre-2000 Mini Coopers, and she was astonished at how small it was. ‘How could you drive something that small?’ she asked. ‘I’d be afraid that I’d get crushed under somebody’s tires!’ However, that whole mindset really came screeching to my attention when I happened to catch something on a local newscast recently:

Smart Car Promotion Draws Criticism

You’ve seen the ads where Casino Windsor is giving away three smart cars, but did you catch that tiny print? Right at the bottom, the ad says “not street viable in U.S.A.”

The smart car, sold in Canada, has a small diesel engine and a little motor that does not meet U.S. emissions regulations, and U.S. Customs won’t let it in the country.

In Detroit, there are signs advertising the promotion, but if you win, you won’t be able to drive your prize in the United States. Casino Windsor said despite all the advertising, the rules are clear.

If an American customer wins the car, he or she has an alternative to take $14,000 in Canadian money instead.

There were plans to import the cars at one time, but right now, the plans are on hold.

Now, I’m seeing the sentence ‘The smart car, sold in Canada, has a small diesel engine and a little motor that does not meet U.S. emissions regulations’, and reading it as ‘The smart car is not vast and heavy enough to compete with our ridiculously large vehicles, and as we don’t really want people to be flattened like pancakes by an Escalade, the US cannot allow it on the roads’. They could’ve added ‘Three days’ worth of fuel for an SUV would keep a smart car running for three months,’ but that wouldn’t be entirely professional.

It’s really struck me why most Americans just don’t buy smaller vehicles. They want something larger that they’ll feel ‘safe’ in. You’ve got some tosspot going, ‘Well, if I don’t drive something that takes up one and a half parking spaces, I won’t feel safe from someone else driving an SUV.’ So that tosspot buys an SUV, wherein someone else says, ‘Well, if he has a huge vehicle, I want something equally huge, otherwise I’ll get crushed under his wheels’. So that person buys an SUV. And so on, and so on. It’s the Arms Race, only on four wheels.

As far as I’m concerned, the argument ‘what if you need to haul around a family, or a lot of people?’ no longer applies. Go buy a station wagon. Remember those? They looked rather like long cars — I know it seems fantastical, but it’s true, they once existed, you can see them on Google. Besides, I’m fairly certain that most people who own SUVs probably don’t have more than five people in their family, anyway.

I suppose you could reason that I wrote this post due to the fact that I was shagged off that Smart cars aren’t street legal in the United states. But it just goes to show what kind of mentality we have driving round on the roads today. I guess people really dig having to spend $40 – $50 to fill their fuel tank each week. Reason no.478 to move to Toronto: Smart cars are legal.
If I had that kind of crazy disposable income, however, I’d rather buy a pre-BMW Mini, or a Fiat 500. I’d love to drive a smart car, but even I think they’re too small to own

Sdtrk: none, oddly enough. You’ll have to provide your own

Something occurred earlier this evening that was so irritating to me, that I delayed bedtime in order to post it and get it off my chest.

So earlier, I was on the phone with a (for the sake of argument) friend, that we’ll call Spike. Over the course of the conversation, he mentioned that he had given something that I bought as an Xmas present for him — a pair of action figures — to someone else. Heh.

As far as I’m concerned, this is something you do not do. You do not tell someone that you’ve given something that they bought for you to someone else. Perhaps if he hadn’t been born in a barn and had some sense of etiquette, manners, and common sense, he would’ve had the presence of mind not to blurt that out.

I can understand receiving something that you don’t necessarily want, and surreptitiously getting rid of it; that’s happened to all of us. But for fuck’s sake, you don’t tell the person. I’d like to give Spike the benefit of a doubt and say that he forgot that I picked it up for him, but still, that’s just fucking idiotic.

That was good that I typed that out, as I’m no longer shagged off about it. I feel pretty confident that Spike will never see this, as he never reads ‘Shouting etc etc’ anyway. And he no longer has to worry, cos he won’t be getting anything from me ever again. ‘O, your Xmas present? O, I’m sorry, squire, I was too busy to pick one up. I’ll get right on it.’ Give me a fucking break

Sdtrk: ‘Head’ by The Jesus and Mary Chain

Ahhh, Monday. The day that I finally had that damnable chalazion scraped off my head. You don’t forget something like that! No matter how hard you try.

I got round to my eye doctor last Monday, at 6pm. The actual appointment was at 6.30, but of course they’re like, ‘fill this stack of papers out that absolves us of all guilt and responsiblilty should we accidentally carve up your eyeball’, so they had me show up early. Having finished those in due course, I was escorted to the operating room proper, where the nurse placed a shower cap-like paper hat on my head, and had me lie on the cushioned cot/counter thing, with my head resting in a cushion to keep it from rotating. She then applied some eye drops, stating that Dr Lim would be in shortly, and made her way to assisting other patients.
Whilst I was lying on that pleather-upholstered cot, attempting to calm myself down by thinking pleasant thoughts, my mind drifted to what someone had once said about a universal truth to doctor visits of any kind. You wait for an interminable period, then they usher you into a smaller room, where you wait by yourself for another interminable period. I was waiting on that cot for a little over half an hour. At one point, I guess my focussing on pleasant thoughts had worked, as I actually fell asleep for a few minutes.

Dr Lim returned with the nurse presently. Dr Lim (her first name escapes me — I think it started with a ‘J’) is a short Asian lass, probably in her early thirties, and with a pleasant demeanour. She began swabbing my eyelid, stating that ‘The part that hurts the most is when we do the injections to numb the area.’ ‘Yeah, I remember that part from the last time I was here to get a chalazion removed,’ I replied. ‘It was really pinchy.’ And with that, we were off!
Now perhaps times have changed since my last chalazion removal — last time, in all honesty, the injection part was not all that bad — but on this go-round, I don’t know what happened, but the procedure wasn’t as smooth as last time. Truth be told, it hurt like a motherfucker. I don’t know if there wasn’t enough lidocaine, or too much, but the thing to remember with lidocaine injections is that they burn. It’s acidic. Factor in that that shit was near my eye, and you have a pretty wild scene, man. Plus, as I was expressing to Dr Lim and the nurse, I wonder if more of my pain was more psychosomatically induced, cos I’ll tell you: you know when you visit the dentist, and they use that pick thing to remove plaque from your teeth? You’re familiar with that sound and that general feeling, yes? Well, Dr Lim didn’t have a pick, but she was doing practically the same thing in removing the core of my chalazion. I could hear that pt pt pt sound as she was extricating it. Yeah. And heh, it’s not as if you can close your eye!

To attempt to get my mind off what they were doing to me, the nurse was like ‘You know, you look like you play an instrument. Do you play anything?’ So I attempted to explain that yes, I used to play guitar and keyboards (but not at the same time) in Dole age and Wreath.VCA as best I could. You know, trying to be my usual humourous and flippant self whilst exacavation was underway on my fucking eye. So in between gripping the nurse’s hand like grim death, I also told them about the Dears concert from that previous Sunday. That went well.
Eventually, Dr Lim couldn’t get all of it out via the inner eyelid. I neglected to mention that all surgery up til this point was performed on the inside of my eyelid, so as not to leave a scar, so they applied a lidclamp and flipped that bad boy open, which also hurt like a sonofabitch. But like I’d said, she couldn’t remove it all through the inside, so she announced that she was going to have to make an incision on the outside and get the rest out. I didn’t feel the scalpel incision at all, but the cauterising that she had to do on both sides of my lid was not pleasant, I’ll tell you. Ye gods. If I ever, ever, develop another chalazion ever again in my life, when I get it removed, my first words upon seeing the doctor will be ‘Fill me with Valium tabs until I no longer remember proper English.’

Everything could’ve been worse, however. The nurse was telling me that on Monday, she and Dr Lim would have to treat a bloke who had four rather large chalazions on each eyelid. They had gotten so out of hand that they were kinda spreading to his upper cheeks. Think about that one for a while.

If I’m not mistaken, the whole procedure, including the wiping up of the blood, and the wound cauterisation, and the eyewashing, and applying the eyepatch that made me look like a character in a Trevor Brown painting, took about an hour. I get to see Dr Lim again for a follow-up this Tuesday. Hooray for Modern Medicine!
Lucky for you, I forgot to take ‘before’ photos, so you’ll just have to use your God-given imaginations. And you can stop throwing up now, I’m all done with my story!

Sdtrk: ‘Groovy spacy ’70’ by Christine 23 onna

Well, this is certainly interesting. (nicked from Brian)

I’m not as much of a Nihilist as I thought I was! I don’t know whether I should be proud or ashamed.

Upon reflection, I think the hedonism charge sticks. When I think of a typical hedonist, I think key parties, swingers, and enough recreational drugs to choke a horse, and I’m thinking, well, that can’t apply to me, as I neither drink nor do drugs, and I barely smoke. But then, I considered what I was discussing with a mate semi-recently: I find it shameful that, as human beings in the 21st Century, we are still governed by societal conditions where we have to work in order to live. No work = no money, no money = no food. We have the (burgeoning) technological means necessary to eliminate a lot of unskilled jobs through mechanical methods, namely through the use of robots and other automata. Of course, the question that usually follows that statement would be ‘So what are unskilled labourers supposed to do for money, then?’ Simple. Retun to school, and take courses for an actual career, instead of a mere job.
I look at it this way, cashiers, service station attendants, fast food workers, etc — people don’t normally aspire towards jobs of this nature, and to be honest, most people in these positions are crap at their jobs anyway. For example, if we had automated fast food places that were to accurately record your order and swiftly assemble it using a series of conveyor belts, dispensers and robotic arms, that would guarantee customer satisfaction. Wouldn’t you rather receive your made-to-order food package from a charming and personable Synthetik similar to Actroid-chan, rather than dealing with some pimply-faced teen who’s desperately trying to apologise for the fact that you ended up with a Big Mac in your bag, when you’re actually at Burger King?
Plus, a whole new job market just opened up right there — someone has to know how to maintain the Synthetik and the food assembly machinery, as well as restocking, changing the drink syrups, refilling the napkins, etc. I wouldn’t want to eliminate all jobs, just a lot of the shittier ones..

Ultimately, I believe that humans shouldn’t be spending 60% of our lives working, but instead, we should be enjoying ourselves through intellectual pursuits or other means, as long as our pursuits of happiness don’t cause harm to others. ‘If it harm none, do as thou wilt’ is the operative phrase here. Humans should be spending their time, money, and energy on living, not working. I mean, even if you choose to spend your free hours masturbating to the Weather Channel, then as long as you’re not harming anyone, and you’re at home with the blinds drawn, then wank for great justice, my friend!
And think of it this way, if you were able to spend less time at a dodgy job you aren’t enjoying, you could be spending more time developing your hobbies into things that could make money for you, which is guaranteed to make you happier. Some people enjoy cooking. Some people enjoy writing. Some people enjoy creating artwork, while others enjoy squirrels. If you’re having fun while working, it’s not really work..
So yeah, wow. A hedonist. Never really thought of myself in that context, but it doesn’t seem really ill-fitting.

In case you’re wondering, yes; I spent all day yesterday listening to my Joy division box set

Sdtrk: ‘The truth about Johnny’ by the Raveonettes

Come Tues morn or afternoon, whichever comes first, one of me mates Tomas, aka Krazy-Q, aka T-money, aka the Other Derek, will be driving westward across the nation to his new home in Portland, Oregon. Needless to say, it’ll be really weird once our circle of degenerates realises that he’ll no longer be getting together with us on Sat eve to watch foreign fillums, or to play Burnout 3, or to stuff vast amounts of Japanese cuisine in our mouths.

This past Sat, we all got together for his send-off. Wolfgang & Masako, Mike, Jeff & Kari, Dave Z & Lani, Tim, Joe & Heather, Derek & Steph, Frog & Jackie, Marika and myself, had an enjoyable dinner at Tokyo sushi /Seoul BBQ, as that’s been our restaurant of choice for years. Whilst we were digesting our dinner, there was almost an hour of hemming and hawing about what to do afterwards. This sort of behaviour is par for the course for our group; most of the time we always know we’re meeting up on Sat, but we usually don’t know where, or to do what, most of the time, and usually some panicky decision is made about an hour before we actually get together. So after making a couple of phone calls and pruning our group of a couple of members, we hit a bowling alley. Through no real fault of our own, we usually go about a year between bowling alley visits, and every time we bowl, we agree that we should do it more often. After great enjoyment flinging oversized marbles down the lanes for about three hours (mental note: the 12 pound balls are the Key to Victory), everyone went their separate ways, and Tomas, Mari and I got back round to Jeff’s house, to watch ‘Frog-g-g‘ which was just awful. It was a Troma film without the Troma, basically. Man. *shaking head*

But yeah! Tomas has been a good friend of mine. I’d first met him back in the early Nineties, when a now-defunct comic store in Ferndale used to hold a weekly anime viewing night called Tora tora Tuesday. He was Derek’s best mate, and I’d only met him once back then. That night, I’d bought an issue of AnimeV that had Catty from Gall force on the cover. I was undoubtedly going on about it, cos I had a thing for purple-haired Synthetik girls back then too, and Tomas suggested that if I let him borrow that issue, he could draw a pic of Catty for me. Eventually, he and Derek ended up leaving, but I had neglected to give him that AnimeV, and I remember being glad that I never lent it to him, as we didn’t see each other until several years later. I can’t even recall how or when we met (again) — it had to be round 1995 or so — but when I was looking for a place to move to when I was living in Clinton township, he suggested his one-bedder, as he had just moved out of it to an apartment unit one floor below. It was a fab place, in a good area, and it even had the unit number 23, which was definitely a good sign. I can’t count the number of hours we spent beating the shit out of each other throughout the entire Armored core series, or having the rest of the lads over for videogames and general chicanery. Good times!
He’s really into webcomics, and one of the ones we always get a kick out of is John Allison’s Scary go round. I would have to say that this particular instalment sums up the inherently goofy friendship he and I have..

myself, Jeff, Mari, Mike and T-money (foreground)
enjoying some painful cinema, as usual

We’re all gonna miss you, Tomas. Ganbatte kudasai, and be sure to give all the SuicideGirls a good rogering when you get there