Roadside Dialysis

Crappy photos

Top Tier insisted that I give him some pictures or he was leaving me, so I squeezed out some crappy ones for you all to enjoy. Sorry, I just can´t take pictures of exciting stuff, it makes me feel like a dork.

http://eloise.cementhorizon.com/gallery/album14

clown fangs

My classes are finally over, thank God. I thought I’d be a better student since I’m older, but it turns out I couldn’t be lazier. I showed up maybe two thirds of the time and I didn´t take my final exam. It was unsettling to me to discover that I still do the same thing when I’m bored in class as I’ve always done: draw fangs in my school book. Who knows why, but always fangs. Dog fangs, vampire fangs, bloody fangs, all kinds. It made me feel like I was in high school again, so I don´t think I´m gonna take any more courses.

Now I have more time to just futz around the city. This place is so cool. One of the prettier things about it is the butterflies that fly around all over like we were in the country. It’s the perfect counterpoint to all the trash and noise. It’s probably what’s inspiring all the damn kids everywhere you turn practically making babies in the street.

Recently I saw some kid downtown who must’ve been late to work because he only had the tiniest bit of surgical tape on his nose, an amount that couldn’t have helped at all with any of the three R’s of young Mexican male nose tape. Just a dash of it before running out the door without breakfast, I guess.

And the other day I saw the youngest policemen in the history of law enforcement. These kids looked like they were sixteen at most. This can’t be true, but there’s no way they could’ve been more than eighteen or nineteen. They were escorting a money delivery and so they had their guns drawn because that’s what they do here when money is being delivered. It took everything in my power not to to go over and confiscate those things.

What else? I think, maybe, I’m finally getting over the goddamned altitude. At first I thought the whole thin air thing was nonsense, but it really does affect me. I get that weird wooziness pretty much whenever I get out of a lying position and I get winded at the oddest times. But the crappiest part about it is the fact that singing in the shower is more difficult than it used to be. Seriously, this is no joke, I can’t sustain those long notes like before. Opera singers should come here to practice, just like those sports stars who go up in the mountains. There’s this restaurant four doors from my apartment that hosts a sort of Mexican bolero karaoke night, and I kinda want to try it out. It’s my big “don’t be a chickenshit” goal for the next few months. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I think that singing Mexican bolero might be the reason I was put on the planet. I’ve bought collections of it on the street and am quickly falling in love, trying to imitate the voices all the time. There was even a point, I’m kind’ve embarrassed to admit, when I thought the people singing at the restaurant got paid, so I was gonna ask the emcee if he needed some young blood in his act. I went and spent a couple of hours there on a Friday night (I was the only one in there under fifty) to learn the routine and discovered that these people couldn’t sing worth shit. I was really disappointed. What a short commute to work it would have been. But passing out from lack of oxygen might have kept me off the stage anyway.

The singing/breathing difficulties gives me an idea, though. On top of the tutoring, I’ve also come up with a million dollar business idea for Mexico City: oxygen bars. Think of it, what with the altitude and the pollution, these people don’t know what oxygen is. But it might be dangerous. I’m not sure they'd be able to handle the good shit. Or maybe I’ll just get into police work, since it’s apparently about as attainable as a summer job at Hot Dog on a Stick.

Oh yeah! Speaking of Mexico City’s finest, my new student is a cop! An on duty cop! He was in full uniform and he brought his partner with him! We all piled into my bedroom together and the partner just sat there alternately snoozing and looking at her hat while the student and I did our thing. I can’t tell you how cool it feels, after all the stories I’ve heard about the culture of bribery, to accept money from an officer.

But I have an even better image to leave you with than that. Last Thursday there was a big rain storm that caused delays on the Metro and I had to wait two and a half frickin’ hours for a train that wasn’t terrifying. I guess I could’ve taken a cab, but that would’ve been expensive. Plus, I had plenty of things in my backpack to entertain me so I just sat around waiting and watching other people freak out. At about the hour and a half mark, two clowns came along. There are clowns all over the place, by the way, and the greatest thing about them is that they’re usually just doing everyday stuff like checking email at the Internet café or buying a gallon of milk at the liquor store. Imagine my delight when these two clowns in the Metro approach the impossibly full train, with their gigantic red shoes and everything, and somehow squeeze themselves in. Like it was a clown car! That made my week.

love jason

Hi

Okay, we´ll give this another go. Gene´s convinced me that I can't keep quiet any longer.

I'm gonna post the emails I´ve recently sent from Mexico, so the next few that show up are gonna be old news to most of you. As for the rest of you, bring a change of underwear.

I´m kind've excited about all the fancy stuff I´ve got at my disposal now, like the "bold" and "italics" buttons. I can do this, or I can do this, but really I'm just doing those things for the money until I can do this. There is also stuff like the "trackbacks" button and the "templates" button and the "weblog config" button that I will be using a lot of, so watch for that.

love jason

no, this one´s not about masked wrestlers either

The big news is that the editor of this gay magazine in Boston wants
to buy an essay I wrote about my experiences down here. My first paid
piece, thank you very much.

And I'm making some cash down here too, which is nice. This guy pays me lots of money to speak with him in English. God bless supply and demand. His brother wants "lessons" too now, and I put up fliers not too long ago for even more work. (It was impossible to avoid the sad irony of posting the "Learn English!" fliers right alongside the
ubiquitous Mexican "Independence" flags.)

But more good news for me: Mexicans are finally starting to dilute my very German experience here. I've been pounding the pavement, finding the cool bars and meeting neat young Mexicans who invite me to their neat young Mexican parties. All of which, of course, is like a final Spanish exam that you show up to in your underwear. But, really, it's like showing up in really stylish Calvin Klein underwear, because I'm doing pretty damn well, talking up a storm, not worrying about how poorly I speak.

But back when I wasn't swimming in local friends I answered an ad I
saw around campus looking for an American or American-ish person
interesting in a role in a student film. I figured this might be a
good way to meet some creative folks (though meeting "filmmakers" is
always a craps shoot). I went in for an audition without knowing what
the part was. Naturally I assumed I'd be playing an evil (but
hopefully more or less taciturn) symbol of American excess. I figured
the only lines I would have to remember would be something like,
"Howdy partner, got any resources ya ain't usin'?" Then they would
throw some Starbuck's products at my head and we'd call it a day,
adjourning to some bar where we could get to know each other. Turns
out the character was a very strident and lines-laden symbol of
American excess. (At one point in the synopsis they gave me, I am even
in the throes of a hamburger-eating orgy, throwing half of the burger
in the trash, wasted. Real subtle, fellas.) They made me get on my
knees and pray and then tell somebody who comes in the door that I was
just attacked by an Aztec demon who was after my heart. Then I had to
cast out another demon from another part of the script by flinging
holy water every which way and screaming, mostly ad-libbed, about
casting thee out, etc. etc. Mostly I just kept repeating the holy
trinity because I couldn't think of anything else to say. In the end I
think we all agreed that I don't have the range necessary for the
part. I must've done each scene five times, and each time the director
told me to put more gusto into it (what he was after, I realized only
after leaving, was Southern zealot buffoonery). Then when I was done
the director said, in just this way, "Oh yeah, just one more thing.
Would you be willing to die your hair blond? You don't really look
American." (I will once I have Big Macs hanging from every hole in my
head, schmuck.) I told him I'd think about it.

Speaking of the Ancients, I made an attempt to see the pyramids in
Teotihuacan the other week. Some of the Germans invited me to an all
night techno rave thingy up there, supposedly smack dab in the middle
of the site. Even though I despise techno (somebody at the rave was
quick to point out to me that it wasn't techno, but some other crappy
music that sounds exactly like techno) and the rave thingies that go
along with them, I agreed to go because I figured the pyramids would
be nicely lit, because if there's one thing that ravists know, it's
lighting. But of course I was lied to and there were no pyramids. It
was in the middle of what I'm pretty sure was a bullfighting arena. I
was so pissed. I knew I'd be bored in five minutes, with or without
pyramids, so I brought a book, which saved my life since there was no
way to get back home until dawn. Let me tell you, it is no easy task
explaining Winesburg, Ohio to rolling raver kids who curl up next to you and ask what you're reading while making a concerted effort not to play with your hair.

That might be the last thing I do with those fellas—I don't really
have anything in common with them (except for the Delightful German,
who's still delightful). Now that I'm making friends in high places,
I'm gonna drop them like a bad habit. By the way, I've got more to say
about the German mouth and what comes out of it. Who knew the subject
would be so rich? It's fascinating to me how the same accent can
completely transform from unbearably grating in Spanish to vaguely
threatening in their native tongue to *absolutely frickin adorable* in
English. Occasionally after one of them has just finished mutilating
some poor Spanish phrase, making me want to lie down and die right
alongside of it, she will then repeat the phrase in English out of
frustration and I just want to take her in my arms and cradle her.
This doesn't apply to the Berliner, though, whose accent is like
broken glass in whatever language. Interesting fact about all this,
though: none of them think it's particularly funny when I tell them
these things, especially that they have thick accents in English.
Though they're pretty well aware of their crimes against the Spanish
language, they each think they speak English like a hard livin' Oakie.

Oh, and I'm officially no longer living with a transgender prostitute. I don't think everyone knows about her, but she moved in about two or three weeks ago, Adam's apple and all, and brought lots of customers with her. But then the room was suddenly cleared out. My guess is the owner lady of the house (whom I love, by the way) didn't like the men coming in and out of the place and kicked her out. I didn't even get a chance to really talk to her. She practically ran away and hid whenever I tried to say hello. Now there's some other more boring lady in the room.

Mexican Independence Day was nice. My favorite type of holiday
experience is when you more or less forget about the holiday's
existence and it all of a sudden shows up in the middle of your
routine, without your effort or heightened expectations. So it was
really nice to walk home from the metro and all of a sudden be
surrounded by fireworks, coming from the Zocalo in one direction and
some fancy old building I don't know the name of in the other.
Fireworks always uncontrollably make me sing that country song "Proud
to be an American," and that night was no exception.

Crappy news: the turtles are gone. Just up and vanished one day like the prostitute.

But my obsessive and probably unhealthy search for good local music is keeping my mind of the loss. It's worse than my problem with
magazines. I've found some pretty good stuff, though I have to wade
through a LOT of crap, which is not much of a problem financially,
thanks to the thriving intellectual property theft industry here. In
the last two months I've increased my music collection, with minimal
burden on the pocket, by about 500%. The other day I bought the
seventies.

The best Mexican stuff remains the ranchero and other old folk stuff (though I feel like I'm on the brink of some real pop discoveries). The best Spanish-language pop music, to my ears, seems to be coming not from Mexico but Argentina. All that energy that used to go into hiding Nazis is now being put into totally rocking. My favorite song so far is "Luces Sencasional" by Los Latigos. I can´t figure out how to send it, so hopefully Gene will write me back soon and tell me. Once you do get it, for the full multimedia "Jason's life" experience: turn off the lights and listen to the song as you stare at the picture of my roommate, while wearing lederhosen. Oh yeah, and try, for the 4 minute duration of the song, to live in fear of a very abrupt and painful subterranean existence.

love jason

Hi everyone,

Me again. Still not too much to report, but I´m still having a
wonderful time. People keep asking me if I've been to this museum or
that pyramid, but I haven't done any of that stuff yet. I figure when
somebody comes to visit and they want to see something old and
unpronounceable it will be just as exciting for me. But for now just
figuring the place out is more than enough enjoyment.
Let's see, what to tell you….
Have I told you all about the noses of young Mexican males? I don't
think I have and the subject needs to be addressed. It is unbelievable
how many of them have some sort of tape or bandage on their noses.
It's amazing, and I can't figure what it's about. A bunch of them
obviously have had their noses broken, but a lot look like they might
just be wearing those respiratory thingies. And, I swear to God,
some--more than some--look like they've just gotten a nose job. And
more than once I've seen the medical tape wrapped under tip so it is
pulled up at an unnatural angle. I've asked several locals about it
and, while none of them can give me a definite answer, each of those
three possible explanations (rough housing, respiration, and
rhinoplasty) have been offered more than once. My roommate even claims
that young Mexican men often don't like their noses and want to
conceal them. But he's not a very reliable source.
In case you´re worried that the holes have disappeared, rest assured
they're diggin' em bigger and deeper than before. I'd take another
picture but I'm afraid that would only encourage them. There comes a
point when you can no longer refer to the holes in the street you live
on, must refer instead to the pieces of street that remain in the hole
you live on. It's a real treat on days when there's an event at the
concert hall a block up and the remaining pieces of street in the hole
I live on are packed with teeny boppers waiting to listen to the
latest Johnny Canción.
What else? I'm becoming better and better acquainted with
the Germans. Even as they remain completely unacquainted with long
vowels. I'm now convinced that the French language was born as a
result of a German trying to pronounce Spanish. But they're fun, we go
to bars and stuff.
I'm pretty sure I'm not dating Oscar anymore, but that's
something you're gonna have to ask him yourself.
Also, the Metro is no longer the tunnel of love it once
was. There have been mind-boggling delays for the past two weeks,
which of course means the trains are as packed as can be, compelling
me to look for a more practical phobia.
I've been writing a ton, which is good. Also a friend who
is starting a publishing company wants to publish The Black Crayon,
(Take a bow, Cantara), so I'll have to go back and read it to remove
all the words that don't really mean what I thought they did when I
was 21.
And I've been reading a ton, IN SPANISH! Very exciting.
I've become obsessed with the three- and four-month-old issues of
local magazines that you can buy for cheap at certain street stands. I
sit in my room surrounded by them and, armed with my Spanish
dictionary, try to culture-fy myself. There's a pretty good magazine
about city life that I like to read. And there's a really good
literary magazine based here that I'm into. I can tell it's high
quality because I don't understand a third of the what it says. It's
funny, though, as the sentence structure gets more complex, the words
themselves often get easier because big fifty centavo Latin-derived
words are commonly similar to those in English. Unfortunately, there's
no alternative paper on the SFGuardian/LAWeekly model, which is what I
really want. I didn't realize how spoiled I was in the States.
Instead, they have a paper, I can't remember its name, that always has
on the cover the end result of the grisliest murder of the previous
night. They have the best headlines, too, like ¨¡NARCOVENGANZA!¨ You
better hope I have a kid before you do, 'cause the next one that comes
into my life will bear this name.

Love jason

August 24, 2005

Sorry for the long silence, everybody. I´ve just been very busy. I
actually still have nothing to say, except me and Oscar are still
dating. (Not the ballerina, that never materialized. The other one). I
only catch about half of what he's saying, but it's probably the
interesting half. He says "suddenly" a lot, I discovered later in my
dictionary. I don't know why, though, and I'm curious. What could
possibly happen to him "suddenly" so often?
Classes are going well. I met an enjoyable German today. I
despise the only other american I know. Not because
he's american, you understand. Just because he's a jerk off. And
wouldn't you know he thinks I'm neat, so I have to keep trying to
shake him. Plus he butchers the Spanish language with a barbarity i
didn't think a boy his age was capable of. He's got a Chicago accent
that can only be described as unholy. He's almost as bad as the
Germans (the enjoyable German speaks like a prince, though). I want to
rip the other Germans´ throats out when they speak--I know that's not
natural, but I can´t help it. It´s like they´re not even trying. I
have an irrational fear that my own Spanish will corrode under their
influence.
Other people I currently despise: my roommate. Only him, really. He
wins the prize for his exemplary work in the field of being so boring
I could cry. He also speaks too fast, and he makes me feel guilty for
taking my clothes to a lavanderia instead of washing them on the roof.
He took me up there to show me how, and now...well now I know we have a roof. I go up there at night in my profesionally washed clothes to
enjoy the amazing view.
On the whole, everything´s peachy. I went to a cafe in a fun part of town and actually came into contact with homos who weren't dancing to bad techno or wearing bumber stickers that say "I'd rather be dancing to bad techno." I haven´t secured friendship yet, but at least I know now that they exist.
There are still holes in my street, only different holes. They keep
changing places once I get used to where they are.
Oh, and I had my first potentially terrifying experience on the
metro yesterday. There was a problem with the system, so twenty
million people had to fit on fifteen trains. I had to let two trains go by because they were absolutely, completely, totally,
phantasmagorically packed. The only reason I attempted to get on the
third one was because a dude unwedged himself from somewhere within
and so I knew that, mathematically, there must be room for me. As most
of you are aware, I am claustrophobic. But, as you might not have been
aware, I am also late for class, so I forced myself to squeeze in and
pretend I was in the "Hills Are Alive" scene from the Sound of Music
for FORTY FIVE MINUTES. I said it was potentially terrifying because I was brave, even at the Centro Medico station (my nemesis), where tons more people tried to push in and squeeze the christ out of those of us already on the train. My favorite is when they stop in between stations where it is dark and suffocating and there is absolutely no hope of escape.

Love jason

July 24, 2005

Hey everybody! I got a room on my second day in Mexico City! That
beats my record of three days, set in the lovely burgh (sp?) of san
francisco. Plus, my place in sf didn´t come with snoopy sheets. It is
in the Centro district of mexico city, which is in the center. also,
it is disgustingly close to the metro. all this for the equivalent of $140
dollars per mo. Also, I just had lunch with the guy
who lives in the next room over (he must pay more cause he has
strawberry shortcake sheets, swear to god). He made me realize
something very important about the spanish language. I don´t speak it.
In time, in time. Everybody has been very patient with my deficiency
so far. I asked this new flatmate of mine what he does for a living
and what I got from his words was that he looks for
errors in the robot his company is making. I swear that´s what I
heard. I´m gonna make an educated guess and assume I got it wrong.
Let´s see, what else is notable. The weather is amazing, the metro is
astoundingly fast, and the altitude sickness I was supposed
to get has not surfaced.
Gastrointestinal status report -- fully operational. And I´ve eaten
stuff from
street vendors even.

Love Jason

First Contact

Hi guys,

I`m alive. And the Metro cars look like gigantic carrot sticks. That`s
all i got so far.

love jason

Freshly cut grass of death and despair

I came home yesterday to find that the entire, gigantic lawn had been mysteriously mowed. I think the girl in the well did it.

Sucks to be a scullery maid, as it happens

I know this is my second posting about reality tv shows, which therefore makes up roughly twenty percent of my entire posting career, but I can’t help it. I’ve become obsessed with Manor House and I would like it to be a matter of public record. I guess PBS finally realized that fart jokes with a British accent are still fart jokes and just because a show stars Judy Dench doesn’t mean it isn’t boring and stupid. They’ve finally got this amazing stuff on about the way life was in fancy-schmancy Edwardian English manors, from the family that lives there down to the people who clean the chamber pots. You get to learn lots of neat stuff, and there is actual drama in the house—they don’t need the producers to add mood music or have a cast that includes a racist cowboy, a gay racist drug dealer, and an American Indian racist techno club dj with Whig Party leanings in order to keep things moving. You might think the treatment of the cultural differences between then and now would be heavy-handed, but it’s not at all. The narrator just tells you the facts, and it’s fascinating enough hearing what comfortable 21st Century people feel about suddenly working 16 hour days.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the concept of reality shows isn’t so bad after all. I even think shows like Mr. Personality and Joe Millionaire are good ideas—it’s just that the way they’re done is lame. Sometimes the American stuff is well done, like with The Michael Essany Show or even, God help me, The Osbournes (it’s not the producer’s fault that family is so fucking obnoxious).
But the blue ribbon definitely goes to the Brits. It’s as if they’ve taken all that pent up energy that used to go into maintaining Naval superiority and put it into their reality programming. Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the (broadcast) waves.
I am sure you are all thrilled to get my opinion on this particular subject instead of a post about my actual life. But with the quality programming served up by PBS (and supported by viewers like you), how can my life possibly compete?

Guess what the goddam dog did

She puked in my shoe.

Fucking dog.

The Hours Til Michele Arrives (starring Jason Shamai, and Meryl Streep in a dual role as a harried WWI nurse and a dissatisfied Chinese noblewoman during the Boxer Rebellion. Narrated by Virginia Woolf's corpse and impersonator/ventriloquist Rich Little)

Goddam kids at work spilled water on my book and asked me why I have more gray hairs than their dads. Should've told them expensive cars and infidelity keep fathers young. All I could think of at the time was to punch them.

But goddam kids at work can't bring me down, no sir, because my thoughts are in the clouds this afternoon. Michele is poised to rock my Jersey suburb! She'll descend upon this sleepy town like locusts that know how to party and decimate its bumper crop of lameness.

Let's have a moment of silence for stupidness, which will surely be dead as soon as she arrives.

The Lovecraft, Exciting and New

Item 1- Thanks to Michele Gibney for her delicious and stylish care package. The cookies and candy were tasty and the Krispy Kreme hat has proved a welcome addition to my head. It has been my plan since getting the hat to wear it all weekend. A very successful plan so far--much more so than my plan to get in shape, which has hit yet another tasty snag on the road to completion. Also, the West Coast Jewish Film Festival bulletin was fascinating reading.

Item 2 - Has anyone ever seen Sunset Boulevard? What the hell was the deal with the monkey? Did I miss something?

Item 3 - Told my dad I probably won't be going to grad school and be a teacher. He was pissed, but I think he still loves me.

Item 4 - Slipped in the mud and fell on my ass TWICE this week. Once in front of a group of bitchy, spoiled little kids who thought it was funny and the other time when the bitchy, spoiled dog on the leash sprinted after something in nature.

Item 5 - Have been able to keep my mind off of the last scary movie I saw in the Bay Area for exactly two months. Impressive run ended yesterday when I realized how much of the imagery in that movie is very reminiscent of the ACTUAL, REAL LIFE THINGS that I live with on a day to day basis. Namely, an old creepy well, a dark wood (complete with mysterious, high-pitched squeals), a farmhouse, precipitation, and telephones that ring. Even without that stuff, whole area is already an H.P. Lovecraft nightmare, what with all of its sinister New England creepiness. Also, there is a marionette in the window whose silhouette at night never fails to scare the shit out of me. Keep meaning to take it down, but I never get around to it.

Item 6 - Water heater fixed, but had to sweep out deluge #2 when the plumber fucked up. Found out from my dad (also a plumber) that my uncle got screwed on the price.

Item 7 - Goddamn key broke in the lock of the house, had to borrow pliers from the guy at the postal supply shop. Found a spare inside, made me happy. I didn't have the Krispy Kreme hat yet, though, so there was a definite limit to the happiness.

Water and the Future of Education

Yesterday I go downstairs an hour and a half before I have to go to work and I discover that the laundry/storage room is flooded nearly ankle deep, and see that the water heater is spitting out water like crazy, so I call up the plumber and he comes over in an astonishing ten minutes and tells me that the water heater is rusted out on the bottom and he's never seen a bigger hole/deluge. The people who were supposed to deliver the new water heater this morning never showed up, even though the plumber was told that they had come. So now I take cold showers. The remarkable thing about this experience is that it doesn't bother me in the least. I mean, even when I was spending the full hour before I had to go to work sweeping water out the door, sweeping to the very last minute, I couldn't help but not give one shit. When the garage door got smashed (the day snow retaliated), it was stressful because, while the elements were partly to blame, my stupidity had to be figured in there somewhere, too. But time and rust were the culprits here, it had nothing to do with me, so I could just sit back and just appreciate the wackiness of it all.

Something a little more stressful is the fact that I'm reconsidering graduate school and a life thereafter as a teacher. I'm starting to think that maybe I don't really want to be a teacher. I'm considering it strongly. When I get back to SF, I'm thinking of just gettting a job and continuing what I've been doing, since it was a pretty good life that left me time to pursue other things (you know, like my hobbies and such). The more I hear from teachers and the more I read about a teacher's day to day life and the more I deal with the fucking kids that teachers have to deal with twice as long as I do (and then grade papers for several more hours), the more I realize it's not for me. I think I saw graduate school as an escape from reality (back to the good old days) but I think now that's an illusion, and while I'm saddened by the knowledge that i won't be going back to learning more supercool things about literature, I think it would be little more than a luxury for me at this point.

Erica and Nuala, teach on! I didn't mean to piss on teaching. I know Erica's an amazing teacher and I'm sure Nuala is too, I just don't think I would be.

Shock n’ Awe Ain’t Just an Indian Tribe the U.S. Decimated in the 1800’s

Spring has finally reached my neck of the woods (I dance on your muddy grave, Snow!), and I’ve found myself, of all things, trying—trying, mind you—to get into better shape. I have already started to jog a little bit every day for the past week. What I’m hoping for is a return to something like my jogging glory days (there were roughly 30 of them—my ankles started hurting after that) in college. This go round might even be more successful, since stinky Tacoman pavement has been replaced by non-stinky Warrenite grass.
And seeing as how I don’t like the war and would like to somehow work that dislike into this post, I have decided that I will be jogging for an end to the war. I assure you it will cause no traffic congestion or uncomfortable hippie encounters. My main goal will be to raise awareness among the family that lives next door.
In response to the US government’s “Operation: Shock and Awe Shucks, I Bombed Your Whole Family,” I will launch this, my own “Shock and Awe” campaign, referring of course to the shock and awe you will all experience when you come face to face with the sexy new Jason. Just a head’s up: many of you will likely find the new me breathtaking and irresistable, but this is a bridge we’ll have to cross when we come to it.

Stuff

Wow. War.

All I keep thinking is I hope they did off Hussein in that initial attack so that they can stop this nonsense as quickly as possible.

I'd like to thank Ian for linking to Salam's site in Baghdad. I've been reading it like a 12-year-old with a Corey Haim fanzine. (What, they don't like him anymore? Nonsense, they don't know what they like.)

For some reason, i was inspired to do my taxes and FAFSA (a week late) all last night, while I was watching the shit go down in Iraq. Actually, i was inspired to do it before, so by the time of the initial air strike, I was already a tax-doing machine. The two had to fight for my attention, but I had a lot to give that evening.

Speaking of a lot to give, it's looking more and more like me and my dad are gonna go through with it. The kidney swappers are supposed to contact me so they can see if I'm healthy enough and have the right blood type. If so, I'll probably go down to Nevada shortly after my return to SF to make it happen. I should only be there for about two weeks and then be back, though it really sucks to have to be away that much longer.

For those of you who don't know, my dad is on dialysis and it's coming up on two years since he started waiting for a kidney (The name of this blog refers to a trip I forced him to take with me up to SF).

Grim stuff, the lot of it. But at least there's Corey Haim, like a lighthouse in rough seas. (You'll idolize him and you'll like it!)

This Book Sucks

Has anyone ever read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency? I found it on my uncle's shelf and remembered that I liked the Hitchhiker's Guide a lot, so I picked it up and started to read it. It sucks cock. Well, the first 27 pages do at least. Any other opinions?

Frothy

Today [I wrote this yesterday] has been a rough day. First I wake up with sickness. No biggie, I’ve been sick before and will likely be sick again. What sucked about being sick was the fact that I tried to take a Vitamin C tablet while driving down the old Steele Gap Road. This road, you see, is the kind of road whose name could only be done justice by an old rural man (women need not apply) wearing vaguely fisherman’s attire and sounding vaguely worried and suspicious, as in the following:

COMMUTER: I’ll be taking the old Steele Gap road to work today, even though it’s very icy and snowy out there and I have to pop a Vitamin C table in my mouth while I’m hugging its curves.

RURAL FISH-MAN: Not Steele Gap Road!

COMMUTER: Yeah.

Well, I guess I could have waited until I was on the more conservative and not nearly as mythic Foothill Rd., but I didn’t really think there would be any problem with unscrewing the cap with a skilled right set of fingers and placing one on my tongue. The only barrier, it turned out, between me and a flawless gesture in the direction of my good health is a little thing I like to call effervescence. That’s right. My mouth started fizzing and frothing like no tomorrow and the taste, my god the taste. Frightened, I swallowed it all down, then remembered what happened to sea gulls on these very sorts of occasions. And though in the smart part of my brain I was pretty sure my stomach wouldn’t blow up, I reached around frantically for something to dilute the billowing and expanding gas bubbles in my stomach, but when I took a sip of the water bottle on the passenger’s seat, it was frozen solid. But then there was this other water under the seat that was fine because there was a lot more of it, and so I averted the greatest exploding-stomach related crisis that’s ever been thrown my way. And all on STEELE…GAP…ROAD! I know. Take a minute.

The thing I don’t understand about effervescent Vitamin C tablets is that, Isn’t the whole point of Vitamin C tablets to save the time and energy it would have taken to pour yourself a glass of orange juice? And isn’t it more of a pain in the ass to take the necessary steps to make this bubbly drink possible? Especially if you haven’t taken the necessary steps at all and instead pop one in your mouth on the old Steele Gap Road? I’m pretty sure I’ve been told often that you can only have so much of the vitamin, that after a certain point, a point OJ bravely meets and exceeds, it just gets flushed out of your system. So there’s no point in opting for the Alka Seltzer method just because it has 1,666% of your RDwhatever of Vitamin C (that really is how much it has, I checked on the bottle. You know there’s some rockin’ high school kid whose summer job it was to put a certain amount of C into the tablets).

The reason I’m sick is because Jesus still hates me and keeps putting snow on the ground. The last snowfall was yesterday, enough for a snow day at the school where I work. I keep thinking about why I’m being tested, what I could possibly have yet to learn. I already discovered weeks ago that walking through a fresh blanket of snow in the sunlight makes you feel uncannily like a cigarette butt in a gigantic restaurant ashtray, the kind with that sparkly sand. What more is there left to understand!? And the question on everyone’s mind is, What about St. Patrick’s Day? Will the parade just be cancelled if it continues this way? I think if the festivities do get cancelled, they should call it the Great Par-tay (No) Blight.

One Bodhi Tree = 700 Brochures

It turns out that Confusing Evil isn't really all that evil after all. She's just weird. She actually engaged me in a very pleasant conversation about the not-so-pleasant weather. I think I may still keep the feud going, though. Most people don't remember why they started feuding in the first place, and I'm certainly not above being the one in the wrong, so long as no one else knows it. Though I may have to conserve my energy for the feud I hope to start with the Buddhist money interests of the Atlantic Coast, a kick-off skirmish for which I hope to incite sometime in early Spring. My main issue with these people, though there are many, is that they keep sending me, Occupant, crap in the mail. You'd think a philosophy that prides itself on its renunciation of earthly possessions wouldn't bombard its subscribers (no pun intended) with junk mail. But you would be wrong, imposing your Western disgust on something far cooler and transcendent than you could ever hope to be.
One of my many and varied responsibilities here in the middle of nowhere is the taking of the mail out of the mailbox and putting it somewhere. This duty would be pretty damn easy if it weren't for all the flyers and handouts and brochures that my Buddhist aunt and uncle get from every enlightened corner of the Eastern Seaboard: "The llama of this invites you to a very special...The Drukpa of that would be honored if...The Bodhisattva of this was wondering if maybe you were...." They all either want handouts or to sell you tickets to something. The only junk mail that outweighs that of the Buddhist money machine is info on frequent flyer miles, which holds a special place in my heart since it's what got me out here. Now, I have nothing against the philosophy--people jump on you if you call it a religion, like it's better than all the other religions that are really little more than philosophies that have been dragged through all the crap that Buddhism is starting to be dragged through--I think it's a party waiting to happen. I just wish that their mailing lists would divest themselves of my worldly address.

Your Show of Shows

I just wanted to ask you all if anybody's heard of this show I recently saw on TV called, I think, This Surreal Life. It's just that I've never heard any talk of it anywhere and it's the most astounding show I've ever seen. You all probably know all about it and I'm just a schmuck, but in case you'd never heard of it either, it's like the The Real World except that the participants are MC Hammer(!), Vince Neil, Corey Feldman(!!), Emmanuel Lewis(the poor man's Gary Coleman), and some women from 90210 and Baywatch. That's right, they have to live in a house together and do wacky things. Together. MC Hammer and Corey Feldman, together. Out of the blue one night there was a marathon so I got to see quite a few episodes, but I'd never heard of it before and it's not been advertised since. Good God, why not!?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Not ONE Kernel of Truth in the Accusation

Good news: I found work! Two jobs, no less: one at a preschool and another at a middle school. Admittedly, they're each about four hours per day, so it's more like one real job with a nice long lunch in the middle. Except that when you go back to work, the children HAVE AGED TEN YEARS! I know, freaky.

I've already pissed off a teacher at the middle school, and in the most confusing and surreal way I've ever pissed anybody off (which is never): I walk into the teacher's lounge and open up the seemingly unoccupied microwave to heat up some water, only to discover that is not in fact unoccupied but is in fact a super-special non-whirring microwave of the future that only appears unoccupied but in fact holds an insane woman's popcorn in its belly. "Whoops," I said while closing the door in the same fluid, almost cat-like motion that opened it in the first place. Half a second later, I locate the start button on this Microwavo-Galaxy-Future3000Tron and press it with the grace of a god, and the popcorn is once again doing what it was put on this earth to do. Within that two-and-a-half second span, the woman freaks out, then finds the strength to carry on, then shows that she's been harboring resentment since the start of the whole mess by sucking loudly at her teeth. THEN, waiting around for my water to heat in the other microwave (it whirs--they must've got it at an old curiosity store), she comes up to MicroWAVE-OF-THE-FUTURE and looks at it before saying to me, "What did you do to my popcorn? It's not popping?" I laugh pleasantly, assuming she's kidding around to apologize for initially freaking out. She goes back to discussing the work of Keith Haring with the other dude in the room (seriously) and presumably forgets all about me. Her kernels start popping in the Don't-Whirrr-y-Be-Happy3000 immediately afterwards and, satisfied, I take my cup out of The-Way-We-Whirrr1000 and walk off, unsure if I was laughing at a joke or a pissed strumpet. THEN on the other side of the gym where I earn my daily bread, separated by an entire wall (which is really cool, by the way, because it squishes into a little accordion at the push of a button) from this woman, she comes all the way over five minutes later, opens the door with a steaming bag of crapcorn in her hand and says, "Look what you did to my popcorn!" Good Jesus, woman! I had no hand in it, I promise you! But that's not the end. THEN, when I was relating this tale to the custodian (who is really cool, and whose glamorous duty it is to push the button that manipulates the fate of the accordion wall), he says, "Oh, yeah, that was Mrs. So-and-So. She told me all about it." The goddamned woman is spreading our business all over the school! I'm pretty sure that this means war--a very one-sided war where she keeps bugging me out of spite and I just laugh at how funny she looks when she's mad. She's already retaliated: the next day, she told me that the door of the copy room had to be kept closed because the cold air needs to stay in the room for the copier to be under the most favorable conditions (she even addressed me as "Sir"). Considering that my predecessor said she kept the door open every single day and that the temperatures of the copy room and the gym are perhaps 67 and 68 degrees, respectively, I think I've got an all out feud on my hands. On one side of the gym stands Jason: honest, misunderstood, tea-drinking. On the other stands Confusing Evil: insane, technologically superior, would-be popcorn eater. All that stands between us is one flimsy but really cool accordion wall, the position of which is determined solely by the fickle finger of Cool Custodian. And with him on my side, her bizarre accusation days are numbered.

Today I am a Man

Surprise! I have a weblog. I will tell stories and you will read them. This is Jason, in case it doesn't say anywhere. Gene convinced me that it would be easier to have one of these things than to keep sending stories through email/Michele. So I'll give this a shot. But not right now. I have nothing to say. Except SURPRISE!

What's a ping? Do I want them?