To Mock the Killing Bird

I’m sitting on the couch in the foyer of a nice restaurant on the South Hill, reading Spokane METRO and waiting for a table.  An out of place man in a loose t-shirt, baseball cap, and a Rolling Rock pounds over and sits in an overstuffed chair across from me.

Nearly yelling:  “Hey man!  How’s America treating ya?”

I study his face because he knows I’ve newly  arrived, but I don’t know him.  “Alright!  I’m enjoying it.”

“NOooooo shit!?  How long have you been here, man?”

“Couple days.”

Coming over to shake my hand, “Noooo shit!  Where were you man?”

“China.”

“Well welcome back!”

“Thanks.  Do… do I know you?”

“No you don’t man, but I’m a fucking intuitive mother fucker!  And you know what?  I’m gonna go back to China with you man because I love you, and I FUCKING HATE EVERYBODY here!  And Andrew, I predict you are going to have a terrible day, because this place will fuck you up.  You will get fucked up if you drink here!”

“Well, I just plan on getting some dinner, so I hopefully I’ll be alright.”

“Don’t fucking drink here man!  Don’t do it, because you will get fucked up.  But I love you man.”  Some older ladies have finished their meal and are walking past us out the door, and he says loudly, “But I fucking hate those-” quietly now, “bitches!  Don’t worry man, I said it quietly, they couldn’t here me, man.  Don’t worry.  But I love myself-” here he starts pulling violently on the front of his already stretched T-shirt, as he has given this speech a number of times tonight and the words come out like a struggle, “I love... myself... more than anybody on this fucking planet.”

We sit quietly for a second and he comes over to shake my hand again and say, “I love you man, but I gotta go.  I fucking hate this place.”  And he went off to The Pear Tree Inn bar next door. 

I don't know how many people actually read this without officially being "Friends", but you should really consider it.  You may be missing out at this point. 

little quick stride steps and hands in
sweatshirt pockets
I may be a buck thirty-five but
I can do 14 pull-ups
can you resist the hookers?
hello!  hello!
they love me, the hookers
they walk out special when I
walk by
they've heard of my strength
but I can resist
no thanks, but it's nice of you to offer
maybe you could stop by recess
some time
when I work out
your days are probably slow, right?
only housewives and unemployed
men at home then
you could watch.  maybe
I could give you some money
if you dressed nice
class it up
a bit
a scarf, dress
no high heels
what's the going rate
for watching pull-ups
by a short man?

"Me, personally, I'm pro-life.  But I don't want to make that choice for someone else.  That's their choice."

"I agree with you, but that doesn't mean you're pro-life.  That makes you pro-choice - wanting the public to have a choice between two options."

"You don't understand.  I, personally, could never have an abortion.  To me, there is no choice."

"Look, personal decisions have nothing to do with it.  The choice isn't between those who would have an abortion and those who would not.  It's between people who think women should have a choice in the matter, and those who do not.  Regardless of your own decision, you want others to have a choice.  That makes you pro-choice."

"Well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree."

"There's no room, no choice to disagree on this one!  You're just wrong!"

"You can't stand the fact that I disagree with you, can you?  Just because you don't agree with me on this issue doesn't mean I'm wrong."

"There IS NO ISSUE!  Do you know what we are debating?  Your understanding of the term "pro-choice".  I thought I could make a case for your logical reasoning skills, but that is clearly not the case."

"Clearly not, I guess."

(Sigh)

I've been thinking about becoming a rabbi.

Really?  I didn't know you were Jewish.

I'm not.  Do you need to be?

I'm pretty sure.  Maybe you could convert.

No, I don't think so.  I don't like the idea of dedicating that much of my life to a religion I don't really believe in.

...

You're doing this for the beard.

I'm doing this for the beard.

 


  15.  watching "reality-based" television
  14.  watching drama or situational-comedy television
  13.  listening to radio programming paid for by advertising
  12.  browsing nondescript Internet pages
  11.  reading entertainment magazines
  10.  watching documentary television
   9.   researching specific information on the Internet
   8.   listening to books on tape
   7.   reading common fiction
   6.   reading newspapers and other periodicals paid for by advertising
   5.   watching public television and cinematic documentaries
   4.   listening to public radio
   3.   writing and journaling of all types
   2.   reading independent and publicly owned media free of advertising
   1.   reading literature, poetry and critical nonfiction

A friend of mine here in Shanghai loaned me a short story collection that was a tribute to the pulp fiction genres  -  Amazing Tales edited by Michael Chabon.  The pulp classics and old hard-boiled detective stories have fascinated me lately, and the short stories only fed into that interest.  Stephen King, Chabon, Michael Chrichton, Nick Hornby, and Dave Eggers all contributed stories.  One of the best things about the old pulp fiction works were the titles, and this book continued on in that tradition with stories like, How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman, and The Tears of Squank and What Happened Thereafter.  

This friend is always trying to come with ways to make socializing more cultured or academic, ways to occasionally escape pedestrian life.  A few of his ideas have been to have a dinner party with a short time set aside to discuss a previously decided topic, and putting together a small one-act play after a group brainstorming session.  The pulp titles seemed like a forgotten art form, as well as a source for some hilarious writing, so he and his wife and I started exchanging our own potential pulp stories via text messages throughout the day.  I might have been headed out to recess when a beeping from my phone notified me of the message:  The Gyrating Horoscope From Circus Tent #9!  (one of his wife's)  The idea was to create a list of plausible titles, create short pulp tag lines for the best of them, and then write one or two complete stories.  Here is the list I came up with, and short summaries for the ones that I thought were the most viable:


Hey!  That's No Troglodyte, That's My Husband!

...And That's The Way The Cookie Crumbles (When Human Flesh Is Baked Inside)

The Pin-bot Sextron From Paddlevania

The Day The Earth Stood Still For Few Minutes But Nobody Really Noticed

The Cannibalistic Invasion Of Leper Island And The Bastard Orphans Resulting

The Blog That Once Foresaw The Future But Would Subsequently Only Cause Frustration

The Siamese Twin Army And Its Carnival Act Of Death!

An Apocalyptic Future That Turned Out To Be Present Time!

Less Weepeep And The Dickensian Murders

The Driven Snow and Driving Mad
When snow in the city comes down in drifts, it can block out the midday sun to total darkness on the mountain slopes of Rainier.  Retired logger and failed gold panner, Aurum Folsom, has seen something through the snow’s eclipse, but can he reach the mountain’s base in time?

Ogden And The Petrifying Wood
Josh Ogden was a self-described rock hound.  After stumbling upon a mass grave that only mother nature could form, Ogden’s favorite fossils had started to hound him.  

The Window Cleaner's Silent Scream
Have you ever witnessed an event that happened so fast, so unexpectedly, that you weren’t sure if what you saw was real at all?  Now imagine that you had bloodstained proof that a murder has taken place, and the silent scream in your memory threatens your sanity.  Who will hear your cry? 

Murder On The 27th Page!
Captain of industry, RP Cozin had finally settled down to write his memoirs.  When he turns up dead before the second chapter can be completed, his daughter hires Agee Humfly to piece together the clues left behind. 

The Little Taste Of A High Speed Chase That Left Ted In A Jam
Ted fancied himself a thug who took nothing from no one and handed out plenty, and the real estate office where he worked rarely challenged his vision.  On the freeway drive home from work he challenged the wrong man and must confront his ego while fighting for his life.

In my opinion, it's a given that Gmail is the best email provider.  Google does things well, and they are consistent about it.  So when Google came out with an email program four years ago I was excited to transfer over to what would have probably been my 6th or 7th email address. 

You may remember that when Gmail first came out, it was by invitation only.  Somehow, an elite group of people received the first @gmail.com accounts and were occasionally given the opportunity to invite other people through an emailed link.  Shortly after starting a blog (sometime in 2004, I think) I started reading a girl's blog from Belgium, and she mentioned having Gmail invites to give to people.  That's how I got mine.  You had to scheme to get one, and it made the address seem that much cooler.  Before that, it was a supposed hoax news story about a Google offering one gigabyte of mail storage.  Unheard of!  But it turned out to be true.  Yahoo gave you something like 10 megabytes and charged you fee to store more than that.  Hotmail offered half that amount of storage, and AOL automatically deleted emails after a certain amount of time.  Google used the invitation system for three years!

Only since 2007 has anyone who wanted one been able to sign up for a Gmail account.  Tens of millions of users.  That's a lot of email addresses!  When I chose my address, gmail.com was still a rare address and I had an easy time finding a name I wanted.  Not like in the heydays of AOL when most of America had an @aol.com address.  In the worst of times, AOL only allowed a ten character combination of 0-9 and a-z.  (I still play this early policy for the many ridiculous trends that continue to plague email addresses)  Tens of millions of users later, the supply of reasonable Gmail addresses is surely dwindling.  That's when I got my idea.

I will create Gmail addresses now... for the future!  I'll just start with the family for now.  I don't have a wife (or girlfriend, or a girl that smiles at me), or kids, but someday maybe I will.  Do I want the future Mrs. Greene-Hyphen or baby Grover Noam Greene-Hyphen to have a substandard email address?  Hell no!  TheGreeneHyphenAbode@gmail.com is now secure from future account registerers, as is GroverNoamGreeneHyphen@gmail.com for our future son.  (I assumed that my wife would wish to hyphenate our names, but since I couldn't begin to guess what her last name would be I thought simply spelling out the hyphen in the email address was the next logical step.)  And if we have a girl, NekoNoaminaGreeneHyphen@gmail.com is secured.  For twins, I have completely different names picked out and cannot go into that just yet.

If only I could predict my wife's first name so that I could make the name change transition as smooth as possible for her.  But I can always play the numbers.  So I've gone ahead and registered the following addresses:

JessicaGreeneHyphen@gmail.com

JenniferGreeneHyphen@gmail.com (a simple JGreeneHyphen@gmail.com would just be too similar to my own)

MelissaGreeneHyphen@gmail.com

And since it was once so in a dream: 

AshleyGreeneHyphen@gmail.com

It's always safe to have a few backup choices as well (both in terms of wives and email addresses), so I registered the following:

TammyGreeneHyphen@gmail.com

CrystalGreeneHyphen@gmail.com

BerthaHyphenGreene@gmail.com (I figured Bertha would demand her name come first.  Hey, Bertha, I'm all for it, but the kids address are stuck, sooo....)

BrandeneGreeneHyphen@gmail.com


I know advertising the innovative practice will deplete the pool of reasonable email addresses even more, but I think I'm pretty well set.  So go ahead and follow my lead.

I think it would be hilarious to film a series of interactions of a man asking people on the street to take photos of him in front of various attractions and scenes, but instead of handing over a camera he hands the stranger a MacBook and explains to them how to use the track pad to take a photo using Photo Booth and the built-in camera.  

Perhaps the title above wouldn't make the best show title, however. 

I shouldn't have stopped by the import grocery store for yeast just because I was in the neighborhood.  They had a huge NEW section of a Belgian beers that weren't terribly spendy.  I just spent 20 bucks on an improvised 6-pack. 

Prepare yourselves for upcoming reviews.

I spent two weeks over the holidays on a solo trip through Vietnam.  It was a fascinating, lonely, much-needed experience.  But I've talked about it too much already to talk about it right now.  I did, however, upload about 200 photos on facebook.  You can look at'em, iffin'n you wanna.  Or stalk me.  Please. 


1.   http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91515&l=f9aa6&id=548021082

2.   http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91520&l=9627d&id=548021082

3.   http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91531&l=75771&id=548021082

4.   http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91548&l=e20cc&id=548021082

5.   http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91549&l=52223&id=548021082

6.   http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91550&l=6e50b&id=548021082

A squat man sat on his couch, perched in the corner cushion resting his elbow on the arm rest and sighed deeply.  
    "Ayeee.  I'm starving!  Have you started anything for dinner, mum?"  He moved his gaze from the television toward the kitchen but the only sound was a nearby oscillating parabolic heater going tooka tooka tooka.  When it had made a compete cycle of right to left he said, "Well then, I guess I'll find me a snack."
    The man walked fifteen paces and opened a sliding glass door that led to his primary colored kitchen.  He opened the red fridge and took out a tray the size of romance novel and put it inside the microwave.  "Medium rare, please." and he tapped a button three times before flicking on a coffee pot.  He returned to the sofa after the microwave beeped, romance novel tray in hand, fork in mouth, beer in other hand, and sat back down in his corner cushion that still held a slight temperature advantage to the rest of the couch.  "Ah, thank you sweetheart."
    When the tray was empty and the beer drained, he picked up the television remote and punched in a series of buttons.  Exactly 30 minutes later a 10 appeared on the television and counted down to 1, after which it displayed a message that said, "Goodnight sweetheart".  The squat man then reached under the couch and pulled out a thin pillow that he folded in half and placed beside the arm rest, laid down putting his head on the pillow and went to sleep. 

Monday:   Surprise!  Free tickets to Kanye West!  Squeeze up to right in front of the stage.  Great show.

Tuesday:  Find out great news about a DJ performance in Shanghai!

Wednesday:   Obama elected US president!  First time voting for a successful candidate!  First time proud of America's choice!  First black president!  Awesome victory speech! 

Thursday:  Great school day after 12 hours of sleep! 

Friday:  Dance party to Common, Sufjan, and M. Ward in preschool classroom!

Saturday:  Best Thai food ever, followed by... DJ Shadow live!  Squeeze up to right in front of the turntables!  Amazing show! 

Sunday:  No Hangover!  Do laundry!  Eat Chinese Muslim Noodles!


This was probably the best week in the history of my life. 

I would have said it yesterday, but I was too busy celebrating. 

Why, oh why, couldn't I have waited just one week to put $4500 in my IRA.  It would have been like.. putting the money away 7 years ago. 

Going to the dentist in China has a disconcerting similarity to an opening scene of any number of old Twilight Zone episodes.  At one point I opened my eyes to see three people looking over me back lit by fluorescents, speaking in a completely foreign language though surgical masks, with no less than four hands and tools in my mouth.  Drilling, scraping, suctioning, and shining some ultraviolet ray gun at my tooth while a machine ticked off in a robot's voice in the background:  10 seconds... 20 seconds... 30 seconds. 



----------------
Now playing: Bon Iver - The Wolves (Act I And II)
via FoxyTunes    

This morning I rode my bike down to the fancy grocery store for Monday's China Daily, an English language paper that prints the NYT crossword.  I have a friend here who verges on obsessed with the puzzle, and he does a great job of making it sound interesting.  I want to be interesting too!  So I've been working my unpracticed crossword skills on it all flipping day and I'm proud to say I have finished about 75 percent of it thus far.  The funny thing I noticed is that while taking a break and milling about the house, I found myself talking to myself.  A lot.  Just little mutterings and side comments.  Weird, I know.  My roommate is gone for the week, and it's just me.  I've never been much for talking to myself, but something about having those numerous conversations in my head over crossword clues triggered something... and now I'm a weirdo! 

By the way, what's Dagwood Bumstead's wife's name? 

The Subatomic Black Thief (working title)

The black hole wasn't immediately evident when it formed (a defining characteristic we now know), and only a handful of bushy-haired scientific crackpots were looking anyway.  A million bushy haired types with a million nets made of superstring couldn't have found our black hole since it was subatomic. 

When some other scientists of a more respectable kind, with hair tightly controlled, turned on a particle accelerator in Switzerland, a black hole the size of a proton was created in the place of the proton destroyed in the accelerator.  At that point, our baby black hole drifted up and out of the tunnel, through the earth out to the crisp open air of Geneva (probably past some fogey with one of those Ricola pipes and money in every stock market in Europe), and essentially fell of the planet.  The short journey only took a few days, but in it's wake it created a new universe and nearly destroyed our own.   

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kinda boring so far?  the next couple paragraphs will talk about monkeys and pubic hair, i promise. 

I love any mention of bootstraps in a speech.  It's totally an ear perk up moment for me.  Then I think, "Alright, here comes something good!"

I thought my first migraine was a way to start the journal since returning to China.  It was both incredible and exhausting.

After skipping breakfast, the morning dragged but I felt fine.  It wasn't until after lunch that something very unsettling started to happen.  Toward the end of nap time and I was sitting with a little girl from Germany reading a story about Easter Bunny school - a classic through and through.  I had read the book earlier to the group so it struck me as odd that I couldn't read it very well.  The pages had gone a little blurry to the end of my right side and it made it impossible to focus on everything but the very middle.  Everything looked like a Venn diagram of words with everything converging and overlapping and only the middle had clarity.  It was very odd, but something you expect to pass quickly after a refocusing.  Only it didn't go away.  It got stronger and waves were now passing through my vision.  If I looked to the extreme right, I saw something like a strobe effect - dark and light waves pulsated into the frame.  It made me nauseous.  I found that if I put my right hand up like a blinder on a horse, it wasn't so bad but I still couldn't read well.  After a while it was of course enough to start panicking.  Could farsightedness come on suddenly??  I was already slightly nearsighted!  I would be halfway blind! 

Only I didn't have much time to worry about that because as the vision problem gradually corrected itstelf (I later read they call it an "aura" and it's quite common) and something even more terrifying happened:  I forgot the name of every student in my class.  Granted, they started only two days ago, but I easily had them down, and if I tripped up a quick thought and look at the child would work.  Only I could stare and stare and I wouldn't help.  And when I looked at the class list, it didn't help either.  I had to think hard and look at each student and I could line up half at that point.  Worse, I realized could not remember the teachers' names!  I know it sounds unbelievable, but I could think of a teacher's face, remember things we had done, but not their name.  With some reasoning, these names came back to me.  My heart wheeled and I contemplated a life with Alzheimer's at 28 (something I always suspected anyway). 

I had to go tell my friend Ande what was happening and she of course told me to go to the doctor after I told her with a white face that I couldn't remember her name five minutes ago.  But... it's not exactly in my personality.  I wouldn't even know what to say!  Can you imagine?  Going up to an office of Chinese women with beginner English and I walk in and tell them I saw flashing lights and forgot my students' names.  That didn't sound like much of a plan. 

It wasn't until I got a chance to talk to Linda, the primary school supervisor (and coincidently one of the few teachers whose name I didn't forget) that she said, "Migraine.  That's a migraine, but you should get it checked out."  Which of course I didn't.  But I did go to computer lab and Google my symptoms.  The next best thing.  The strobe effect description was a dead match, and even some name forgetting isn't exactly uncommon.

I was full on dizzy, pale, and unhappy when school ended.  The only bright side was looking at teachers during our meeting and secretly laughing that I couldn't remember their names without serious thought.  I also felt better that I could blame a migraine instead of tumors or senility.  I arrived home at four o'clock and slept 13 hours until I had to get up for school the next day.  I was a little dizzy still, but I knew everyone's name at least.  I popped an Advil and by late morning I felt fine.  It may have been coming on again after lunch, but I fought it off with another Advil, water, and good thoughts.

I'm convinced the food at school has something to do with it.  It's loaded with MSG and often gave me mild headaches before.  I also read that skipping breakfast can urge on a migraine headache.  These factors help dissuade that it's a tumor, but you never know.  I promised everyone I'd go to the doctor if it happened again. 

So, if I start developing superpowers you'll know what do blame it on.