September 2010 Archives

i'm no longer getting my RDA of Queen.

well, you know that the best it can ever hope to be is a distant second best, behind basil poledouris' masterpiece, but it's still pretty darn good.

i'm nearing the end of stephen king's fractal, self-referential magnum opus, "the dark tower". the seventh and final book is a recapitulation of the pattern of all the books before, and it is, in my opinion, head and shoulders better than any of them. like any good story, it is invading my consciousness.

a couple of nights past, when it was especially hot in the bedroom, we had a fan set up and no comforter. throughout the night, the bedsheets would be blown about a centimeter up, then fall down again as the waves of hot air were blown toward the bed by the fan. i slept restlessly, and had a nightmare.

normally when i have a bad dream, it tends to creep up on me slowly, developing from a "normal" dream into a "bad" dream with such lack of subtlety that my sleeping overmind can take control, and either laugh in the face of my subconscious and turn things pleasant again, or, more frequently, demand that i wake up and end the nonsense. but this dream was quite different. i was in the middle of a "good" or at least "boring" dream, and then suddenly, with no warning at all, i was context-switched into the intensely vivid experience that the bedsheet was suspended four feet above the bed, and descending upon me to envelop me, and kill me, and drag me into some stephen king nightmare of malevolent, unrelenting, and totally enveloping evil.

(by the way, the use of the word "envelop" twice in one sentence, an affront to the language which i am normally staunchly guarded against, is meant as a tribute to master king. har har har.)

the whole experience lasted only a second or two, much shorter than the normal bad dream, providing me no time to shut things down. instead i fought back, punching and kicking at the descending cottony killer, and awoke with a start to find myself delivering perhaps the hardest kick i've ever inflicted on another human straight on to the shin of hops, sleeping next to me. she took things rather well, and seemed much less startled by it than i. i apologized profusely, hoped i hadn't broken anything, and went back to sleep.

the next morning, she told me i had punched her, too.

anyhow, i highly recommend the dark tower. it is invasive, in a good way, as long as you're not sharing a bed with me.

hops and i spent yesterday afternoon in chinatown in search of some chinese (duh) tea equipment. by one coincidence or another, we ended up in Vital Tea Leaf, a "tea bar" run by the craziest old man in Chinatown, "Uncle". It turns out (thanks google!) he's well known to the locals, and the riotously funny firehose of profanities, sexual innuendo, and booming orders that he directed at us was not outside his normal daily activity.

we looked at the teapots, found none we liked, and as we left, he shouted at us, "WHERE ARE YOU GOING? SIT YOUR ASS DOWN AND HAVE SOME TEA, IT WILL MAKE YOU YOUNGER AND GOD DAMN SEXIER!"

From there on, he imparted important lessons about how i should deal with hops during that "difficult time of the month" (hint: LIE), how hops should never drink coffee because some day she will take her shirt off in front of a mirror and be all wrinkled. He demanded that we guess his age (hops: 50, me: 200), and he claimed 78, which, I guess is how he looks in the sfgate picture, but to be fair to Uncle, in person he looks (and acts) much younger. The first infusion of tea we should give to our unwanted guests, and in China, short women carry cows on their backs through tea fields to make Milk Oolong.

There was much eye-rolling by his daughter and her fellow coworkers.

While we sat and participated (non-participation is not an option) in his hysterical rants, he shouted at and cajoled passers by ("DON'T STAND IN MY GOD DAMN DOORWAY, COME INSIDE, SIT DOWN, HAVE TEA, IT WILL MAKE YOU GOD DAMN SEXIER!"), with surprising success. Several repeat customers came by for more of the same.

"COME INSIDE, HAVE TEA, IT WILL MAKE YOUR BOYFRIEND GOD DAMN SEXIER, YOU DON'T NEED ANY", he shouted at one couple.

Uncle did not prepare the tea in a manner that I would call "carefully", nor would I describe his performance as "stingy", we got a lot of free tea. But mostly, it was all about the performance. we left with some teacups and some ginseng tea for hops, who isn't quitting coffee no matter how wrinkled it makes her. i had felt a little dumb mail ordering tea from chinatown, but after the day's travel to actually get to and from chinatown, i figure that the 8 bucks i paid in shipping was actually a bargain. still, the next time i'm in chinatown, i'm sure i'll stop by to see Uncle.

i see you runnin round town with the drink i love
and i'm like, "fuck you!" and "starbucks too!"

with your vanilla chai latte and a soy milk brew
well i'm like, "fuck you!" and, ah, "fuck milk too!"

this is a great video for a great song.

and you are going to watch it, RIGHT NOW.

"highlander" is an awful movie.

and the only thing worse is "highlander 2".

of course, we haven't seen the third one yet.

on the other hand, michael ironside is friggin rad.

It's Frobuary 1, YOMHC 0x69!

There's a new barber in town.

You guessed it, I gave myself this haircut.

It's been said that I dress like a 4 year old, just grabbing whatever is around and putting it on. Now it can be said that I have a haircut like a 4 year old who found mommy's scissors. I nearly lost an ear and did cut myself in the sideburn area, but not badly. The area on the bottom of the back that real barbers always obsess about for some reason ("you want it flat, rounded, octagonal, what?" "how does it look in the back?") looks like crap, but since i can't normally see it, and since people who sneak up on me from behind deserve whatever horrors they observe on the back of me, I am fine with that.

This haircut pairs well with some nice Anji green tea and The Orb.

i don't have a salad today, because i ran out of lettuce. instead, i have chicken with too-hot salsa. i have no greens for lunch.

but i do have a nice green cactus on my desk. and i do recall that cactus is edible. yum.

why wasn't i told?

i'm on the sixth novel now, a nice 400 page reprieve from the usual 900 pages per book in the DT series. a movie woulda been a real time saver.

watching "the machinist" was like getting punched in the face by muhammed ali: a painful experience delivered with obvious mastery.